by Ok, I’m cheating a bit and posting this just after midnight, but here’s my day for Friday
- vacation!!
So, I hope you’ll forgive the early post as I take a day off!
Library Day in the Life: Thursday
Here’s what today looked like:
- in a surprising twist, the day did not start with checking email,etc. Instead, I was up and at work for 7am so that we could shoot our latest video. We need to be there early to shoot before the library opens. It went well – we had some great actors.
- meeting to talk about consultation process/guidelines for blended service
- finally catch up on email, etc
- set up for group participation in Handheld Librarian Online Conference (#hhlib)
- listened to keynote of the #hhlib
- meeting
- attended remaining sessions on #hhlib. Lots of info on using SMS/text for reference service and other mobile goodness, which of course, got me thinking about it. Canada is behind when it comes to cell phones and half decent plans. Unless you have a plan, and admittedly most people I know do, texting costs to both send and receive. While it would be nice to offer service through text, one of the dominant ways students communicate these days, I wonder if this service would create a digital divide. Not everyone may be willing to pay to use the service. Of course, we offer IM service and many are without computers still, but libraries also offer access to computers; we do not offer access to cell phones. I doubt that this line of thinking would affect too many, but it did make me pause and consider who it is we are trying to serve and what about the rest of our users?
- 1 hour shift on email/im
Library Day in the Life: Wednesday
I hope you’re not bored of my days yet. Here’s how today went:
- catch up an emails, etc – you know the drill
- met with colleague from First Year Experience Office to discuss library involvement in Welcome Day and let them know some of the cool things we’re doing (First Year Experience wiki, videos, etc). They will be linking to our resources from their own pages (yay!) and I’ll now be part of the first gen session on Welcome Day, as well as the Parent Panel (another yay!). Also arranged to work out some first year research/writing courses, partnering with a prof (one more yay!) for FYEO.
- listened to latest Adventures in Library Instruction podcast
- finalized high school instruction request form
- attempted to participate in part of ACRL’s OnPoint Chat series, “Are Reference Desks Passé?” but it was full (I guess I need to sign in much earlier).
- networking lunch with colleague in learning technologies. As always, a good time that got ideas flowing
- researched guidelines for consultations/referrals for blended services and looked for good examples
- picked up another liaison area (arts and science inquiry) and will have to look into instruction sessions
Library Day in the Life: Tuesday
Another day in the life of the wee librarian. Here are the minutia of my day (probably more than you ever wanted to know):
- unsurprisingly, went through email, rss, social networks, etc to update myself and got ready for the day
- posted meeting minutes on wiki
- accepted a role as part of the training team for blended service and possibly as a mentor
- worked on collection development
- worked on updating our First Year Experience wiki
- 2 hour research help desk shift
- finally checked out bing
- set up doodle poll to decide sessions for upcoming Handheld Librarian Online Conference
- added projects for incoming co-op students to work on
- fought some more with volunteer scheduling
- dealt with various email throughout the day
- called it a day
Library Day In the Life: Monday
Well, I’ve been silent for a while now but I’ve decided to come back and take part in Library Day in the Life. It’s been around before but this is my first go at it. I figure it’s good to share what I do, realize what I do, and gives me a great reason to start writing here again. So, here’s my Monday – pretty typical for this time of year for me. Note: I have cheated a bit, in that I tweeted much of what I did, mostly because I figure I’ll forget later. Apologies for the repetition to those who follow me on twitter.
Monday
- start the day by catching up with the library world and the world in general (rss feeds, social networks, news, etc)
- meeting with our teaching with technology group, where we’re looking at library integration into our new blackboard system
- had wikis set up for committees I’m on (thanks Amanda!) and put content in them
- got confirmation of full move to blackboard in fall, which means updating library quiz and helping out faculty as needed
- updated online form for high school instruction requests
- worked on conference proposal
- ate lunch at my desk (bad habit – must break)
- hour shift on im/email reference
- coordinating volunteers for next week’s Welcome Day
- meeting to script out next library video (we’re doing a series which I’ll post more on when they’re all done)
- biked home to avoid nasty looking clouds
Shoving and Making
It’s been an interesting couple of months. This is largely due to the fact that I recently attended the Northern Exposure to Leadership. I met some wonderful people doing incredible things. It was an absolutely amazing experience and one that I’m still trying to fully digest. I do hope to post something more on this experience, as soon as I figure out how to put the whole experience into words.
