The Conscious Library

Library Scavenger Hunt

2011-11-24T10:16:00.001-08:00

We have recently been running a scavenger hunt in our library which has caused great excitement amongst both the staff and the borrowers. Finally I'm getting around to blogging about it.

I had been browsing library blogs for a while and reading about scavenger hunts that other libraries have been holding and I thought to myself 'I want to try that'. Every October here in Ireland we hold the Children's Book Festival which comprises of a month-long treat of storytellers, author visits and other events in all the public libraries around the country. Of course, like everywhere, budgets are tight these days and it's not the lavish affair it once used to be. I was keen to come up with library programmes for our library to include in the book festival that were cheap or even free to run and easy to do, while still being book related. It was the perfect opportunity to try out the scavenger hunt.

Many librarians very generously shared the questions from their own hunts online and I dutifully pilfered them and made up a few of my own to go with them. I had been thinking about Foursquare for a while also and trying to come up with ways to incorporate it into the library in some way. I liked the idea of the badges or titles that you earn and thought this would really appeal to the children.

So I came up with a plan to have a scavenger hunt with six levels. Every level had it's own name and badge to earn. The levels started off with very easy questions about the basics of the library such as the difference between fiction and non fiction. As the levels progressed the questions got harder, such as looking books up on our catalogue and the final level required the use of the encyclopaedias in our reference section to find the answers. Having six levels and a varying degree of difficulty meant that the scavenger hunt appealed to a wide range of ages from 7 to 11 years.

I kept the titles of the badges book related as much as possible. We have Bookworm; Library Mouse; Brainy Badger; Clever Rabbit; Cunning Fox and Wise Owl. I was able to find bookish looking clip arts for all of them online. Along with the questions I designed a 'detective card' which had a map of the library and space to collect stickers as the children completed the levels.

A lot of the questions were open enough that there was no definitive answers to them, such as: 'how many books about Anne Frank can you find in the library' or 'write down the title of your favourite book'. The idea was to get the children thinking and exploring the library rather than testing their knowledge. I also made sure the questions covered all areas of our collection such as the Local History Section, and that the children learned about the history of the library by finding out when it opened etc. One great question we used (and I can't take credit for it) was 'introduce yourselves to the librarians and have them sign this clue'. This was one of the questions I 'borrowed' from another library scavenger hunt. It meant that we got to chat to the children and learn their names, and they now knew our names too! Suddenly we weren't fearsome dragons that the children were too afraid to talk to ( not that we ever were). The last question we ask in level six is ' what part of the scavenger hunt did you like the best?' and a lot of the children said introducing themselves to the librarians was their favourite.We also gave hints with the questions as to where to look for the answers as well as plenty of encouragement along the way.

We 'launched' the scavenger hunt over the duration of the book festival by doing it with classes that came to visit the library. Most of them got through two levels that way and a lot of them are continuing to do the other levels in their own time.

Once the children have completed the six levels they hand in their detective card and we send them a certificate. I think we, as adults, tend to underestimate the value children put into achieving or completing something and receiving praise or notariety for it. We were hoping to do prizes but again.... money money money so we stuck with certificates. We send them to the children in the post and they are thrilled when they get them!

In the true tradition of paying it forward I am happy to share the questions we used with anyone that is interested. Just email me or leave a comment below.

Things I've left fall by the wayside.

2011-11-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've put any time into my CPD23 Things course. I was all guns blazing at the start but I've slowed to almost a complete standstill lately.
I'm happy to say that I've been busy at work and I look forward to blogging about a couple of the projects I've been working on soon.
I started this process as a result of feeling a certain level of dissoluteness with my work and a need to work on something new. The 23things course was just what I needed to inspire me to try new things and all of a sudden I'm very busy and ironically too busy to keep my blog up to date or keep up with the things as the weeks rolled by. I suppose that's a good thing, I am now experiencing a fulfilment in my job that I didn't have before.
But I'm not done yet! There is more to come and I am determined to finish this even if it takes another 6 months.

There are a few of the things which just are not relevant to me, such as Thing16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published. I am aware that there are some very effective campaigns in the UK to save libraries and while the libraries in Ireland are experiencing cuts and staff shortages I don't think we're in as bad a state as the UK. That is not to say that I don't think there is a need to speak up for libraries in Ireland, I do it every day as I deal with our patrons, when I tweet or even chat to friends. Writing this blog is as far as I will go to get published for now but I plan to explore the suggestions for getting published in Thing16 further.

