Verily it hath been an age since I last posted

This is, in part, due to the fact that Blogger ate my previous post, I'm not sure why but it has definitely vanished into the vast Bermuda triangle of the internet. It probably wasn't that interesting anyway.

Ooh look, it isn't September anymore! *dances*

I think I can speak for us all when I say, what a relief. It seems to me that you need a full year to recover from it, but you also manage to forget, in that time, just how awful it is. There's just nothing like the experience of running around like a headless chicken for the better part of six weeks, with paperwork, books and students everywhere, in no particular order. I think this is what people sometimes refer to as "character building," I can safely say my character has been sufficiently built for one year!

It also seems like an age since we completed the two-day PTLLS course back at the beginning of term and I realise I haven't really evaluated it, being sucked into the September vortex as we all were. It was definitely a challenge in terms of timing, fitting in the assignments in the time allowed, but I think it was a useful experience and definitely gave me more background knowledge on the teaching process, with some handy tips on managing groups in a learning environment. It was also nice to do something as a 'team', though obviously we were missing our lovely LAs.

In other news, myself and Lorraine were able to attend the latest Heritage Open Day in Oxford, where we saw a demo of the Heritage upgrade, Cirqa. It is very shiny. One interesting point that I took away from the session was that, for individual users, you can change the background image that appears as default - Chris Hemsworth anyone? :) Obviously there were a great deal more salient points made in the session and they should all be on the handout I circulated via e-mail, but let me know if you're missing anything!

I think i've thrown enough irreverance around now to make up for the last couple of months' absence, so i'm off to do something useful. Farewell until next time!

Dusting off ye olde blogge

Hello out there! It certainly has been a while. I'd like to say i've been doing exciting things but i'm not sure that writing a hundred million SB invoices and RFID tagging really qualifies.

I don't really have a specific 'theme' for this post, it's more of a reflection on the work we have done on 23 Things thus far, and what could be done in the future. I think, for instance, that I really should have numbered each 'thing' in posts as I went through, rather than spending time thinking up funky post titles, so this is something I plan to go back through my posts and update.

Looking back, i've also enjoyed the variety of tools we have explored for sharing information online, with particular shout-outs going to Prezi, Pearltrees and Pinterest. I think we can all see this in action with the new LRC Induction Prezi, thanks to Marianne and Lisa who did an excellent job of polishing what was definitely not polished when I first had a play around with it!

I was also thinking about whether we could use the 23 Things blogging platform to support the upcoming PTLLS course - assuming, obviously, that any of us have the spare time to do anything in September - it might be an interesting way to share ideas and thoughts about the course with everyone on the team.

I leave you with a quote from Donald E. Westlake on the subject of priorities, and cake (both of which we may well be needing a surplus of in the weeks to come!)

"Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten."

Why would you have cake and not eat it? Answers on a postcard please ...

Social Cataloguing

At present i'm trying to triangulate a point between three fans where I can achieve maximum coolness; thus far I am experiencing mixed success (cool ankles and ears, still too hot in all areas between). Any more of this 30 celsius nonsense and i'm moving to Siberia. Oops I forgot to say hello

Hello, loyal blog readers! This week in 23 Things we are exploring social cataloguing sites.

I'm no stranger to LibraryThing and have been using it for a while. The layout is simple and you can organise books into different shelves, as well as use keywords to connect with similar books and indeed similar-minded readers. I also enjoy the 'stats/memes' function, where you can view stats for your library in a number of different ways, including: 'vous et nul autre', books shared between you and exactly one other LibraryThing member and 'controversial books', a list of your most 'controversial' books as measured by standard deviation of members' star ratings. Somewhat unsurprisingly for me, I've enjoyed several things that others haven't, but then, Angry White Pyjamas does cater to a bit of a niche readership...

In the interests of branching out, I'm now using GoodReads as well. Overall, I must admit I find the site nicer to use - the colour scheme is brighter, for starters, and I like the quotations and quizzes that are available to catalogue on the site, as well as books. The 'Listopia' function is also interesting, similar to the lists you can create on Amazon. Speaking of which, Shelfari (Amazon's contribution to the social cataloguing website medley) intrigues me, as I wonder exactly how much it is about 'cataloguing' as opposed to 'getting people to buy things.' More to follow on this, as it seems you have to sign in using your Amazon account, something I don't plan on doing at work.


If you happen to be bored, or have a spare moment or two, you can check out my 'read' bookshelf on GoodReads here:

my read shelf:


Until the next post - keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep blogging!

Online bookmarking, the world beyond old receipts and train tickets

Hello readers!

Welcome to the first blog post for July, we're now officially in the midst of the British summer and enjoying all the bounteous sunshine that it has to offer!

