Thing 15

Seminars, Conferences and Events

Hm, okay, this is a tricky one for me! Being relatively, um, young(?) I feel I haven't much to talk about (I seem to be doing several things wrong already!) But anyway, I can talk about some non-librarian related things too...

In terms of having attended conferences, my only real experience is the libraries@cambridge conference in January. I guess the best thing I did before attending that was carefully reading through the programme and deciding which bits would interest me most. I guess I did make the mistake mentioned in Katie's blog of taking lots of notes, however in this case I found it particularly helpful to me as I then went on to write up the event for the CATALOG website, which my poor memory would have not allowed me to do without! Beforehand we also created a poster for the displays viewed between seminars and over lunch, and I felt this made me a lot more interested in general about the conference, and thinking about what else others would talk about/create posters for.

Presentations are something I have some experience of doing, although not in my past year here in Cambridge. I find them terrifying to do, but that does have the advantage that I prepare so much for them that they usually go okay! However, all my presentations to date have been on physicsy/mathsy topics, so maybe it is a little different when it is library related.

Finally, I do find there are conferences cropping up, especially in the CILIP Update magazine, which I would be curious to go to. Money is usually the case for not thinking twice about going to them though, even if somehow they are free they turn out to be in Newcastle or somewhere equally far away! I am always interested in attending seminars and talks within Cambridge, especially when they discuss topics such as social networking and the move into 'the digital age'.

Thing 13

1. Google Docs

I was introduced to this when I started at St John's, and also through having a play around with last year's 23 things programme around the same time. We use it to make announcements, and also to publish working hour rotas and details for example for public events and work experience students. It has been quite useful in that respect, but I can see how there is more potential for its use. For example, in the library we all access the Google calendar and docs through the same account details, which I guess is the not the point to be made in this thing. It would be immensely useful for group work when studying, and is maybe something I would consider from September when I 'return' to university.

2. Dropbox

I love this, and this year have become an avid user! It has been useful when making applications to library school, as I could work on them both at work and home using different computers. I think it's great to back up individual files that I want to keep safe, as I know that wherever I am I will always be able to access it. Transferring files between my old and new laptops has been another way it has proved its use. What it is interesting to note is that you can share files with people who do not have a dropbox account - something that may be useful at some point.

3. Wikis

Not a day will go by without me randomly googling an unknown word and ending up on Wikipedia do educate me a little! It is invaluable to many people, if you don't need to know everything about something, and are just curious. At university I found it had limited use, as even if you could find a page on quantum entanglement, it didn't necessarily mean the words were understandable! Sometimes looking at it just made it more confusing! I have never considered writing my own wiki, my only experience of this is as a graduate trainee maintaining the CATALOG website and recording changes made. I never really thought of this as a wiki though...

To conclude, I am always going to sing the praises of dropbox as it has had so many uses for me. My only wish would be for more space on my account! I have not yet got my head around Google, with so many aspects to it, and I think I need to look at it more carefully.

Thing 5

This looks like it's going to be the toughest post yet for me to write, reflective thinking is not something I think I do a great deal of! To start me off I began reading over some of the most recent posts for Thing 5 on the 23 Things for Professional Development blog. Thank you to Emma, Wendy and Polly for your help!

I am going to take the systematic approach, as I have always found that works best for me. Making bullet points under headings and planning exactly how to approach something is usually the way I go for whatever task I have to complete.

1. Recall it

Over the last couple of weeks I have learnt a great deal whilst working my way through the first five Things. Firstly we started out by setting up a blog and then beginning to use it to express our efforts and thoughts about each Thing we came to tackle. Secondly we spent some time expanding on this by looking at the blogs of our fellow bloggers. Thing 3 brought us to consider our personal brand, spending time finding out what information we could access about ourselves online and whether it portrayed the image we wanted it to. Thing 4 involved lots of parts, learning about Twitter, RSS feeds and Sporify. And this brings us up to this, learning the importance of reflective thinking (although it's not quite complete yet!).