As for thing 15 Attending, presenting at and organising seminars I attended my first conference today! Our annual Public Libraries Conference was hosted by my own library authority here in Galway this year and our County Librarian very kindly allowed us time off to attend. It wasn't the daunting experience I thought it might be and proved to be very informative. I'm looking forward to day two tomorrow. On a follow up from my last blog post I am also in the process of organising a story time skills swap among the librarians in my county that do story time. I have a group of about 10 librarians interested in attending so I'm currently thinking about what format and structure it should take. So thing 15 - check!

Thing 14: Zotero/ Mendeley / citeulike are all very useful tools and I am grateful to know they exist but I don't see myself using them at the moment. We rarely have patrons in the library who would have a need for these tools either but it's good to know about them should the need arise.

I'm not sure why I covered those three things backwards. but there you go. That seems to be the way I work best!

Thing 13 Google Docs, Dropbox and Wikis

2011-09-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's been a loooooong time since I've done anything for my CPD course. I could list a number of excuses but they would all be just that -excuses and not valid reasons.
The real reason I've let things slide I think is because I've been a little disillusioned with the whole process. I'm wondering what good will this be to me in the end? I am the only person in my whole library authority as far as I know that is doing this course and none of my colleagues seem to have an interest in reaching out to other libraries or even amongst ourselves via the Internet.
A major part of this course has been about interacting and connecting with other librarians. I have done that, a lot. I have an amazing and inspiring circle of over 200 librarians on google+ . But I don't know any of these people in person.Of course the answer is staring me in the face. I can't rely on just the Internet to connect with other librarians. I have to step outside the door sometimes too. I think I got a little bit too absorbed in the notion of connecting with librarians online and forgot that there was a real world out there which should be my starting point. Then I can use the stuff I have learned about on this course to develop and work on those contacts some more.
Well thankfully it was only a momentary lapse and after a long break and some knitting therapy I'm back and fighting fit!
So I'm choosing to skip thing 12 or perhaps we can just take it that the above paragraphs cover Thing 12. Putting the social into social media, I've learned, takes a bit of effort and means actually leaving the house from time to time. Still, I cannot recommend google+ enough as a quick way to connect with other librarians to share ideas and sometimes even vent. It is open to everyone now so it will be interesting to see if it maintains the cultural ideas-sharing ethos it started out with.

Thing 13 has three things I've wondered about for a long time and now finally I get to sit down and explore them. Google Docs, Dropbox and Wikis are all fantastic resources that can really be of huge benefit to librarians.
In my library authority we have 30 branches, some of them very isolated. We rarely get the opportunity to visit each other and apart from telephoning to request a couple of books now and then there is very little interaction between the branches. I think that the above three resources could come in very useful in many ways to help foster some collaboration between our branches.
The one event that all the branches collaborate on every year is our Summer Reading Challenge. I say collaborate but in reality we simply all run it at the same time but rarely interact with each other to swap ideas or tips. We sometimes send each other files of posters or registration cards if there happens to be a person in one library that's particularly good at 'computer stuff'. A lot of our branches are run by one librarian and they have said in the past that the admin side of the reading challenge is very time consuming and adds extra pressure to their work load. So something like google docs or drop box would be very useful indeed for sharing files.
I've also been thinking a lot about story time and trying to come up with themes, structures and good stories. It would be great to have a forum to exchange ideas with my colleagues on what they find that works or doesn't. Wikis perhaps? I'm not sure, I'll have to explore it a bit more. Even if Wikis isn't ideal for that use, it certainly has got me thinking about what we can do.
So, my plan is to perhaps start some sort of informal story time focus group between the librarians who are interested in or currently do story time and arrange for that focus group to meet in person. From there we may set up something like a wiki or use google docs to swap thoughts, ideas and educate ourselves and each other.

Running From More Than One Thing

2011-08-03T04:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have let things slide a little bit for the 23 Things for cpd course. I have been busy, honest. I've been busy expanding my circles on Google+, baking merengues and I've taken up running. All very important things.

I have been doing some library work; I've been putting plenty of time and energy into my Knitting Club and Story time, both are going well.

However, time is slipping by and we're already on Thing 11 now and I've done nothing since Thing 6!

