wow

Best workday ever.

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So, call me a twopointopian for loving my workday today. If exploring new worlds for librarianship, experimenting with new ways to do what we do and raving about it isn’t your thing, skip this post.

Here’s why today was fantastic for me:

9:15am – 20 minutes or so in a meeting for Enquiry and Loans staff showing pretty slides and telling them what emerging technology is and why I think it’s important for library staff to learn about it, and then outlining the 23 Things program.

9:40am – Upstairs to the accountant for Teaching and Learning where I used her credit card to order a Second Life island for the university.

10am – 12pm – Reference desk shift. Just another ordinary one, where I felt like I helped people and their faces lit up when I explained what the library held for them.

12:15pm – Emailed all library staff announcing the 23 Things program starting mid September, and inviting them to register

12:30pm – Emailed the university’s Second Life Interest Group telling them that we have an island

1:30pm – 5:00pm Seminar with Stephen Abram where he outlined Top 10 Strategies for Library Success and with versatile wit, speed of thought and intelligent charm quietly blew the minds of 30 or so librarians.

5:00pm – 5:30pm Made a short video clip of Stephen talking about 23 Things programs, to use for the launch of the 23 things at work.

6:00pm – 10:30pm Shared food and drink with Stephen and six other librarians who all were interesting thinkers and conversationalists.

Wow!

UPDATE 2 September 2007: OK, so I had a lot of awesome library techie things improbably converge in the one 12 hour period. “Couldn’t possibly get better”, I thought.

This weekend when catching up on my feeds, I discovered it did get better. On the same day, Michael Stephens from Tame the Web  highlighted this blog as one of his 5 blogs for Blog Day07 that “inspire me, engage me and make me think”.

Excuse me, I’m off to lie down in a quiet room.

Off on an adventure

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I’m flying to Melbourne on Friday to spend the weekend there before talking on Monday about “Virtual Libraries: Real Librarians” at the State Library of Victoria’s training day for public librarians Libraries, Web2.0 and Other Internet Stuff. I’m excited about spending a whole day hearing about libraries.

I spent last weekend creating new slides. After outlining what is Second Life and how libraries are using it, I will talk about ten ways Australian public librarians can get involved. I’m aiming to do a live demo on the day -with the audience telling my avatar what to do. I also pointed my video camera at the screen as I did a tour of Info Island and the Australian Libraries Building so that I have a backup if glitchiness happens.

I even upgraded the driver for my video card so that there is no chance of Emerald being clothed in textures in her environment instead of clothing textures. (It used to get a bit embarrassing when a tree texture didn’t quite cover what ought to be covered).

After a tech run through at the State Library on Friday afternoon, I will be free until Sunday. Michelle, the Connecting Librarian, is taking me to St Kilda Markets and a visit to her home and her library until the evening when we have dinner with Christine McKenzie from Yarra Plenty and Helene Blowers from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County.

I’m really excited about meeting these folk. Michelle and I have worked together on librariesinteract.info for over a year and I have watched the Learning 2.0 program as it’s grown up and moved to Australia. I was tempted to bring a mike and make a podcast that night, but I’m leaving it at home and just enjoying the company instead.

Of course on Saturday morning I will be popping to the local K-Mart or Target to pick up a copy of the new Harry Potter. No kids and the day to myself to read it! I would be better off saving it until the plane trip home, however. If anyone would like to suggest something I shouldn’t miss in Melbourne or catch up for a coffee or show me their library, I’d be happy to do so on Friday night or Saturday. Just email me sirexkat @ gmail dot com .

I get home about 10:30 on Monday night, my very lovely boss has offered to do my desk shift so I can recover, then I fly back to Melbourne again at 3:30 on Thursday to attend the Carrick Exchange focus group the next morning. If my kids and Co-Pilot didn’t want to see me, then I could maybe miss a flight or two and just stay in Melbourne all week.

Grow your own OPAC…but save those kittens.

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MPOW recently switched on a function on our III Opac which allows users to add a star rating to items in the catalogue. In one of those late night conversations in Second Life, I showed it to Dave Pattern, who was motivated by the green tinge he felt to code his own version and pop it over his Dynix installation. Gee I wish I had the skills to code that.

