Shoving and Making

It’s been an interesting couple of months. This is largely due to the fact that I recently attended the Northern Exposure to Leadership. I met some wonderful people doing incredible things. It was an absolutely amazing experience and one that I’m still trying to fully digest. I do hope to post something more on this experience, as soon as I figure out how to put the whole experience into words.

Library Journal recently announced this year’s Movers and Shakers. I’m not surprised to find that I know many of the names, both in real life and virtually, on the list. Congrats to you all!

Many of you may already know about the Library Society of the World’s new award, the Shovers and Makers. I think this is a great idea! While Library Journal recognizes some of the most outstanding work being done in our field, the Shover and Maker award celebrates the fact that many of us are doing great things too. All you have to do to claim a Shover and Maker award is post a profile celebrating the great things you are doing. I’ve done mine. Go! Do one for yourself! Celebrate all your hard work!

I will be attending Computers in Libraries this coming week. Hope to see some of you there!

SuperConferencing It Up

This past week, I attended OLA’s SuperConference and it was, as always, great. I find the shot of professional rejuvination quite necessary in the seemingly never-ending month of January and the conference didn’t let me down. I will confess that I didn’t attend many actual sessions. This conference, I found I really did more networking that I have in the past. I met up with people I haven’t seen in a while and it was great! I’m starting to think that sessions at conferences need to be shorter so that more networking can be done in longer breaks. It’s the chatting with fellow librarians that really helps me put things in perspective.

I gave a session with Shawn McCann on gaming and virtual worlds in academic libraries. I was tired of the regular presentation, so we decided to do the whole thing as a Jeopardy game with clickers. It was more active for the attendees and more fun for us. Slides should be going online soon.

Also, in a strange turn of events, I am now the Vice President and President-Elect for OLITA. Looks like exciting times ahead!

A New Age

Today I watched my first inauguration ever. I may not be an American but I understand the importance of this event and was excited to be part of this momentous event, to be part of history. It was amazing to see him recognize the challenges and problems that lay ahead of him and to recognize the diversity in peoples and religion. Obama has a huge battle before him and I wish him all the luck and intelligence to see his country through it.

Obama represents change on a number of fronts. While I intend to follow what he does, I must admit I’m intrigued by this president’s ability to embrace science and technology and am excited to see what he does with it and what impact this has elsewhere. Obama already does weekly YouTube addresses, whitehouse.gov now has a blog, he tweets, he’s addicted to his blackberry and he promotes participation, transparency and accountability (I keep wishing Canada would follow his lead). Hopefully he will continue to embrace these technologies when he becomes overwhelmed with actual work. Libraries have been actively moving towards such technologies and Obama’s use may have a direct impact on these services we provide as others begin to use the technologies to follow and participate in their government. I watched the inauguration on CNN’s live facebook feed. This is an amazing collaboration – people changed their status as they watched history unfold – over 1 million status changes were made during the inauguration – over 4000 a minute. It became a truly social, global event and I bet that Obama’s use of technology had some part to play. I think CNN and Facebook were a great collaboration and would love to see that continue – especially during breaking news, etc. I know Twitter was also going strong but decided to save my connection for the feed itself.

Exciting times are ahead and it’s great to be part of it!

A New Year

Happy New Year to all! A new year, time for new beginnings and all. Instead of resolutions (which I hardly ever keep, like 95% of resolution makers), I’ve decided to be a little more general. It’s a year of more and less. More of all sorts of good things (exercise, healthy eating, of course blogging, making some kind of difference be it volunteering, monetary, what have you, etc etc etc) and less of the bad stuff (reduce stress if that’s even possible, less crappy food, yadda yadda yadda). We’ll see if that’s too general to be effective but at least I might be able to feel I’ve done something. Good luck to you if you’ve done the resolution thing and hope to see you in this new year!

