eLit 2006 - white hat

There were around 80 delegates to the eLit 2006 conference from I think I counted 15 countries. They were a mix of librarians, IT, learning support and academic staff, although librarians easily outnumbered the rest. Quite a high proportion of the delegates were also involved in presenting in some way which gave it a strong sense of being a participative event.

Those presenting papers were also invited to submit them for publication in a joint issue of the journals Italics and JeLit, soon to be renamed Journal of Digital Literacy, which will give me the chance of seeing what I missed in the parallel sessions I didn't manage to get to.

eLit 2006 - red hat

Affective reaction and emotion was a theme that came up in the panel discussion and Q&A session at the end of the eLit 2006 conference. It was suggested that sometimes we address cognitive development in isolation, not giving enough attention to how people feel about issues like e-literacy. I found this interesting as one of the issues in the paper I was involved in presenting was that of library anxiety and how this needs to be addressed before we can hope to develop information skills.

In personal terms I had my own anxiety to deal with as I was, along with a colleague, presenting my first paper at an external conference. I had originally said that I was happy to be involved in writing the paper but didn't want to do much, if any, of the speaking. Eventually I decided that it would be good for me to step out of my comfort zone far enough to do some of the actual presenting. It was scary to find myself at the front of a room full of expectant looking conference delegates, but once we got started I realised that it was actually quite fun to have people's attention for a while to talk about a subject that I'm interested in. I was very glad I was not on my own up there though, so I must thank my co-presenter for helping to make it a slightly less stressful and much more enjoyable experience than I'd anticipated it might be!

The atmosphere of the conference overall was one of active involvement and sharing of experience. Some difficult questions were raised and no easy answers were forthcoming, but there was lots of energy going into trying to find ways forward. One presentation summed this up for me. It started as a very proper academic research paper, describing methodology and analysis and so on, but as the presenter got involved in talking about their work with students it was like a light had been switched on, the tone of voice changed, and suddenly you could see and hear the enthusiasm.

eLit 2006 - blue hat

Last night I got back from the eLit 2006 conference in Loughborough with so much to think about that I couldn't possibly do it justice in a single blog posting. So what I thought I'd do is a series of postings based on a Six Thinking Hats structure. This one is the 'blue hat' posting, concerned with the process of how I'm going to record my reflections.

I think this structure will allow me to present a rounded view of my experience of the last three days. I'll try to write something with each one of the hats on, and it will be interesting to see which I find most comfortable!

Multi-skilled

You can never tell what you'll be doing next in this job. I seem to have agreed to do a mind-map ice-breaker session on an Open Day for visiting Further Education college librarians. When exactly did I become qualified to do that? It certainly wasn't at library school! Or while employed by City banks. It's working here that's given me such a variety of unexpected new skills.

Weeding the books

What do university librarians do in the summer time? Dust the books? Go and explore strange and exotic foreign libraries?

One thing we do that I enjoy a lot is we weed the books - and that's not typo, or a lisp. I already said we don't get time to read books. What we do is we weed out and dispose of old books, books that have been replaced by new editions, books that are starting to fall apart from sheer constant use, books that people don't like the look of and so haven't used, books in subject areas that are no longer relevant. I like doing this. I like it so much it probably reveals some personal trait best left unanalysed. I find it very satisfying. Even more so the last couple of years, as our better quality weedings are being dispatched to Rwanda, which makes it a worthwhile job in more than one way.

Taking a breath

There's another book on the pile of books I'd like to read. You might think that a librarian would have time to read a book once in a while. The trouble is that information overload effects us too. Today I had to make several attempts to read one short email. It was the sort of day when your interruptions get interrupted. That's why I'm blogging now. Just occasionally I need to

• stop
  
  
• breathe
  
  
• think

then dive back into the flow again. I think that's one of the main things I get out of blogging - the opportunity for just a few moments reflection now and again.

Reading about searching

There are some interesting books being published lately about that remarkable business success story - Google. Search Me by Neil Taylor, The Google Story by David Vise and John Battelle's The Search are all new in stock this academic year.

Scary things

I keep finding myself standing at the front of rooms full of people lately, doing presentations. It's something that causes me a certain amount of anxiety, which is not surprising, as public speaking is right up there with terrorists, spiders and dentists as something that a lot of people find scary.

Oddly enough, one of the things I was talking about this time was anxiety, specifically library anxiety. Libraries don't make the top 10 most scary things but, rather like spiders, large ones can be daunting.

