#Thing22 - Reflective Post


This module was all about becoming an "Engaged Professional" and as someone who has been somewhat "disengaged" over the past number of years, it was a stark reminder to me that the library profession and indeed, the concept of libraries themselves, is something that is the responsibility of all of us and if we don't actively participate and advocate then it is to our own detriment.


The "Things" involved in this module certainly helped me to point my thoughts towards how this advocacy can be achieved


- thinking outside the box, and using new mediums such as podcasts can certainly help - both for circulating information AND non-direct marketing of libraries
- having a strategic plan in place so that your advocay is consistent and focussed on a particular message that will gain you the most support
- Getting your users INVOLVED!
- Using your vast networks and contacts as a librarian to support you, get ideas from, stop reinventing the wheel and use the experience of those who have done it all before
- Focus on what you need to advocate for and how - one step at a time.


It is easy to fall into routine and habit in libraries, and not realise that society is moving past you and will outgrow you if you don't stay engaged and listen and be aware (mea culpa!). I sincerely hope that this final module of Rudai 23 has shaken me out of my apathy and I look forward to increasing my engagement in the future.

#Thing21 - Professional Bodies


Firstly, I have to confess that as I am approaching the deadline for the end of the Rudai 23 Series, this thing has been a bit more rushed that I would like, but I will continue to investigate in the future.
I also have to confess that prior to this I was somehow unaware of the "My Library, By Right" campaign, which I am now up to speed on thanks to following them on twitter, but also mostly by scavenging their website and informing myself of what's going on.
I think it's a great campaign and so many of the ideas they are using / coming up with are easily translated to ourselves across the water.
If we want libraries to survive we need to get our users involved and make them feel ownership of them. And also remind them of what they will miss out on if they are not around!
I will defintely be keeping a close eye on all of CILIP's advocacy campaigns - for ideas big and small!

#Thing20

I took a few of the suggested exercises and summarised my thoughts on them below:

Exercise 1: Name three detrimental effects to a local community when a public library is closed.

- It excludes people from accessing a wealth of information that would only become the resource of the privileged and the few

- The library has become such a great place for community groups of all disciplines to get together and work together, would be sorely missed for that if it were closed

- One less avenue for the community to inspire and assist young people in the community.

Exercise 3: Name three ways in which you can demonstrate the impact and value of the library service that you work in or use.

My library is in the private sector but it assists with background research for those dealing with client teams, helps with current awareness of staff in knowing changes to the law and trends in their discipline, maintains online resources and up to date key materials for staff.

Exercise 6: In your opinion what are the three best features of the My Library, By Right Campaign and why?

- Public awareness

- Messaging is on point - the My Library, By Right slogan gives people ownership of their library and makes them a part of it's campaign

- active engagement by encouraging people to contact their local representatives.

Exercise 8: Choose an area of library practice that you feels requires debate.

- The upgrade of public library buildings - too many inconsistencies in the quality of library buildings around the country - should be more cohesion and consistency to make the library space a more inviting space for everybody, everywhere.

 

#Thing19 – Podcasts

 

First of all I am very grateful to this “Thing” for introducing me to the wonderful Irish History Podcast - http://irishhistorypodcast.ie/ which is the Podcast I chose to download and review and now I am hooked!

Prior to this my experience of Podcasts was limited to the worldwide sensation that was the “Serial” podcast – which I mostly chanced upon as it was a watercooler topic in the workplace and also I was training for my first ever 5k and so it was something to listen to whilst I plodded around on dark cold nights. However, once it was over I never really expanded my inquiries into the world of podcasts much and especially not as a tool that librarians or academics would use. However, I downloaded the Soundcloud app (on android – a very straightforward experience) and I also use the Castbox app – again a very straightforward tool although searching for what you want on it can be a little tricky occasionally. I immediately got stuck into the Famine series of podcasts and apart from fulfilling my own deep interest in Irish history I tried to be conscious of how podcasts could help me as a librarian. These are just a few of the things that occurred to me:

 

• A great way to do research when approaching centenaries etc of historical events and you are wondering how your library may contribute / participate etc to events surrounding that – because you can listen as you go, you won’t get bogged down in reams of paper and books whilst trying to sort out themes and issues pertaining to said event
• Alternatively, if there is not a podcast already out there on the topic, your library could use all that paper-based research to produce a podcast and thereby make it more accessible to a wider range of people who may have an interest in the topic
• The hard work has already been done in grouping topics together, identifying key issues, putting things that fit together into one episode etc – you could reflect all of those things in a physical exhibition in the library
• A worthwhile podcast created by your library could be a great way to advertise your library and your exhibitions / research materials to a wider audience
• And of course they are a terrific resource to point any of your visually impaired library users to – we would all do well to be aware of what’s available out there.