..........

ahem.

I have spent the last few weeks dabbling in bookmarking sites including Pearltrees, Pinterest and LibraryThing, with a side order of Delicious and Evernote, though I haven't had too much success with the latter. In terms of Perry's 'organisational thinking', this surprises me:

American philosopher, John Perry, identified two types of organisational thinking.* Vertical organisers tend to to work on one task at a time, with an uncluttered surface and make good use of filing cabinets and (in a computer sense) hierarchical folders. Traditional bookmarking sites favour vertical thinking.

By contrast, horizontal organisers like all their projects spread out in front of them so everything is close to hand. The approach is used as a memory aid to keep track of project status, and as a prompt to carry out tasks. More modern bookmarking sites, such as PearlTrees, are better suited to horizontal organisers.

 *OUCS (2011) Reserach Information Managment: Organising Humanities Material. Oxford University Computing Service, Oxford.

I would have said that I am a 'vertical organiser', working on one thing at a time in a linear, hierarchical way. (I have been known to sub-divide my e-mail and T drive folders to a ridiculous degree.) However, given that i've found Pearltrees, particularly, to be more useful in re-designing the Hair and Beauty e-maps from the old VLE, it would seem that I have 'horizontal' tendencies as well! Not like that.

This brings me to Pinterest, another real discovery for me in terms of presenting information. I've been playing around with boards largely for Hair and Beauty, my subject liaison. I found this a particularly difficult subject to be involved with initially, as my liaison roles at Brockenhurst were very academic and suited a different type of support. Pinterest is brilliant because it allows you to select useful tidbits, including photographs, and organise them however you see fit - up until recently i've been pinning onto a 'Hair and Beauty Inspiration board', something I think Holly used to do, and it works very well with this. I did manage to share it with a member of the department who was interested in showing this to students, so I'd call that a success!

Lastly, I have always enjoyed using LibraryThing as a virtual extension of my bookshelf, the online branch of my reading 'empire', as it were. I particularly like the 'connections' feature which suggests other books you might like, without the same element of rampant capitalism with which certain online retailers do the same thing. It also makes excellent widgets.

I leave you with this gem, courtesy of Pinterest. Let us not forget our paperback origins in this brave new digital world :) Until next time!

Bookbandit vs the LRC iPad (and Apple products in general)

Suffice it to say that the first meeting of Bookbandit and the LRC iPad has not been without incident.

My general ineptitude with Apple devices has its roots waaaay back in the days of my Photography A-level; wrestling with a Mac for the first time was rather like trying to work with the sort of alien technology we used to see on Stargate SG-1. I've always found the menu 'systems', or indeed, lack thereof, very confusing and very difficult to get used to compared with the Windows operating system. It also seems near impossible to find useful everyday things like the print queue, the ability to take a screenshot, or basically to do anything approaching normal IT work.

I don't have anything against the idea of the iPad; having information in a more portable and readily accessible format is all for the good, but in my experience it's rarely ever actually worked correctly - and I mean this in a way more than with Windows devices. Perhaps it seems worse with Apple products in particular because they promise so much, but don't always deliver.

Does anyone else have problems with the difference between Windows/Mac operating systems? Anyone a total convert to Apple? I'd be interested to know your thoughts.

Yes, this entire rant post was prompted by the iPad auto-correcting 'LRC' to 'Orc'. That and i'm still not really over the whole 'fingerprinty ewww-ness' of touchscreen devices, my hands are usually very clean but ohdeargodthesmudges. No likey, my friends, no likey.

Twitter reloaded

Good morning all! (Well, it has been thus far, at least, despite the weather).

This week's post sees a return to the realm of Twitter as I didn't quite finish the tasks last time. I've had trouble tracking down the specific webpage for the CILIP InfoLit group and, by extension, the associated Twitter feed, but I think I have isolated it at last. (Or something that looks very much like it!)

IL training session in Manchester, 13 May. More info at bit.ly/109kKmo #infolit
— CILIP InfoLit Group (@infolitgroup) May 3, 2013

The itinerary for the conference can be found using the link above, and you can explore topics on the #infolit feed on Twitter.

One session in particular caught my eye: 'Supporting research online @ MMU [Manchester Metropolitan University]: information literacy, digital literacy and employability themes' by Nicola Beck, Senior Assistant Librarian (MMU). I like the marriage of information literacy and digital literacy because, truly, you can't have one without the other and I think, even in the digital age we currently reside in, information literacy is vastly underrated by many and is something that deserves continued promotion. Here endeth the quill-and-ink rant.

