Blog Archives
Things Begin…
This is my first post as part of the Cambridge 23 Things programme, Cam23 for short. I might be heading up the (very lovely) Cam23 project team but like each of them I’m also participating fully. For one thing, there are quite a few Things on the programme that I’ve never explored properly before, for another I’m after a shiny certificate (with curly-swirly writing) and a voucher too.
iGOOGLE
Thing 1 and 2 are iGoogle (and other startpages) and RSS feeds. iGoogle is a nice idea in principle and plays to my super-organised side but it doesn’t really fit with the frankly chaotic way that I use the web. I tend to have about 3-5 different browser sessions or tabs open at any one time and these are rarely on the default homepage which I tend to only see first thing in the morning. Besides I’m not that keen on the mushed up nature of the gadgets or the fact that they seem to take an age to load up. They don’t actually take ‘an age’ of course it’s just that I’m now pre-programmed to expect websites to open within a fraction of a billisecond. However, my Delicious bookmarks do open that quickly (my preferred home page) as do the links on my web browser toolbar. Having said all that, I am going to try iGoogle out as my homepage for a while to see how I get on. Maybe I’ll warm to it?
Another thing that has put me off in the past is that some of the gadgets die off over time, when I returned to the page I created just a few months ago, three were out of action. Interested to read Emma’s take on iGoogle over at The Mongoose Librarian and Lottie’s at Adventures of a Blogging Trainee Librarian. Both well worth a read.
NETVIBES
NetVibes is a different beast altogether. From what I can understand it has rebranded recently as a ‘dashboard engine’ rather than just a startpage which allows you to set up hubs from which to monitor information on people, topics, industries, countries and companies from many different platforms (video, social networks, blogs, search engines) in real-time. I can see a possible application for the library service here at Judge but haven’t quite worked out what, certainly embracing the real-time element and the auto-refresh of information is appealing. Perhaps setting up subject-based dashboards? Below is a Netvibes dashboard that I set up on ecotourism, a topic we had a detailed enquiry about recently. Just creating this in front of the MBA project team I met with would have instantly led them down some interesting and relevant avenues.
RSS FEEDS & GOOGLE READER
As for Thing 2 I already access all my RSS Feeds through Google Reader and find it completely invaluable. For quite a few years I randomly checked in on blogs I liked but as the number of blogs I visited increased so did the need to access them in a different way and to be prompted as new posts became available. I installed the Google Reader widget in my iGoogle page so I have a window into the blogs I subscribe to there but I’ll continue to just go to it direct I think. Adding the Cam23 blog to my iGoogle was surprisingly seamless.
Pleased to have got started on Cam23, and to find, as I imagined i would, that I’d learn stuff I didn’t know before.
Roll on the Things…
EBSLG Cologne 2010 – Day 1
The European Business School Librarians’ Group (EBSLG) is made up of senior librarians from the top business schools in Europe and its annual conference began today in Cologne (although the weather’s not quite as great as in the pic below). My twitter followers will remember that I was concerned I might not get here due to ash cloud shenanigans, but thankfully it blew off into the North Sea and I flew out yesterday with no hitches.
To be honest I was more concerned about missing out on the networking opportunities that the conference provides than the programme itself and thus far I’ve not been disappointed as we’ve begun to catch up with what we’ve each been up to since we last met. A very helpful ‘Year in Review’ document is published just before each conference to which we all contribute and this gives a rundown of news and activities in each of our libraries. Unsurprisingly (and comfortingly) this document tends to reveal that we’re all grappling with the same problems and seeking to institute many of the same initiatives and projects so talking to each other at length makes a lot of sense. This year everyone seems to creating online tutorials, engaging with Web 2.0 (particularly blogs, RSS, Library Twitter accounts and creation of Delicious collections of open web resources), dealing with physical library space moves and changes and exploring issues around repositories and open access.
The venue for the first day and the delegate hotel is the Kolpinghaus in Koln’s boutique shops district. A perfectly pleasant hotel that unfortunately has a bizarre obsession with religious iconography and, in particular, crucifixes. There’s one in every single room staring down at you. Thankfully mine (see left) is rather utilitarian and abstract so I’m ignoring it easily.
The first two presentations this morning focused on library services in Germany. First up Dr Peter Kostadt gave us an entertaining guided tour of the University of Cologne’s OPAC 2.0 which provides unified access to library resources. The presentation included lots of interesting facts and figures relating to: usage of types of resource (ejournals being more popular than databases which are in turn more popular than ebooks); slow take-up of mobile technology due to costs for students; the popularity of online chat with library staff and their ‘Ask Albot’ service. The very clean looking OPAC 2.0 can be viewed here: http://www.ub.uni-koeln.de/ and was judged favourably by EBSLG participants. Matthias Loesch from the University of Bielefield was next up. I was initially put off his presentation due to talk of ’meta-harvesting’ and some too frequently repeated statements about students just wanting to use Google and that search engines aren’t indexed, however, it picked up when he got on to his reason for being there – to talk about BASE – a multidisciplinary search engine for scientific open access documents. BASE can be viewed here: http://www.base-search.com/
Thereafter there was a presentation from Claudia Spengemann of EBSCO on their Discovery service. By all accounts Summon is doing much better than Discovery at the moment, but Claudia certainly knew what she was talking about and made a convincing argument for purchase even though most customers are currently just trialling it. You can find out about Discovery here: http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery/ Gale Cengage were next up and after covering the usual company history stuff (which I always wish every supplier would cut) they presented the results of a survey that had gathered information through in-depth interviews on the way students searched and what sort of information they wanted. I’m hoping to get my hands on their full findings as this was in many ways the most interesting content of the morning.
After lunch at which they seemed to be serving Findus Crispy Pancakes (chicken and cheese not the sloppy horrible mince that I feared) it was time to visit the supplier stalls (which were in a room which the previous evening had housed a beerfest type event with lots of German men in good voice - I hadn’t gone in but vividly imagined something akin to ‘that’ scene in The Odessa File). Quite honestly Capital IQ I should be on commission for the lovely things I said about you and your database in there today. Perhaps we can have it for free next year? Yes? Great. Useful catch-ups as usual with Sibylle of Euromonitor and Laura of Research for Libraries and a request for info from Bill of Emerald as I currently need more evidence to convince my faculty of the value of the product.
The last business of the day was the Bazaar of Ideas for which four plucky volunteers (including yours truly) presented on a project they were engaged in. I showcased the Cam23 web 2.0 programme which start next Monday. Due to the format of the session I ended up presenting four times to groups of 4-8 people. This actually worked rather well and they responded to what I had to say and the objectives of the programme very favourably, indeed, many EBSLGers have said they will follow the programme even though they won’t be eligible for the certificate or voucher. My presentation slides are now available on SlideShare.
The evening gala dinner at the Wolkenburg was great – especially due to the company - until I had the misfortune, towards the end of the main course, to get the start of a lovely proper geometric shapes migraine which forced me to leave rather suddenly and return to the hotel by taxi. Thankfully its since evaporated. I certainly didn’t expect to be blogging about Day 1 this evening.
Today’s programme has had an interesting added dimension as it saw me tweet during a conference for the first time. I’ll blog about the positives and negatives of that in a separate post I think as I have lots to say. Tomorrow no web as we’re not here in Hotel Crucifix – so no tweets and no chance to feverishly check my email regularly like the work-obssessed freak I am. How will I survive?
Gute Nacht
The Origin of 23 Things
The Cambridge 23 Things programme will begin in less than 2 weeks and, like the rest of the project team, I’m currently preparing the blog posts that participants will read each week. As blogging is the first Thing under my personal watch I began crowdsourcing material today on the value of blogging from my Twitter followers (receiving immediate assistance as usual) and conducting some web searches to see how other 23 Things programmes had covered the topic. This latter activity soon set me off in another direction entirely (nothing new there) as instead I found myself investigating the origin of 23 Things terminology…
I already knew that the original 23 Things programme was constructed by Helene Blowers, Public Services Technology Director of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina back in 2006. What I didn’t know was that she had been inspired by reading an article written by Stephen Abram in Information Outlook called 43 Things I Might Want To Do This Year which incorporated a list of library and information-related Things that he urged his readers to register on the 43 Things website (Helene had very sensibly decided that 23 was more achievable for herself and the programme participants than 43).
I hadn’t come across the 43 Things website before, maybe its better known in the US (or maybe I’m not as well informed as I’d like to think!). In essence 43 Things is a place where people all over the world can list Things (tasks/goals/dreams/ambitions) they’d like to achieve, such as ‘lose 20 pounds’, ‘have my first kiss’, ’learn how to type fast without looking at the keyboard’ and ‘tell my boss what I really think of him’.
One of the most interesting sections of the site is under ‘Zeitgeist’ where the Things most wanted by everyone in the world (well with a huge US bias I imagine) are listed. The Top 10 most wanted Things of all-time are as follows:
There’s also a section where people can record achieved goals, just as the Cambridge 23 peeps will record tools they’ve evaluated and explored on their blogs. ‘Fall in love’ (one of the top ten above) is listed as the most achieved goal. Although I note that only 9970 people have fulfilled this goal making 15446 people still loveless. Ahhhh.
Inevitably there are some very strange Things being wished for on 43 Things. My personal favourites being:
- ‘have my own library’ (I can recommend it)
- ‘put my face on another body’ (literally?)
- ‘start a fight club’ (as long as you don’t tell anyone about it, the first rule of… ahh)
- ‘become a mermaid’ (Daryl Hannah beat you to it)
- ‘write a sloppy half-formed poem every day in May 2010 (I admire his lack of literary ambition)
- ‘become a gigolo in Delhi and earn money’ (As opposed to just doing it for fun I assume?)
And yes I have shamelessly added this latter list to generate traffic to my blog from people who are going to be disappointed when they get here.
Although I can’t promise the Cam 23 participants that they’ll fall in love our programme should definitely make their summer more interesting.
Andy
When to keep my big mouth shut…
For the last few months I’ve been following with interest the 23 Things Web 2.0 programme conducted within Oxford University Libraries which was open to all library staff there. By all accounts it has been very successful indeed with a take-up that surprised the project team and many resulting benefits for participants, organisers, and their libraries, alike. As I learned more about the programme structure and delivery, crucially that it is largely self-directed – requiring limited set-up, I began to seriously think ‘What have we got to lose?’ by trying the same here in Cambridge. After a suprisingly little amount of tweeting and emailing ‘Cam23′ was born, or more properly ‘the Cambridge 23 Things programme’ which is due to start next month and run through to August.
We are still very early doors with this, the project team (an excellent group of people IMO) has only just been formed and the Cam 23 blog is brand new today, but already this feels like a very promising endeavour which will bring library staff across Cambridge together as we explore the value and application of Web 2.0 and social media tools.
This may just be one of those occasions where – for a change – it was right NOT to keep my big mouth shut!
Andy