As for the Famine series itself  - I loved it. Very informative, narrated at a nice pace, great use of sound effects - particularly liked the "Famine tour" through Dublin. And adequate number of episodes to leave you fulfilled but not overwhelmed. 5 star rating from me!

Thing 18 – Reflective Practice ( on Things 14-17)

 

So Thing 14 was a task I readily dipped into, as I am a lover of lists – particularly the act of ticking items off.  Nothing beats that satisfaction! However, I have a habit of making my lists AFTER half the tasks have already been completed,  which defeats the purpose entirely and doesn’t improve the timeliness of completion – I think my travels on this Rudai 23 journey are a case in point!

So I enjoyed trying out Evernote – and road tested it with some projects that typically arise in my current job, like following the Budget to Finance Bill process from start to finish. As you can imagine this process has many strands, and we have different tasks to complete at each stage and different sets of information we need to keep track of.  For that reason I particularly liked the enhanced features that make this more than a “list”. Being able to attach files and clip webpages meant that I was able to keep everything I needed together in one space, and decreased my chances of overlooking any tasks etc. Also, really handy as a reminder tool, as when you need to repeat the project you can go back and reproduce the same list of tasks and tweak them to the current year/project as required. It’s definitely a tool I will use again, so thanks Rudai 23 for introducing me to it properly!

I also tried out Feedly as I monitor a lot of websites and do use RSS feeds – a lot of the sites I follow are slightly messy to begin with so I think I may need to tweak this a bit better in order to get it working efficiently for me – it’s a tool that I think requires a bit of trial and error. I also tried out Remember the Milk, but having used the enhanced functionalities of Evernote, I just preferred Evernote, and would probably stick with it.

 

For Thing 15 we needed to consider how to evaluate information and Wikipedia was discussed as an example. I am a huge fan of Wikipedia, particularly when researching something you are absolutely clueless about. However, I am also aware that being clueless leaves you open to getting “ bad information”. That is why I generally use Wikipedia as a starting point – something that gives me a synopsis but also points me to citations/sources and back up material etc, that can be used for the “real” research. Of course that’s much easier when the Wikipedia passage is well referenced and the citations are complete so I tried out the Citation Hunt Tool. It really showed me how difficult it actually can be to validate everything that you might read in a Wikipedia article (or online in general!) so it was informative to get to grips with the process and to try and understand exactly what kind of validation is required in order to be 100% confident of accuracy. I can’t say that I caught the Wikipedia editing bug (!) a lot of hard work! But the exercise has definitely made me appreciate the resource all the more!

 

My digital footprint is something that I have always been conscious of, but part of engaging with more apps and online tools means expanding that footprint so I make it a policy to limit myself to only those that I really need and also to take the time to analyse and set the privacy settings according to my needs. No more information that is required in order to use the tool to its utmost or to my exact needs. It is a good to take the time to review these every so often though, as privacy policies are ever changing and you might find that the app you depended on 3 years ago, is little used and defunct now. I actually think it would be worthwhile setting a  review reminder every six months or so, just to make sure that you are controlling your Digital footprint effectively.

 

When it comes to Sharing work I’m afraid I have to admit to being the beneficiary moreso than the sharer! I use Slideshare regularly, particularly for downloading webcasts and their slides. Perhaps time to think about giving a little back!

#Thing13 Reflective Post

 

As a reluctant and intermittent user of social media platforms over the years, doing the Rudai 23 course has given me an opportunity to revisit and rethink how I might benefit from more interaction with said platforms. I am in the position where my current job does not require a strong public social media presence, and in fact, it can often be discouraged in a way as I work for a large corporate with very firm ideas about its branding and image, and where social media presence is strongly monitored by a marketing team. Therefore, my “personal brand” has to be mindful of situation, which is why I created a Twitter bio that does not name my place of work and makes sure to mention that all views are personal ones. In a way it is limiting as a professional and I am curious how others negotiate their private and professional selves when creating an online personal brand?

However, this does not mean that social media and online networking and collaboration has no place in my day to day affairs. It is undoubtedly one of the most current and easily accessed sources of up-do-date information, I monitor a lot of websites, government departments etc for their latest updates and press releases and quite often these can be found on Twitter or Facebook feeds before they hit the various organisations’ websites. For this reason, I found the exercise in following various users on Twitter quite interesting and it is something I will try to hone and fine tune in the coming months so that I have a feed that will point me towards developments that I need to know about in a timely fashion.