Has anyone else had a look at this yet, or had similar problems finding it? #infolit is an active Twitter feed and the topics discussed are quite interesting (plus their conferences seem to have excellent freebies, see my previous entry for details).  

Now I return to making myself seasick with Prezi. Sayōnara!

To tweet or not to tweet

Greetings readers!

I have been gradually dipping my toes into the great sea of Twitter over the last few weeks and again, despite my miserly old-school ways, have found it an interesting and useful tool for sharing ideas and information. I'm not going to lie, though, 140 characters is a real challenge for me, as someone more used to writing reams and reams at a time (you need only look at previous blog posts for this to be made apparent!)

Feeds du jour:

@waterstones, particularly interesting at the moment because of their 'the book that made me' project, which you can find and contribute to by using the hashtag #tbtmm

@GuardianBooks, news, reviews and author interviews. Recent threads include: why do some books give you a hangover?, recommendations for a great sci-fi book and a reading group.

@infolitgroup: CILIP's InfoLit group, who apparently had some very nice screen cloths to give away at their Annual Conference: https://twitter.com/infolitgroup/status/322621386717806592/photo/1

I haven't really tweeted much myself yet, I must admit that I don't think I have anything worth sharing. I could go on forever about the trials of timetabling and the "Game of [LCH] Keys" but i'm not sure there's really a world-wide market for this. Is anyone else 'tweeting' on a regular basis, if so, what do you tend to tweet about?

(On a totally unrelated-to-work note, 'Star Trek Into Darkness' is awesome, absolutely worth the £10 investment at the cinema. Though I do look back with fond rememberance on the days when you could get a ticket and actually have change from £10).

Until the next post, arrivederci!

@bpclibrary20 First tweet! Taken longer to compose than some of my 5,000 word uni essays. Also, welcome back to our LMS! #yayHeritageworks
— Once More (@BPCbookbandit) May 14, 2013

Breathing new life into old e-maps using Pearltrees

Greetings on this cold, grey and rather miserable Tuesday afternoon. Fear not, though, I bring shinies. Or, more accurately, pearlies.

Yes, today I have been exploring Pearltrees, as a way of recycling the Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy e-maps from the old VLE. I'm quite pleased with the look of the 'Pearltrees' and the interface is very user-friendly, although it does keep badgering me to upgrade to a premium account. I mean, really, do I look like i'm made of money?



I'm enjoying this method of presentation for the old 'e-maps', it's much more interesting than looking at a list of hyperlinks, although it has more potential for confusion. In an ideal, non-premium world I would like to have spaced the pearls out a bit more to reduce this, but alas, organisational freedom comes at a price. As does changing the background picture of each pearl, hence why the 'notes', or groupings, are all the same.

Thanks to Lorraine for giving me a heads up on this resource, it is indeed excellent :)

Coming soon, my half-hearted adventures into the realm of Twitter. I mean, really, 140 characters? An alien concept for someone who still uses full words and punctuation in text messages.

When Bookbandit met Prezi, or, here be widgets

A couple of you have asked me how I managed to embed my Hair and Beauty Pinterest board onto my blog, and in this Prezi I have attempted to show you how! I enjoy the fact that i've had to embed, as a widget, a Prezi that explains how to embed things as widgets, making this a meta-widget, I suppose.

This is also my very first Prezi so any feedback would be welcome. (It still makes me feel seasick.) Oh, and 'Once More' is the shortened version of my blog title and e-mail address, just so you're aware.

RSS Feeds

Who can believe we had brilliant sunshine on a bank holiday Monday? This surely heralds the coming of the apocalypse.

In other news, this week '23 Things' takes me aboard the good ship RSS (Really Simple Syndication). I've already embedded RSS feeds into my blog; I started with The British Library and have now swapped to 'Blogging Shakespeare', which can be found towards the bottom of the page largely because it isn't shiny and I don't really know what else to do with it. I must admit i'm finding Ebsco's LISTA very clunky and user-unfriendly, though it seems simple enough to create alerts and to share abstracts on your blog if desired.

EBSCOhost: Bard to the bone

I enjoyed the title of this, which is why i've shared it! Am going to have a play with the embedded RSS feed on my blog and see if I can make it a little more dynamic and interesting. If you can see it nearer the top of my page next time you check back you will know I have been successful :)

Exploring the blogosphere

Greetings, my fellow bloggers.

Our next challenge in the wonderful world of web 2.0 is to search for and explore other blogs, including but not necessarily limited to those that discuss web 2.0 technologies. I think this is the internet equivalent of mingling at parties, something I must admit I have never been any good at, but here's to turning over a new leaf and becoming, at least electronically, a well-connected, informed and interesting individual!