Library Journal recently announced this year’s Movers and Shakers. I’m not surprised to find that I know many of the names, both in real life and virtually, on the list. Congrats to you all!
Many of you may already know about the Library Society of the World‘s new award, the Shovers and Makers. I think this is a great idea! While Library Journal recognizes some of the most outstanding work being done in our field, the Shover and Maker award celebrates the fact that many of us are doing great things too. All you have to do to claim a Shover and Maker award is post a profile celebrating the great things you are doing. I’ve done mine. Go! Do one for yourself! Celebrate all your hard work!
I will be attending Computers in Libraries this coming week. Hope to see some of you there!
SuperConferencing It Up
This past week, I attended OLA’s SuperConference and it was, as always, great. I find the shot of professional rejuvination quite necessary in the seemingly never-ending month of January and the conference didn’t let me down. I will confess that I didn’t attend many actual sessions. This conference, I found I really did more networking that I have in the past. I met up with people I haven’t seen in a while and it was great! I’m starting to think that sessions at conferences need to be shorter so that more networking can be done in longer breaks. It’s the chatting with fellow librarians that really helps me put things in perspective.
I gave a session with Shawn McCann on gaming and virtual worlds in academic libraries. I was tired of the regular presentation, so we decided to do the whole thing as a Jeopardy game with clickers. It was more active for the attendees and more fun for us. Slides should be going online soon.
Also, in a strange turn of events, I am now the Vice President and President-Elect for OLITA. Looks like exciting times ahead!
A New Age
Today I watched my first inauguration ever. I may not be an American but I understand the importance of this event and was excited to be part of this momentous event, to be part of history. It was amazing to see him recognize the challenges and problems that lay ahead of him and to recognize the diversity in peoples and religion. Obama has a huge battle before him and I wish him all the luck and intelligence to see his country through it.
Obama represents change on a number of fronts. While I intend to follow what he does, I must admit I’m intrigued by this president’s ability to embrace science and technology and am excited to see what he does with it and what impact this has elsewhere. Obama already does weekly YouTube addresses, whitehouse.gov now has a blog, he tweets, he’s addicted to his blackberry and he promotes participation, transparency and accountability (I keep wishing Canada would follow his lead). Hopefully he will continue to embrace these technologies when he becomes overwhelmed with actual work. Libraries have been actively moving towards such technologies and Obama’s use may have a direct impact on these services we provide as others begin to use the technologies to follow and participate in their government. I watched the inauguration on CNN’s live facebook feed. This is an amazing collaboration – people changed their status as they watched history unfold – over 1 million status changes were made during the inauguration – over 4000 a minute. It became a truly social, global event and I bet that Obama’s use of technology had some part to play. I think CNN and Facebook were a great collaboration and would love to see that continue – especially during breaking news, etc. I know Twitter was also going strong but decided to save my connection for the feed itself.
Exciting times are ahead and it’s great to be part of it!
A New Year
Happy New Year to all! A new year, time for new beginnings and all. Instead of resolutions (which I hardly ever keep, like 95% of resolution makers), I’ve decided to be a little more general. It’s a year of more and less. More of all sorts of good things (exercise, healthy eating, of course blogging, making some kind of difference be it volunteering, monetary, what have you, etc etc etc) and less of the bad stuff (reduce stress if that’s even possible, less crappy food, yadda yadda yadda). We’ll see if that’s too general to be effective but at least I might be able to feel I’ve done something. Good luck to you if you’ve done the resolution thing and hope to see you in this new year!
Tweeting Away
It’s been a while since I posted anything on government, so I thought I’d share some interesting twitter news (which is also posted on the AGIIG blog, so apologies for those who follow both). As some of you may know, I’ve become quiet addicted to Twitter and FriendFeed. Librarians aren’t the only ones twittering – the US government has started tweeting too. Here’s a link to a directory that has been started that notes tweeting agencies.
Pegasus Librarian had a great post a while back on the changing nature of the biblioblogoshpere. I think she’s right in her observations that for many, blog posting have droppped off and part of this has been the increase in the use of microblogging. Blog posts have moved from the informal medium to act as a more formal medium and the informal conversations have moved to Twitter – it’s faster and resembles more of a dialogue. I know that I have been moving that way myself.
Twitter has had quite an impact on communication, for good or bad depending on your viewpoint. It’s really too bad that Canada’s technological infrastructure is preventing Twitter usage from cell phones. CBC’s Search Engine has an interesting podcast and blog on Canada as a digital ghetto – be sure to check it out and share whether you agree or disagree.