It doesn't take much to keep me motivated in my work and today I was floating on Cloud 9.
One of our regulars is a lovely IHC client who calls me Flossy. She is about 55 and has a mental age of about 8. She loves Fairy books and we keep an eye out for new titles to give her when she comes in.
Today she was waiting outside the library at opening time, and entered beside me as part of the official party for the opening of our Pasifika Festival. After the formalities and the Kava Ceremony and an hour spent making a Samoan flower garland for her hair (with a hot glue gun!) she came and gave me a huge hug and said "Thanks for making our library so lovely".
That why I am a public librarian :)
Monday, September 12, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Thing 7 : Face to Face Networks and Professional Organisations
This weeks topic is professional organisations and I need to consider my experiences with them. What involvement have I had? How has it affected my career? What have I learned? Why are/aren’t I a member?
I first joined LIANZA when I was a student back in 1989 or so. I loved reading Library Life, the professional magazine, but once I had to renew as a full priced member I dropped it because I felt it was just too expensive. I did not resurrect my LIANZA membership again until I had to as part of the professional registration system which was introduced 3 or 4 years ago.
I gained my old-school library qualification from Wellington Teachers College back in the late 80s. It was an extremely practical qualification and graduates were really useful employees because they could actually 'do' the work rather than talk about it. I had experience with 2 university-qualified librarians and neither of them were much chop tending to get lost in intricacies and irrelevancies but couldn't even catalogue a book or cope with snotty-nosed, poor white-trash kids climbing on their knee for a cuddle at storytime. For a small town public library they were hopelessly out of their depth. Anyway, I digress ... as I do ....
I had been consciously building a strong CV for at least 5 years before the LIANZA Professional Registration Scheme came out; very deliberately upskilling myself knowing that my then boss would be retiring in the near future. I have been in this same job since I was 21. I came as an untrained, silly girl and worked my way up the ranks, first as a junior library assistant, then cataloguer, Deputy Head of Libraries and now Boss Lady. I gained my library qualification, then a degree with handpicked papers for this job, including modern English, feminist and post colonial lit, NZ and Pacific history and politics, management and journalism. Then I did a 1 year part time course on Linux, and then a 3 year part time course in Network Administration. I knew that when Rosalie retired I would have to face change. That could include applying for her job; knowing I would have to be much, much better than any other applicant to get the job because I had been here so long. The other option would be to apply for a job somewhere else and for that I would also need a brillliant CV to overcome what appears to be a sluggish, unambitious attitude to my career (by staying with one organisation my entire adult life).
All that by way of explaining that I needed Professional Registration to acknowledge my value as a librarian because my library qualification was practically worthless and so that is the only reason I rejoined LIANZA.
I occasionally attend local LIANZA gatherings: AGMS, Mid Winter dos etc. I always enjoy these gatherings immensely; the librarians are bright, bubbly, inspirational, clever, generous .... I do like Librarians as a general rule.
I have never become an office holder and at some point I probably should but at this point I'm not totally confident that LIANZA has a clear idea of its role in relation to APLM, the Association of Public Library Managers, which formed 3 or 4 years ago. I think APLM has siphoned off a lot of 'energy' and expertise.
I used to consider the annual LIANZA Conference a 'must' to attend each year but I am more committed to attending the NDF conference now. The reason for this is that I find NDF stimulating and inspirational whereas LIANZA is often more 'look what we did'. NDF is all about digital collaborations between the GLAM sector: galleries, libraries, archives and museums and I do believe that is the way we need to be moving. Both conferences are excellent networking opporunities and many librarians attend both but the inspirational, thought provoking, 'jaw dropping' nature of NDF suits me better.
I am thinking lately that I might like to join SOLGM because I am becoming convinced that we librarians need to find better ways to sell our stories to the Councils who fund us. We have to learn how to place our stories in the right framework and tell them with the right words.
