movers and shakers – UK version?

Well, the Library Journal’s movers & shakers for 2009 have been published and congratulations to Dave Pattern for being the only person from the UK on the list. So, seeing as there is no official UK version, if there was who would be the UK’s movers and shakers in the Library world?

what is the point of CILIP

The future of libraries is good. In a recent interview I was asked to do a presentation on “is there a future for academic librarians” – the short answer is yes & I went on to explain some of the areas where I felt the Library had a role to play in the wider HE world. I was questioned after the presentation by a Faculty member who asked whether what I talked about had to be the role of the Library. I said it didn’t – if we don’t do it then someone else will. Libraries are well-placed & well-skilled to move into lots of these areas, but there needs to be the will and the desire to work with users, and the strategic support from the organisation, and wider, to claim these as legitimate roles for librarians.

As such I found Bob McGee’s post on the CILIP use of Twitter to be very backward looking & navel-gazing (see also Phil Bradley’s reply which seems to have prompted most of the comments on the original post). Now I don’t think that Twitter is the answer to everything (thiss post couldn’t use twitter as it’s far too long), but I think that Twitter does have a use and could be used by CILIP to engage members and non-members. CILIP Communities was set-up to allow  CILIP members to engage with each other and share good practice etc, but it is quite clunky to use and many people have complained that it is difficult to get updates from it sent to yourself and to reply you then need to go into the site. Twitter, on the other hand, is much easier to use and there does seem to be a community of practice emerging in the library and information professional areas. So it could be argued that twitter is enabling the discussions that CILIP Communities was set up for (although there are still differences between the two).

Jenny Levine’s post on the use of twitter by ALA shows just what can be done if we as a profession are open to new things and willing to experiment.

Between the discussion on whether CILIP had a twitter account and Bob’s post about it the discussion had moved on to what was the point of CILIP. Not many positive reasons for continuing to be a CILIP member were said. I have been a member since I did my MSc and plan to continue to be a member during my professional life, but I found it hard to explain why (especially in 140 characters or less!). I suppose the main reason at the moment is to maintain my MCLIP status, as it was alot of effort to get, but CILIP membership is expensive just to have that on my business cards (which MPOW have not yet managed to print me in the almost four years I’ve worked here, maybe with my new job…).

Reading Bob’s post made me so angry I really want to do something to change this attitude, but how do I do that? What is the best way to engage with CILIP and work with them on this?

change of theme

I realised this morning that for some reason the whole blog header was black, and whilst I could get it to display the theme header I couldn’t get it to display my nice picture of sheep on the Chilterns. So I have changed the theme to something that does display my picture in the header. No biggy, but am feeling somewhat uninspired for other things to write, so will waffle on about this!

living in the cloud & job interviews

Last week I had an interview for a new job, well a 12 month project management secondment at my current place of work. Partly because of the well publicised tendency of prospective employers to google job applicants and mainly because two (of the three) interviewers are friends with me in Facebook and/or Twitter I decided not to write anything anywhere about the job application or preparing for the interview. I’m sure they are too professional to let any comments I wrote on Twitter or Facebook have any bearing on their decision to hire me or not, but I felt uncomfortable writing comments that I knew would be read by them and that might have portrayed me in a different way to how I would present myself at an interview. For example, the fact that I only really started doing any interview prep until the day before the interview doesn’t affect how well prepared I am at the interview, but could be interpreted that I couldn’t be bothered to do anything before that. (Actually we had already arranged to go and visit some friends for the weekend and we finished making our wedding invitations and sent them out, so interview prep had to be done in a day of annual leave as I was only given a week’s notice that I was invited to interview!) It was strange being interviewed by people I knew, but I think it went alright – I can only think of a couple of things I should have mentioned but didn’t!

It’s a really interesting project and I hope I can still be a part of it, even though I didn’t get the job. I’m a bit disappointed, but pleased that I was considered appointable, even though they went for a candidate with more experience in the end. Although it is interesting that as they decided to go for an external candidate they consider that it will be easier for them to learn how MPOW works and get to know people, rather than the time that I might need to develop the project management skills.

Anyway, I think it was a positive experience and I’m sure it will be good experience for the next time I’m interviewed.

a web2.0 wedding

Well, the wedding invites have been sent out and include details of our wedding website. The main purpose of this website is to keep the wedding list updated, as I don’t agree with forcing all guests to buy us presents at the same shop – if we want a purple duvet (which we don’t) why should we force someone to buy it for us from a specific department store rather than the local market? (Which is more likely where we would buy it for ourselves!)

