Day 15 #blogjune - 6 reasons why I love my profession

Today's post will be short and sweet, and, I hope, encourage some discussion around my 6 reasons.  I have deliberately not given reasons why these reasons are important to me :)

1. We make a difference in the lives of our communities.
2. I continue to grow and learn.
3. We champion the right to access to information for all people.
4. Our field is constantly evolving and therefore never boring!
5. Opportunities to specialise.
6. I buy books, lots of books, and don't have to buy a bigger house :)

What are your thoughts?

Day 14 #blogjune - Presenting to an audience

Yesterday I wrote about my thoughts on students being taught presentation skills; today I thought I would cover what I learned in the process of teaching myself how to present.

I had to learn presentation skills myself.  I was accepted to give a presentation at a national conference and, after I was accepted, realised the magnitude of what I had let myself in for.  I had never presented, never really observed anyone present and had only been to 1 or 2 conferences.  To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement.

I set myself some tasks on how to actually present well to an audience (well, I hope I succeeded here!) and started to observe how people engaged with others.  This was internally (staff meetings etc), externally (board meetings, forums, seminars etc) and so on.  I found I didn't have to actually go to a conference to learn what engaged people and what made them lose interest.  Some of my key recommendations are summarised below:

Think about what is important to you when giving your presentation. Is it:

• Engaging with the audience?
• Reading your paper out loud?
• Stimulating discussion and debate?
• Being remembered?

Observe presenters.  Look at:

• how they speak
• their style
• their interaction with the audience
• what you like/don't like

Engage with the audience

• Poll them at the start
• Speak TO them, not AT them

Ideally, your presentation, if it is formal, should contain 3 parts:

1. paper for publication
2. presentation notes
3. Slideshow

These suggestions have helped me prepare for over 50 presentations, so they do work.  Hopefully they can help you as well :)

 

 

Day 13 #blogjune - Presentation skills

Today Rachel wrote about whether libraries should support/teach researchers on presenting to an audience.  I'm going to take a slightly different path and talk about whether library studies students (or indeed any student) should be taught presentation skills.  I do think this is a necessary skill to have in today's workplace. Even if some think they will never present in public or to an audience or at a conference, there needs to be some understanding that presenting is not just about the above three.  Very, very often nowadays, in the workplace, there is a need to highlight or showcase certain events/happenings/good news stories or provide updates to senior management on progress or make a case for something to proceed.  All of these require presentation skills.  Do all of these require a slide show? Not always...but what if you were asked to use one to support the points you were making? Or if, all of a sudden, you were told the Director was coming to a meeting where you were highlighting your plans for your team? And no, this does not always happen because you are in a management position.  The above examples happened to me when I was in officer roles.  I also know that some interview panels will request that a presentation happen during the interview (and again, this may not always be for a senior role...).  So yes, I do think students need to be taught presentation skills.  In a face to face environment, this may be easy.  Set an assessment, cover expectations, have them do research on good presenting/presenters and then have them present to the class.  But what happens if the student is studying via distance education?

 

This can still be done.  I have taught units where one of the assessments is a powerpoint presentation on a topic that is covered in the unit.  To go with this, there is a prose piece which is to be written as though the student is talking to the audience (so no formality required).  Although this may not help with confidence in actually presenting to an audience, it does cover off on the areas of text heavy slides, appropriate font to use, correct 'voice' to use, when to attribute and correct attribution and how much information is enough.  I've also taught a unit where one assessment is a presentation to a manager and can be purely audio (with no visuals) or a YouTube clip (including a voiceover on a slideshow).  I find this is an excellent opportunity for students to learn about the importance of presenting, their visual appearance (if they are filming themselves) and how to speak so the text on the slides support what is being said, rather than the slides being *everything* that is being said (which is so often the case).  Sadly, some don't take this seriously, as it is not a real life situation.

 

What are your thoughts? Do you think that presenting to an audience should also be taught to students?

 

Day 12 #blogjune Activity based workplaces

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Garry McQuillan, CEO of Cardinia Shire, talk about their move towards activity based working (ABW).