People tend to deal with anxiety by avoiding the scary thing as much as possible and by trying to appear more confident than they really are, and only admit to being anxious or ask for help as a last resort. (Maybe that's why I spent so much time just outside Bath University library when I was a student?!)

While preparing for this event I discovered that the colleague I was doing the presentation with and I differ significantly in the way we deal with anxiety over this type of thing. I tend to do my panicking earlier on in the process and want to keep on going over the slides and the notes, but I don't get particularly anxious on the day itself. Maybe that's because I'm not a good performer, so I tend to avoid the whole issue of making it into a performance and just read out my notes!

We are going to do a slightly different version of this presentation at a conference next month, and I am trying to wangle it so that I only get a walk on part in that one.

Library open on Bank Holiday Monday

Students have often asked if the library could be open on bank holidays. Well it is going to be open on the one at the end of May. More details here in Library News

Conference papers

When CW over on her blog wrote about getting a conference paper accepted and about the subsequent avoidance of putting pen to pen - or more likely finger to keyboard - I thought it was quite amusing. Until I got an email saying a proposal a colleague and I had send off a while ago had been accepted - suddenly it wasn't so amusing!

We're going to talk about library induction and library anxiety and um... doughnuts. If you want to know more sign up for e-Lit 2006 in Loughborough!

Why time management is a bad thing

I've always had the feeling there was something fundamentally wrong with a time management system that would have you writing out long 'to do' lists and struggling through them. I thought it might just be a personal aversion to 'to do' lists, but now one of my favourite business bloggers has put his fing..., um, I mean paw, on exactly what is wrong with time management.

Business librarians - talking in the library!

It's always interesting to compare notes with people doing similar jobs in different places. Which is what we got a chance to do today, as we hosted a meeting for business librarians from around the local area. As we discovered, 'business' can mean a variety of things, including or not including law, economics, social science, hospitality, advertising and more subject areas.

This was a first meeting of its kind, and so was a fairly general discussion of current issues in the business librarianship field. Subject areas that seem to be of general interest for possible future meetings were induction, ebooks and training (which is lucky as these are some of my particular interests - did I influence this too much I wonder?!)

Being part of the blogosphere has helped me to feel in touch with issues in the international librarian community, but it can sometimes be harder to keep up with what's happening locally! I hope we can make these meetings a regular thing.

British librarians blog

Here's something for the CV - I was one of the first 100 blogging librarians in Britain! There are now 100 members of the British Librarian Bloggers Group.

Budget update

A colleague tells me that details of today's Budget are available from here.

Including a link to DirectGov from where, "You will be able to view the speech live from this page in either Windows Media or Real Player formats, as well as download an audio 'podcast' version for use on your PC or MP3 player."

Just what I wanted!

This is not the only example of high tech government I've seen lately. It seems that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which ran an experimental wiki for a while, now has a blog.

Whatever next?

Paperwork

I seem to be suffering a deluge of paperwork at the moment. Even as I write this someone has just added another inch of paper (a new course validation document) to the pile! I don't know quite why it is, but lately its landing on my desk faster than I can deal with it.

I'm looking forward to my enquiry desk duty later as a chance to get away from it for an hour.

It's a LibraryThing

It's fun being a librarian. And now, with the really rather wonderful LibraryThing - anyone can join in!

A reflective sort of post

It was an 'out of the comfort zone' sort of day today. I think it was good for me, but I wouldn't like it to happen too often. No one bit of it would have been a problem on it's own, but all on the same day was a bit of a challenge.

There was a re-validation of a course in one of my subject areas, which meant that in the morning I showed some of the visiting panel around the library and talked to them about the resources we have in the relevant subject areas. After this a colleague and I gave a presentation about the way we manage our library induction to a group of visitors. Part of the 'out of the comfort zone' of this was that we made a few last minute changes to the slides, (changing some quotes around and adding sound clips!) which is not something I would normally have the nerve to do just before a presentation. It definitely did improve it though, so was worth it. Then there was a short break for lunch and then we did another presentation, this one on Web 2.0/Library 2.0, and what it might mean for us, to some of our own library staff.

Standing up and presenting is a part of the job I enjoy much more than I used to (there was a time when I cringed at the thought of it and didn't enjoy it at all) but it's still not my favourite thing in the world. I would not like to be a lecturer. I generally get more satisfaction from working away quietly in the background to make sure everything is in place for people to come along and take the library resources for granted!

Which is what I hope to go back to doing, except for one small group training session, next week.

Business writing

There's an interesting article in the latest Business Information Review about the importance of creative writing skills (including blogging) in business.

They say KISS stands for Keep It Short & Simple. I was told it was Keep It Simple Stupid, but maybe that was just me?

