The Librain

Well, I haven’t posted for a while again. The challenge of working  every day when suffering from a debilitating illness means that some things simply don’t get done! And writing personal blog posts is one of them.

Despite my illness, I am still trying to drive the development of our Library Services forward. Since last summer, I have been working at our Junior School, upgrading and improving the Library there. It has been fantastic to get such positive feedback from the staff.

At our Senior School, the newish Library continues to be an inspiring place to work every day. It has been so frustrating trying to cope with a weak voice as this has meant that a lot of the exciting aspects of being a school librarian have been out of the question. Slowly, however, I have been dipping my toe in the teaching side again.

What I am able to do is connect with the school community using web-based tools – Twitter, Facebook and the developing library website, Library Online. This site was beginning to get almost too big and I started to think about how I actually want to continue its development. I have decided that I want to use it as a hub for all of the other services that our Library Service subscribes to, such as SlideShare, Prezi, Vodpod, and so on.

I had read about other librarians’ use of LibGuides to create pathfinders or research guides for their communities. Well respected school librarians like Buffy Hamilton and Joyce Valenza had blogged about LibGuides and I had read about college and university librarians using this service too. To continue the development of web-based virtual library services, I needed something that would enable me to make and edit pages quickly, that would blend into the existing website and that would be stable long term.

For a while, I have used Netvibes both personally and for the library and I find this very useful. But I wanted a service that would do more. Bear in mind that we do not have a VLE in this school.

Our Research Guides on LibGuides

So, I have now been using LibGuides since before Christmas and what do I like about it the most?

1. The ability to create guides based on existing ones. You can make template guides and re-use these for consistency. Also, you can search through guides made by other librarians and, with permission, re-use these to save time – there are 1000s of fantastic ready made guides available.
2. You can also re-use boxes across guides. This saves so much time when building new guides and you can re-use your own content.
3. You can include downloadable documents so that students can access worksheets and powerpoints from home. Or you can embed files using widgets and html so that videos or presentations will run directly on the guide.
4. Springshare will customise your guide to look similar to your existing web page if you wish. Then you have the ability to further customise your content.
5. You can easily make widgets to embed links to your guides in your library or school website so that students can find them quickly. This is beginning to drive the hit rate on Library Online upwards as students now check there first to see if a new guide has been made.
6. So far, the teachers who have got on board are really pleased with the research guides I have made and I have also had really favourable comments from many students. It is showing the role of librarian in a different light to some students and also the staff!
7. I like the way that I can easily see the number of hits each guide has had and also see other statistics of the use of the guides.

I think this post is now long enough, so I will sign off now, but come back to this subject again soon as my knowledge and use of LibGuides develops.

Well, folks, I have been neglecting this blog over the Summer – sorry! Anyone who knows me will understand that I have been really busy organising the refurbishment of my school library. Is that a valid excuse? Well, I think so!

Anyway, it is progressing very well and we hope to open it soon. From the time the work started, in July, I have been taking photos and posting them on the library site – Library Online. Also, I have been tweeting (probably too much) from The Librain’s account and also my school library account – Library Online – with almost daily updates. I think that because of this activity, I have been asked to do a presentation for the next Your School Library Course!

If you are interested in library design, then this course should be very interesting. There are some great presenters – I wish I could have had this course a year ago! Anyway, if you want to find out more, then check out the flyer below:

In between taking part in the latest Your School Library Course, cataloguing loads of new stock, tweeting, going to a conference and planning the new library, I have also been trying out three Web2.0 tools! Ages ago, I uploaded our catalogue to LibraryThing and put two widgets on the Library Online website. However, I have also seen two other tools – Gurulib and Shelfari – which I thought might be interesting to try also.

I am not doing a detailed review of these sites, just commenting after a quick look and in terms of how useful they might be to school librarians who need a way of displaying or accessing their stock from their website.

Also, bear in mind that our library stock is very small at the moment – only 2700 items. Out of the three sites, only LibraryThing asked for a subscription as it has a limit of 500 items.

So, here are the results of trying these out:

LibraryThing
On the site, widgets are very customisable, which is nice. The issue I have is that if you upload old books, then LibraryThing puts in a generic cover, if it cannot find the real one. The generic cover is not very pretty! I have, however, been able to upload the catalogue complete with the keywords – which have gone in LibraryThing’s “tags” field. As I originally exported the catalogue records into Excel, I was able to add the Dewey number into the “tag” field as well. With some books, again old ones, it cannot find details, so they are not uploaded. You can do lots of activities on LibraryThing, such as add reviews, join groups and so on. I had thought of using the site for my Reading Group then realised that, as most of them are under 13, the site rules say that they cannot join. So I am using a wiki for this.

GuruLib

Recent books from My Library

powered by Gurulib

Gurulib seems to be a lot more basic than the other two, some of the books were not recognised, but uploading the file went very smoothly and more quickly than the other sites. I have not yet spent much time exploring the site.

Shelfari

An interesting thing about making the Shelfari widget is that you have the option to choose a tag – this would enable a lot of flexibility. The site did allow me to upload the entire catalogue, although I did have some problems initially with getting the upload to go on to the correct “shelf”! Again, I have the problem with the unrecognised books that ended up with weird covers – but if I had the time, I could scan in the real ones.

