Keeping up with the Jones's

I'm trying to catch up on some of the readings I've been doing lately, and keeping my information in the one place. So, here's another one. Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill for pointing me towards it.

Sheehan, K. (2010, August 3). Keeping Up with Keeping Up. ALA Techsource. Retrieved June 20, 2011, from http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2010/07/keeping-up-with-keeping-up.html

Very interesting article - clarifies some of my thoughts and gives guidance on what really are appropriate actions to do to try to keep up with technology and changes. It can feel so hard with limited time. And I feel like I'm really not doing very well compared with the people who's writing I follow. I need to target my work/reading/development because I can't hope to do it all (as Kate Sheehan points out clearly).
However, when I compare myself with many of my collegues (not that I intentially try to benchmark, just what comes up in conversation) I realise that other people are struggling even more than me, or have less interest/see it as much less of a priority. Again, as pointed out by Kate Sheehan.

Soooo, how will I implement this new knowledge? Well, although my current work is in Higher Education, I still have a passion for public libraries, and a growing interest in school libraries.
The areas that I find easier to keep up with and most interesting are more social networking - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, etc. The areas that I find more difficult are the issues around DRM, ePortfolios and some of the content creation areas (Vimeo etc.). So the areas that I am less confident with are probably the ones which aren't focussed on in public and school libraries as much (although of course they are still relevant). And I do read enough to know of the basic issues/that there are issues with DRM, that there is a variety of ePortfolio platforms and software and that there are some absolutely amazing content creation applications out there.And where to go or who to talk to, to get more information. Which means that (according to Kate) I'm doing ok.

So I will leave you with my new favourite quote:

“Keeping up with technology” seems overwhelming and huge and ridiculously hard if it’s presented as a monolith that must be scaled. Keeping up doesn’t mean knowing every single tech trend that’s out there. It means being engaged with your community and knowing what your patrons are using. ... Just like the rest of librarianship – it isn’t about being an expert; it’s about knowing where to look.

And this is my problem....

"It’s very easy to buy all the bestselling business books and read everything novel that comes up on Twitter or your favorite blogs but, your competitors probably do the same and… this will only lead to information overload.
The real goal with knowledge – and where you can out-learn your competitors – is to internalize learnings and let things you learn change you. After all, you can know the name of all the tools in the shed but, if you’ve never learned to use any of them, your knowledge isn’t worth very much.
By actively seeking opportunities to learn, absorb and reinterpret knowledge, you build the thinking that will allow you to out-learn and, eventually, out-teach your competitors.
Make sure you have the best learning process in your market. Reading is only half the battle."
 How I Managed to Out-Learn the Competition. (n.d.). . Retrieved June 23, 2011, from http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-i-managed-to-out-learn-the-competition.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LifeHack+%28lifehack.org%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Although I am not in a competitive situation in a business sense, I am trying to compete with my memory! I tend not to internalise the information that I take in or, when I do, I don't keep appropriate or detailed enough records. So, yet again I am planning to come back to this blog to keep myself on track.

Thing 21 - Ustream and the impact of ubiquitous video

I watched Kathryn's demo of Ustream with interest but would have liked to see the chat functionality in action. I've now registered and will have a play at home, away from the security restrictions (well, hypersensitive IT-savvy husband aside) to see how that side works.

Thing 18, 19 - Join Twitter, Tweet for a Week

The Twitter registration process was quite simple and clear - pity I was meant to tweet the week that I only had one day at work :) But I've been enjoying reading other's tweets, and also found out quite a bit more about some people's roles.
I also read something quite interesting:


Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers

Not that this is a new idea or unique to Twitter - as others have written, the whole point of many of these new technologies is to enable faster communication. Most technologies can be used for positive or negative results depending on the outlook of the users...

Things 16-17 - Join Facebook, add Facebook friends

I've been on Facebook since Feb this year. I decided it was the best way to keep up with a friend who moved to Malawi with AVA for two years. She updates her status regularly using her mobile phone and uploads amazing photos when she is near a large town. It's also been good to keep up with a number of our interstate and overseas nephews & nieces (who range in age from 29 to 4 - not all of them on Facebook!) and all of their doings...

I currently have 37 "friends" - family, local & interstate friends, people I have worked with (some over 10 years ago) and I've just been found by a couple of high school classmates after 20+ years!
I get frustrated by people who want to send me all their wonderful invitations to play games or add pretty things, but I love the ease of ignoring them :) I'm still at a dip in & out stage - every couple of days is enough for me, but I can sometimes find myself getting a little addicted and staying on much longer than the time I have allocated myself.

I haven't yet done much playing with less social type things - I am a member of the ALIA group, and Aussie Librarians, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I'll be interested to hear how other people are using it.

Thing 14 - Flickr

I've looked at other people's images on Flickr (sometimes being amazed - as I am with Facebook - how much private information they're willing to give out about themselves) but haven't joined or contributed until now. I can see it's definite benefits in a personal setting but (like many of these tools) I could also use a different 'thing' to achieve a similar result - in my case that would be sharing images with family & friends that are interstate.
I did like Ian's work example and can see the value in something like the Cambridge Library's display with catalogue links - but would also think that it would create a huge amount of work. I do wonder at the time/value equation - although I suppose as with many emerging technologies, someone needs to put in the time & energy initially. Long term there may be huge demand and the time/value equation may swing, but until someone has done the work to allow users to get to know it, it won't happen. A case (possibly) of 'if you build it they will come!' Or not!

