Andrew Green’s keynote speech went to the heart of what libraries offer: collections and services. Delivered against a deceptively innocuous photo slideshow, the speaker offered consistently challenging proposals for change.
Marros in Camarthenshire — see what I mean about deceptively innocuous photos? CC-BY-NC-SA Andrew Green via Flickr
Green began by evoking the academic libraries of his early career, institutions with a ‘quasi-religious’ devotion to local print collections and a sense of control over emerging technology. However, growing user independence, coupled with more accessible and homogeneous ‘common collections’ have since undermined the role of academic libraries.
How can we reassert our value in this climate? Green proposed that less effort should be invested in common collections. Instead, we should focus on services such as sharing our expertise in digital literacy, collaborative working, intellectual property and Open Access. Library holdings remain important, but Green stressed that we should emphasise our distinctive collections and share these with wider audiences (see the RLUK 2014 report).
In keeping with the conference theme of ‘developing professions’, Green encouraged staff to cultivate a broader skillset. We need to become digitally adept, expert promoters and successful fundraisers, with an ability to engage academics and new audiences.
While provocative, Green’s talk expressed confidence about the future, and challenged us to be ambitious in finding our role within it.
[written for the Bodleian Libraries Staff Development Newsletter, August 2015)
Looking back at my expectations and ambitions in my Thing 3 post, I have learned more about social media and engaged with more people online. I’ve live tweeted from Librarycamp ‘13 at Birmingham back in November and explored other people’s images on Flickr.
However, I’ve been quite inconsistent with Twitter, at times checking daily and at others leaving my account for weeks. I’ve also failed to tweet regularly, and have shied away from advertising my blog posts for this programme. In some ways this is justifiable, because my reflections on my own experiences with social media may not be relevant or interesting to others. I’ll endeavour to draw attention to other blog posts in future.
I’ve also posted in splurges rather than consistently, which I realise is neither good for instilling a blogging habit nor for building up an audience. However, it has encouraged me to write rapidly and without an inhibiting degree of self-consciousness, and I’ve enjoyed it. At times I’ve probably not taken the idea of my personal brand seriously enough (I don’t think my facetious blog tags will do me any favours), but then again, I repeated the Google Search for myself (in Incognito mode) suggested for Thing 6, and all of my Emma Jones tags have done their job- I’m there!
I went all out on the tagging [Photo: Flickr user ekai CC-BY-NC-SA]
In terms of my next steps, I’d like to explore some of the tools that I didn’t spend as much time learning about during the 23 Things programme, like Instagram and Prezi. And if I suddenly become a prolific social media user (or have to manage a number of accounts as part of my job), I’ll probably want to explore a social media manager like HootSuite. I’d also like to look at more digital tools and skills. I fancy trying my hand at some of the exercises on Codeacademy, as I’m a complete novice. I’d also like to take a look at image display software for books, as the Wellcome Trust have just made their document viewer freely available. This might be useful for small-scale digitization projects in future job roles, and is something my supervisor has discussed with me. I think Balliol Archivist’s proposal for a 23 Things-style CDP programme aimed at library, archive and academic staff interested in the history of the book and managing collections would be really useful- we should make it happen!
Doodle polls have been the saviours of my inbox many a time. I get irritated with long threads of emails involving large groups of people trying to arrange meetings, with dates and times being ceaselessly volleyed back and forth. One of the most frustrating aspects of this for everyone is that no one wants to be the adjudicator. With Doodle polls, a simple table can show which time and date is the most popular, which saves arguments and distracting emails. I’ve used this tool to arrange group Skype calls before, but I can also imagine using it to coordinate times for small group tailored training sessions or to arrange times for library tours.
Not this kind of Doodle, obviously [Photo: DeviantART user samanthaulita CC-BY-NC-SA
Google Drive
I’ve used Google Drive for collaborative work before, such as group manuscript transcriptions and a pilot Library of Lost Books project. I’ve also tried uploading documents and creating them from scratch using GD (I’m writing this post on it right now!) I like being able to access documents without carrying a flash drive everywhere, and the version control looks good. However, I’ve found typing can be a bit laggy, and I’ve not been able to get quite the same formatting or word counts from Word documents which I’ve uploaded and tried to edit within GD. I’m not sure if I’d be able to use reference management software in GD as easily as I can within Word, but there are features offered by GD that the MS Office suite doesn’t provide, such as in-document Google and Google Image searches, and geomap charts from spreadsheets. Here’s a rather crude geomap I created from the data on books by country of publication in the Fellows’ Library:
Some of the more improbable ones, such as the book from Turkmenistan, have since proven to be isolated cataloguing code errors. But you get the idea.
Due to the differences I’ve experienced in formatting and word counts, I probably wouldn’t edit academic work in Google Drive, but I might well use it to back up project work saved to my work station.
The library I work in has started a new blog for 2014, which allows staff to share news with the college and general public. One of its regular features is the Book of the Month. An early printed book from the college collection is displayed in the Fellows’ Library, alongside a caption. This caption, together with some photos, is shared on the blog. Here’s the caption/post I wrote for February:
While I do occasionally check the Stats page on WordPress, I find the metrics ambiguous. If I look at the popularity of the post above, for example, does this count all views of the post (including the default home page, which has rolling posts), or only the views from people clicking on the post title? The referrer section of the Stats page provides a useful indicator of how people arrived at the blog, but (presumably for privacy) this is sometimes frustratingly general. For example, the referrer may be Twitter, but it is unclear whether the website traffic has been attracted by a tweet I wrote, or one written by someone else.
Bit.ly does a much better job at evaluating the impact of advertising links to posts, rather than counting views by blog followers or views from search engine results. I’ve used it to shorten links before, but never to keep count of views. I’ve set up an account to track clicks on the link above.
“All One Clicks”: Cheers, bit.ly.
I’d like these posts to reach a wider audience, but I know to do that I’ve got to get on with the self-promotion stuff. Next time I post something on the jesuslibraries blog, I’ll tweet a bit.ly link and see if this has any effect on the Stats.
I’ve always prided myself on taking great care over my academic referencing, so initially I was a little wounded when I discovered that there was software which could manage and format references just as well for me. But after my fit of pique subsided, I conceded that a mechanical process like referencing really should be automated (providing a critical pair of eyes can be cast over it to check its accuracy).
A few months ago I decided to have a play around with Zotero, chosen (with the help of this handy LibGuides table) for being free, accessible from any computer via a browser plug-in, and for its ability to capture PDFs and save screenshots (which I find handy when I’ve seen a reference online that I’d like to look up later). And the types of online resources it can deal with are impressive. It’s a halfway house between a bookmarks folder and more conventional work-in-progress bibliography. Google Books, Youtube, this blog post, anything. The write’n’cite feature in MS Word is also very intuitive.
Zotero: It’s a bit heroic [Photo: Flickr user Graham Steel CC-BY-NC-SA]Although I haven’t had an excuse to try it yet, the ability to share references looks promising. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if reading lists were sent out like this, with records linking back to a library catalogue or to PDF journal articles? This would be handy for library hotlists (perhaps librarians and academic staff could contribute to a shared Zotero folder?), as well as making it one step easier for students to go through a long reading list. There’s no need to patronize experienced students, and there’s no merit in the slog of looking things up on the catalogue every time.
The only thing I haven’t got the hang of yet is adding chapters within edited volumes to my Zotero folders. At the moment, I’m finding the book via Google Books/SOLO, importing the reference, and then typing in details for each chapter I need. If there’s a simpler workaround for this, it would make my day if someone could let me know!
I assumed that Pinterest was all about curating aesthetically pleasing items, but after looking at the Bodleian History Faculty Library’s account, I’ve realized that there’s much greater potential for libraries. Not only can Pinterest showcase a library’s history and treasures, but it can also act as a…well, pin board for flyers, links to online resources and photos of service points.
Instagram’s not something I’ve explored before, but I’m excited by the idea of using it to publicize rare book holdings. Although the images wouldn’t be good enough for bibliographical scholarship, I’m sure that they could contribute to a library’s branding by reaching a much wider audience. There’s definitely a strong contingent of intellectually curious, artsy users on there, and what better subjects to put through some retro filters than old books?
Rare books on Instagram (via statigr.am)
Flickr
I’ve shamelessly scoured Flickr for most of the images I’ve used on this blog so far, as it’s so easy to find reusable images by licence. Google Images now has a search filter that allows users to search for Creative Copyright (CC) images, but I’ve found that most of the results point back to Flickr photos anyway (possibly because the licence metadata is so clear).
Inspired by 23 Things, I decided to set up my own account. I really like the layout of the photostream and the ability to post photos to groups, although I feel like I’m being tricked into posting my photos on Facebook every time I log in using that account; as much as I don’t like password fatigue, the idea of knowingly giving permission to Facebook to monitor my activity on other sites bothers me more.
I’ve put my photos up with a CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike) licence. I feel I should be a bit more permissive and allow users to remix my photos and take them out of context, but for now I’m quite attached to the idea of being credited. Here’s one of my photos from the handpress printing course I’m taking with Paul Nash (Bodleian/Story Museum):
And here are a few Flickr users that are worth following:
I’d really like to get a handle on copyright issues because I feel that information professionals, as their job titles suggest, should be clued up and willing to give informal advice. Many librarians already have to give guidance about avoiding plagiarism and making work open access, so it wouldn’t be surprising if readers looked to them for authoritative advice on other kinds of copyright issues.
For instance: who owns the copyright of images and transcriptions of medieval manuscripts when the authors are dead? Do the repositories that pay to preserve them have a claim? And if so, do they own all images, or only those which have a creative element (3D rather than 2D)? Can these be reused? Do the the reproduction licence costs and commercial profits from merchandise outweigh public access rights (for example, uploading Wikimedia images for all to see and use)? Will Noel’s recent McKenzie Lecture, entitled ‘Bibliography in Bits’, argued that data should be made available for new and unexpected uses, and that CC licences helped dignify images with metadata rather than encourage pirating. I also thought John Overholt’s tweet about copyright claims was quite persuasive:
As you can see, I know next to nothing about this issue. Part of the problem stems from not knowing where to find reliable information, and from not understanding how the laws of different jurisdictions affect an international space like the internet. If anyone’s got some pointers, I’d be very grateful!
In most instances, I think the linear movement from slide to slide gives a decent sense of coherence to regular Powerpoint presentations. As I’m not yet at ease with giving formal presentations, I’ll probably stick with Powerpoint for now. That said, imaginative design is important for slides too. There are plenty of inspiring examples on Slideshare, although typically the slides which get highlighted are corporate ones (and I’m not going to advertise them further here!)
I don’t have a presentation to upload at present, but there’s a project showcase towards the end of my trainee year, which will provide a good opportunity to share a presentation online. I’ll probably use Slideshare, embed it in this blog and possibly share through my LinkedIn profile. This is definitely a way to reach new audiences. Clare Bristow’s Slideshare presentation about the History Faculty library’s antiquarian books has reached (at the time of writing) almost 2000 views, far surpassing the number of people who saw the original presentation. As my project is of a similar nature, this might provide a good template for my presentation.
