Professional Development

Tags

PD, personal development, professional development

Talking about professional development with a colleague got me thinking about motivating staff to actually go to training courses or participate in training opportunities.  I can understand when you have to pay for the training yourself, but when the organisation pays for the training or it’s offered free for those in the profession then I’m left perplexed by the refusal to go.  Especially when that same person then goes and complains that they never get an opportunity to upgrade their skill!  Chances are if you say no to training often enough the employer will not bother offering you the opportunity to go to again.

I’m always looking at ways to improve my skills, and by no means am I perfect or even particularly good at everything but I try and learn at least something about the various aspects of librarianship.  My biggest struggle at the moment is motivating others to try and learn a new skill. This is especially true if the skill involves technology, whether a new device or new software/medium. Have to agree with Mary Kelly who on her blog Library Lost & Found said

Chances are that a perfect blend of scheduling, training budgets, and managerial support will not exist.   Often, the reality is that there is nothing to support you and your career.  You – and you alone – will be the only one to care about your career.

We need to take responsibility for our own professional development and look at the courses being offered and seeing if it would enhance our skills even in a small way.  I’m not saying to go to everything but don’t say no to something just because you don’t know anything about the subject.  The other benefit of going to training seminar/workshops and other professional development opportunities is the opportunity for professional networking.  Sometimes that becomes a valuable opportunity because it gives you the opportunity to find out how others do things and gives you the opportunity to bounce ideas off someone else.

ALIA Biennial – Discovery Day 1

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ALIA, ALIA Biennial, ALIA Sydney, Conferences, digital, Library, technology

Brief jottings from the first day of the ALIA Biennial Conference July 2012.  Jottings definitely not comprehensive & only reflect what things I noted.

discovery over aggregation

• Roughly half of the Australian population are public library members
• what’s up the other half?
• Keynote Speaker – Tom Chatfield Discovery in a digital age – @TomChatfield
• More mobile phones in the world then when born
• Astonishing acceleration of technology but problematic
• Past experience not relevant (seen by some)
• When living in the future – the past is more important than ever in the current struggle to preserve public libraries not enough stress has been laid on the library as a place, not just a facility – Alan Bennet
• What do we want from technology?
• What do we need?
• What does technology want from us?
• There is no such thing as a neutral tool
• How can we create better experiences?
• Twitter acts as a recommendation engine with me as the algorithm
• Privileging discovery over aggregation
• Places people enter to discover things that they don’t know that they don’t know
• We risk becoming consumers rather than citizens greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge  – Daniel J Boorstin
• Session 2 What do we do about mobile?
• Sarah Schindeler smartphones are winning – 79% of all mobile phones shipped to Australia are smartphones
• increasingly sophisticated on-device information seeking mobile-only internet users
• when doing gamification – be aware how communicated following through on lessons learned to ensure equal access to our resources and services for all Australians
• Take your partners! – Geelong Regional Library
• Top tips for selecting a partner in programs is: compatibility, flexibility, commitment, creativity, patience, passion
• Storytime in the Park – collaboration with National Parks
• Kaleidescope program – collaboration with cultural institutions – Geelong Performing Arts, Geelong Gallery, Museum & Courthouse Arts centre
• ALIA Sydney draws from both community of practice and learning networks.
• People are more important than structures.

AGLIN Forum 2011 new technologies: values and practices in libraries

Tags

AGLIN Forum, PD, personal development, technology, web 2.0, workshops

Some notes from an AGLIN seminar I went to in 2011 as a way of keeping track of PD events I go to. Accuracy not guaranteed

The first talk of the day was by Peter Alexander and Tim Dale on Gov 2.0 and how the government is using web 2.0 technology.  The aim is to use web 2.0 as a whole of government.  There is always pressure to do things better for less money.  Twitter and other social media are just another channel to the job.  Better service deliver is the aim; Give people what they want, when they want and how they want it.  Internet is the preferred method for people to contact government.  The preference for internet communication with government has grown over time.  The main reason is convenience but sometimes regulations mean people must present to shopfront.