Thing 15

http://www.TrippyText.com - Trippy Text
http://www.MakeYourSpace.com/ - MySpace Layouts

Thing 13 part 2 - the feet!

At the Friday workshop we did a group photo of our feet - spectacular but it did surprise me how many of us were wearing 'sensible' shoes!

Thing 13 - Upload an image

This is a photo my husband took (but I uploaded to our PC at home :)) of McNaught's comet in January 2007. Lucky us only had to walk 25m across the street to get this view - so we were able to enjoy on a number of nights.

Thing 11: Social tagging and search

I did a very basic search on the term 'survivor'. I was interested to see what wildly varying results I got, and I wasn't disappointed.
Delicious, Google, Zuula and Kartoo focused on the TV series, a music group, and a clip of that name.
Murdoch Uni catalogue had only 4 titles - related to the surviving partner and their needs, and the UQ catalogue had 119 results with a smattering of fiction & non-fiction.
CiteUlike had a medical focus, and I couldn't get Connotea to work for me.
I found Kartoo quite disconcerting = I'm obviously not as visual a person as other people, although maybe if would grow on me given time :)

Thing 12 - delicious.com

I'd heard quite a lot about delicious over the last year, but it all seemed a bit too hard when I was just working with my bookmarks on my home PC. Then when I started at Murdoch I knew it would be worth checking out - so I was pleased to find it was one of the Things.

After an initial glitch (which was my fault) I found the set-up very simple and the different methods of tagging quite easy - although I can see that I already want to modify some of the tags that were imported. And I'm guessing that to make them useful setting up more of the tag bundles would be a good idea.

After adding Kate to my network I found my husband and added him also. I need to explore the social side a little more as at this stage I'm simply seeing delicious as a way to share my bookmarks at home and work. But I do think that (given time to explore) it will be much more than this.

Firefox and Extensions

This week's things (7 & 8) are not completely new to me, in that we have a couple of extensions on our home version of Firefox. BUT I didn't add them - just used them, without really realising what they were and how many options are out there. I've spent quite a lot of time looking at this week's things, mainly at home ( :)) - I've installed a Harley Davidson theme (didn't work very well for me - too bulky), a black one (found sections hard to read), Walnut for Firefox (I can cope with it but it is a bit distracting) and finally settled on a boring but usable one!

Details of my things below:

Add a theme - I finally chose Microfox for Firefox

Add an extension - I added a couple - ChromaTabs Plus 2.1 (I like the idea of seeing at a glance the originator of different websites - didnt work very well with the walnut theme but is fine with my current one) and Mouse Gestures Redox (we use something like this at home and I'd gotten used to it :)) I'm also thinking of installing Foxsaver to have a nice screensaver of photos of my kids :) Just need to find out if it uses too many PC resources...

Add the 23 things toolbar - done

Download Zotero and LibX - done

Add some resources to your Zotero Library. Try to include something from the Library Catalogue, a database and a website such as Google Scholar. - done

Choose one of the extensions covered in Things 7 and 8 and write a blog entry on whether you would use it and why.

I've been using the 23 things toolbar to keep in touch with other participants blogs and the RSS feed of the 23 Things blog. I also like the ease of which I can get to the 'things' It's great but I figure longer term I'll be using the LibX toolbar more consistently.

23 Things - first musing!

I'm really looking forward to this program. After four years out of the library world (apart from trying to keep pace a little through personal reading and elists in between changing nappies & bandaging knees) I am really looking forward to having a chance to learn some of the key technologies that are coming forward and being used in our library world.

I've always enjoyed learning new things, but find the amount of 'things' out there at the moment a bit overwhelming. So to have had someone select some good examples of emerging technologies is making it all seem much more do-able.

From the video:

Which habit of lifelong learners is easiest and which is hardest for me?
Hardest would be habit 7 - teaching/mentoring others - partly because although I enjoy sharing information with others, I don't always feel best qualified to do so (it's such a big responsibility) and partly because at this point in time I don't work closely enough for long enough with other people who have less skills in this area than I do :)

Easiest - habit 2 - accept responsibility for my own learning. In my last 5 working years (ignoring the four year hiatus) I started 7 different jobs (lots of contract work in Darwin :)). These were generally in quite different workplaces with different systems, software and different political environments (including local government, state government, university and non-profit). I didn't always get a handover with previous staff but I found it a real challenge to learn as much as I could and to become as productive as possible in as short a time as possible. I suppose I just like learning new things :)

My goals for the 23 Things?
Generally, a greater understanding of some of the new and emerging technologies, how they can be used, and how they may/will impact on our service delivery now and in the future.
Specifically, I am interested in learning more about Twitter, del.icio.us, Flicker and Second Life - these are the things that I hear people talking about but I don't feel like I 'have a handle' on at all.

What I need in my learning toolkit to achieve these goals?
Thankfully, I know that many of these things are available already.

• Good net access (more of an issue at home potentially)
• Digital camera
• Headphones and microphone
• Time - an issue for everyone, but working 10 hours a week I expect to be doing some of this at home so that I can really explore and understand