Dumpling in a Hanky

Apparently, collaboration is not just a thing that it is naughty to do with the enemy during a war . It is also a Good Thing too. There are many collaborative tools, and Thing 13 asks us to take a look at one or more of their suggested tools: Google Docs, Wikis, and Dropbox. Now, I've looked at Google Docs in passing before, or when someone's pointed me towards a document they'd like some input on that's being hosted there. To be honest, I've not seen much use for it for me currently - my role does not often need that sort of mass-input to create single documents, or to share them widely. Same for Dropbox - I've not had much need to put a document somewhere that people can later download it from. If I want to work on a document at home, I can access my computer remotely, or email it to my personal email address. So, neither of these two resources currently do much for me, as my work needs don't call for much in the way of document collaboration.. Wikis...

I try and pretend I'm not, and keep it well hidden, but actually, I can be quite Grown Up and Professional. So much so that I'm going to be Revalidating my Chartership this year - ohhh, get me, eh? But...I am not-so-good at saying why I'm fabulous, or keeping up with collating my evidence of professional activity nice and accessible in a voluntary way, so I've got two things that are going to help me with Revalidation. The first is my employers internal appraisal system - as our Library service's work is entirely internally focussed, it's important to be able to demonstrate that we're still maintaining a high standard of professionalism and awareness of activities and developments both in and outside our specialist fields. The appraisal system allows my boss and I to set realistic targets and activities, keep track of them, and update them as progress is achieved. All of which works nicely with the Revalidation process! And second is teaming up with some...

Yes, I feel all proud, because it's coming up to birthday-time for the UK Library Bloggers Wiki. ..it's toddling along nicely all by itself (with just the occasional spammer attack - it's really quite satisfying to get to ban and block people!), with people generally seeming quite happy with the process of adding their blogs themselves. Since I last looked in July 2010, there have continued to be additions in various categories.                                           July 2010                                        March 2011 Institutional bloggers              135                                                   ...

So, we unleashed the UK Library Bloggers wiki into the wild back in March, and crossed our fingers that it would be ok, out there in the Scary World, all on its own. And so far, it seems to be doing just fine, yay! There are of course the regular spammer attempts to "subtly" insert adverts for dissertation work, and all sorts of less...erm...wholesome products within the entries, but the email alerts about text amendments that go to the administrators of the wiki (Phil, Jo and I) means that the first person online and able to, goes in and removes that material and blocks the creator. This has worked really well so far, and unwanted content doesn't stay on the wiki for any real length of time. And the best bit is the librarians and info professionals who've been adding themselves to the wiki! I created a backup in March before we "unlocked" the wiki, and at that point there were 115 institutional / professional group blogs, 83 librarian blogs, 5 Chartership...

Yeeesh, it's been 2 whole years since I started building you out of the results of Google, Yahoo,Technorati and other random searches. Very quickly I realised that I couldn't bring you up properly on my own, so Auntie Jo , Auntie Christine , and Uncle Phil stepped in to help. Without them, you might have gotten a bit unruly, and grown up all scraggly and without any discipline. I think that together, we've done quite well, keeping you nicely in shape and making sure you're as well informed and as up to date as possible. And now that you're all grown up, we've realised that the time has come to set you free in the world, to let you make your own way, meet new people, make your own changes, grow and develop in ways we might not be able to help you with ourselves. So....we've unlocked you, and now anybody (who registers with PBWorks) can edit, update and add to you. We know it's a risk, but we think you're old enough now to be able to look after yourse...

So, I've previously blogged my Library Roots , and added it to the wiki of the Library Routes project (and if you haven't done yours yet, get adding - it's fascinating!). I thought I'd now add info on my Library Route, i.e. how I ended up doing what I do today. Well...it all started off a bit randomly. I'd qualified, and now I needed a job. I was scouring the CILIP Gazette job section, and the library recruitment agencies, and the local authority job sites here in Edinburgh, hoping to find something, anything, that would let me work! But it's not easy, even in the Capital of the country, to find a job when you don't have any official experience. So really, after a couple of months, and with the savings going down fast, I needed a job. I saw a post for a part-time library assistant at a private members society library within the Scottish courts complex at Parliament Square. I had no idea what a librarian would do in a court library, but I got the job, a...

I was pointed a while ago to this discussion on JISCmail a while ago, which I'm not a member of, so I couldn't respond to the discussion about library blogs (and to be honest, I couldn't be bothered joining to explain why the UK Library Bloggers wiki came from, and why it is as it is -it's all done in my free time). The point I took from it was that the UK Library Bloggers wiki wasn't regarded as comprehensive, and was seen to be inconsistent. As it's always a work in progress, I took that on board...and spent 30+ hours over the last few months going through each of the 800+ liblogs listed on the Hotstuff 2.0 list discussed in the JISCmail thread, and determining which were in the UK, and if they were missing from the liblogger list. From that, I found 37 new liblogs (and a lot which I would classify as dead, as they haven't had any posts in 2009, so I ignored), some of which were debateable whether they fell into the liblog definition (automated library...

So, a month or so ago* I did a trawl through all the institutional / professional group blogs on the UK Library Blogs wiki, checked that the ones I'd found before were still there, added any new ones I'd found, and added a new area on entries, for account information on those groups or professionals with Twitter accounts listed on their blog. I'm trying to do the personal blogs soon too, but with more work, less time to do it in, and my own life getting a bit busy, don't hold your breath for that to happen in the next few days! :) As always, if you're not on there (and that's quite likely, the Magical Interweb is a big place, with many nooks and crannies hiding things), contact me either via the 'contact owner' option on the wiki front page, or via the email cunningly disguised in the right hand sidebar here, and I'll add you as soon as I can :) *Oh, looks like it was a bit more than a month, more like two! Time flies!

I'm continuing to add to this list, as and when I can, and trawl through those already on the list to check for changes since the last visit / my mistakes in the collection of the initial list (my apologies to Neil Infield for accidentally renaming him to Ian!) Also, I received an email telling me to look at FADE Library 's great work on collecting UK health library blogs, which I will(with their kind permission) also add in to the overall list (and blog about in a later post) to try and make it as comprehensive as possible. Unfortunately, my email provider went squiffy and deleted the original email before I could reply, so I don't know who to credit for alerting me to this massive piece of work by the FADE staff, and also means their own blog details were zapped! If this was you, please can you get back in touch so I can add your blog, and say thank you personally!

I tell ya, it takes at least a week to catch up on the week you were away...and now I'm off to Dublin this afternoon until Sunday, so I can only imagine how long it'll take me to catch up again when I get back! One useful thing I have done while on holibobs though is play with Yahoo Pipes, to create a feed of feeds. After being a total doofus and needing the help of the lovely law.librarians group to fix things (how come they could easily explain what a video didn't?) I've had a stab at making some usefulness from the UK Librarian Bloggers wiki, starting with (hopefully) a feed of all the academic library blog feeds on there. If I'm lucky, you should be able to do something with it, like subscribe to it. Although I haven't got as far as actually testing that theory myself. Hopefully, you'll find it here : http://pipes.yahoo.com/jennie/ukacademiclibraryblogs And even more hopefully, it'll be useful to someone! Let me know if it works, and if it's u...

I added a permanent link on the right hand side to save peeps searching for the link for the wiki, which is now buried under my random ramblings... >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This post at Information Overlord caught my eye. We've been discussing for a while the best way to incorporate some business continuity planning into the library service: ie, what would happen if one of the two of us (who a lot of the time function as solo librarians, dealing with the issues arising in our own offices with little or no reference to the other) was suddenly unable to work. Or, even worse, if one of use decided to leave!! *takes moment to lie down and stop hyperventilating at thought of boss ever leaving* The structure of the company, the core duties of each staff member, the procedures needed for each activity, the suppliers we use, the products we take, the codes we use, who to ask internally for various things, data on the special professional interests of each fee earner...all information essential to getting our jobs done, but if and when one person isn't there, is the other person fully equipped with information to continue without them for any length of ti...

I still exist, have just launched into a frantic and concerted effort to pull my portfolio together for Chartership, so all other activities are on hold, and that includes commenting on or posting to blogs…although it doesn’t include reading them, so I’m still busily reading, just not visibly ‘active’. I’ve been having fun compiling my portfolio on a Peanut Butter wiki, which has many advantages….and disadvantages! Overall, I think it’s helped me to organise and compile things far better, despite the many frustrations with formatting quirks between it and Word! Have written an article on the process of using it, which hopefully shall appear in some journal somewhere in the near future… Now, all I have to do is have peeps read it, comment, redraft, and submit…and hope the Board pass it!

The answer in my case is…no. And it’s been a deliberate decision (under regular review) not to join it, despite regular requests from various friends. I use (with varying frequency) My Space, Bebo…I blog, I email, I wiki, I forum. I like to be in touch and aware of what’s going on in the world. I don’t, however, have an incredible compulsion to be constantly connected to my friends 24 hours a day, so, although I joined up to find out more about it, I can categorically state that I will never Twitter (unless someone can give me a better reason than “you can tell people who don’t care enough to speak to you in person everything you’re doing throughout the day, in response to a totally inane question about what you’re doing”). I also have a limit on the amount of times I really need to see the same people duplicated in my network of friends in different sites. It started with MySpace, which I joined in a spirit of investigation and fun in February 2006, when it was filling the news h...