Library blogging

One of my main inspirations in the world of library blogging is CW and her Ruminations blog. So when she said she was going to do a survey of librarian bloggers I just had to take part. At first I was going to just email the answers. Then I thought, why not blog it? So here goes.

Where do you work?

I work at Southampton Solent University, on the south coast of England. Some people may know it better as Southampton Institute - we only got university title last year (an excuse for many celebrations!)

What's your job title?

Information Librarian (Business Management)

What are your main responsibilities?

Selecting and organising access to business information resources (specifically for the subject areas of management, human resources management, marketing, advertising and public relations)

Providing help and advice on making the best use of these resources (via enquiry desk services, group training sessions, one-to-one research workshops, leaflets, webpages and anything else I can think of!)

Liaising with academic staff to make sure we're providing the right resources for existing courses and are involved in plans for new courses.

Contributing to the overall information team effort with special responsibility for induction and ebooks. I've also got an interest in library innovations (e.g. blogs) I think this dates from a few years ago when I asked to go on a creative thinking course and they let me. I've not been quite the same since, either in or out of work!

How long have you been blogging?

Since June 2005

How did you begin blogging?

I'd read a bit about blogs, and thought there was potential in them, so I decided that the best way to find out what they were good for would be to set one up on a trial basis. In June 2005 I set up ML107 which is my work/professional blog. In July 2005 I added Cabbage Soup for my writing group, then in October 2005 I started miso soup for my daily haiku. In February 2006 another writer set up ukku spring haiku to celebrate the coming of spring and I'm now a co-moderator of that group blog. I seem to be getting carried away!

What do you blog about?

This is more of a problem on my work blog than on my writing blogs as I'm not too sure who - if anyone - reads it, so I'm not sure what I should be blogging about. (On my writing blogs I don't mind/care who reads it - it's just me rambling for my own amusement.) Being unofficial and experimental it has no promotion, other than when I mention it in my training sessions, and only one link - from my profile page under staff contacts.

So far I've tended to blog about courses I've been on, new books and other resources that have come in, databases or reference books I think need a bit more promoting, current issues generally, and things that I am reading or thinking about at work. It's mostly work related, but a few more personal comments creep in occasionally. I think professional blogs need a certain amount of personal content to make them engaging and readable, but obviously not so much that they turn into purely personal journals.

Why do you continue to blog?

It appeals to me as a way of 'thinking aloud' with the advantage of having an automatic archive of past thoughts to refer back to.

I'm interested in writing and I don't see a major difference between creative writing and professional writing. I've had articles published in poetry magazines and I was joint author of one article published in a peer-reviewed librarianship journal (Aslib Proceedings) and the writing process was not all that different, although obviously each have their own styles and conventions that you have to be aware of.

My blogs are very much writing practice. I try to write something, somewhere, every day that I'm not ashamed to make public.

Would you agree that blogging has improved your professional practice?

It certainly encourages timely reflection. For example, when I get back from a course or conference I don't wait for a meeting to report back to colleagues, I blog it right away while the ideas are still fresh in my mind. I then have the blog entry to refer back to if I want to do a more formal presentation.

Being involved in the blogosphere has made me feel more in touch with the professional community, internationally. It's an excellent way of keeping up with current issues - at the moment the whole Web 2.0/Library 2.0 debate in particular. It takes much longer for discussion of this type of topic to filter through to print publication. It's rather like being able to drop in on the chatty bits of a conference for a few minutes every day.

Basically its all about communication, which I think is a good thing, although I have some sympathy with those who groan at the thought of yet more communication! Since I've been using Bloglines I've found it a lot easier to manage the growing the number of blogs I like to keep an eye on, without it taking up too much time.

May I quote your answers for publication?

One of my secret ambitions is to be quoted. (Oops... )

If yes, how would you like the quotes attributed?

I'm happy to be attributed by my real name and blog URLs.

May I email you again for more discussion/clarification?

Certainly.

Oh, and, thanks for encouraging me write a longer blog entry than usual, I'm such a minimalist my entries are usually short-short and I need all the practice I can get at longer pieces.

It's interesting, on reflection, that I wrote this entry on a Sunday (although I've edited it a bit and am posting it on Monday.) I'm still a little wary of spending much work time on blogging, even though, as I said earlier, I do feel it's contributing to my professional development. This is an issue I think I need to reflect on some more. So thanks for bringing that to light too!

Local business information for Southampton

The COBRA database now has local information for Southampton. It's aimed at people planning to start up a small business and has general information such as population figures and local contact information.