Falling behind?!?!?

There is just so much to do to keep up with everything. Continuing professional development requires a commitment of time and also of space to complete, or leave, as required.

My current position entails being at different campuses, not always easy to remember where you need to be and at what time. This makes things more difficult with CPD as there is no place to leave things and know that you can come back to them tomorrow. I am finding that I take a large bag with me to work, it includes a number of things I am reading and information on other things that I need for my job. It means that there is no spot that I can consider as "the space" for doing my professional development.

When I was a student I had my desk at home, and woe betide anyone who disturbed the arrangement. This just doesn't work anymore, not helped by having two teenagers in their last year of secondary education. Lots of things to distract me at the end of the day. Anyway, I have now read the "things" that I haven't kept up with and will check some of them out and then blog.

Things 4 & 5

Thought I would do these two together. Thing 4 was about the use of social media such as Twitter. This was an area in which I had completed some exploration, having been a user of Facebook for quite a while. I also had RSS feeds from some of my favourite sites, just didn't have the time to read the interesting articles! Twitter allowed me to receive feeds from some of the same places but in 140 characters. This gives quick pieces of information that may promote specific articles that are of use, without having to lumber my way through large blocks of text.

Thing 5 is about Reflective practice. I think that this is something that all life-long learners tend to do. We look at what we are learning, think about it, see what we have accomplished well, what we feel we could have done better and identify new strategies or information that we need to use for the next learning curve. The actual writing down of this can become tiresome if it is done for every learning task, but the reflection on our travels is useful across all of our life.

Branding (Part 2)

So, I have had a chance to think about branding.
It is not only personal branding that we need to be aware of, though that is particularly relevant to this week's discussion. As Librarians we need to think about the branding of our libraries, our profession and our role in this ever changing world.
We also need to be aware of the effects of branding on our clientele. Why do we think that they rely on Google search for their answers, most of them know that they should check their sources more thoroughly but Google has created such a "safe" brand that people do not look past the first one or two pages of results.
This is where we, the librarians, come in. We need to ensure that we explain the way that Google works, the intricacies of personalization of search results and the impact that this can have if they are trying to access a non-biased view of their world.

Branding?

What do you mean when you talk about branding? My Google search for my name did give me a nice surprise, my LinkedIn account came up as the top response. Okay, so that means that people can find ME, but then I had to think about my LinkedIn account and whether it provides an accurate representation of ME. Looks like I will have to do some more work on that account.
I am very aware of the blur between personal and professional social media on the Internet, something I have been stressing to my children for a while. "ENSURE that your privacy settings are at the highest", "Make sure that your friends don't tag you in photos that are available to others on the web", I think they may be getting tired of my rants.

Health issues for students (and staff)

One of the things that I have noticed while working in academic libraries is the way in which the majority of students study and write their papers. Whilst occasional "all nighters" will not cause long term problems we do need to keep an eye out for symptoms of sleep deprivation. Students are not the only ones trying to fit too much into an otherwise 24 hour day. Let's think about the long term consequences to not only our own health but also to our ability to perform at our best.

Teamwork myths!

I always knew there was some unreliable information out there on teamwork. Here are some myths and their debunking.

Just a thought!

 Here is something that I found very interesting. I have an undergraduate degree in english and history. Subjects that would not survive if there weren't archival documents. Here, the Internet Archive has decided to store e-books in hard copy. They have provided their reasoning and it is sound practice for more than just e-books, think this through to other areas where a loss of "fidelity" to the original could cause major issues.