 

The premise of ABW is that the office is designed in such a way that it supports all work activities, rather than having parameters around a particular employee's space (for eg, someone's *own* stapler, computer, phone etc).  An ABW space cultivates a variety of different working environments which all support different activities performed by the staff during the course of their work day.  There's a mix of desks, quiet rooms and meeting rooms.  Staff have laptops and can plug into a dock at any available workstation on any floor (if there are multiple floors) - no one has their own desk, unless their activity specifically requires this (and there would be a handful that fit this). 

 

Garry spoke of 4 platforms that are needed for this to succeed.  At the moment only 2 come to mind - one is the need for an excellent technology platform and the other is paper independence.  Quite ironically, I think paper independence is what most people would struggle with. However, removing the need to have everything in hard copy removes the need for myriads of filing cabinets which take up valuable real estate.

 

Obviously there would need to be some kind of framework supporting this.  I do remember some of the "ground rules" that were mentioned. One was that a staff member couldn't be away from the workspace for more than 20 minutes.  If that was going to be the case, they needed to remove their things.  Another was that there was no eating at the workstations.  Staff were encouraged to move away and go to the staff room to eat (lovely, big, airy and welcoming).  Everything is stored on the intranet. Everything. No shared drives.  You can read more at Cardinia's move to ABW here and here.

 

The thought of being in an environment like this would have baffled me once.  I would not have been able to imagine working without having hard copies to file away for future reference and of having a space where I couldn't access the things I needed to go about my daily activities.  However, over the past 2 years or so, my workplace provided me with a Lenovo ThinkPad Helix which gave me a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to work away from my office when I was required to be offsite. I could access Council infrastructure as soon as I logged in, which meant I could access anything I was working on. However, I couldn't access my paper files. This started me on the road to paper independence.  I started taking my ThinkPad to meetings and I could access previous minutes whilst there, as well as the agenda.  I would take notes on the actual agenda and this would spur me to action items I needed to do (as opposed to having a new document with notes from the meeting on it - why the first worked for me over the second I have no idea...). Over time, I was able to shred previously printed copies and move away from filing things.  I still had one drawer of files, but they were historical and so I kept them. I did, however, shred another 3 drawers of historical files (pre my own files), after making sure that they were on TRIM, our records management system. To further cement my paper independence, anything I created or actioned, I made sure was in TRIM, so we had a corporate record.  This all worked amazingly well and I really recommend it! I do have to say, however, that I still had a list of things I would scribble down and a diary for informal meetings, but I think the latter may well disappear in the new year....

 

What do you all think of ABW? Does any work in such an environment (as opposed to hot desks)?

Day 11 #blogjune - Back to front or front to back

I feel like I may finally be slowly catching up...just slowly. For day 11, Sharon wrote about running again, so I thought it may be timely to have another hobby post.

My first post for #blogjune was about the card swap I coordinate with a friend. I ended the post with a photo of my card for swap 1, which I barely got in by the deadline (ok, so I was a little late - they were due April 30 and I made them April 30...). I did get my act into gear after that and have completed swaps 2 and 3 (due June 30 and August 31) and have planned swap 4.  Generally, I would assume, most people would plan each one when they have finished the previous; that would be the typical way to schedule things, but I tend to be more back to front :-). I really do like knowing what I am making way ahead of time.  For me, a lot of the enjoyment comes from the searching, planning and testing of design ideas.

Short post, which I will end with a picture of my swap 2 cards.

Keeping up to date (day 10 #blogjune)

I've posted before about some of the methods I use to keep up to date. Con and Kate blogged recently about what they read to stay up to date with what is happening. I still intend to do a post on some of the blogs I read, but as I'm on my iPad right now am not sure if I can get links to work efficiently. Will look at that later.

I also blogged about the fact that #blogjune causes my feeds to explode enormously (at the time of writing I am now under 1000, currently at 857 unread feeds!). I continuously add more subscriptions to my reader and leave them there to read when I feel like it. I don't always read everything, a lot of the time I skim them to see what catches my eye. I've started unsubscribing from feeds that only have a summary post; I don't have the time or inclination to keep jumping to sites to read the post in its entirety.

I subscribe to Library Link of the Day,which is the only way I get news via email now, unless it is sent to me directly. I get a lot of information from Twitter and use strawberryj.am to see what has come through on Twitter that I may have missed.