Ok I can tell, with relief, that week 8 is a reflection week because I looked at Google calendar, installed the CPD calendar into it and even installed it on my igoogle page. So that's thing 8 checked off the list at least. I'll be brief - google calendar rocks! If I can integrate it with my iphone it will enhance my life greatly! I will try to convince my boss to add it as a widget to our library blog page.

Evernote. I am sure it will come in handy. Again, it has the same problem for me as pushnote in that I can only use it on my computer at home. I have installed the app on my phone however, so I may get more use out of it that way. I am sure I will see the merits of it as I use it more. Thing 9 - Check!

So, thing 7, face to face networks and professional organisations, thing 10 accreditations, charterhsips and thing 11 mentoring all blend into one big head in the sand with fingers in ears while singing 'la la la can't hear you' avoidance.

So I'll keep it brief. I am a lapsed member of the Library Association of Ireland, Ireland's answer to CILIP. I've never been to a conference or networking event. I don't have a mentor and I don't have any letters after my name. Why? I've never felt the need for any of that.

I got into library work because i enjoyed it. I studied sculpture originally, but found there wasn't much work in it to put it mildly. The life of an artist, while spiritually rewarding, can be a lonely and often misunderstood one. I needed more contact with the real world, while still maintaining contact with my creative side.

A library job cropped up out of the blue and I just went for it. It ticked the boxes I needed. I found I was good at it. But as I said in my first post I stayed well within my comfort zone. I decided to do this course to push a few boundries and here we are - I've reached my boundries.

I don't do face to face networking well, conversation does not come easily to me. Every time I see an acronym like CILIP, ALA, LISNPN, ARA, IMRS ...... I get fuzzy eyes and feel the need to lie down.
I wouldn't dream of asking someone to be my mentor.

So I need to make a check list of things to:

Renew my membership with the LAI
Look at other professional organisations and see what ones are relevant to me
Think about the posibility of doing a chartership or finishing my Masters Degree
Attend a neworking event - no excuses!

Hopefuly by the end of this process I will have achieved these things, and possibly found a mentor along the way.

The World's First QR Code Film Festival

2011-07-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

While scanning through my library stream on G+ I came across a post entitled The World's First QR Code Film Festival. It immediately caught my attention because I've been reading a lot about QR codes recently and I have been trying to come up with ways to use them in our library.

QR codes are popping up more and more on supermarket products, movie posters and book jackets to name a few. They are the next step up from bar codes and when scanned with a smart phone they usually connect the user to a web page but can also be used to provide other information such as a page of text or contact details.

They are a bit of a gimmick and many would say they are on the way out already. I think they are something that could prove very useful in libraries. They are extremely easy to make and there are plenty of free QR Code generators online. So far I've only read about their use in academic libraries but I am very keen to hear about Public Libraries using them. I've used them on our brochures and advertisements to link people to our library blog.

So back to my Film Festival. The idea with the Festival is that you print of a pdf page of the QR Codes and display it in your venue. People can then scan the codes and watch the films on a youtube channel. I loved this idea so I did up a poster and printed off the page and it is now on display in our library.

I saw the link a little late, the Film Festival is only until the 31st of July so I don't know if we'll get many 'attending'. Is has inspired me to try something more literary based in the future. I'm thinking a poetry festival.

Have you used these codes in your library? I would love to hear about it.

How far through this post will I get before I mention the G word?

2011-07-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

Thing 6 covered online networks and having dutifully joined and explored several of the ones recommended I now have social media fatigue. I have so many passwords to remember, emails, usernames and profiles to fill out that I need a secretary. Some are great, some I'm not so sure they will be of any use to me right now but it's good to know that they exist and I already have thought of several librarians who will benefit from them more than me.

I have a Facebook account which is solely for personal use. I have a small group of friends with whom I connect, share a couple of photos and little else. For me it's a way to keep in touch with friends who live abroad and who I would otherwise have lost touch with.

Facebook gets a lot of controversy and attention in the press because of security issues but Twitter and Google are both guilty of similar infringements in the past and probably will be again. I was delighted when I googled myself as part of my brand identity thing and although a link to my Facebook account came up, it was locked down tight with no access to it. I've learned to keep on top of my security settings and I check regularly to see what other people can see if they look at my profile.

I think Facebook is a great tool for libraries. It is a fantastic way to have a readymade website for libraries that may not have the funding to host their own website. Facebook works on a kind-of 'word of mouth' model and even though it plays on our voyeuristic weakness for watching other people's activity, from a business point of view this works a treat for publicizing events and services.

I really can't see myself ever using it for professional purposes. I don't want to bore my friends with my library stuff and I don't want my colleagues to see what I got up to last weekend. In the same way that bebo was used mostly by teenagers and myspace is dominated by musicians, Facebook is the social gathering - 'the barbecue' as was quoted in Thing 6.

LinkedIn is most definitely the office. I had heard of it but never ventured onto the website. Bizarrely I never thought it to be relevant to me. "Me? I'm not a professional." I'll have to address that in the future.

LinkedIn seems to me like an online cv. I'm sure there's more to it but I haven't had a chance to explore it fully yet. I suspect I'm not at a place in my career that requires LinkedIn at the moment. The profiles we were invited to look at as part of getting to know LinkedIn are very impressive and much more high profile than mine would be. So immediately my little 'pop-up blocker' in my head appeared and I shied away from filling out my own mediocre profile. I will get back to it in the future though. Like anything, I'm sure it takes time to grow.

I loved LISNPN! What a fantastic resource for librarians. I think I'm just about inside the 10 year window so I'm definitely going to explore it more. I can't wait to recommend it to some recent library graduates.

So finally I get to talk about Google+. I am in love with this social network!

There are dozens of articles out there in the blogosphere at the moment discussing Google+ versus Facebook or Twitter, 'will it replace them?', quoting statistics about Facebook's declining numbers and Google+'s growing numbers. I really don't think Google+ will replace either of those networks.

It serves a very different purpose which I will try to explain without gushing or waffling. My main problem with Facebook has always been the inability to compartmentalize the different groups in my life so that I can pick and chose who sees what. And yes, you can do that with Facebook now, but it is complicated to set up and for me this is a turn off straight away.

Google obviously have learned from Facebook's mistakes and have created circles, which has become the most popular feature of the site. Similar to Twitter, with Google+ you can add a person to your circle but they don't have to add you, just like following someone.

You can create as many circles as you want and call them what you want. So for example I have a family circle, friends circle, a knitting circle and a library circle. I also have a 'following' circle for people I find interesting but don't know, and wouldn't expect them to add me to their circle. When posting stuff on your 'stream' you can chose who sees your post, be it the wider public world, a particular circle or even just one person.

Unlike Twitter however, I feel much more inclined to comment on people's posts, share them with others and get involved in the discussion. I'm no longer lurking in the background.

Google+ has lots of other little bobs and whistles that are neat and I'm sure they will add more to as they go along. For me however, it's the circles that make it a winner, and a very different type of network. The circles break down all kinds of barriers.

Already a huge number of librarians, authors, publishers, artists and photographers are using it to connect with each other on a professional basis, swapping articles, snippets of their daily lives, projects they are working on. I have added a link to my profile to a list of library professionals and when I check in on my library stream now it's like attending an online library conference every day. It's like a blog feed and a twitter feed all rolled into one.

For librarians Google+ is definitely worth a look. Google are not allowing business pages yet, so it's difficult to say if it will turn into an ad-fest like Facebook has become. At the moment it's ad-free which is all the more reason to get in and enjoy it before the businesses and promotions start rolling in.

Of course, it's still a social networking site and like Twitter, Facebook and the internet as a whole you need to be wise about who you connect with and what you share. Here's an article from Librarian by Day which gives a more objective view before you take the plunge.

5-reasons-google-is-a-privacy-accident-disaster-waiting-to-happen

If you would like an invitation to Google+ just comment below. If you're already on Google+ look me up.

Where do I Come From, What am I, Where am I Going?

2011-07-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

In order to achieve thing 5 I'm going to have to start my reflective practice a little bit further back than the start of this course. Not too far back, just eight years or so. Don't worry I wont bore you too much.

I've been working in Libraries for eight years now. I never really decided I wanted to be a librarian, I just kind of fell into it.

I love my job but I suppose it has taken me a while to see it as a serious career. Apart from going back to University to study a post-grad in Information Science I've done little else to push myself or challenge myself career-wise. I've always worked hard, but kept within the confines of what felt safe and what I knew I was good at.

In the past year and a half I've had the opportunity to work in a couple of different libraries to cover staff absences and maternity leave and this has been a real eye opener for me. It has given me the opportunity to try out new things that I would never have been able to do in the library I was officially based.