2. Evaluate it

I feel so far I have learnt a great deal in the last few weeks, and been encouraged to use those Things I had used before more frequently. Blogging is an art that I feel I will take some time to gain confidence in, but what has definitely helped is having this structure to persuade (force being a too strong a word!) me to log on and blog. Having a 'project' to complete will always help me to keep doing something, and hopefully after this years 23 things programme has finished I will have gotten in the habit of coming to this page every week or so. This is why I think my blogging on the CATALOG website has been so successful, I have made myself the task of ensuring at least once a month I write a piece on what I have been upto at work. This is of course giving me a great record of what I have been doing during this one year scheme, and hopefully will be helpful to others considering librarianship as a career. In Thing 2, looking at the blogs of others has definitely helped me to understand what blogging is about, especially as some people have been working on them for a great deal of time. I have always felt learning from example is an efficient way to absorb ideas, and this approach definitely helps me there.

I began looking at Thing 3 thinking what a strange idea! I had never thought about how I appear online, aside from ensuring I don't share any information I do not want the world to know. This task definitely encouraged me to fiddle around with this blog - although still not satisfied with the design I do love the flowers! One day I shall get out with a camera and take some semi-decent photos of myself and come up with an idea for a more personalized background.

Finally Thing 4 was the task I enjoyed most so far - particularly using Sporify as this was completely new to me. As I said previously I have never been sure about Twitter, partly because I don't know many people who use it themselves. Maybe if all my friends were tweeting about themselves it would interest me more. Sporify was great to play around with, but I don't know if it is something I would use much at this stage. Maybe I just need to learn more about what it can do!

3. Apply it

All these things I have learnt about could be very useful to a modern library - I especially enjoy reading Polly's blog for Newnham College Library. I will be going to the Judge Business School library (Cambridge) in a few weeks as part of the Penumbra shadowing scheme, and particularly requested to see how they use technology such as this in their library.

Over the next few months I am going to make a particular effort to blog, and keep up with the 23 Things (I am now on track! On to Thing 6 next week :-)). Twitter is something I plan to experiment with, and again with Sporify, I hope I can come up with more excuses to use it on here.

As to reflective thinking, I hope this hasn't bored you to senseless - it is rather long!

Thing 3

To get straight to the point...

When I google my name alone somewhere far down the page appears my LinkedIn profile, but my name must be relatively common as I am definitely not a singer! Adding 'library' to the search definitely helps, with my appearance on the St John's College library and the Cambridge graduate trainees website, CATALOG, popping up as well. However, this blog does not appear and neither does my facebook page (although that is likely to be because of my security settings, I don't want the whole world to see photos of me lying on the beach). I have spent a great deal of time on my LinkedIn profile, so I am pleased that it is easy for people to find that, and likewise with the blogs I have written for the CATALOG website. I feel that everything that appears gives a positive view of my position at the moment, although maybe does not give me a 'personal brand' as such. This could be shown more through my blog here, which to be honest at the moment is pretty boring! This is something I could work on to improve my image and maybe give an idea of the person I am to those reading. So far my LinkedIn photo is probably the only easy to find page that gives an idea of my personality! It would also be great if my blog could appear in the top listings in a google search, and this is something I need to work on.

23 things...

Hello,

My name is Rachel and although you can see I have already blogged before, it can hardly be said that I do so frequently! Last week I registered to take part in Cambridge's 23 Things for Professional Development. I have heard so much about this scheme in my ten months here as Graduate Trainee Librarian at St John's College, Cambridge, and so it is quite exciting to actually get started on it! I realise I am rather late in beginning, there are just never enough hours in the day, but I plan to catch up in the next couple of days.

I am probably going to repeat things said elsewhere on this page, but anyhow. I am just coming to the end of my time as a trainee at John's, and from September will be studying for a masters in Library and Information Sciences at Aberystwyth by distance learning. So currently I am on a job search! From being here I decided that I did not want to return to being a student (having done that for 4 years was quite enough), I love actually having a job and feeling I am doing something with my life. I hope to finish my MA at relative speed, so allowing me to progress from whatever position I get starting in August (fingers crossed).

I hope cdp23 will help me to learn more about areas of social media and ways to use the internet that I have not come across yet. There are definitely a few 'things' that I have not heard of. One other advantage could be actually reminding me to blog! I seem to have no difficulty doing this for our trainee's CATALOG website...