I'm on the magazine routing list at work and skim through many from Australia and overseas to see what catches my eye. These include journals about public libraries, technology and literacy. I pay more attention to these ones, as they directly relate to my work. I also receive journals on academic libraries and I skim through these to identify any emerging trends that may translate across into my sector. Needless to say, these pile up quite quickly...

Memory keeping (day 9 #blogjune)

And so I have another memory keeping project about to happen. I do this because of course I don't have enough projects happening, I need to add more to the list. In my defence, this is an easy one and should be extremely sustainable, even though it spans a long period of time. 

I'm planning to start a 5 year journal. Sounds daunting doesn't it? Committing to keeping a journal for five years, but I promise it won't be :).  Every day for a year I'll be answering a set question posted by Debbie Hodge on her site. After the first 12 months, I'll start answering those same questions again, building a record of comparisons over a five year period. It should take no more than two minutes of my time every night. As the full month's questions are released ahead of time, I aim to do a little planning and write the month's questions in my diary as soon as I get them. 

There is no need to answer the particular questions allocated to that day; you can even choose to write your own line about the day, but I don't want to be self directed in this instance. Answering a question will speed up the process for me. 

What are your thoughts - prompts or self direction?

Free iPads (Day 6 #blogjune)

My previous blog post was about attending ILT2012. This was an amazing conference and I learned so much. One of the things that stood out to me was the prolific use of iPads, both by delegates and by speakers in their programs/presentations. The intuitive nature of the device makes it ideal for those with many different types of learning disabilities. Add to this the fact that you can get a number of applications that will read text out to students, convert text to audio, allow for interactivity and create content. Web pages can be converted to ePub, and then annotated, with these notes aggregated at the beginning of the book. Words can be defined while reading or spoken out loud, again using ePub format.

The conference actually had 200 iPads for usefor free by delegates (nowhere near enough to satisfy all! I think there were 1200 delegates all up) for the duration of the conference. Many delegates tweeted and took notes, but the most interesting use was delegates taking photos of slides rather than taking notes! How would you use your iPad at a conference?

Breaking barriers (Day 5 #blogjune)

Two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend ILT2012, an excellent conference on inclusive learning technologies for struggling students.  While the conference appears to have its roots in the teaching sector, I think libraries have a huge role to play here and can offer many valuable contributions via papers and presentations.  That this is an unusual consideration was evident on many levels:

a)      The assumption that I was from a school “Hi, I’m [name].  Which school are you from?”

b)      The continued assumption that I was from a school when I said I was a librarian “Oh that’s great; which school again?”

c)       The absolute total incredulity when I would answer that I was from a public library “Oh I HEARD about you! [name] this is the librarian from Melbourne that [name] was telling us about.”

The reactions were quietly amusing and the overall support for what public libraries are doing for the community was very heartening.  Everyone I spoke to was encouraging and impressed, seeing the role public libraries had to play.  What was less encouraging was the lack of knowledge of what public libraries are, and have been,  doing in the community for years.

This lack of knowledge is from educated professionals in a field that supports research and learning.  Why are we not out there breaking barriers and making ourselves known to others?

A technologically connected social butterfly (Day 4 #blogjune)