I first joined LIANZA when I was a student back in 1989 or so. I loved reading Library Life, the professional magazine, but once I had to renew as a full priced member I dropped it because I felt it was just too expensive. I did not resurrect my LIANZA membership again until I had to as part of the professional registration system which was introduced 3 or 4 years ago.
I gained my old-school library qualification from Wellington Teachers College back in the late 80s. It was an extremely practical qualification and graduates were really useful employees because they could actually 'do' the work rather than talk about it. I had experience with 2 university-qualified librarians and neither of them were much chop tending to get lost in intricacies and irrelevancies but couldn't even catalogue a book or cope with snotty-nosed, poor white-trash kids climbing on their knee for a cuddle at storytime. For a small town public library they were hopelessly out of their depth. Anyway, I digress ... as I do ....
I had been consciously building a strong CV for at least 5 years before the LIANZA Professional Registration Scheme came out; very deliberately upskilling myself knowing that my then boss would be retiring in the near future. I have been in this same job since I was 21. I came as an untrained, silly girl and worked my way up the ranks, first as a junior library assistant, then cataloguer, Deputy Head of Libraries and now Boss Lady. I gained my library qualification, then a degree with handpicked papers for this job, including modern English, feminist and post colonial lit, NZ and Pacific history and politics, management and journalism. Then I did a 1 year part time course on Linux, and then a 3 year part time course in Network Administration. I knew that when Rosalie retired I would have to face change. That could include applying for her job; knowing I would have to be much, much better than any other applicant to get the job because I had been here so long. The other option would be to apply for a job somewhere else and for that I would also need a brillliant CV to overcome what appears to be a sluggish, unambitious attitude to my career (by staying with one organisation my entire adult life).
All that by way of explaining that I needed Professional Registration to acknowledge my value as a librarian because my library qualification was practically worthless and so that is the only reason I rejoined LIANZA.
I occasionally attend local LIANZA gatherings: AGMS, Mid Winter dos etc. I always enjoy these gatherings immensely; the librarians are bright, bubbly, inspirational, clever, generous .... I do like Librarians as a general rule.
I have never become an office holder and at some point I probably should but at this point I'm not totally confident that LIANZA has a clear idea of its role in relation to APLM, the Association of Public Library Managers, which formed 3 or 4 years ago. I think APLM has siphoned off a lot of 'energy' and expertise.
I used to consider the annual LIANZA Conference a 'must' to attend each year but I am more committed to attending the NDF conference now. The reason for this is that I find NDF stimulating and inspirational whereas LIANZA is often more 'look what we did'. NDF is all about digital collaborations between the GLAM sector: galleries, libraries, archives and museums and I do believe that is the way we need to be moving. Both conferences are excellent networking opporunities and many librarians attend both but the inspirational, thought provoking, 'jaw dropping' nature of NDF suits me better.
I am thinking lately that I might like to join SOLGM because I am becoming convinced that we librarians need to find better ways to sell our stories to the Councils who fund us. We have to learn how to place our stories in the right framework and tell them with the right words.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Thing 6: online networks
Linked In
I have had a Linked In profile for a while now. The recommended reading by Sharlyn Lauby was very good. I went back and reviewed my profile. It is basically pretty good: professional photo, fairly explicit introduction to my work experience and interests, I have 3 referee statements and around 100 connections, none of whom I am embarrassed of :) I have never bothered with groups before but after looking at the examples I see they do add weight to a profile. Reminds me of Mum saying: "you are judged by who you associate with". I have my Slideshare account linked to my Linkedin which means that several of my slides from presentations can be viewed. I am careful what presentations I have saved online as I am aware they show on both sites. I never update my profile which I will have to address. I don't feed my Twitter comments here because I am pretty lighthearted and irreverent on Twitter sometimes ... and I like that tweets can't be found after 3 weeks or so - not so with LinkedIn.
