August 12th, 2010
Screenshot of the blogs where I contribute
I currently contribute to two public blogs: the University of Leicester library blog, where I work, and this one. This one has been rather neglected since I started blogging all my professional development events over at uollibrary, with the exception of my recent contribution to the Library Day in the Life project. As events are one of the major points of focus of this blog I’ve not been driven to post here so much.
However, in my chartership plan I’ve indicated that blogging is one way I’d reflect upon my development. Why hadn’t this blog become a place of reflection? I’ve realised that I’d grown out of touch with blogs. I’ve been using Twitter quite heavily for some time, and I’d stopped using my feed reader and was relying on Twitter to point me towards blog posts of interest. About once every two months I’d visit my Protopage site and feel guilty that I hadn’t read anything. I’d try to catch up, but always felt I’d missed the conversation.
So I’ve made an effort to rejoin the conversation, by changing the way I read blogs. When blogs first came to my attention I preferred using a page-based feed reader, but then I was looking at blogs for entertainment, not professional development, and didn’t want to keep track of what I had and hadn’t read. But for my professional development it’s nice to be prompted to keep up-to-date, and encouraged to discuss and reflect. So I’ve switched to Google Reader, which keeps track of how many posts I have and haven’t read, and encourages me to keep up-to-date.
And lo and behold, three days later, here I am writing a blog on the process. Because it turns out that having read others reflecting on what they do prompts me to think about what I do. And reading others thoughts day-to-day prompts that far more than trawling through a backlog. Plus (for bonus points) Google Reader is really easy to access from my Android phone on the train, meaning it’s easier to keep up-to-date too!
From a wider perspective, I think it’s really interesting how changing the tool I use to do something really changes how I see it. I’m going to see if I can apply this elsewhere. Next step: changing the format of my presentations for teaching… and I promise to blog on how that goes too!
Tags: blogging, blogs
Posted in Web 2.0, chartership, professional development | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
The view of my desk at work
As I was only in for two days this week a major goal for today was clearing my inbox as far as possible! I tend to have folder for projects so this isn’t too alarming a task, but I had a few queries to follow up and things to get done before I went.
Firstly, I followed up on the map query from yesterday by establishing contact with the map library. They were very helpful. Unfortunately, copyright restrictions meant the maps couldn’t be copied without permission from the publisher, but they did fax me through the details of the series of maps I needed. Once I had the publisher’s name I was able to source quite a few alternative points of access: one local stockist of a CD with the maps on, and also online versions of the maps (which were useable with help from Google Translate!)
My original plan was to be in work on Monday and Wednesday this week, so I didn’t think I would be in today, and only belatedly remembered I’d said I was unable to help with some teaching on Tuesday morning. The teaching was unique to this time of year: helping tutors who were going to be supporting international students in researching essays for our summertime international induction courses. I was able to pop in to the session and help support one of our biological science librarians in demonstrating some general science resources which might be relevant for students to search.
I made my way through the majority of the emails I had – mostly small things – as the day progressed. This included providing some text for a distance learning handbook for Geography with details of library services. I was able to borrow a large part of the text from another of our librarians who has a much larger portfolio of distance learning students in the departments she supports. However, I needed to check a lot of the details of services provided, including where a graduate certificate fitted in our various borrowing and service categories!
Lastly, I was down to two messages in the inbox, and had to finish sending off the details of our subscriptions to individual academic journal titles to one of the departments I support. I’ve been trying to find time within a staff meeting to discuss these within departments, but as this department doesn’t have a staff meeting scheduled until after our deadline for decisions, we decided to email the list of current subscriptions round, like previous years. As I send the email, I’m thinking there must be a better method than inviting email comments, perhaps some kind of online questionnaire? I make a note to investigate this further with the other departments when I came back from my break, and then my library day in the life week for Summer 2010 is over!
Tags: librarydayinthelife
Posted in HE libraries, professional development | No Comments »