Today he’s casually mentioned that the University of Huddersfield will go live with user comments on the OPAC in the next week. Gee I wish I had the skills to code that.

But..Dave, in turn, has said “Gee I wish I had time to do that”….about….

John Blyberg…..

….. who has created a “social OPAC” interface which sits over Ann Arbor’s III Innopac library management system. It allows user rating, tagging and reviews. He’s released the code as well. And made a screencast to show how to use it.

Dave would “kill a box of cute kittens with my bare hands to be able to take on a project like this“. Well, John and Dave, I’d care for a box of cute kittens until they were grown (infinitely more of a sacrifice) to have the coding skills to do what you guys are doing.

Keep it up. Please keep sharing…and those of us with lesser skills promise to try to persuade those higher up in the food chain at our workplaces that guys like you need time and support to do what you do. We’ll even try to change things so we can care for any “free as in kittens” services you produce.

Getting Ready For Canberra

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If our kids tell you that they’ve been fed nothing but baked beans for too many dinners in the next few months…I’m afraid they’ll be telling the truth.

Their parents are preoccupied with the serious business of Getting Ready For Canberra.

The Co-Pilot flies over at Easter because his Fremantle-based choir, Voicemale, will be performing at the National Folk Festival. Their set is around the theme “A New Agenda”. They are thinking of their all-male blokey group singing “Sisters are Doing it for Themselves“. As I write this, there is the “thump, thump,thump” of someone keeping time upstairs as he arranges “Brass in Pocket“. So lots of singing and practice and co-ordination for him until April.

ozflylib.jpg

Me..well, I’m busy making movies and taking snapshots in Second Life. I’ll be in Canberra for something else in early February. To calm my nerves and kill some time, I emailed Matthew Stuckings at the National Library to ask whether I could meet someone to chat about what we’ve been doing with the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life.

Well…they were interested, and now I’ll be giving a public talk about Second Life as part of their “Digital Culture” series, on Wednesday February 14th 12:30pm – 1:30pm in the Library Theatre.

If it was on any other topic, I’d be really daunted. I was daunted..but I decided to do it partly because it’s a really invigorating topic for me…and I know enough about it to talk for an hour (half an hour plus questions!)..and I’d love to see people’s faces as they experience SL for the first time. And… an hour after it was suggested to me, I read Ivan Chew’s post about “chickening out” of being on blogTV.SG.

In my talk, I’ll be pointing out that Second Life provides new chances to collaborate. It’s been illustrated by the four or five generous Second Life Librarians who have shared with me their power point slides they used for live presentations. If anyone reading this has any ideas of what I should include or what they think people would want to know, feel free to contact me.

I’m doing a practice run at MPOW on February 9th for WA academic librarians. I hope to do a live demo for both talks, but am getting together lots of movies and snapshots as backup for both. (Hence my new toy).

The talk is titled “Flying Librarians of Oz: What’s all the fuss about Second Life and what’s it got to do with libraries?“. More info on the NLA Events page. (Now, if I’ve used Cite Bite properly, that link should go to the page, then magically jump down to a yellow highlighted heading, “Digital Culture Talk.)

TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Content

Skype and google..they’re talking!!!

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Now that I’ve installed skype, my google search results display clickable links to some telephone numbers so I can start a VOIP call with just one click. That’s them below with the Australian flag next to them.


My vague and not-so-tech-savvy-this-morning-brain thinks…..”is this something to do with microformats, and should I find out more about them…they look fun”.

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Power of one….

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People with enthusiasm, who embrace what they do with joy and encourage others, can change the lives of hundreds of people…far more than most committees do. Here’s a few of them…

Fig 1. Enthuse, embrace, learn, play.


Enthuser 1 – LORI BELL
Lori always seems to be online when I visit Second Life. She was showing librarians around Info Island 10am Western Australian time this morning, yet when I just emailed her (about 9pm my time), she replied straight away. She’s getting out of bed at 3am her time to show us around as part of our LINTy party.

She is co-ordinating countless projects in Second Life, creates a Real Life buzz around her project and is a hub around which many folk are empowered to try out skills in Second Life. She’s part of a team but she works many extra hours and brings extra ooomph to it.