Every library is very different. In the past year I've worked in a library in a socially disadvantaged area and in a library more affluent area and in turn dealt with very different clientele with very different needs. Both libraries provide an excellent service to the public and are very respected in their communities. My work in each library has been very different and I've thoroughly enjoyed both experiences.

However, I have been getting a little restless lately. I needed something more, something new to learn, a chance to stretch my brain a bit. In both libraries I was fitting into someone else's slot, filling their shoes. In each instance I made the job my own, tried out new things and made changes if I felt they needed changing, but I needed something that was wholly mine.

Then I heard about this course. I had been toying with the idea of starting a blog, or doing something with my twitter account but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do exactly. This course seemed perfect! It was almost like destiny ( I don't believe in destiny but the darn thing keeps coming up).

And so here I am 4 weeks into an amazing course that I think every librarian should do. I'm learning so much as well as connecting with so many new people. I now love writing this blog. I'm constantly thinking of new posts that I want to write about. I'm finally getting some use out of my twitter account. Best of all, I'm excited about my job. I look forward to going to work every day. I didn't exactly dread going to work before this but I'm definitely more passionate about it now. But most of all I've met new people, albeit virtually for now. Hopefully I'll meet some of them in person some day. I cant wait for the virtual google+/twitter hangout.

I've learned lots of things about the variety of librarians that are out there along with the different types of technology that are at our disposal but if we are talking about reflective stuff then I've learned three things:

One: that I need to make opportunities happen myself rather than waiting for them to come to me.

Two: I will never reach new heights unless I push a few boundaries.

Three: These boundaries are set by myself and nobody else.

Hey this reflective practice stuff really works!

Roll on thing 6!

Bubbles and Ducks Storytime

2011-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Today is Friday which means the end of the working week for most but for us here in our library it means Storytime!

We hold storytime at 12pm every Friday and it is my job to read the stories. This is a new role assigned to me at the start of the year while the librarian who usually does it is on maternity leave.

I have to admit I didn't relish the thought of taking on the job when I was asked. But it is an essential part of public library work and after eight years working in libraries I knew it would catch up with me eventually. Don't get me wrong -I have plenty of experience with reading to my neices nephews over the years and I've read to my own little boy since he was 3 months old.

I can fully appreciate the benefits of reading aloud to children and I think storytime is great for building childrens' social skills and confidence levels as well as developing a love of reading.. I just wasn't keen on doing it myself.

Toddler's are a tough audience! They don't hold back in telling you if they think a story is too long or they dont like the song. (both complaints I had this morning). A friend once told me - dealing with a challenge is like when you're in a canoe and the water gets choppy, the best way not to tip over is to face the waves head-on. So I decided take it on and do the best I could and at least if I turned out to be disastrous then it was only temporary so no harm done. Well, hopefuly, no harm done, no children traumitised from the crazy librarian who couldn't sing.

So I started last Januray with a straighforward formula of sitting on a chair and reading stories to whoever would listen and worked my way from there. A few weeks later I decided to try out sitting on a story rug, that went down very well. Then a few weeks later I plucked up the courage to sing a few songs - nobody ran away holding their ears. And after trawling the internet for ideas and inspiration, today's storytime was the first one that had a bit of structure, purpose and even a theme!

Today's theme was Bubbles/water/ducks. A bit of a mish-mash but sort of connected. I have a memory like a seive. If you tell me your name, I'll repeat it like the book says and still instantly forget it. I have, have, have to write things down. So I actually wrote out a plan today, of what stories I was going to read, what songs I was going to sing and in what order. It went a little like this.

Give every child a sticker with their name on it.
Invite them to come sit on the rug.
Sing a hello song incorporating each child's name
Chat for a few minutes with the kids about weather etc
Read Here Comes the Rain by Mary Murphy
Sing wheels on the bus
Read Come On Daisy by Jane Simmons
Sing row row your boat
Final story Big Red Bath by Julia Jarman
Grand Finale - blow bubbles for the kids to catch.

Needless to say, it didn't quite go to that plan. We have a mixture of ages at our storytime and it changes from week to week. So I had to 'read my audience' so to speak. This week the children were a little older and not much into singing so I had an emergency book - The No No Bird by Andrew Fusek Peters which I read and scrapped Row Row Your Boat. I had my verses for the Wheels on the Bus in a different order than what one little boy was used to and he wasn't impressed. In the end they all left before I got to blow any bubbles. I kept it a secret planning on surprising them but I guess I should have at least told them there was a surprise on the way. Tough crowd indeed! But good fun. I blew the bubbles anyway.