Facebook
I have had a facebook account in the past; I was a reasonably early adopter well ahead of my kids who were still using bebo. However I cancelled it about a year ago for a number of reasons:
- I got sick to death of the way facebook kept changing their approach to privacy,
- I used facebook for my family only - and I explicitly stated that on my profile but still received dozens of requests from colleagues and vague associates wanting to be my friend (I hated saying no),
- I allowed myself to get bullied into friending my kids and their mates and accepting their invitations to Mafia Wars, Farmtown etc and then ...
- I got hooked into stupid online games (farming)
- sick of stupid updates from friends about game, quizzes etc.
I don't regret closing facebook at all except for relinquishing my account means I can never get jransom back again if I ever regret not having an account.
Thing 5 : Reflective Practice
The post on the cpd23 website for this Thing is very, very good. I need to do reflective writing more often for two reasons:
- I know it is a useful way to 'unpack' recent events that have not gone so well and figure out what happened and how to avoid repeating mistakes,
- I need to write my professional development journal for reregistration.
I am not going to reflect on this project yet. I have been away for weeks and weeks doing a big piece of writing for work and I need to catch up to Thing 11! BUt I know I have to start work on my journal in the next month.
Thing 4: Current awareness
Twitter
I am a Twitter addict ... just love it. Here are some of the reasons why:
- It is not time consuming - I can pop in and catch up very quickly through a quick scan back to where I last read, or I can just search on @me and reply to any I need to,
- or It can be a great time waster: I can 'chat' with people, join conversations, follow links and check out trending hashtags,
- some TV programmes are great fun with a twitter hashtag open - the commentary can be as amusing as the tv show (eg My big fat gypsy wedding is hilarious with commentary),
- Extremely useful and informative during natural disasters: Christchurch earthquakes #eqnz, snow storms last week #snowmageddon etc,
- professional development: I get so many fabulous links from Twitter; its like having my personal reading list 'weeding' who filter out the best links for me.
RSS Feeds
Before Twitter there was Bloglines and I absolutely loved it. Every evening I would park up the couch with a kid each side watching tv and catch up on a bunch of posts from my favourite websites. Then Twitter came along and I fell out of the habit of reading Bloglines so religiously ... and then the announcement that Bloglines was closing. I sulkily transferred all my feeds to Google Reader and sadly it is just not the same. I have found it hard to get used to but I think I have just fallen into a new groove with Twitter.
http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/
Pushnote
I have grouped my feeds into lists and while I read my 'favourites' every day some lists back up for a week or two. My favourite blogs at the moment are:
Pushnote
This is a completely new tool for me. It doesn't like me to be honest though I have signed up and rated 1 or 2 sites to see how it works. I didn't post it to my twitter account because i hate it when people flood my stream with updates like this ie runkeeper, foursquare etc. I can't envisage a way that I can use this to add value to my life. If I find a good site I mark it in delicious,
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Mark Osborne : the Open Source School
Mark is Deputy Principal of Albany Senior High School. Open source software and cloud computing have been essential in the establishment of this school, and in this presentation from the 2010 EDtalks Symposium Mark outlines his beliefs about the advantages and opportunities that open source and cloud computing bring to the students, teachers and school community.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Thing 3 : Consider Your Personal Brand
So who else has done a spot of vanity searching this week?
Google Search
A Google search on my name gave 3 pretty solid pages about me, but by the 4th page it was about half me and half other Joann Ransoms (there are lots in the USA you know).
The first page of listings showed I am pretty active on this interweb thingee:
A fair bit of my writing is starting to appear on these pages too: my most read blogposts for instance. The top 4 are about Koha and bullying ... which is interesting (not the Koha - thats no surprise - but the teenage bullying). I have only ever written 2 posts about bullying (out of 162) and they both make this list of search results ... not sure how I feel about that...
Google images shows almost a whole page of the lovely photo of me in Singapore taken by the very talented Cindi Trainor (you can't see the Singapore Sling I was nursing or even recognize that we were sitting in Raffles). I wrote and asked Cindi if I could use it as my 'official' photo on twitter, blog profiles etc. which was a very smart thing to do. It is a photo I am very happy with and it is the photo that Google finds over and over again. Sadly, however, I am now quite grey (ok - white) and my lovely bright hair in that photo could only be regained through spending vast amounts at the hairdresser, so it may be time to update my photo ... false advertising and all that.