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Enthuser 2 – WARREN HORTON
Director General of the National Library of Australia, 1985 – 1999. I’ve been doing a bit of reading about Aurora and discovered that the foundation is self funded due to a legacy he left on his death in 2003. He believed in empowering future librarians, and was deeply involved in Aurora’s inception and running until he died.

I’ve been reading how he scrutinized the applications and took delight in matching applicants with mentors. He was affectionately called the “Grand Poo-bah” by participants and mentors when he joined in each 5 day live-in course. He let down his guard and talked frankly about some of his best and worst decisions. He had an extensive knowledge of who was where in the library world, and apparently a talent for suggesting who should be where.


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Enthuser 3 – RICHARD RENNIE
Richard runs the Fremantle Light and Sound Museum. He’s not a librarian, but a passionate ex-science teacher who won the Premier’s Award for Science Communication 2006, He single-handedly runs his collection as a volunteer, in a small room in our local museum..and always seems to be there when we visit. He lets us play with his stuff collected over 40 years, talks to us about it and we leave thinking about it for days afterward.

The last few times we visited, we

  • Played “Pong” on an old tele-tennis machine hooked up to a portable black and white TV
  • Ran our fingers along a string dangling from a christmas card and heard it play a tune due to the friction of our fingers over the special bumps in the string
  • Used a magnet to distort the picture on an old black and white TV set
  • Wore special red and blue specs and goggled at Michael Jackson and Dr Who in 3D
  • Placed our $50 notes under ultraviolet light to reveal the anticounterfeiting marks on it
  • Used a typewriter – a highight for Mr4 who now wants to get one.
  • Debated whether the baffles on a gramaphone really made the sound quality better
  • Looked through periscopes and kaleidoscopes and stroboscopes.


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Enthuser 4 – REG BOLTON
I’ve previously blogged about Reg Bolton. He packed an entire circus into his suitcase and inspired and taught thousands of children that they had the power to amaze. He had a few “circus swear words” that he banned from his Big Top

“No, Can’t, Impossible, Embarrasing, Difficult”


TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Face the situation.

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I’m going to Aurora.

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February 2007. Threadbo Alpine Village. 5 days. 31 other potential leaders. 2 Facilitators. Mentors from the top of the field. No idea what it will involve.Thrilled.

From the background on the Aurora Leadership Institute home page:

The Institute’s mission is to assist future leaders in the library and associated cultural and information industry to maximise their leadership skills and potential. We want to position leaders to be proactive and effective voices in a dynamic and sophisticated information environment.

This is done through a combination of experiential learning, group and individual exercises, and by working with a strong team of senior and experienced Australian and New Zealand mentors. The Institute programme includes exploration of leadership concepts including vision, risk taking, creativity, communication, and styles of leadership. It is a demanding, challenging and exciting experience.

MPOW and the two librarians who recommended me have been really supportive in the whole process. If you’re reading this – thanks.

I had a single motivation to apply. Peta‘s post on LINT which was, a rather straightforward call for applicants. When someone asked a question about what it involved, 10 people immediately jumped in and basically said “go for it…the best preparation is not to expect anything…it’s gruelling but you’ll use what you learn for the rest of your career“.

To apply, I needed to frame what I do, and what I want to do, as leadership. I’d seen leaders as charismatic and determined sorts who make other people’s decisions for them and then somehow convince them that this is what they really wanted to do. Always surrounded by flunkies and constantly watching their backs because they’ll be challenged by someone else who wants to be the leader. That’s just not for me.

But..if leadership can be keeping a central focus on what the library user wants and sharing and enthusing and encouraging and networking and learning and facilitating, then I’ll take that on.

The only down side is that it’s two weeks after both kids start at a new school. One is going to kindy for the first time, the other starting mainstream school after being in a special educational program. When I talked the application over with my mother-in-law she told me that my boys would see a mum who was following her dreams and fulfilled by what she was doing. Wow! I’d only been stressing out and hadn’t seen it quite so positively.

What I’ll actually be doing is so mysterious that the naughty little girl in me is imagining Masonic kinds of rituals involving binding books in buckram while reciting Dewey. And finding out that LCSH actually has a sacred narrative meaning authored by Da Vinci. And maybe that Canberra really was designed using spiritual mathematics , and the National Library is a key point in it all.

This blog will be a great place for me to reflect and track my path in all of this.

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