Networking is something that I find challenging, and I am of the mindset that maybe Twitter or LinkedIn are things that I should be using more in order to reach out to other institutions and potential collaborators in a simple and informal way. This part of the course has not changed my mind on the value of Facebook as a professional tool for one’s personal brand – certainly useful for your overall Organisation to have a Facebook Page, and to use it to highlight Events etc and also just to maintain visibility in front of potential and current users. But for the individual, I still think that it’s function is largely personal over professional.

I have already covered the collaborative tools in my previous blog post so will not repeat it all here, but I definitely find them a positive and hope they continue to develop and improve.

Overall, I am still just “dipping my toes” and feeling my way around how I want to present myself to the online world and how I can best use others’ online presences to my benefit. It is definitely an ongoing process I think and not something that should be done in haste – it is something that should be carefully crafted to your individual requirements.

Thing 12 – Collaborative Tools

#thing12

The last collaborative project that I worked on was a report we were commissioned to write for an external organisation. Some of the work was face to face, as it was the responsibility of my department to produce the final report, but also some of it was virtually as other contributors came from other departments, some of which were in physically different offices.   It was a rather large and complex report, but as a large company we use iManage, which means files are saved in locations that everyone can access, there is version control on documents as well as the ability so see previously saved versions, there is access control based on user permissions, and along with the usual track lining facilities in Microsoft Word, it made the process a lot easier to manage.

However, there is  still a lot of “manual” control over a project this large – the report was broken down into chapters,  diagrams and graphs were doled out to marketing teams to create, and dropped in at the end, the bibliography and footnotes had to be carefully cultivated from all the disparate parts. In hindsight, and now having done the Rudai 23 online networking portion of the course, I think perhaps something like Trello might have kept a better handle on some elements of the process – and helped with the last minute checks that everything was in and in order before we reached the deadline!

On a more personal level I have used Google Docs for planning my sister’s hen weekend – a more formidable task that you might at first expect – but it was an excellent way of keeping tabs on all participants and which parts of the weekend they were included in, who needed accommodation etc.

Overall I would say that using a collaborative tool is most definitely a positive, especially if you might have any “rogue elements” in your team – e.g. the person who is just not good at communicating what needs to be done, what has been changed etc.  Or the person who is not good at consistently saving and backing up their work.  Or just for the simple task of not losing sight of a “Master Document”!

#thing10 #thing11 #Rudai23

Check out my twitter account and personal branding bio @LindaGorIre

#Thing9 - Reflecting on online exhibitions and infographics.......



The first thing I would have to say about creating an online exhibition is that, as I am finding with a lot of these visual communicator "things", is that it is time consuming. If you want your exhibition to look well and make sense, you need to put in the time. Forward planning is essential!

Going at it in a haphazard manner is not the way (as I've learned!), and in future I would definitely map out how I want it to look and feel, and what information I want where, before going at it. Otherwise you spend a lot of time re-doing the same stuff and for a project like this, when there can be so many parts, right down to the smallest image or the curating of a piece of text or whatever, that is not something you want to be doing.

For my "exhibition" I decided to use Wordpress, as I have been using Blogger for this blog, and wanted to try out a different platform. I took the "Budget Summary" leaflet from this year's budget and turned the information into an online exhibition of the main points. Be careful when you are picking the web address of your exhibition! I realised I had put the wrong year in mine at the end..not helpful when it comes to search results.
In general though I found the Wordpress platform quite straightforward to use once I got the hang of it.

I enjoyed playing around with the Infographics - Piktochart is very easy to use. I was using the free version but I would imagine it is a powerful tool if you have the paid version and all the options. Easy to whip up one of these for anything that you might want to draw people's attention to, or explain in an easy way - and very handy for throwing up on social media platforms like facebook, twitter etc. A great way I think of keeping the content on those pages looking fresh and up to date.

Overall, the whole "Visual Communicator" module was an eye opener for me - I discovered a lot of tools that I didn't know existed, and which I feel could all be easily mastered to good effect over time. I look forward to that process!

#Thing8 - trying out infographics with piktochart!

#Thing7 - Take a look at my online exhibition here:

https://budget2017thing7expo.wordpress.com/

I took the Budget 2018 summary leaflet from the Department of Finance and turned it into an exhibit of the most important details from the budget.

#Thing6 - Reflecting on communicating visually...................


Hi!

