Thank You

Remembrance Day is one of the few days that I find I can get quite emotional, thinking of all of the brave men and women who have sacrificed themselves, their time, or their loved ones. Thanks is not enough but it is all I can offer. We will not forget your sacrifice.

Library Day in the Life: Tuesday

Another day in the life of the wee librarian. Here are the minutia of my day (probably more than you ever wanted to know):

• unsurprisingly, went through email, rss, social networks, etc to update myself and got ready for the day
• posted meeting minutes on wiki
• accepted a role as part of the training team for blended service and possibly as a mentor
• worked on collection development
• worked on updating our First Year Experience wiki
• 2 hour research help desk shift
• finally checked out bing
• set up doodle poll to decide sessions for upcoming Handheld Librarian Online Conference
• added projects for incoming co-op students to work on
• fought some more with volunteer scheduling
• dealt with various email throughout the day
• called it a day

Library Day In the Life: Monday

Well, I’ve been silent for a while now but I’ve decided to come back and take part in Library Day in the Life. It’s been around before but this is my first go at it. I figure it’s good to share what I do, realize what I do, and gives me a great reason to start writing here again. So, here’s my Monday – pretty typical for this time of year for me. Note: I have cheated a bit, in that I tweeted much of what I did, mostly because I figure I’ll forget later. Apologies for the repetition to those who follow me on twitter.

Monday

• start the day by catching up with the library world and the world in general (rss feeds, social networks, news, etc)
• meeting with our teaching with technology group, where we’re looking at library integration into our new blackboard system
• had wikis set up for committees I’m on (thanks Amanda!) and put content in them
• got confirmation of full move to blackboard in fall, which means updating library quiz and helping out faculty as needed
• updated online form for high school instruction requests
• worked on conference proposal
• ate lunch at my desk (bad habit – must break)
• hour shift on im/email reference
• coordinating volunteers for next week’s Welcome Day
• meeting to script out next library video (we’re doing a series which I’ll post more on when they’re all done)
• biked home to avoid nasty looking clouds

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.

Upstaged again?

First of all, I saw this on TechCrunch today. I’ve mentioned the use of twitter for reference before and have heard people speak on it at conferences. As always, it seems libraries have taken a back seat. toanswer is a mashup of twitter and answers – exactly what reference should be doing. It seems many of our services are promoted better by others. What we have here is a marketing problem. We also have another issue here – the idea of the one big library. If libraries and librarians came together to offer one centralized reference service, how would we fare against these services? I think there is potential here for libraries but it is heavily reliant on cooperation. We see this happening, Second Life reference service is offered by librarians from around the globe, but I think we need to pursue these ideas a little more aggressively.

I’m off to IFLA to present with Amy Buckland next week. I’m quite excited – I’ve never done any international conferencing before. No doubt there will be a recap of the conference experience when I return.

Fun with toys

Like many others,I’m just trying out apps on my itouch. Now, if the rest of the world could work on getting more free wifi, that would be great.

And I’m back…

It’s been forever since I’ve posted and feels like forever since I’ve been at work. I’ve finished my research leave which resulted in a paper for IFLA with Amy Buckland (and it’s already up!).

I also presented at workshop on Transforming Information Literacy: Do We Have the Skills at WILU with my great colleagues Karen Nicholson and Shawn McCann in BC. It went well, although as with most presentations, I would change things in the future. Participants seemed interested in Shawn’s demo of World of Warcraft but seemed reluctant to talk about literacies outside information literacy (which is perhaps understandable as it is an info lit conference, but we were introducing other 21st century fluencies such as digital literacy, media literacy, numeracy, scientific literacy, etc). I love WILU as a conference – small and intimate – and this year was no exception. Attended a number of sessions on peer tutoring, something I would like to get started here. I hope to start work on a student ambassador program and will share info as it develops.

Finally, I presented at the CLA annual conference on gov pubs 2.0. I hope to start doing some of the stuff I talked about (del.icio.us account for subject guides, google search for gov pubs and more). This presentation, along with the WILU presentation will be online soon – I’ll post links when they are. I’m also stepping down as convenor of the Access to Government Information Interest Group with CLA. It was a good but long trip in BC, completely with seeing family I hadn’t really seen in 20 years.

Next conference will be IFLA in August. One thing I’m finding with conferences lately is that our library really has become bleeding edge in many cases. Many of the presentations I go to, we’re already doing. When I talk about things we’re doing, many can not relate as they do not have the support to try things as we do. It’s something I need to be thinking when I create my presentations. I really am lucky to be working in my library!

With all of the research and presentations, it’s taking a little while to catch up on work. Summer means First Year Experience work is first and foremost – we’ll be having a scavenger hunt for Summer Orientation and will be included in a parent panel. Once that’s done, there’s just Welcome Day, Welcome Week and Clubsfest to plan.

And with all of my goings on, our library is still doing neat things. We just had a launch for our mass digitization project – a partnership with Kirtas Technologies, Ristech and LuLu. Congrats to all those working on these major projects!

And that’s all I have for now. You may have guessed that I will not be posting on CiL – there’s so much out there now. All you need to know is that it was the best conference eva!

I’m Back

Yes, I have been bad with my postings lately, but I’ve been conferencing and vacationing, both which are rejuvenating in their own ways. I thought I would use the next couple of posts to share my conference experiences, although I’m still processing some, so there may be follow up posts.

Gaming in Libraries

I attended a great SirsiDynix Institute on Gaming in Libraries by Jenny Levine. I finally received her book on the same topic and can’t wait to devour it. If you get a chance to hear her talk on the topic, I highly recommend it (it’s also archived at the SirsiDynix Institute and her blog).

One of the things she said really made sense to me. I’m sure others have heard this already, but I think this was the first time I had.

We can’t be the bosses, we need to be the strategy guide.

Bosses are the final monsters that need to be defeated to get to the next level to a gamer. we can’t be the one’s blocking their path. By being a strategy guide (what ever gamer uses to help them through the hardest parts), we can help them through their challenges. It’s a great metaphor for anyone in reference services. Let’s all aim to be that strategy guide!

Where oh where have I been?

Well, I’ve been quite neglegant so far this year in posting here. The first week back was relatively quiet but that is quickly being shattered. I’ve been getting ready for round two of the distance course I’m teaching, library instruction requests are coming in quickly, and changes in the library keep everyone hopping.

I’ve also been spending more time in Second Life lately – which means you get to hear more about it. We’ve had our first InfoCan group (remember, if you’re a Canadian info woker in SL, this is a group for you!), and despite the small attendance numbers, I think we’re one our way. I’ll be preparing for a few presentations in the next while on Second Life, which I’ll post more about once they’re done. I’ve done a little work on my avatar too – I recently got some new skin (which sounds very odd if you’re not involved in Second Life)- one normal and one a little more gothy. So, here’s one version of the brand new me: