Aurora - 12 months on

Ok, more than 12 months have now passed, but the post has been processing mentally for quite some time and I do think it is now time to put it on paper.

Aurora was an experience. It was both the personal and professional experience of a lifetime. It was an experience where future leaders analysed their leadership skills, achievements and perceptions of the profession as a whole. The Aurora Leadership Institute's mission is to help future leaders maximise their potential and position them to be effective voices in our profession.

Although I was looking forward to attending Aurora, my feelings were mixed with apprehension as I was unsure what to expect. How closely scrutinised would all the participants be? Would my performance as a leader come under close scrutiny and be found lacking? I went to Aurora with an open mind, believing this would be the best way to approach such a learning experience.

I explored the changes that are inherent in our professions, and there was the realisation that change needs to come from the top, whether it is for the library or for the profession - we cannot just accept the status quo. Aurora provided affirmation of my beliefs on what leadership should be about and that a stronger, more united approach to workforce planning is needed.

One thing for certain is that Aurora is not a 'quick fix' and doesn't perform miracles overnight. It's a huge learning curve - the processing required to absorb the information is amazing and not, as I just said, fast. The year has gone rapidly and I have achieved many things professionally that I am sure I would have achieved regardless of whether I attended Aurora or not, but I am sure I would have viewed things in a different light had I not attended. The ability to take a 'helicopter view' has been invaluable - being able to understand and think about what I am doing strategically in my position has helped me go forward and also realise that I was not so 'new' that what I was doing was not leadership. Aurora helped me realise that what I saw was not necessarily what others saw - in my position, I see a different picture to my staff and I need to apply my vision and thus influence my colleagues and staff to work towards higher aspirations for my workplace. It was extremely frustrating for me when others did not see the outcomes as clearly as I could. Now I know that this is not my impatience to get there, but is just that not everyone has a bird's eye view. I realised that leaders do lead and sometimes need to have the freedom and confidence to make a final decision. Most importantly for me, I also realised that learning to accept failure is a critical part of professional as well as personal growth.

An important step for me during Aurora was the realisation that I didn't have to be everything to everyone professionally and I made a conscious decision to downsize my committee involvement. During that time I was on six committees and as I took on more roles I didn't want to let other committee members down. I still didn't want to leave any in the lurch, so I drew up a plan and worked out when the best time would be to 'release' myself from various committees without letting any down. Over the next six months I resigned or finished my term with four committees, giving me time to focus more on my two remaining ones - aliaVIC and NLS4 (shameless plug - this promises to be THE event for the 2008!).

I thank ALIA who contributed $4000 towards the Institute fee (I was the recipient of the inaugural ALIA Aurora Scholarship), and also the State Library of Victoria, who, under its Statewide Public Library Development Projects, generously funded the difference between the Scholarship and Institute fees, as well as my airfares to and from Canberra.

Aurora was an amazing experience. Through my involvement I have made friendships and alliances spreading over Australia and New Zealand – an invaluable network that I continuously use for professional and personal support, to sound out new ideas and discuss issues. The Institute allowed me to look at opportunities and threats from a global perspective, instead of just in my backyard, and challenged me to continually aspire to do the best that I can. The inspiration and encouragement I received from all participants and mentors was incredible and I have enjoyed watching the paths that A10 Aurorans have taken over the last 12 months.

ALIA and employer support

I was talking to a colleague the other day about the amount of support that employers give to employees to conduct professional Association contributory business during work time. She was amazed that some employers do not support ALIA associated work and I was just as astounded at the extent of the support her employer gave her - ALIA committee work is even put into her annual workplan as part of professional development.

A leading library service has made comments that Association related work is not 'real life', budgeting for events that had a turnover of hundreds of thousands of dollars was not applicable to a work scenario and working with volunteer committees had no bearing on staff management in the workplace.

Whilst I am not surprised by this attitude, I am disappointed. If working for a volunteer association does not constitute 'real life' or 'real work', then what does it constitute? Sure it is great professional development and good learning for the participant, but learning such as this has to be better utilised when applied in the workplace.

So what does constitute Association related workplace support? That's an interesting question. Once I would have thought it was something as simple as dialling into a conference call during work time or receiving phone calls in the workplace, but I have been surprised by the level of support from some employers. As I mentioned earlier, one colleague has ALIA related work inserted as an output in her annual workplan, so she is able to dedicate time during her work day to Association related work, others, although having no formal work plan in place, can dial into teleconferences, send and receive emails. write reports and attend meetings during their work day. Of course, I wouldn’t expect that this would be done all day, every day, but obviously there is trust in the staff to be able to deliver their own work objectives.

So what are the worst examples of lack of support that I have heard about? Library staff needing to stay back to 'make up' time used during the day to answer Association related emails, emails being monitored, not encouraging contribution to professional literature, refusing to fund conference attendance yet applying it to a workplace training plan and (perhaps) the most disappointing of all, that a library service is too small to support Association related work. Surely investing staff time in something as important as growing the profession and professional development would outweigh such an outlook?

We owe it to our profession

I was reading Jill's post the other day about her follow up with work placement students that she hosts. What a great thing she does - following up on students not only allows you to see where you have influenced them in their career, but can also be a way to motivate those that have lost their drive.

Have I followed up on work placement students? Yes I have and it has been very rewarding seeing how the students have grown over time. However, I don't believe that we, as a profession, should only stop there. We need to engage with the younger generation more and encourage them into the profession. In many ways, we are given these opportunities on a platter and don't utilise them. What are the opportunities? Work experience students from high school. We have the potential to create a positive experience for these students, which can in turn influence them to choose librarianship as a potential course of study, and then subsequently a career in libraries. Instead, so many work experience students are given boring repetitive tasks on a daily basis. If they weren't interested in a career in libraries when they started the programme, chances are they are less interested when they finish it!

Yes, tasks such as shelving and shelf reading need to be done but they don't need to be done because a better programme wasn't created. Sitting in on Storytime is ok for one session, but not four - why not turn it around and have the student present a session after sitting in on the first? Or have the student create the next one that they can then deliver? Why not have the student shadow someone on the circulation or reference desk (many libraries are set up in different ways) so they can be exposed to the wide variety of questions that we are asked?

At the moment I am part of a workgroup that is developing a template/guidelines to help create an exciting and worthwhile work experience for the students, so that, at the very least, it changes their perceptions of working in libraries , and at best, they would consider librarianship and/or encourage their friends to consider the same.

After all, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our profession.

NLS4 - right on track!

What can I say? Work and life just seemed to get in the way. Having said that, so many things have happened that I won't enter them all on this post, or it will go on forever! I am not even sure that I can list them in order!!!

NLS4

Last time I posted about NLS4, we had just appointed ICMS as our Professional Conference Organiser. Since then there has been a change in the Committee - Andrew Finegan is now our Marketing and Promotions Coordinator. As well as this **breaking news** the NLS4 website is now officially open and launched! The team decided to launch the site on August 20 (I am behind!) at ALIA's 70th birthday celebrations - we were proud to have one of our milestones linked with such a significant one for the Association.

Something that made me especially proud was the way the team pulled together so we could deliver on time. We all had our own components to deliver to Jill, our fabulous Website Coordinator and we all did it, with time to spare for playing with the aesthetics of the website itself. This is no mean feat, as the committee is spread across four states! Well done Team!

And the latest news - announced yesterday - is that the NLS4 website now is RSS enabled, so anyone can subscribe to the feed and let all the updates come to them, rather than keep checking the site - Andrew and Jill worked well together to get that happening.

We are in negotiations with our preferred venue at the moment - we can't say anything yet, but the team does promise that it will not disappoint!!! What is next? Stay tuned - we will get our patron competition up and running soon....

New books at the library

New books
Originally uploaded by shewgirl

This is really what I had planned to do - and I doubt there are copyright issues involved! This was done quickly, but with a little more trying I am sure the glare can be removed

What does everyone think now???

Eldest by Christopher Paolini, on iPod!!

Eldest
Originally uploaded by shewgirl

Well I managed to get this working through Flickr. Wasn't as hard as I thought. Pretty snazzy huh? One of my projects is to try and get a blog happening for the Children's and Youth Library, especially for Young Adult reader's advisory.

When you click on the pciture of "Eldest", it takes you to a link in Flickr. Can you see the hyperlinked mouseover??

Wouldn't this be a great way to advertise new books in the library?

Thoughts, anyone???

Teaching kits

Had a busy last couple of days at work. Trying to get some Teaching Resource Kits off the ground, and it isn't as easy as one would think. The idea behind the kits is to support topics that are taught by schools in the area. I put together a good list of themes to design the kits around by talking to teachers from local schools. Each kit is supposed to have activities, props, books and AV items to fit around the topic. To make it easier for staff to check, the kits will be limited to 3 of eveything - 3 activities, 3 books, 3 props etc. This is where the difficulty comes in! Try finding only 3 activities and keeping it so that the activities are quite dissimilar. Try finding 3 props, again that are not similar, which will end up consisting of ONLY 3 pieces! For the Farm kit, wouldn't it be great to have kids assemble a farm, complete with fencing? How is that done with three pieces??? Perhaps a large wooden floor puzzle? Nope, they come in more than 3 pieces :) To add to this, I tried buying from an online educational toy supplier. Buying online is timeconsuming, especially when one is just browsing in various areas to see what is available - imagine how much more timeconsuming it is when THE CART DOES NOT SAVE!!!! I must have lost that cart at least 5 times. Phone calls to the supplier did not help at all - would you believe they had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned the word 'cart' and 'online'? Frustration plus! I ended up cutting and pasting my cart into a Word document to save the codes but the cart still wouldn't save long enough to enter them all in. I ended up faxing the order instead. I am glad I persevered, because the props are exceptional - now I just need to put them where they belong! Hey, I am getting there....

Meme : 8

Well I haven't been tagged, but I have a bit of an obsession about memes at the moment, so here are my random 8 things - thanks to CW for suggesting we just do it anyway!

1. I love shoes, any really, but high heels and classy stilettos really get me in.
2. I drive a white 4WD Musso.
3. I got engaged in April.
4. I love photos and love to scrapbook.
5. Can't stand tomatoes. YUK
6. I own a Craft Robo
7. I loved movies stars from the '40s, '50s and '60s as a teenager (esp Marilyn Monroe and James Dean)
8. I am listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on my iPod shuffle -roll on July 21 and the release of HP and the Deathly Hallows!

I tag Boneygirl

Back on track

So much has been happening of late, it is easy to think that time has passed and nothing has been achieved.

Sitting and reflecting on things made me realise that quite a lot has happened.

• The iPod pilot is finally up and running, after weeks of research for clarification on copyright and licencing issues;


• I found out about adding widgets to blogs;


• I was involved in interviews to shortlist from a list of Professional Conference Organisers for ALIA's 4th New Librarians Symposium (NLS4) - decision still in the process of being finalised, so stay tuned!


• There has been a fair bit of discussion happening between the NLS4 committee regarding our websites - the one in progress (not the one linked to above) is looking superb, thanks to Jill, our Website Coordinator. Big learning curve on what is possible when developing a website!


• Figures - oh my god the figures! Who would have thought that delegate fees, trade booths, percentages, management fees and square metres (yes square metres!) would need to be scrutinised as closely they have been. Number crunching is happening more naturally now, but still glad the NLS4 team has such a great treasurer in Kevin;


• Worked on getting the July holiday program ready - printed copies finally out and I must say it is looking good!

When you consider I had two weeks leave in the middle of this, then i guess it is a fair bit!!!

Update - this post has been a few days in the making, Since I last wrote, the Team for NLS4 has made its decision for a PCO and selected ICMS, a professional conference organiser with over 30years experience. It was not an easy process, but we got there in the end - thanks to the team who were so supportive during such a mad time.

So tweet me

I finally couldn't stand it any more - I had to find out what 'Twitter' was. Sent a friend an email asking what the heck Twitter WAS and got a quick link back. By the time she replied with more information, I had checked out her link, made no sense of it so had to join to find out for myself.

So what is Twitter? It's another social networking service that lets users of the site to send text messages to their friends in several ways - via SMS, IM or the Twitter website. The best way I can think to explain it is that it is like web based sms...and can be quite addictive...

You don't 'text' from Twitter, as you do from a mobile, you 'tweet'...

Back after 25 minutes of 'friending' some people that I recognise in Blogland. KathrynG wrote an interesting post on it on her blog - good read.

So have I sparked some more interest in Twitter for you? Hope so - friend me and tweet away!

Playing around

I thought I would have a little play around with my blog and add a widget or two. I don't really want to overload the blog with widgets everywhere, but I thought the To Do list was cool. Lots more widgets like that at LabPixies.

Being a true cataloguer, I tried to have correct labels on my postings so they could be searched, but I didn't like the way they looked visually. I put them in a label cloud, thanks to Phydeaux's instructions for that. The largest labels in the clouds are the ones that appear the most throughout the blog. Phydeaux also give instructions on how to organise blog archives into a calender - looks pretty neat!

Note scrapbooking is first on my to do list!

Innovation and initiative.

This posting has been a work in progress for many days. It can take me a while to put an entry on my blog, but it doesn't usually take me days to complete a post.

I have to admit I have been on leave and work was crazy when I got back, with lots to catch up on, meetings to attend and planning for a new library. It's been a bit harder than usual keeping up with my feeds because I seem to be getting caught up in 'being on the edge' and thinking of cutting edge stuff in programming and services, never mind all the technology that keeps coming our way and staying up to date with innovations in library practice.

Reflecting on all this has made me stop and take stock of everything - someone (a very knowledgable someone) told me to take this time as a 'pit stop', to gather my thoughts and see where to go from here. Rather than looking at keeping up with what has been happening in blogland as being essential to everything, I turned it around to look on it as something I wanted to do, rather than something I had to do. It worked and my feeds have come down :) Surprised me no end to find this post from Michelle, where she also talks of taking stock and also of the painful process it can be waiting for your colleagues to catch up with you - too true.

Like Michelle, I want to regain my optimism, and in my case, enthusiasm, for my profession. A bit more encouraging for me now knowing there are others who a having similar struggles. Here's to successful outcomes!

iPods on loan - at last!

It has been a long time between posts, but things have been moving along. In my last post, I mentioned that I had 3 emails floating around in cyberspace to Audible. One of them was answered and it turned out that we (as a public library) are definitely able to purchase and lend out mp3 audio files. Not only this, but we can actually have 3 copies of the book on loan simultaneously, which was not my original intention. it actually still isnt my intention to have more than one copy available - i will wait and see what this pilot turns out like.

There are geographical restrictions - I am not too sure what they are, but when I registered and specified my country as 'Australia', the website automatically allows me access to only what is available for purchase in Australia.

So far all is good. The iPods are being borrowed and I am sure there will be teething problems soon, but so far all is good.......

Update on mp3 audio books, iPods and libraries

WOW, I am in 2 people's feeders - doesn't take much to excite me nowadays :)

Since my last posting on the subject, I have been very busy investigating other options for buying mp3 files to lend out on iPods. I found this interesting post on Gordian Knot. It seems Bartlesville Library has been doing what I want to do for a while. Ironically, they found that iTunes was the best way. They were loading audio books onto patrons’ devices but then also purchased their own iPods for loan, in the same way that I would like to. With iPods (not sure on other mp3 players), you can’t synchronise the device to more than one computer. This, to me, is a bonus with relation to the copyright issue. If a patron tries to use the library’s iPod with iTunes on their home computer (eg to copy the audio book for home), the computer will erase all files from the iPod, as it has already been synchronised with the library’s pc.

With my investigating hat still on, I contacted one of the Library’s audio book publishers who are hoping to go down the path of mp3 files for purchase (as opposed to mp3 files on CD). The person I spoke to was under the impression that the licence meant one copy could be loaned out at a time, so if I chose to make a copy of an audio book and lend it out on an iPod, that would be ok as long as I removed the cd copy from the shelves. This seems too good to be true! I would be happy to buy audio books as mp3 files on CD and then transfer them to an iPod and not lend out the actual CDs, but I think this warrants some more investigation.

THEN Boney-girl sent me this doozy. This is the Catholic Ed Office in NSW and they are lending out audio books on iPods! They use Audible.com, which the iTunes person has also referred me to, so I went there. They seemed ok, so I sent them an email outlining what I wanted to do and got this back “In regards to the sharing of audio books, you will only be able to activate 2 iPods on your Audible account. There may also be some geographical restrictions on certain titles on our website due to your location.” I replied back asking what activating only 2 iPods means (useless if it means I can only download to 2 devices – what is the point??) and also asking what the geographical restrictions are. There was no reply regarding geographical isolation, but that copyright meant an account couldn't have more than 2 iPods to download to. I managed to track down another 2 email addresses to contact, so currently have 3 emails floating around somewhere in cyberspace.

I do find it strange that a public library can't lend out an audio book when they can lend out print copies.

Oh, and there are lots of libraries in the US that are loaning iPods with books loaded on them, such as South Huntington Public Library in New York.

So does anyone have any ideas here???

RSS addiction

I wonder if anyone else is addicted to RSS feeds the way I am at the moment?? As soon as I read a blog, I have to add it to my aggregator. Those of you who read my blog (and I hope that someone does!) will know of the problems I had earlier on when trying out Google Reader and Bloglines for a blooging/RSS workshop I am running during National Youth Week. I really liked Bloglines, but ended up using Google Reader mainly because it is the same account as the one for blogger and gmail - easier when training patrons, I think anyway.

At the moment I have nearly 90 subscriptions, with 7 folders and some loose subs that I am unsure of (unsure of where to slot them for now). Of course this means that, at the moment, I have 100+ feeds to read......

I wonder if I am in someone else's aggregator????

MP3 audio books in libraries

I have been thinking for ages about the possibility of buying Young Adult audio books as mp3 files and lending them out on iPods. I know that there are ways to have these audio books available for downloading from a library's catalogue, but this can take time and is very costly. So, me being me and not wanting to wait, I thought a quicker way to start this would be to buy the audio books as mp3 files, buy some iPods, then lend out the iPod loaded with the book, pretty much in the same way that public libraries lend out books. I had no plans to lend out a book more than once at a time (after all, with a printed book, only one person can borrow it at once, right?) and thought it would be pretty straightforward for staff and patrons to understand. There would be no need for staff to transfer files, as the iPod would stay preloaded with the same book.

Sounds simple?

well it isn't. I can't get a straight answer from iTunes on whether we can do this. One person told me that he saw no reason why we couldn't and although we were restricted to having the audio book on no more than 5 computers, we could have it on as many devices as we liked. Further enquiries have led to puzzled questions for clarification (obviously lending out an audio book is a foreign concept??), to replies saying that lending out the book for commercial purposes is against the terms of sale. Trying to clarify whether a library lending out an mp3 file on an iPod is commercial still had me going around in circles.

So much for good ideas. sigh.

Major bookstores - strange selling tactics

Went into work quickly today (yes I know it is a Saturday, but I had to meet someone there for a pickup) and saw that more advertising had landed on my desk. This was a letter from a major bookstore chain (not Collins, Angus and Robertson or Dymocks), addressed to me (although any organisation that sends out blanket letters starting off with 'Dear Tanya [surname] [and spelling my name with a 'y' - bad form] needs to be spoken to seriously about the credibility of their marketing) and letting me know about the bargains that were available to me. If I bought THREE books from their bargain books, I - get this - only had to pay for FOUR. "Pick any three Bargain [sic] books and only pay for four".