The other day @jobeaz posed the question of whether we are too connected nowadays. Are we spending so much time connected to our devices that we are forgetting how to socialise in person? Forgetting the art of conversation?
It made me stop and think about why I use my iPod/iPad/phone and whether I am spending too much time on them at the expense of more real life time with friends, colleagues and associates.
I've always been a technologically connected social butterfly, even when the most prolific form of online communication was email. One of my first uni subjects was about the Internet and my first assignment was to write a paper collaboratively with study partners (allocated at random) using only online methods. Enter ICQ (remember that??) and Yahoo Messenger. While I did enjoy chatting to friends via these mediums (mainly ICQ) what I didn’t like was the fact that I would be constantly tied to the computer during the communication process. For this reason, I preferred email.
For years this was my main way of keeping in touch with those who weren’t close by, along with texting. I still used the phone, but email was far cheaper. I checked my mail regularly and was rarely behind. Perhaps because this was something I chose to do rather than something I was required to do.
When I convened NLS4, the committee was very disperse, coming from all over Australia. Again email was the main method of communication. By the end of the conference, however, I was so over being glued to the computer, out of necessity, that I didn’t want to check my emails anymore! I even went so far as to put a password on downloading email, so I could access old correspondence but not download new email :)
The pattern I see here is the feeling of being chained to my PC. Enter my iPod (first device) and things changed. I could look at my email from wherever I was (with wifi), go ‘flick, flick, flick” (imagine corresponding wrist action) and within a few minutes have actioned and deleted what used to end up being a backlog.
Do I spend more time on devices than I used to? Definitely. Has this been at the expense of real conversation with people? I think not. There is a time and place for everything. There are some that I only speak with face to face, others via some form of electronic medium (including texting) and others using everything.
All my family are connected but I do have parameters in place as a way of educating the children of when is an appropriate time to be connected. Remember, this is the norm for them, so they don’t see tweeting, texting, emailing or wearing headphones at the dinner table unusual, much less rude.
Oh and I’ve resisted 3G as one of my own parameters :) I really don’t want the option of being connected 24/7 wherever I am!

Library quotes (Day 2 #blogjune)

I recently had the pleasure of following (and thus being followed by) Abigail Willemse on Twitter, editor of Lianza's Library Life (acccess copies here).  We had crazy tweet session, trying to find library related quotes that would fit within Twitter's 140 character limit and then tweeting them, using the hashtag #libraryquotes.  These are some of the gems we came up with:

• A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure. Arthur Baer
• The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. Carl T. Rowan
• Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
• He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot. Anonymous
• Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. Anatole France
• A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. Shelby Foote
• A good library is a place, a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet. Samuel Niger
• Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. Augustine Birrell
• Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind. Richard Power
• (Libraries are) The medicine chest of the soul. Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes
• A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. Henry Ward Beecher
• A great library contains the diary of the human race. George Mercer Dawson
• I've been drunk for about a week now, and I though it might sober me up to sit in a library. F.Scott Fitzgerald

I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed tweeting them :) And now, marking awaits!

Busy, busy, busy

And so June has started and with it another marathon blogging session done by a heap of library professionals.  Am I one of them? Yes.  Am I crazy? Yes! Why would I add yet another thing to my already overflowing schedule and to do list?  I have no idea.  Somewhere inside me I want to get more routinely used to writing about what has been happening and thus articulating my thoughts.  Maybe this will happen. Finally.

So here I am writing a blog post about how busy I am instead of trying to knock some more things on the head :)  A pile of marking from Charles Sturt University was sitting waiting patiently, saved on my laptop for INF333, only to now be joined by more marking for INF310.  Yet another pile awaits from Vic Uni.  That is on this weekend's list (along with more domestic requirements, but they're boring :) ).

I'm also Co Chair for the ALIA Careers Advisory Committee and am putting together an outline for a strategic framework of sorts to guide us.  This will be fleshed out in a couple of weeks when I meet up with Anthea and I'm sure the document will drastically change form when we've worked on it for a while!

In the meantime, my head is bubbling full of new ideas to promote and enhance literacy in our community, ideas that can hopefully be implemented region wide eventually, thus reaching even more of our diverse users.

Post 30, Careers paths

I was thinking today about the various career paths that are open to librarians, as well as how we ended up where we have. I am going to keep this post short and sweet and finish it by asking some questions of you all.

Why did you decide on librarianship as a career? When did you realise this was the profession you wanted to work in? Did you study as an undergraduate or postgraduate? If PG, is this a second, or even third, career for you?

Looking forward to some discussion!

Post 29 June card challenge, days 25-28

Day 25 Make a vintage type card inspired by lace. I tried to keep to shades of pink for this one. The pink mat was done using the EK Success daisy border trim punch. I lined it up centrally on each side and just did one punch, so it gave a framed effect. Day 27. Make a card with handmade flowers on it. I used a fabric yoyo I had made that coordinated with the rest of the card.Day 28. Make a card with some fabric on it. I used a design I machine embroidered a while ago. The card was finished off with faux stitching in a pink to match the design.