What do you think?

Almost a year ago I wrote a post about how I was trying to pull together all of the web services that I was developing in my previous school. I had created a library website, a wiki, a blog and was developing sections of the school’s VLE to support teaching and learning through the library – I decided to call it all LRC Online Services.

Well, I have now reached a similar stage in my new job – very quickly it seems! We already have the following library sites:

• Library Online – the main library site
• Library_Online Twitter account – used to put news updates on to any of the library sites
• Library Online Netvibes pages – these have been created to house news feeds from France, Germany, China and the UK. Also, I am adding in Business and Sports news feeds
• Library Online Wiki – this is a private wiki for our Reading Group

I expect you are seeing the pattern here! Yes, I am branding all of these with Library Online in order to draw all of these services together.

I have played around a bit with Wordle and made these temporary logos. These are the colours of the refurbished library – I think the one on the left looks best!

I may open this as a competition at school later on – I am sure that the students can do a better job!

I must be getting tired! Or real life is grabbing hold of me again? I feel I have become so immersed in a Web2.0 world and am so excited and inspired by all that I am reading and experiencing that I cannot immediately look up and engage with a real person!

The podcasting presentation was excellent and I feel that I could try this out, when the opportunity presents itself. I have saved the presentation and also all of the links so that I can return to it later on.

I also dropped in on the “chat” session just to see that it works OK before our session at 8.00 pm tonight. If I have the energy, I may add to this post after that.

This afternoon, I tried the session on The Seamless School Library – well, that had me bowled over but totally drained at the same time. This is not a quick Word document or a .pdf, but a whole website to explore. It was too much for an afternoon – trying to fit this between the normal library stuff. I am also getting quite tired as I have been staying up too late reading stuff and then I cannot sleep as so much is whirring around my head!

Anyway, I will again come back to that section at a later date as I cannot cope with it today.

So, I spent some time working on the Library Online website. Having watched the social bookmarking presentation, I was reminded that I could use the “link rolls” script from Delicious to show visitors to the Subject pages the latest links for each subject that I have added to Delicious. I have only made a few of these pages as yet, because I have not reached the point where I am working closely with teachers. I just made these as examples – although the English one is starting to develop because the Sixth Form students are starting to ask me for help – wonderful!

Update: What great fun it was chatting to other school librarians on Meebo last night. Now I can see why teenagers get so addicted to MSN! Then I spent some time setting up Skype and got through to a friend in Australia. I still feel so starry-eyed by the power of technology! Maybe that is why I chose the picture below as my main avatar!

I have watched the presentation about Social Bookmarking – nice to have another one with a voice narrating. I think that I learn a lot from this kind. I really like VoiceThread in particular as the commenting is nice!

Anyway, back to the presentation. Again, I don’t think that I found out a lot of new stuff as I have been using both Delicious and Diigo for some time. But it did remind me of some things and introduced me to some new terms. I have favourited it on SlideShare and will return to it at a later date to think about it some more. I was interested in the RISAL project and will certainly explore that more when I have the time.

The second presentation : “The Os of Web 2.0: Openness, Originality and Others” is in PDf format and I have downloaded it and printed it out to read. I find it difficult to read long articles like this these days as they take a lot of concentration and I don’t really get the space and time for that – at school, everything is very busy; at home – well, mayhem would be a good word! Also, I am not used to it – I think that I am out of practise these days.

Anyway, I have begun a bubbl.us to show my learning network (I have used this before to create a sitemap for my Library Online site – although this needs updating).

Well, I am actually writing this on day 4, but that is because for some reason I couldn’t get to my blog last night. So I will have to write something for day 4 this evening, if I have the time!

I started the day thinking about participation on the course. A lot of SLN members from the UK have joined and yet I could see only a handful online and posting comments. Also it was apparent that many people were struggling with Sosius before they could actually get to work on the course. So I decided to  write a quick guide to getting started and then I uploaded it to a couple of areas and notified everyone – I hope that it helps.

Also, thinking about all of the wonderful resources mentioned in the posts, I had begun to tag them on Diigo for myself and so I thought that it would be helpful to others if I offered to do this for everyone. Now, I know that it is a huge task and may be a bit impossible to achieve successfully. But I will try to do it as best I can.

So, to the actual course. What did I learn yesterday? I have only just begun my new job and the focus for my first year must be on designing and developing the new library. It is such a small school and so it is easy to talk to staff face to face. However, I have also been given the remit that I will help the school develop ICT in the future. I hope that I have opportunities to show some of these Web2.0 tools to staff – maybe at a training day. So, I will take the chance to learn as much as I can and try to suggest things to teachers where appropriate. I will also use the Library Online website to demonstrate some of them also and maybe develop a wiki for the Reading Group. Then I will have some practical examples to show.

We are in a difficult situation when a lot of the staff do not read their official emails! But I will have to try to find my way around this. So these are my thoughts about the presentation on professional development for staff with Web2.0.