All the ideas and inspriation for my storytime came from other librarians who generously put videos, song lyrics and ideas up on youtube and various blogs. One great blog I discovered during the week is www.librarystorytime.wordpress.com There hasn't been any new posts since 2010 but it still have lots of ideas on it which I'll be dipping into in the future.

The Brown Paper Book

2011-07-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

Nearly all the books
were gone before
I got around to
taking a photo.

Here is a picture of a little event we had in our library for World Book Day last March. We wrapped up some books in brown paper, stuck photocopies of the barcodes on the outside and let borrowers check them out. They had no idea what they were getting.

It was great fun. The kids especially loved it. I had Alice in Wonderland-esque "Read Me" stickers on the front. It was like getting a present, which we wouldn't let them open until they got home. They were very excited at the thoughts of opening it and seeing what was inside. You know that feeling, when a parcel arrives in the post, or you get a wrapped gift?

The whole purpose was to get borrowers to try out genres and authors they wouldn't normally go for.

We find, in particular with children, our borrowers go for the same authors all the time. They find an author they like, read everything by that author and then are at a loss where to go next. Sound familiar?

They come to the desk desperate for some ideas but are reluctant to try something new if it's any way different to what they're used to.

Or, they're so used to reading series that they're immediately suspicious of a stand alone book. 'It must not be very good if there's no follow up' I see them thinking.

So enter the brown paper book, or the Mystery Check-Out as we called it. It was a huge sucess. I completely underestimated how enthusiastic the children would be about the project. We had two class visits the same day and had to limit them to one book each. We ran out of books after an hour!

I was stuck with a dilemma when choosing titles as I had to keep them pretty gender neutral. That wasn't too difficult with the adult books, I stuck to mostly classics or biographies. With the children's books it was a little harder. In the end I chose a lot of non-fiction, mostly poetry.

I think children's poetry is great but try convincing a child that and you have a battle on your hands. Some of the poetry books came back to us pretty quick, the next day or even that night they were flung unceremoniously into our dropbox.

However, we got some great feedback from parents whose children had the fortune to get a novel rather than a poetry book. They were delighted with what they got, it was an author they had never heard of and they loved it. Result!

Next time around I'll stick to novels. I was trying to conquer too much by introducing poetry into the mix.

From google reader to twitter in one or two easy steps

2011-07-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

After reading Thing 4 for CPD23 programme that I'm following I was happy to see I had two out of the three recommended things already done. I have a twitter account and I've been using google reader for a couple of months now. Huzzah!

It still took me over a week to get around to looking at pushnote however. We are in the midst of launching our summer reading challenge and I'm starting a knitting club in our library so my time has mostly been taken up with that.

Well, I say mostly, but really I've been distracted by something else - google plus, google's new social networking site to rival facebook which was launched last week. At the moment it's invite only and of course because of this I quickly went from 'meh' to 'how do I get in? I need an invite NOW!'

I am a sucker for those pre-sale customer evenings in furniture stores and those 'buy it now before it's too late' rails in certain clothes shops. Google knows me well and played to my weaknesses. So after a week of trawling blogs and forums for invites my online knitting friends came through for me and I'm in! So, now what?

Its quiet at the moment and I'm still exploring it. So far I like it and I'll be writing more about it at a later date. I suspect it will be used much the same as my facebook account- for personal use rather than professional. It's something new to play with at a time when facebook has been getting a bit boring for me.

As if I need another online networking tool to play with when I've already got things like twitter and reader etc to play around with and explore.

I've had a twitter account for a year or so and I've used it primarily to follow people, mostly comedians, a few bloggers and of course Stephen Fry. I've always felt it's a bit like stalking, but I suppose you only post what you want the entire world to know. I am amazed at how free some people are with every detail of their waking day.
I don't tweet myself apart from the odd retweet, but considering I have only seven followers and only two of those are human (as opposed to an organisation), and one of those is my husband, who's sitting opposite me at the breakfast table, I think 'what's the point?'

Well lately, since I've been using Google reader and started reading blogs I've come accross plenty of articles that I think are interesting and I would love a way to pass them onto other people to read. I've been using the star function for any article I like and now I have a little stockpile of articles that I think are interesting but nobody to show them to. Is this where pushnote comes in?