First, thank you to Debs for suggesting www.technorati.com as a base for searching for blogs. You can search by blog posts or complete blogs and they have some interesting themes or headings for blog subjects. The 'Top 100' list is worth a look through and you can also search by 'tags,' which adds more of a sense of exploration as you're not necessarily searching a specific subject or theme, but picking up clues here and there in search of buried blogging treasures. Sort of like a web 2.0 Indiana Jones. With fewer snakes.

Given my love of all things Shakespeare I decided to follow 'Blogging Shakespeare', http://bloggingshakespeare.com/, which is powered by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who I would one day love to work for. This is actually a collection of blogs all maintained by the SBT, which provides a breadth of news and information. I really like the layout of the main page as it's very dynamic, they've used warm colours and the various links to other sites, to the RSS feed etc are all clear and easy to find. They are also very active on Twitter so I follow their feed here as well.

This week, through the medium of Twitter, I was also able to share renowned fantasy author Joe Abercrombie's utter joy at the miracle that is the Crunchy Nut Cornflake.

The internet is a beautiful thing.

My personal brand

Happy Friday, folks!

Onto thing #3 of the 23, what do I consider to be my personal brand? With a pseudonym like 'Bookbandit' - thank you, teenage self - i'm obviously residing on the more casual end of the online-presence spectrum. I like to stay true to the love of books that has carried me through most, if not all, of my life and I think this is still possible in a professional context. (Some of my labels possibly less so, but I do maintain that Firefox is better than IE and George R. R. Martin does still owe me my social life from the last few months).

Having maintained various online accounts before, mentioning absolutely NO details whatsoever, I am used to both positive and negative comments and have found that the best response is often no response: just as in real life, people often make negative comments purely to provoke a reaction and, if denied this reaction, they soon get bored and move onto something (or someone) else. Constructive criticism is quite different, this allows you to have more of a 'conversation' with the commenter who offers their own advice or opinions in contrast to your own. I'm always happy to receive feedback I can do something with!

Happily, a google vanity search reveals a lot of results for a person with a very similar name to my own, an online-presence shield of sorts. However, it does also show one of my final year undergraduate essays on Shakespearean villainy and a link that suggests you can find articles about me from 1609. Rude.

World Book Night 2013

It's World Book Night 2013, ladies and gentlemen!
http://www.worldbooknight.org/books
Appallingly I haven't read any of the selected titles this year, although there are a couple on my "I should really read that when I have the time and am not obsessed with Game of Thrones" list. 
This post also coincides with the 'official' start of 23 Things, so here follows my mission statement for the course:  

I am taking part in this process to develop my knowledge of Web 2.0 technologies. I hope that this will contribute towards my CPD, giving me a different but complementary set of skills to the library/admin work I have been in for a couple of years now. I look forward to finding out how we can use Web 2.0 in the teaching and learning process, as a way of better connecting with our learners and of course with other library staff, at BPC and elsewhere. 

Having played around with all the bells and whistles I can justify for now, I must sadly return to the serious business of timetabling. Once more unto the breach, indeed.      

Pinterest, RSS and Twitter

Greetings, readers.

This week i've successfully managed to embed my Hair and Beauty inspiration Pinterest board, something I have now shared with a member of the teaching staff. Hopefully this will give the students something a little more creative to do and show them that there are other ways to arrange their ideas. I always think, with a practical subject in particular, that it helps to have a variety of ways to work and to take on information. It's nice to have a fresh, creative way of looking at things, especially as we crawl towards the end of the week! 

In other news, I have now added a British Library news feed (RSS) and, for my sins, I have created a Twitter account. Currently I have no intention of tweeting myself, having nothing of any real interest to say, but I am following some interesting feeds including that of my erstwhile employer, Waterstones.

I'd like to think that a blog can never have too many widgets, but looking at my own I am starting to wonder ..
  

The widget has landed

Look, a shiny new widget!!  ----------------------------------------------------------------------->

This is just to showcase some of the new books i've ordered for Hair and Beauty, and so that I get to type the word 'widget'.

Not telling you how long it's taken me today to work out how to embed it ...

The Inaugural Post!

Welcome to my first blog post, ever! Being a somewhat reluctant member of the internet generation this is going to take some getting used to and I am, ultimately, much more a pen and paper sort of person (or should that be quill and ink?). Regardless, here begins my maiden voyage into blogging for the purpose of '23 Things', that is, using a blog to record experiences and thoughts of Web 2.0 technologies and how they could be useful in our library - and beyond!

Hopefully at the end of this process I will have a far better knowledge of different web technologies, blogging platforms and what on earth a 'widget' is. Who knows, I may even come to enjoy it.

Until next time!