Tweeting Away

It’s been a while since I posted anything on government, so I thought I’d share some interesting twitter news (which is also posted on the AGIIG blog, so apologies for those who follow both). As some of you may know, I’ve become quiet addicted to Twitter and FriendFeed. Librarians aren’t the only ones twittering – the US government has started tweeting too. Here’s a link to a directory that has been started that notes tweeting agencies.

Pegasus Librarian had a great post a while back on the changing nature of the biblioblogoshpere. I think she’s right in her observations that for many, blog posting have droppped off and part of this has been the increase in the use of microblogging. Blog posts have moved from the informal medium to act as a more formal medium and the informal conversations have moved to Twitter – it’s faster and resembles more of a dialogue. I know that I have been moving that way myself.

Twitter has had quite an impact on communication, for good or bad depending on your viewpoint. It’s really too bad that Canada’s technological infrastructure is preventing Twitter usage from cell phones. CBC’s Search Engine has an interesting podcast and blog on Canada as a digital ghetto – be sure to check it out and share whether you agree or disagree.

Technoblindness

I just came back from catching a presentation done by a multimedia class. I’m sorry I missed the beginning and the rest of the presentations as this was quite enlightening. In a project called Lifecasting, students filmed a number of reactions to situations. I was most enthralled by two scenarios which filmed people staging things left behind/being stolen and invasions of personal space in a public atmosphere. In the cases where people left items behind or staged a theft, the people around them were generally oblivious to the action happening. Why? Because they were on their cell phones or staring at their computers. The same occurred when people invaded personal space – computer screens seemed to act as a barrier to the actions and conversations around them. I find it fascinating that we’ve used social technology such as cell phones and computers and use them in such anti-social ways, blocking out the world outside our small personal world.

This has implications for work on a reference desk. I know I am tied to my computer and while I try to look up and keep an eye out for people needing assistance, I wonder how many I’ve missed because I’m using technology as a barrier. I will certainly try to be more aware of my surroundings while I’m using technology.

Speed Dating

Just finished my first speed dating meeting. No, it’s not what you’re thinking, at least, not exactly. We had visitors from another university visit us. We used the prinicples of speed dating to coordinate the meeting. People were invited based on the interests of the visitors and we had equal numbers on both sides. Everyone from our institution had 5 minutes with one of the visitors and then we moved on. We then had two longer half hour sessions in small groups. It was great! I need to work on my networking skills and this was a great way to ensure I talked with everyone. The biggest problem – 5 minutes ran out far too quickly! I learned lots from the visitors, about what they were doing and their questions made me think about what we’re doing. I highly recommend the speed dating meeting – it was fun and informative.

Common Look and Feel

The Government of Canada is rolling out a Common Look and Feel for all of their websites. While in theory, this is may be a good idea, I’m not sure I’m a fan of it. StatCan has started changing their site and while it has always been in need of work, I think this might be a step backward. I admit, I haven’t spent much time on the site to completely flush it out yet, but I am disappointed. The site search used to highlight the type of information, and it still does, but it seems more clunky. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I had just gotten used to the previous site. I will give it a shot but I’m not holding my breath. Take a look and see what you think.

New Toys

Thought I’d share this interesting bit of news with all. McMaster prides themselves on being innovative and the library strives to do the same, but we’re not the only ones on campus being innovative. Our bookstore, which I often frequent during breaks, has a cool new machine – it’s a print-on-demand machine. Apparently, we’re one of only 3 bookstores in the world who have one! It can print out a 250 page book in 5 minutes – pretty cool. They will print public domain items, giving them access to more than 1 million titles. Looks like the items being printed need to be scanned first, which means they will be parterning with the library’s kirtas scanner, at least for some items. Not sure if they are able to scan items there or not. A very intersting development on campus and I’m interested to see how much the new toy will get.

Me and my tag

After a discussion with a colleague, I decided to change my blog tag for fun. It’s been a couple of years on this blog so a change is well overdue. I’m thinking I should do this more often. If you’ve got suggestions (be nice please!), let me know.

In case you’re wondering, the new tag is in reference to my new dual-cord status. I shall always have power now!