The Librain

This time I am looking at the Web2.0 tools that I use for collaboration. To focus myself, I am going to concentrate on those I use to connect with colleagues, rather than how I use Web2.0 with students. Those of you who know my work situation will be aware that I am not currently in the position to develop very much on the teaching side – but I am saving up loads of ideas for the Autumn Term onwards!

I talked about the use of Twitter in the previous post on this subject, in terms of communication. But a really amazing example of collaboration happened yesterday!  Using Twitter, around 150 librarians joined together to discuss the use of Web2.0 by our professional body, CILIP. We were able to follow, to some extent, the meeting that was taking place at CILIP’s headquarters in London and discuss amongst ourselves. By using the tag #cilip2 in all of our tweets, it was then possible to follow what was going on. I used Twitterfall to track the tweets really easily. If you want another way of seeing part of the discussion then look here.

#cilip2 – Twitter Search

It felt very exciting  and groundbreaking to be able to take part – and I have found a lot of colleagues from other sectors to follow on Twitter. In fact, I am beginning to feel that my Twitter community is becoming my first “port of call” for professional development and information these days – there are so many brilliant people out there! And I am developing a Twitter addiction!

Here is a Wordle based on the #CILIP2 tweets:

From Dave & Bry on Flickr

That leads me on to the second Web2.0 tool that I want to talk about here. Some years ago, when I still ran Strongest Links (for those of you who don’t know, that was a site I ran to support UK school librarians), I heard about wikis. I thought that a wiki would be a great tool for school librarians to use to share information and ideas. So, I set up a wiki and loads of people signed up – but, very few people actually put on any content. I think that it was a bit before its time.

SLNers – A Network for school librarians in the UK

Recently, a group of us took part in an online course (mentioned in previous posts) and, as a result, one librarian, Yin Doran, set up a Ning for us. Now – that is beginning to take off! I think that she chose the right technology at the right time – key to success! We can discuss things on the Ning and add files, photos and videos. I think that it enables a greater depth of discussion than can be achieved on a large mailing list like SLN. Also, so far, it has tended to attract librarians who are trying to work at a level beyond the basic stuff. Yes, we are all at different places in our learning curves, but we are trying to lift our eyes above the daily, mundane tasks, which we all have to do, and push things forward. I have also started a discussion on the Ning called “Twitter Helpdesk” to support colleagues finding their way on to Twitter.

Please, no Dewey questions!

Before I return to considerations of Web2.0, I am going to divert here towards a really interesting afternoon spent visiting the library at a local university. Many thanks to the lovely staff there who made me so welcome. Please note that any photos on this post are not of the library I visited today.

Sesame Library by Jim Bob Blann on Flickr

My first ever library post was as Graduate Trainee at Lancaster University Library back in 1979-1980! In those days we were in the early stages of automation – each book had a piece of punched card inside – about 10cms long. To issue a book, we had to take the student’s card – which also had holes in it – and put it through a reader. Then we had to push the piece of card through after it (I think I am remembering this correctly – it was a long time ago!). As the card often got scruffy, we had to learn how to read the holes and work out the numbers that they represented. One of my favourite jobs was the afternoon I spent each week with the techies. They were developing the next stage of computerising the library – barcodes!

Anyway, that diversion, within a diversion, just goes to show quite how old I am!

What I am leading up to is how far things have changed. I last walked into a university library probably in 1981, when I was finishing my Masters at Sheffield. Today, I walked into the most wonderful library space – I was almost jealous of the students for having such an amazing place in which to study!

So then I am thinking about my tiny library space in my new school – well, in comparison to a university library, all of my school libraries have been tiny! You would think that I had nothing in common with the library staff – how could I?

Well, that would be wrong! First of all, we are fellow-professionals and we speak a lot of the same language. We could relate to some of the same issues as librarians in an institution concerned with teaching and learning.

I went there to make a link and to talk about how we, as school librarians, can better prepare students for their time at university. I also had some idea what I would hear as I often read about the concerns of colleagues in the wider profession. These seemed to be the main issues.

On arrival at university, many students:

• Do not have an understanding of how to appraise resources. They do not have a concept of authority or trusted high quality resources. They think that a blog (written by anyone), a peer-reviewed journal article and a book are all equal.
• Have not gone beyond Google in terms of search engines before. Many still use Wikipedia uncritically.
• Have never used a subscription database – and wouldn’t know what one is anyway. The university invests a huge amount in high quality online resources, e-journals and e-books!
• Have never used journals.
• Have never read around their subject and baulk at essential reading lists.
• Are shaky when it comes to writing an academic essay.
• Have issues with plagiarism – not unexpected!
• Also have issues around understanding what a library is – as a public shared space. So they see nothing wrong with imposing themselves on other’s space in terms of noise, use of mobile phones and MP3 players, use of laptops, eating and drinking etc. They also have no idea of security – leaving their belongings around.
• Issues around use of ICT – using each other’s passwords or library cards.