To create the present list I’ve used an embeded google spreadsheet and set up a second spreadsheet as a list of what people have promised to buy us, with an input form so they can add items themselves (seems to take about 10 mins for the spreadsheet to update on the site). This is relying on all our guests inputting their present when they’ve chosen it and also reading the updated list on the site to check that no-one has already agreed to buy it for us. So far of the 5 items that have been added by guests 2 are the same, so I’m not sure how well it will actually work! We shall see on the day (or after when we unwrap them all) what we end up with and how it compares with our list that we started with!

Embedding the bits from google was very straightforward (following the instructions in Google App Hacks), although did mean I had to do the site in Blogger not WordPress as WordPress strips out some html code and that includes the code needed to embed these.

The one benefit of using a shop wedding list service is that most of these services include delivery after the wedding, which may be a pain for us as we’re getting married where my parents live, going from there on honeymoon and then returning home. Fingers crossed we have arranged  for someone to drive our  car back! Hopefully full of presents!

We’ve also set up a flickr group to collate photos after the event, so is a real web2.0 wedding!

who throws a shoe?

I meant to write this after it happened, but was so busy with tying things up for the end of the year that I never quite got round to it. So now the fact that a reporter threw a shoe at George Bush is old news, someone’s even made a game about it.

But in a sense it does prove that Bush was right – no-one would have thrown a shoe at Saddam as they would have been killed!

the end of an era

One of the things that I’m expected to do as part of my job is to provide cover for the extended hours librarian as needed. This entails working on the Library Counter for an evening about once or twice a year. As we do this so infrequently we are a bit of a liability and often feel as if we don’t know what we’re doing! But now the powers that be have decided that we no longer need a professional librarian working in the evenings, and so, without most of us realising it, we will no longer be working on the counter at all.   Whilst I wouldn’t want to work on the counter all the time, it does feel like the end of something as stamping books is what most people thinks a librarian does (sadly!). So it’s the end of an era as I’m not likely to stamp books again (unless I get a new job which requires it, although at the moment I’m not looking at new jobs that would). And  as it has been snuck on us without fanfare, or even being told that it was the consequence of the decision that had been made,  I’m sure some of my colleagues haven’t realised that it has happened.

the rate of change

people often say that change is happening faster now than previously, but is this true?

I saw a presentation sometime last year about change and the speaker gave details of the changes that his grandparents saw during their lifetime – washing machines, cars etc as well as computers. I can’t remember who it was who spoke, or I’d link to it, but he was pointing out that we only really appreciate the changes that we see and forget what has happenned previously.

My great-grand aunt (who I remember) went to Girton and studied chemistry, but her studies were somewhat thwarted by not being able to go in the libraries in Cambridge as she was female. Quite what they thought would go on in the libraries of Cambridge if they were opened up to women I can only imagine (and hope that they were wrong!), but it brought home to me the fact that the situation in libraries has changed alot in the last 100 years, so why does there seem to be such a feeling of suprise and panic that things are continuing to change?

Poor Peggy didn’t even get a degree – she got a certificate to say if she was male she would have got a third (but then what do you expect if she couldn’t use the libraries!)

Happy Christmas everyone – it’s my last day at work today this year!

we can’t afford to buy cheap things

Somewhat following on from my previous post on command line searching I have been reminded of a phrase an ex of mine used to use: “we can’t afford to buy cheap things”. Now he was Romanian and had grown up under Ceauşescu and the deprivation that the Communists brought with them.They didn’t want to buy cheap things as they would then need replacing more frequently, so spending more now would mean a lower outlay over time.

It seems to me that this isn’t a view that is shared in the current western society (huge generalisation I know!). Yesterday had the highest sales ever for Woolworths – because it was a closing down sale and everything was even cheaper than normal for Woolies. To balance this though there doesn’t seem to be the understanding that cheap doesn’t mean value for money – it’s a move towards low cost at the expense of quality.

Cheap used to be seen as a somewhat derogatory comment but now is the key selling point of an object. Maybe this is tied up with an inability to consider the long-term. We are becoming a consumer culture where everything is wanted now and you can’t wait – even if it would be better.

Not sure what my point is about this, but it does make me worry about what might happen in the future…are we all doomed?

at a crossroads

I feel that I am at a crossroads in my professional life – it’s feeling like time to move on from what I’m doing, but there are so many directions I could go in I don’t know which to choose. Do I want to stay in academia? Move into a more technical role (I did enjoy playing with things at mashed libraries)? Or I could do more of the project management side of things?
It seems that now I’ve got my personal life sorted (or moving towards it anyway) that this is a good time to review where I want to be professionally in 5 years time or so.
I remember feeling like this when I finished my GCSEs and was deciding on A’ levels, as there were so many subjects I was interested in and could have studied further. In the end I chose to do Maths, Physics & Spanish (with AS French that I then dropped) and now I’m a librarian, so
However, I’m sure that whatever I might decide now the direction I do take will depend to a certain extent on what jobs are available, as well as whether hubby-to-be wants to move.