Govt 2.0 drivers : leadership, engagement & open access

• Declaration of open govt: informing, engaging, participating
• important part of move to govt 2.0 is the people and their innovation
• innovation is engaging with risk
• Engagement: govt official website interacting with web 2.0 technologies,
  twitter, fb, media release. two way communication
• If you going to engage you must engage with the media
• if you going to use web 2.0 must have a policy, who you respond to &
  possibly sub policies
• Speechbubble – eg from Human Services
• Govspace – platform provided by Finance for depts. to have blogs
• open data – no restrictions to info
• principles – need to find the data, then play with it & share after
  manipulation
• agenices need to discover data to publish, the process – any restrictions
  or open needs to be determined
• then licence phase – choose how to publish then publish phase decide
  appropriate format/look then refinement stage where edited
• need to give people the tools to interpret the data
• data.gov.au – help people discover the data sets
• libraryhack.org shown
• showing uses of data sets in web 2.0  – US police showing where crime committed, giving name, address & rap sheet
• how do you see libraries using this space
• use govt material. libraries need to be progressive
• libraries need to be innovative, drive some of the change, demonstrate
  value, use the tools
• web 2.0 assist in community engagement

Brian Farnhill & Suzette Bailey on Effective info management
strategies with sharepoint 2010

• features of sharepont 2010 – managed metadata across all Office 2010
  applications
• difference between – taxonomy vs folksonomy. folksonomy user defined
  metadata, promote popular terms
• document sets – documents grouped together for a specific purpose; apply
  metadata and info mgtment policies to all docs in group
• can also manage docs as if single area
• info mgtment policy is a set of rules that govern the availability &
  behaviour of a certain type of important content
• web 2.0 assist in community engagement

John Cooksey from Zenith talking about Technology & talent

• move towards part-time & temporary jobs
• workforce strategy – more questions then answers
• should companies ‘make’ or ‘buy’ labour
• what roles critical, one size fit all does it work, valid & reliable
  people measures in place

thinking for a living – Tom Davenport states knowledge works have high
degrees of expertise, education or experience

3/4 job growth come from – IT, health & Training/Library

influence of web 2.0 – traditional less relevant, need for broader info
mgtment skills including: info/bus needs, info design

vision 4 workforce – can they do the job, will they. short term fixes not
an option

upgrade staff skills

Laurie Atkinson on Victorian Government Library Service

comprised of all govt depts & agencies

part of Victorian Govt agenda to share services

stakeholder engagement critical to success

use staff wiki to help drive change within organisation

wiki used as a survival guide to coping with the whole change

creation of virtual teams created to help with change

staff had to put hand up for one of the 5 teams

changes in structure have not translated to budget

VGLS setting measurable outcomes to changes

VGLS: put your problem on the market and let them fix
it! The power of crowd sourcing!

Paul Hagon from NLA on Web 3.0

web 1.0 = 1993 hyperlinks, static, consumption

web 2.0 = 2004 2 way, interactive, producing, social

web 1.0 info pushed out to you, web 2.0 info you can interact with

web 3.0 ~2010 semantic, machine driven

linkages of search terms and meaning

microformats, rdf, html markup used in web 3.0

values places in code to tell computer of meaning of certain search
outcomes

eg., html code to tell engine that information it’s looking at is related
to copyright info

search engines starting to put more relevance to the extra code

resource descriptive framework attributes (RDFA) – Xml code

semantic web all about linkages

Dublin Core = specific rules regarding metadata

owl = web ontology language, used to start build semantic rules in strict
way

sparql = sql for link data

libraries can use markup html using rdfa in their records

dbpedia – like wikipedia for web data

Alison Dellit talking about Trove

using Prezi

what they learnt from Trove experience

Content: if you don’t have the content then you won’t get anywhere

wide variety of use of the content. digital, rare, undiscovered

Convenience: means to the end for some people

simple choices, plain language, complexity for those who want it, user
feedback

Libraries Australian & Australian Libraries Gateway important to Trove

Iterative, user-driven collaborative

Scott Lewis talking about The Semantic web

what is the goal of the semantic web? It’s about efficiency

everything that you can get out of the info

How? meaning of info is derived from the document itself, and not the
source context

meaning is structured

meaning is contained/communicated

Increasing total use : less info, not more, increases use: contextual,
taregted, layered

display: using meaning to inform display: priritise, condense, visually
intrigue

active info: make the information “usable”: share-able,
comment-able

outsource enrichment: engage users, save engagement: meta-info – comments,
clicks, shared items; tags; additional content

Interface engagement: interfaces have the purpose of making info us as
easy as possible

challenges: relate to your clients, not the info; attitude &
aesthetics are half the battle; learn new ways to say yes

Tool: RDF/RDFs/OWL; social web; AI classification system

web 2.0: originated in thoughts about commodification; web 2.0 “use
of databases which are derived from social interactions;

web 3.0: everything is a database

mass aggregagtors – moreover, muse

Gaik Khong on Automated selection & subject indexing of newspaper
clippings

part of ParlInfo

LAST Library Authoring System & Thesaurus : autmoated ingestion,
automated selection, automated subject indexing

collates, selects & indexes the media monitors newspaper clippings by
7.30am each morning

Anne Slaney talking about pay per view pilot for end users

trust in users not to do the wrong in regards to inappropriate material or
over use

New Year, New beginnings

Tags

ALIA Sydney, RFID

With the new year comes the usual new year resolutions.  I’ve decided that I’ll make mine commitments to try to do certain things that I know I need to.  One of these is to blog more often, the other is to read more and thereby review those on my book review blog Reading Owl.  At the moment I’m playing with my new Sony Vaio Duo 11 and got to say I’m enjoying this.  Means I’ve got something portable that I can use but doesn’t weigh me down like the laptop.  Getting excited by some of the ALIA Sydney events that are coming up.  At work I’m being driven crazy by technology as usual but we are also going through the process of putting RFID tags in everything.  Exploring Microsoft Windows 8 is fun but does make me think about where things are and what I want at my fingertips.