Post 28 June challenge catch up, cards 17 and 26

I have finally caught up. Set myself a challenge within this challenge to make use of what was around me and just get it done!Day 17. Use heat embossing on your card. I used a floral background stamp with perfect medium to stamp the image on the black card and then used clear embossing powder over it. It is extremely difficult to see in this picture. I tried several different shots but the embossing barely showed in any of them :( I used a Martha Stewart border punch on the pink paper and a favourite Stamp It dragonfly stamp with a fluid colorbox chalk ink.
Day 26. Make a card with torn paper. I kept this card simple as I wanted to showcase the softness of the paper.

Post 27, What's in a name?

In Post 16, I blogged about the A-Z of me and under 'P' for "Pet Peeves" I put down people using American spelling. I know many of us have varying peeves, but another one of mine is my name being spelt incorrectly, especially when it is in reply to an email I have sent and clearly signed off as 'TanIa', not TanYa. I acknowledge that mistakes happen and automatic assumptions count a lot for this (ie Tanya is usually more prolific than Tania), but when it happens continually over the course of many, many emails, then it becomes more than just a mistake, it becomes silly. If the purpose of these emails is to get professional advice on a number of topics, then it become more than just silly, it becomes ridiculous. If you want my advice on things, you would think that the least you could do is notice the correct spelling of my name. Surely it isn't hard?

Post 26, Getting there

Almost at the end of June and almost at the end of the #blogjune challenge. And it has been a challenge. This month has seen me out most days or committed to something that has a top priority (marking) conflicting with something that also has top priority (teaching) conflicting with another top priority (motherhood) conflicting with, lo and behold, a high priority (writing). This has meant that I have been playing catch up with my daily blog post and also with the June card challenge that I have been taking part in. June has been exceptionally frantic and I'm looking forward to July 10 when I've submitted final grades for the semester and there will no longer be a need to play catch up.

Has anyone else had to play catch up this month? How have you managed to stay ahead?

Post 25, Days 21 and 24, June card challenge - filling in the gaps

So I have finally gotten around to filling in the gaps for most of my missing days.

Day 21. Make a card for a new baby. The stamp I used was from my playdate with Gemma last Thursday to Kaisercraft in Geelong. I coloured the animals in using my copics and edged the white borders with a blue copic.
Day 24. Make a card using your coloured pencils. I was a bit worried about doing this one, as I wasn't quite sure about matching colours, but it seemed to work out ok. I used the Faber Castell watercolour pencils i 'borrowed' from Ms 19. I used some water to soften the colours on the card after I coloured the butterflies in. This is my favourite Hero Arts Heart Butterfly.

Post 24, On choosing a conference committee, part 4

The NLS4 committee was pretty much set when I received an email from a self confessed conference junkie who was asking, pretty please, if she could join NLS4 as she was having withdrawal symptoms. Who was this junkie? Margie Anderson, ALIA's Victorian Local Liaison Officer (now called the ALIA Victorian State Manager). I had worked with Margie on the alia07 conference committee and knew what she meant when she said she was having withdrawal symptoms. Managing a conference project is such a rewarding and fulfilling experience and I know that there is a sense of anticlimax after the conference finishes. I had NLS4 planning to look forward to so didn't feel as flat as the rest of the committee.

Margie was a powerhouse of knowledge and expertise during alia07. She had been in libraries for many, many years and wanted to be on the committee for her own personal development, not merely as an ALIA employee. It was Margie who suggested we have 15 minute hot spot sessions, to try and fit in as many great presentations as we could and Margie also gave a fabulous professional development seminar on our PD day, the Thursday before the conference. This sessions was free for ALIA members who were registered to attend NLS4.

Margie was worth her weight in gold, even if she is addicted to conferences :)

Post 23, June card challenge, Days 22-24

And we're onto week 4...

Day 22. Make a Christmas card using non traditional colours. I quite like how this one turned out. I've since played a little more and refined the tree, however those cards were in traditional Christmas colours, so didn't meet the challenge criteria! I used the Fiskars Apron Lace border punch. Day 23. Make a card with some embossing. This is one of my all time favourite Christmas card designs. I embossed the card mat to add some interest using the Cuttlebug swirls folder.

Day 24. Stay tuned...