There were lots of interesting features of the library in terms of design that confirmed some of what I am planning for our refurb – although I am more than embarrassed to compare the two! The sockets set into the floor, flexible seating, laptops, for example. It has also made me think that my idea for the classroom space (which we will incorporate into the library in 3-5 years), might be a good one: that we don’t take down the wall, but keep it as a bookable small room with IWB, laptops and flexible seating. That way it can be used for small group work, meetings etc., and the main library can have contrasting uses. For example, when we have a class in the main library, the smaller room could be used for quiet study; when we want quiet in the main library, the smaller room could be used for a group booking. The university library had a wonderful array of different kinds of space: ICT suites, group meeting rooms, areas with traditional study tables, areas with coffee bar style tables and chairs, zones with settees, and so on. This caters for the wide-ranging learning styles of today’s students.

I wish my library were a Tardis!

TARDIS by Dave Pearson on Flickr

Anyway, to finish, there are so many opportunities here for school librarians! Not only can we collect this kind of evidence about modern HE students and use it to convince our schools that we have a major role to play. We can also take heart from the fact that we share so many issues with our larger “cousins”. And we can look at their good practice and use it to inform how we develop our own collaborative teaching but also how we design our library spaces for the future!

Both images from the Flickr site

This week, I am trying to sort out in my mind all of the amazing Web2.0 tools and apps I have been playing around with, how useful I think they are for my own work, what I need to do to get the best out of them and which ones I will try with teachers and students when I have the opportunity. It is a tall order as my head is buzzing with all of the new things that I find every day. But I think I need to slow down and take stock. I seem to be skimming the surface and moving on again before I have really learned what each one can do.

A colleague, Caroline Roche in “Playing in my sandbox“, posted very wisely about this very thing on her blog – yes, I think that I am probably one of the “butterflies” in that I just play around with something for a while and then my attention is caught by a new thing to try! My husband has always said that I have a butterfly mind (wouldn’t mind the wings!)

Another librarian, Meredith Farkas in “Looking beyond the technolust“, has also recently written about those of us who are advocates for technology and our attitude to people who are maybe more measured in their approach to new things and ideas:

I think sometimes we all need to try and step outside of our personal feelings about these technologies, which isn’t easy when we think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. When we are talking to others about technology, we need to realize that what we find useful may not be useful to them (and that’s ok).

So, I need to think carefully when I advocate tools that I use myself – as many of you may not love them so much – and that is your prerogative!

The list here is very much a personal one. These are the things that are working for me at the moment!

Organising

To organise my working day, and sometimes my personal stuff I find Netvibes invaluable. I used to use Outlook and Pageflakes in my last job,  but we don’t use Outlook in my new school and Pageflakes got a bit flakey(!) recently.

The Librain’s Netvibe Pages

I have already posted about my use of Netvibes before, so I won’t repeat it all! But I do wonder what I will do if it goes!

Communication

Well, I still use email a lot – apparently younger people are moving away from it now. I don’t text very much as most of my family and friends don’t. I also don’t use my mobile phone very much either – this may cause some shock amongst readers!

I like email as I have a record of the correspondence, I can take the time to think about what I want to say, although I am known for jumping in a bit too quickly with it sometimes. I still have too many accounts – Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are old ones that I rarely use these days. My main account is Gmail, which I use for personal and semi-professional stuff and I also use the school official email. None of these are Web2.0, but email still forms the basis of my daily communications.

Twitter

Twitter is becoming a really important source of news, information, professional development, support etc. My Twitter network is growing, although I try to keep the number of those I follow to a reasonable number. I also stick to people who I think will be interesting and ignore those who lock down their tweets or who don’t have a profile. It will be interesting to see if I, and others, are using it to the same extent a year from now!

I am also experimenting with Meebo. I have this on my library website and have used it to communicate with some students – I am not sure about this and will think about the issues surrounding “chat” with young students. It was used successfully by a group of school librarians during a recent online course and I hope that we try it out as a group in the future.

Of course, blogging is also a way of communicating. I write something here and, if I am lucky, I get a response from other librarian colleagues that makes me think. Blogs are a wonderful way of sharing ideas – that’s why I have so many on my Netvibes page!

This post has been long enough and I will continue with other ways I use Web2.0 tools another day. I will cover collaboration, presentation, social bookmarking, note-taking, picture/photo sites, organising books, and maybe more as I think of categories!

Have just seen the site for the Your School Library Part II : Information Literacy with Web2.0 Course starting in June. This is the next course after the Transforming School Libraries one that many of us took part in earlier this year.

I am sure that I will be blogging about this extensively later on, but I just wanted to point out here the really neat way they have used Netvibes to create a website. I have been able to copy elements of this over to my own Netvibes pages so that I keep track of the development of the course.

I am really looking forward to it as they have some great speakers again!

Why not visit the site and sign up for the course when they open registration?

Well, I am now back home after a really great weekend. The conference was absolutely fab – huge thanks to the wonderful and very hard-working SLG Committee.

I feel very tired but, at the same time, bursting with ideas. As always, it was lovely to chat with so many fantastic and inspiring people and catch up with so many who I count as friends. Not one “Weakest Link” comment from any of them!!!

Anyway, I have now finished creating a page with the materials from my presentation. Thanks for your great feedback and please feel free to comment on the page. Mind you, please be nice as I cannot take anything negative at the moment!

Now to chill for two weeks if the family will let me!