ALIA Biennial – Day 2

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ALIA, ALIA Biennial, Conferences, Literacy, reading

Day 2 ALIA Biennial

Day two went quickly with the theme being literacy, reading and libraries.  Started with an author panel.

Author panel including Matthew Reilly, Richard Glover, Melina Marchetta, Anita Heiss, Pam Newton

Session – Wonders of Reading

• Words to Dust session
• words from the dust program
• series of 12 programs
• 6 locations
• 3 hours each
• consecutive days
• # small exercises using memories from youth, school & homelife
• Challenges
  • # some nervous about putting their stories online
  • # technology
  • Inspiring in the future
  • # self-managing writing groups have been established:
    • Cowra
    • Grenfell
• #Continue to inspire & support each others
• www.wordsfromthedust.com.au

 

Pinterest

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pinterest, social bookmarking

Found out about Pininterest about a year ago but apart from trying it a few times didn’t get into it much.  Rediscovered it recently and found that I really was enjoying finding different images to pin.  Not pretending that I know how to use it to its full capabilities but really enjoying exploring it.

Can see uses for the library but at the moment just exploring its abilities.  It would be interesting to see how libraries end up using it.  The instructions are easy to follow.  Reminded to continue to explore it by another blog post.  Interesting to see what happens with it.

New Years Resolutions …..

Tags

ALIA Sydney, blogs, Conferences

Think I’d learn by now that it’s never a good idea to have a new years resolution.  Since my last post I’ve been to VALA 2012 and got blown away with all the information presented.  Unfortunately life got in the way & I didn’t blog any of it.  Unfortunately between work, kids, studies, ALIA Sydney activities & rebuilding a house I seem to have lost my ability to find five minutes to blog.  Must try to reclaim some of the time to blog especially as ALIA Biennial is coming up.

AGLIN Forum here I come

Tags

AGLIN Forum, ALIA Sydney, workshops

Getting ready to go to Canberra for the AGLIN forum on “New technologies: value and practices in libraries”.  Looking forward to an informative day and possible networking opportunity.  This comes after a very informative and enjoyable evening yesterday at the ALIA Sydney “Knowing Me, Knowing You” networking event.  Fun time and lots of information for all who attended.  Especially good to see a good cross section of people from different sectors of the library and information industry as well as varying professional backgrounds.

One thing that came through in all the discussions is that if you have a passion for something follow it and you’ll find the perfect job for you.  The passion may be in libraries but it may also take you out of libraries as well.  Remember that your skills are transferrable to any role you take on.

AGLIN Forum “New technologies: value and practices in libraries”

Tags

AGLIN Forum, professional development, technology

Just organising my trip to Canberra for the AGLIN forum on “new technologies: value and practices in libraries”.  There is an interesting mix of people speaking.  I’m interested in looking into the semantic web and what that is about.  At the moment there really is a lot going on technologically both globally but also within libraries and sometimes it’s hard to keep up.  Will be blogging from the forum and tweeting if possible.

Online training

Tags

online training, PD, professional development, training

As more training gets done online these days I’m finding myself evaluating things that I like and don’t like about it and what bits are helpful.  I know we all do this but I’m finding that there are times where I wonder why I’m doing the training.  I’ve recently had to do some systems training and as the LMS provider is in the US the training has been done online.  Now I know there are technical difficulties that arise and there are time zones and other issues but I really struggle to follow a training session where all I’m doing is sitting at a desk watching my computer monitor and listening in while the trainer is showing me different links and areas of the system.  While I do find it interesting it becomes a bit of a battle trying to remember everything – while taking notes – and not to fall asleep during the session as it becomes a bit of a one way session.

I’m not talking about a session that is only 1 hour – this is a 6 hour training session that can become monotonous when all you have is one person talking and all you need to do is remember to move your mouse occasionally so that the screensaver doesn’t come on.   It gets worse if there are no training manuals provided – or are provided 5 minutes before the session starts and you haven’t had time to print them out.    I know there are limitations to what you can do but I’m not sure that anyone learns a lot in that situation.  I know that I’m usually left scratching my head and wondering what was it that I’ve just learnt.