I remember in Singapore Jenny Levine commented over a meal or a drink or something how important it was to 'author' your own online profile and I have deliberately done that over the last few years. Her reasoning was something to do with identity theft ie 'THIS is me' but this whole Google vanity search thing has been an eye opener.
Name used
I always use jransom wherever I can - not some nickname - mostly because I couldn't think of anything clever. As time has worn on I am actualy quite happy that my name has become my brand.
Professional vs Personal Identity
I have merged the two because I believe that people connect with personalities rather than organisations. I want to be an authentic and 'real' online person that people can relate to and engage with. I do try very hard to keep my family and truly personal stuff offline. I used to have facebook for family only but got sick of turning down friend requests from professional colleagues and people I didn't know at all. I might have viewed facebook as 'strictly personal' but clearly the rest of the world didn't / doesn't.
Visual Brand
My professional blog Library Matters is very clean and plain and modern but my recipe blog Lest they be Lost is branded entirely differently. This is very deliberate to show that my recipes are a completely different side of my 'personna'.
Google Search
A Google search on my name gave 3 pretty solid pages about me, but by the 4th page it was about half me and half other Joann Ransoms (there are lots in the USA you know).
The first page of listings showed I am pretty active on this interweb thingee:
- a blog post I wrote about CPD23 on this blog,
- my linkedin professional profile,
- my slideshare site with a bunch of professional presentations,
- my 'local' professional biography on our library website,
- a blogpost congratulating me being named an ALJ Mover and Shaker,
- a Youtube interview with Kathryn Greenhill on 'hacking the library',
- a blog post by The Shifted Librarian (Jenny Levine) talking about my Kete presentation at Bridging Worlds in Singapore,
- photo of me in Cindi Trainor's Flickr stream (from Bridging World's),
- my Good Reads profile (what?!),
- Movers and Shakers article in American Library Journal.
A fair bit of my writing is starting to appear on these pages too: my most read blogposts for instance. The top 4 are about Koha and bullying ... which is interesting (not the Koha - thats no surprise - but the teenage bullying). I have only ever written 2 posts about bullying (out of 162) and they both make this list of search results ... not sure how I feel about that...
Google images shows almost a whole page of the lovely photo of me in Singapore taken by the very talented Cindi Trainor (you can't see the Singapore Sling I was nursing or even recognize that we were sitting in Raffles). I wrote and asked Cindi if I could use it as my 'official' photo on twitter, blog profiles etc. which was a very smart thing to do. It is a photo I am very happy with and it is the photo that Google finds over and over again. Sadly, however, I am now quite grey (ok - white) and my lovely bright hair in that photo could only be regained through spending vast amounts at the hairdresser, so it may be time to update my photo ... false advertising and all that.
I remember in Singapore Jenny Levine commented over a meal or a drink or something how important it was to 'author' your own online profile and I have deliberately done that over the last few years. Her reasoning was something to do with identity theft ie 'THIS is me' but this whole Google vanity search thing has been an eye opener.
Name used
I always use jransom wherever I can - not some nickname - mostly because I couldn't think of anything clever. As time has worn on I am actualy quite happy that my name has become my brand.
Professional vs Personal Identity
I have merged the two because I believe that people connect with personalities rather than organisations. I want to be an authentic and 'real' online person that people can relate to and engage with. I do try very hard to keep my family and truly personal stuff offline. I used to have facebook for family only but got sick of turning down friend requests from professional colleagues and people I didn't know at all. I might have viewed facebook as 'strictly personal' but clearly the rest of the world didn't / doesn't.
Visual Brand
My professional blog Library Matters is very clean and plain and modern but my recipe blog Lest they be Lost is branded entirely differently. This is very deliberate to show that my recipes are a completely different side of my 'personna'.
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