As to the other presentation on mashups! This was a really steep learning curve for me. At least I think that I understand a little more about what they are, but I couldn’t get to grips with Yahoo Pipes. Maybe that was because I was trying to do this in too much of a hurry. It is difficult to make the mental space and time at home on an evening, when my boys are fighting me for the computer!

I will have to come back to this at a later date, when I can find a quiet time to really concentrate!

Well, I am at home as the school is closed because of the snow. So, I thought that it was about time that I wrote a post about the developments I am making with Web2.0. After, that is why I set up the blog in the first place! Sorry that this is a long post – but today I have the time to write it!

I am having a lot of fun with the school library website. It has been started as a way of tracking the development of the Library as it is refurbished and also offering a service to the school when the current library stock is not of a standard to really meet the needs of the staff and students. It has been gratifying that so many school librarians have seen the site and have used it as an exemplar of what can be done. I also think that I can use the site to create a bit of a “wow factor” by utilising lots of Web2.0 gadgets and widgets to catch the eye.

These are being used in an educational way (honest) but also as a bit of fun. I chose a theme for the site that has a sidebar at each side of the main page. That way there is enough room to add in a range of widgets. I have moved them around a bit and tried a range of services.

So what are the main Web2.0 services that I am using? The left sidebar is mainly about the Library Online website itself:

• The top two widgets are just text that I use to explain the site and put on the latest news about the site.
• Then comes a widget with my Twitter feeds. I have to make sure that I use direct messages for personal conversations as the Twitter feeds need to look professional for the site. They are a great way of adding instant news updates to the site. I am Dixie_library on Twitter, by the way!
• The next six widgets are those generated for a WordPress blog that enable visitors to see the page structure, recent posts, recent comments, categories and tags. These help a visitor to navigate the site.
• Under this is more fun stuff. I have found that our students are fascinated to see where the visitors to our site are coming from – this is especially important as we are have International School Award. So I have put in widgets from Feedjit and Clustrmaps to show all of this.
• Below this are a range of widgets. The Educator’s Calendar from Widgetbox is used as I wanted to show events from around the world. I am not entirely satisfied that this is the best source as yet. Then a weather widget (also from Widgetbox) for our nearest town – Hinckley – shows how cold it is today! A badge for the TeacherLibrarian network and administrative tasks finishes this sidebar.

The right sidebar is more about the Library itself and also the public library etc.:

• First of all a text widget which will show current activities such as the recent National Year of Reading and currently the Times Books for Schools.
• Secondly, a widget that shows the photographs of our Library that I have uploaded to Flickr. I have done this so that I can show the development of the Library from this baseline year going forward into the future.
• Below this is another text widget with quick facts about the Library.
• Then I have put in a box with a link to a Meebo account. This may be a bit risky, but I have been reading about libraries who are using Instant Messaging with their customers and I am trying it out. I may find that another service will give me more control as I am a little concerned about misuse. What do you think?
• In the absence of an online catalogue, I am using LibraryThing to show the books that we have at present – the only issue I have is updating this as I think that I need to delete all records on it and re-import them regularly as we are buying a lot of new stock and withdrawing a huge amount at present. Anyway, this is shown in the sidebar.
• There are then some other reading-based widgets with favourite authors, a link to reading development websites tagged on Diigo, and a book review finder – which is a Google custom search engine.
• I have also highlighted our local public libraries in Leicestershire and Warwickshire (where most of our students and staff live) with links to their online catalogues and to the online subsciption services that they offer. Our local branch is also advertised here to encourage use by our school.
• Following this are three more widgets – firstly showing our Delicious tags: I have built these up over a long time and am in the process of adding new ones to support our staff and students. I use Delicious now for our curriculum and Diigo for professional links. Next is a link to SlideShare, where I upload any presentations that I think would be of interest. Last of all a link to Wordle, which I find fascinating – I keep trying to get teachers to use this – but no luck at the moment!

So, this has been a very long post, but I wanted to explain what I am trying to achieve at the front end of the site. Ideas for development are very welcome – please let me know if you have found better alternatives!

I am now busy transferring the links on to Diigo as the site has now gone – along with the associated email address. It will then be incorporated into another site – watch this space for more details.

Then I had better get on with posting other things as The Librain! I am so busy in my new job and with my new library website. But I am sure that there are issues that I will want to write about here in the near future.

I have put the site back up today and it will run until the end of the year, without any updates, though. I will now put all of the personal stuff onto this blog and just leave the site for the time being. I will also keep the links that are still useful on delicious or furl and link to them from here.

The School Library Association are looking into how they can use the links on their site.

It will be sad to see it go in a way – and my husband thinks that I am making a mistake in finishing the site now – but technology has moved on so much and I want to try out new things. Now that the SLA has such a good site, I am sure that they can use the links and keep themmore up-to-date.

When I started Strongest Links, there was nothing like it around for UK school librarians, but things have improved so much.

I will continue to post on this blog with my thoughts about school librarianship, and also enjoy developing my school library website.

Many thanks for all of the lovely comments you have made here or by email about how much Strongest Links has helped. I am glad that it was of so much use!

Best wishes to you all…