Realia

Archive for the ‘Libraries’ Category

Thing 18 asks us to take a look at screen capture tools and podcasting. I am a fan of using screen capture tools to create videos for training. In previous jobs, I have used Jing and Camtasia. At my current workplace, we have GoToWebinar, and while it is meant to be a webinar tool, since it involves screen sharing, if you record a session without an audience, it basically accomplishes the same thing as a screen capture tool. I’m sure it is missing some of the bells and whistles (the ability to highlight things, etc.), but it works pretty well for my purposes.

As far as podcasting goes, I have never been involved in making a podcast. I also have to say that listening to podcasts is not my preferred way of consuming information, either. I have subscribed to podcasts in the past, but I never make time to go back and listen to the episodes. I think I just prefer to take in information by reading it, rather than listening to it.

Thing 17 asks us to explore Prezi and Slideshare. I’ve heard about Prezi for a few years now, but I’ve only recently tried it out (for a presentation for the grad school class I’m teaching this semester). So far, I can’t really say that I like Prezi that much. I was really impressed by the first few Prezi presentations I saw, just because they were so different from PowerPoint presentations, but now I feel like all Prezis have the tendency to look the same. I’m willing to admit that I probably haven’t spent enough time with it yet, because I can tell that there’s somewhat of a learning curve before you really feel like you’re taking advantage of all of the features.

One thing about Prezi that I do think is a plus is the fact that it really makes you focus on telling your story with less text. It is very easy to overload PowerPoint slides with bullet point after bullet point, effectively putting your whole presentation on your slides. Too much text in Prezi just looks weird, so I do think it is an effective way to really think about highlighting the most important points of your presentation, rather than including every single word that you want to say.

I am much more familiar with Slideshare than I am with Prezi. I have used it for a few years now; every time I give a presentation, I upload the slides to Slideshare. This makes it easy to share my slides with the attendees, as I can simply give them the link and they can access the slides on their own time. It also has the benefit of getting my presentations out there; I have been contacted on a few occasions by people who found my slides on Slideshare and then contacted me to see if I would give a presentation for them, so Slideshare has been beneficial to my career. I also like to search Slideshare to draw inspiration from other people’s presentations, both presentations on topics similar to those I talk about, and presentations that have nothing to do with my areas of expertise but have really nice slides.

For Thing 16, the assignment is to talk about advocacy in the library profession and to think about publishing professionally. I have to admit, I feel like I am probably a little bit lacking on the advocacy front. I do care passionately about libraries, but I am not as good at advocating for them as I should be. I think that since I work at a state library agency, providing services to other libraries in the state, instead of on the front lines, so to speak, at a public or academic library, interacting directly with patrons, it sometimes feels like it’s hard to find ways to connect with people who don’t work in libraries and make them see the value of library services. That is something that I should probably work on. Even though I don’t interact with patrons in a way that allows me to say “Let me show you what my library can do for you,” I can still talk to non-librarians about libraries in general.

I was also interested in this Thing’s take on publishing as a method of advocacy. I do think that it is important to get pieces that advocate for libraries published outside of the library literature. So far, I have a couple of articles published, but they are definitely aimed toward a library audience. I do want to get better about posting to my blog; it’s an easy way to share my ideas, and I should try to do it more often.

The assignment for Thing 15 is to talk about our participation in conferences. The only library conference I have attended is the Nebraska Library Association conference, but it is something I look forward to every year. Aside from learning new things at the conference sessions, I always enjoy informal conversations with librarians from across the state that I don’t get to see very often. I guess that would be my advice to people who are new to attending conferences – don’t forget to allow time for some informal learning outside of the actual conference sessions.

For the last few years, I have also presented at NLA, and I really enjoy doing so. It’s a nice small audience, and I know a lot of the people attending, so I feel very comfortable presenting in front of them.

This year, I was also involved with the planning of the NLA conference, as one of the co-chairs of the registration committee. It was interesting to be on the other side of the conference experience. In my pre-library life, I used to work for a nonprofit organization where I was involved in planning their annual seminar, so I have had event planning experience before. I didn’t particularly enjoy doing it on a full-time basis, but so far, I have enjoyed conference planning in a volunteer capacity. It’s nice to feel like I am giving back to my professional organization.

In the future, I would like to attend larger conferences and interact with people from around the country, rather than just my own state. I’d like to attend an American Library Association conference one of these days; I’d also like to go to a code4lib conference sometime. Eventually, I’d like to present at larger conferences as well, since I’ve really enjoyed giving presentations at the state level.

After taking a lot of time off, I’m going to attempt yet again to catch up with CPD 23. The assignment for Thing 14 is to explore citation management tools. I used to use Zotero when I was in library school; lately, I suppose I haven’t felt the need for a citation management tool, I suppose. Since I wanted to look at something that I hadn’t used before, I chose
to explore Mendeley.