To me pushnote looks a bit like a cross between digg and twitter. You can like or comment on an article or recommend it through your twitter feed or facebook status. It work's pretty neatly too. I tried it out today with a couple of web pages that I navigated to from google reader. I went from google reader to the article web page to twitter using pushnote. Success! I'm sure it has other uses too which I'm looking forward to exploring.

My only bugbear for now is that I can only do this from my desktop computer. I read a lot of my blogs through my phone and I doubt I'll be able to install pushnote on my work computer. It's still in beta so hopefully an iphone app is on the cards.

Things I want to achieve by the next post:

Make my blog look good
Add pictures to my posts
Post about something other than cpd23 (no offense)
Stop using parenthesis so much

Me, Myself and the Wider Online World

2011-07-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

After an enthusiastic start and the excitement of even recieving some comments, proving that there is someone out there listening, I've let things slip for a while. Life and a holiday in France got in the way, hardly a thing to complain about. So I'm attempting my second post on a french keyboard while trying to ignore my mosqito bites.

I have a lot of work to do yet to get my blog looking the way I want it too. There's a lot of housekeeping to be done with the layout and adding images which I plan to work on when I get home. Then I'll be giving guided tours to anyone interested!

In the mean time I’ve done plenty of thinking about what kind of online presence I want to have and how much of it will be personal and how much will be professional. I googled myself and found plenty of me out there but they're not me, so to speak but other Niamh O’Donovans. Until now my personal online presence has consisted of me lingering in the background, observing, 'liking' the odd thing and venturing an occasional comment. Starting this blog is a big step for me in putting myself out there for scrutiny.

When I came up with the name The Conscious Library I was just playing around with a few words in the theasaurus and thought 'yeah that sounds good'. It fits the formula for picking a good blog name, easy to remember, short, specific but sort of generic at the same time. It refers to libraries but it could be about a lot of things. I did have to look up the correct spelling of conscious but I’m a renowned bad speller. What I particularly like about the name is that it can transfer easily to other sites like twitter for example, so there’s plenty of potential for development. Like a lot of things I do, I came up with the finished product first and worked out the concept afterwards.

In my head I imagine the Conscious Library to be like online version of a real library - which I think a lot of blogs are already. There are a lot of bloggers out there who are already librarians though not by profession. They might not thank me for referring to them as librarians but they do essentially the same thing we do every day in our physical libraries- recommend reading, provide information and create an open comunity space for people to connect with eachother. Two that come to mind are Flavorwire and Brainpickings and I recommend you check them out.

I would like The Conscious Library to become a space for swapping ideas, thoughts and opinions as well as showing off the things we do in our library that I’m proud of. I hope this blog will advance what I do in my everyday job as a librarian, into the online world.

So there is part of my brand, the rest will come together as I go along I hope. I’m still lurking in the background to a degree, a bit reluctant to put myself out there completely.While I am the curator and developer of The Conscious Library, I see it as a seperate entity to me. I guess that might change over time as bits of my personality sneak in. Lets see if it turns out how I expect.

Thing 1

2011-06-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

I decided to start this blog as part of the cpd23 course which I plan to follow over the next few months. So here is my first post. I'm sure (or hope) I'll look back on this first post in years to come and cringe.

Currently, where I am in my career is sort of at a stop. Dead end sounds too final. I'd like to think that i'll get a green light somewhere in the future but at the moment with a recession in full swing and with recruitment embargoes to beat the band I'm at a red light stop. Simply put there's not a lot happening for me carreer-wise in terms of promotion. So I'm using what opportunities I can to keep my brain busy, keep learning new things and be ready and full of knowledge when an opportunity does come up, however far ahead in the future that may be.

Its common knowledge among librarians and I would hope among the general public that library services world-wide are suffering as a result of this recession. Budgets have been slashed, staff let go and there is an ever present threat of more cuts to come.

However, I have been following several blogs over the past few months (I will mention these in detail in further posts) and I have found plenty of resourceful librarians making the most of what they've got, and willingly sharing their ideas with the wider population. The internet has allowed librarians to develop a thriving online community. The phenomenon of social networking has enabled us to tap into a section of our community that previously may have considered the libraries old-fashioned and behind the times. Keeping up with new developments in technology is an integral part of librarianship today and the internet has helped us do that.

It is my hope that by completing this CPD23 course that I will be able to catch up with the rest of the online world and have an online presence of my own to be proud of.