This post is simply here to reflect on what's been going on with this blog thus far.....particularly the last few "things" related to communicating visually.
As part of that process, I used some images from sources that contain copyright free images, such as Google Images and Pixabay, and that I could, therefore, use on my blog quite freely.
I also played around with Photofunia, which allows you to edit images for re-use, and finally I created a slide presentation on Powtoon.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but having completed these tasks I would have to say that my biggest feeling at the end of the process was just how much better visual material can make a blog (or whatever medium one is using) look. It might seem like quite a shallow thing, but in an age when bloggers are competing with so much else online, marketing your wares and grabbing people's attention has fast become just as important as ensuring the quality of the written content you want to share. When your customer base is quite often made up of people who might describe themselves as  "browsers" or  "clickers" - moving from one screen/blog/webpage to the next and only stopping when something really grabs their attention - that moment is key. The thing that "grabs" their attention and reels them in. I really felt that with a little bit of effort and thought, it's possible to increase the chances of that "grab" by using some very convenient visual communicator tools.

During Thing 3, I was really bowled over by the amount of images that are available under the Creative Commons Licence. There is a literally an image available for every scenario you might find yourself in and I think they are quite useful for giving a nice visual cue to readers as to what content they might expect to find underneath, or even as something vague and thought provoking that might arouse enough curiosity in them to want to look deeper - I tried to play with that idea by using the image of the open road and getting people to guess the title of the book - just the idea of using a visual aid that might give people pause, so that they don't just click past your content. I found the image sources very easy and straight-forward to use and they integrate well with blog platforms.

Using Photofunia was a little different - it's something that probably requires a little bit more time to get maximum benefit from. If you look at the two images I used, the text "Halloween is coming" looks far better in one image than the other, so experimenting is definitely key. Being able to edit to your own personal message is great though - it really allows you to create a look and feel to your blog that is all your own, whilst maximising the visual cues to the message you are trying to portray.

The last resources I used was Powtoon. I found it a little trickier to use, not as intuitive as the image resources and so it is definitely something that I would need to play around with a bit more before feeling comfortable. I ignored Rudai23's advice to watch the intro tutorial video - perhaps that was my first mistake but it has got me thinking....what was their (Powtoon's" mistake that I didn't feel that "grab" when it came to looking at their video.......anyway!
I also think that this resource would benefit from a more collaborative team effort - if you are going to create something that could be quite lengthy for people to watch, ie demands an attentions span of longer than a few seconds! , it would be important that it is edited well. Stick to your message, don't stray off point, follow a direct line or storyboard and make sure all your key ideas or points are covered.

If I was to do this task again, I think I would spend more time on each of the resources until I was comfortable with them, and then I would be in a better place to evaluate which one is the best one to use for any particular post or task that I am working on. Without being completely au fait with each one, I was basically shooting in the dark in terms of wondering how it was going to turn out on the blog. I was happy to run with that, as part of the learning curve, but in a working environment when one has quick turn around requirements, it would really help to be able to dive right in to the best option, rather than playing around and hoping for the best. I enjoyed discovering these resources over the last few weeks anyway, and look forward to getting to know them better!

#Thing5

#rudai23 #thing4

It's that time of year again - Find all your scary reads at your local library now!!

 

 

What's your favourite scary Halloween read? Submit a comment below and let us know!

Thing 3! Current Reading - Can you guess the title?

Image reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Answer - The Road, by Cormac McCarthy!

Thing 2 - A Blog Post! (On blogging)

Well, as this is supposed to be a "self-reflective" blog about my Rudaí23 experience, my first real blog post will "self-reflect" about the relevance of blogs to my professional life as a librarian.
Currently, that relevance is "zero".
Or so I thought.
When I actually stopped to think about blogs and their usage in the private sector for which I work, I realised that they are everywhere! I tap into them on a regular basis to keep up to date with new developments and link others to them as part of our knowledge sharing role - just because they don't have "BLOG" written on top with blinking lights, doesn't mean that isn't what they actually are!
But what about me, apart from using other people's blogs, could I use a blog to enhance my current work effort? & surprisingly (to myself !) the answer is yes!
We have been struggling with under-use of resources and a need to market said resources better and a blog could be a fine way of doing that. Ideas for such a blog currently include:

 - Some book reviews from expert staff
 - Some " Resource of the Week" feature pieces
 - Integration of the blog with our current knowledge sharing database
 - Instructions, tips and guidance blog posts

So that's the seed planted, now all I need is some helpful I.T. staff and a few opinionated experts.....

Hi! This is a new blog, created for the purpose of reviewing my participation in the Rudai 23 - 23 Things for Information Skills course.
Hope you enjoy it!