I like a lot of the features of Mendeley, like the ability to upload the PDFs that are already on your computer. (I assume that Zotero probably has this feature too; I just haven’t used it in a while.) I don’t think I’m really in a position to use a citation manager a lot at this point in time, since I’m not in school or seriously researching any topics, but Mendeley is definitely something I’ll keep in mind for the future.

For Thing 13, the assignment is to explore Google Docs, Dropbox, and wikis. I am a big fan of Google Docs. I have used it in a number of collaborative situations, including committee work for the state library association and sharing ideas with the instructors with whom I co-teach a cataloging class. I also have to say that I really love using Google Docs forms – it makes it easy to set up a web-based form and then the results can be shared as a spreadsheet with others.

Compared to Google Docs, I have not been using Dropbox for very long, but so far, I have found it very useful as well. It is nice to have it installed on my home computer, so that when I save Word files to the Dropbox folder at home, they are synced to the online Dropbox folder and I can access them from anywhere. I know there are some security issues involved with Dropbox, so I wouldn’t use it for any highly sensitive information, but for things that I’m not too worried about, I have really found it very useful.

Of all of the tools for Thing 13, wikis are probably the ones that I use the least. It’s not because I don’t see their value, but I think that I’ve just never found the right group of people who all agree that using a wiki is a good thing. I think it takes a certain amount of commitment to really get wiki usage off the ground. I am toying with the idea of using wikis for group projects in the grad school class I am teaching next spring, though, so we’ll see how that goes.

Thing 12 asks us to reflect on social media in the context of professional development.  I do think that social networking creates a genuine sense of community among people in the same profession. The librarians that I interact with on Twitter are definitely part of my professional network, and when they all talk about getting together in person, for example at an ALA conference, I feel kind of left out if I’m not able to attend. One day, I’d like to be able to meet some of these people in person, but for now, I’m content to call them part of my online professional community.

I do feel like Facebook has the potential to create somewhat superficial personal relationships. I feel like I’m “in touch” with a lot of people I knew in high school and college because I can see their status updates and know basically what is going on in their lives, but I don’t have in-depth conversations with them, and sometimes I think that’s kind of a shame. I think that I don’t have the same expectation for in-depth interactions with professional contacts online, so I don’t see this being as much of a problem for professional social networking.

For Thing 11, we’re supposed to talk about our experiences with mentoring. I participated in a formal mentoring program through the American Library Association about a year ago. My mentor and I emailed back and forth a few times, but I feel like it was hard for either of us to make it a priority, and I don’t feel like I got that much out of the experience. I’m not sure how I feel about formal mentoring programs in general. They seem like a good idea, but I think the mentoring experience can feel somewhat forced in these situations, and it really takes a commitment from both parties in order to make it work.

Personally, I have benefited much more from informal mentors. I can identify two people who I feel are really good mentors to me, and the mentor-mentee relationship has just grown naturally through our interactions with each other. I feel comfortable turning to either of these people for career advice, and I really feel that they have a genuine interest in watching me succeed in my career. I don’t work with either of these people, and in some ways, I think that can be a good thing when it comes to a mentor-mentee relationship. Talking to someone who is removed from your workplace can be a good way to get perspective on career issues.

The assignment for Thing 10 is to “tell us about why you joined the career, where you are now and how you got there and what you are planning to do next.”

I think that I covered the “how I got here and where I am now” pretty well in my very first post on this blog, so please go read that if you’re interested.

As far as what I’m planning to do next, well, who knows? I’m actually going through a pretty reflective period, career-wise, so this assignment is well-timed. I know that I don’t want to make a career move any time in the near future, but I’m at a spot where I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m doing at my current job, and so I’m starting to think just a little bit about what I want to do in the future and what I can be doing now to help facilitate those things, should I decide I want to make a change.

I’ve taken some online continuing education courses on things like taxonomy development and metadata. I think that eventually, I would like to move away from cataloging according to rules that are already set up and move toward work (perhaps on digital library projects) that involves starting from scratch with making decisions about how to organize a collection, setting up metadata schemes, and perhaps even creating original controlled vocabularies to describe a specialized set of items.

I’ve also taken on some work as an adjunct instructor for graduate library science classes through the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Nebraska-Omaha. I really enjoy teaching, and sometimes I think about pursuing a career path that would allow me to do more of that.

But for now, I’m happy where I am, so I’m content to simply contemplate the future of my career.

The assignment for Thing 9 is to try Evernote. I signed up for an Evernote account a while ago. I really like it in theory, but for some reason, I haven’t really incorporated it into my daily routine yet. I’ve installed it on my home computer, I have the app on my iPod Touch, and I access it from the website at work. Now, I think it’s just a matter of remembering to use it. I absolutely can see the value of it, and really want to make it a habit to use it. I put off writing this post for a very long time because I wanted to use Evernote more before writing about it, but I haven’t yet. Since I’m obsessive enough to not want to go on to the next thing until I’ve written something for this one, Evernote is currently preventing me from progressing with the rest of the 23 Things. Therefore, I’m finally just going to write this post, declare that Evernote is a useful thing I’m glad to have been reminded of and plan to use more often in the future, and move onto the next Thing.