What a deal - buy three books and pay for four.

What did I say about marketing credibility???

Blogging workshops - National Youth Week

Well, I think I am just about ready - still some fine tuning details to get through, but the bulk of it is all done. For those of you just joining in, we will be running a series of blogging workshops during National Youth Week, which is from 14 to 22 April 2007. The workshops cover basic blogging, using blogger, and also an introduction to RSS feeds. We will be using Google Reader, mainly because of people's familiarity with the google name. I was hesitant to go down the 'google only' path - there are many others out there, but as I started using blogger and used my gmail account to login, thought it would be easier to keep going down this path. I did think of trialling some other email addresses to sign in, but didn't want to end up with millions of unused blogs everywhere (and hence clutter up cyber space - hate clutter, even on the net!)

Because (at the time), I was unsure if one could start a blog with blogger using a different email account, I then had to think of whether to say persons doing the workshop needed a gmail account or whether we would run participants through that too. Of course, I couldn't assume all had a gmail account, so now that is in the program too. Then we move onto Google Reader....

Another concern was the age. 12 and up? 13 and up?? Went to Google's terms and conditions and they say that anyone signing up has to be 13 years or older, no provision for parents signing for anyone under, so that settled it - anyone signing up has to be at least 13. Maximum age?? Still undecided. Perhaps 16?? They are probably already blog-savvy by then!

I have put together some basic steps on how to get a gmail account, then start a blog using blogger and using Google Reader as an aggregator. I have been told that getting people to understand RSS feeds can be quite a challenge, which surprised me, maybe because it is so logical to me??? time will tell! The idea is that everyone will start a blog (after getting a gmail account of course), put some posts on their blog, then everyone can use Google Reader to get feeds off the other participants’ blogs. It really seems too easy……

Now the biggest challenge- preparing and educating the staff!! The biggest barrier will be the mindset of this being something run by the Children’s Department – always a challenge! Then preparing something so that staff understand what a blog is, what RSS is and what participants will be doing. They need to understand so hopefully they will be more interested, but also so that they can answer any enquiries made and they can tell patrons what is required (ie an email address will have to be created) and what is also involved.

Had a brilliant flyer created by BoneyGirl – really funky, but very streamlined and classy (appeals to my nature of wanting less clutter!). Need to print these out in the coming week and distribute them. The bookstores have agreed that they will pass them on to their customers. Of course, over promotion can be a problem in itself…. We have just undergone a major refurbishment and the public access PCs are now in clusters, so I can really only give the workshop to about 5 participants. I didn’t want to be over ambitious and assume that we would fill 5 sessions (for the week) so have just put something like ‘Starting April 16, call for more details”. If there is more interest, then we can open up another session. Of course I have to remember to advise staff to take a waiting list…..

More on African AIDS babies

Since my last post on the subject, I have been in touch with the organisers of this appeal and found more information on the internet. The Malawi project is huge. There are pictures of these cute little jumpers on the site. The march newsletter put out by Ken and Lyn Begley says that now 52 000 jumpers and beanies have either been delivered or on their way. That is massive. I wondered how many would be enough, but it turns out there are over 10 million AIDS orphans in Africa who have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Sometimes they have AIDS themselves. That means there is still a lot more knitting to do! I still haven't taken a photo of one I have made, but I will do it soon....

Blogging session with aliaVIC

Went to a blogging session last night that was organised by aliaVIC and run by Heather Blakey. She was quite good and a Wordpress fan. Her blog Soulfoodcafe is quite interesting. At the moment she is working for the Victorian Education Department to establish a Global Teacher/Student Resource. Apparently we can go through this and establish a blog that can build communities. Quite interesting. Will certainly look into it.

Have had a play with the page settings in blogger and hit a snag again. It won't give me the options to add page elements - I just keep going back to the dashboard. My friend however, is having a whiz of a time doing so as we speak......I must see if that activeX problem has resurrected itself.