For all its shortcomings, I treat Wikipedia as an academic comfort blanket within easy reach of a quick Google search. For my purposes, I’ve never found an article inaccurate or partisan enough to shake my faith in the reliability of Wikipedia’s articles, only some which are too short or basic. But just knowing that at least one other person has reached the same conclusion, categorized a work with the same label, or hit upon the same important date as I expected is reassuring (even if it betrays a desperate acceptance of confirmation bias). I’m also consistently impressed by the rapidity with which pages are updated in light of current affairs, such as a person’s death- I’m convinced there’s a small but dedicated clique of morbid editors who have a secret death date scoreboard…
The Wikipedians’ death date scoreboard as it stands [Photo: Wikimedia Commons]Even when I was a fresh undergraduate (2009), the critical appraisal of Wikipedia as an academic source was coming into university syllabi. The message then was NEVER RELY ON WIKIPEDIA, which I think was too much of a blanket statement; although I might not base my academic work on a quote from Wikipedia, on more than one occasion I’ve found the citations and further links essential. Librarians who teach study and reference skills have a role to play here.
To see what goes on behind the articles, I looked at the Talk page for the Bodleian Library. This is clearly the place where people with an axe to grind mouth off- one user declares the Bodleian isn’t really a library at all, and proceeds to take exception to the idea of it on the basis that it’s a legal deposit library. But there’s also a lot of good will and informal chatter on the page, as well as transparency (a Bodleian Libraries employee offers more accurate information but asks someone else to correct it). This looks like a really good example of library employees building respectful relationships with the Wikipedia community.
Hopefully, one day I’ll be brave enough to wade in and contribute my own edits!
As discussed in my Thing 13 post, I’m not an avid podcast listener. Nevertheless, I realise that a lot of people are, and I think that putting recordings of talks online is a low-cost way of opening them up to a bigger audience and giving them a life after the event. For instance, there were a number of appealing talks about the history of the book in Oxford last term, but their timings meant that many people couldn’t attend. If recordings could be combined with links to images of the books discussed, even better. However, I appreciate that the cost in staff or enthusiasts’ time is a consideration for the organizers of these talks. I think convincing employers of the potential audience of podcasts and having a stategy for advertising them would be essential if I were to produce them for work in the future.
Screencasts
The combination of visual cues and verbal guidance can make Screencasts a lot easier to follow than a list of written instructions. It was for this reason that I taught myself how to use Zotero with SOLO by following a screencast tutorial by Ollie Bridle. I don’t have access to Adobe Captivate, but making a short dummy tutorial with screencast-o-matic was straightforward enough. The ability to add annotations and arrows to screen shots with Jing could also be useful for producing supporting documentation, like circulation and cataloguing training handouts. Annotated screencasts might also be an effective form of handover guidance for the next person in my post.
Videos
I made a video on Youtube, but found it frustratingly difficult to edit (or to add a voiceover). Instead, I decided to familiarise myself with some of the things that Windows Live Movie Maker can do. The short video that I made of myself was too cringeworthy to upload, but it gave me some valuable insights into how I’d appear in a video tutorial:
I move my head a lot when I talk. This is annoying to watch
Making eye contact with the camera without getting distracted by the screen is quite difficult to do
I seem to have a slight lisp, and I don’t know whether that’s because of the recording quality or because I’ve always had one and everyone’s been too polite to mention it. This might make it listeners to follow what I’m saying
I’m not sure why I’d need to make a webcam video tutorial for my job, but I do like the idea of video inductions to libraries. Here’s a couple of inspired library concept videos from Oxford:
Slideshare makes sense. If a speaker has put a lot of work into making a presentation cogent and stylish, they might as well put it up for other people to admire and use. I’ve found Slideshare pretty useful for finding visual explanations of concepts like linked data. Flicking through a full presentation in five minutes certainly makes me feel mega efficient. Having concepts broken down into bitesize slides is also reassuring.
However, I get the feeling that I’m probably missing a lot of the contextual information and discussion that comes from hearing the presentation too. One solution is to link the slides with an accompanying podcast, but that negates the benefit of being able to rapidly skip through images. Perhaps if I want to put some slides online, I’ll have to reconsider the maxim that less text on slides is good, or adapt the slides between presenting in person and uploading them for others to use independently.
Podcasts
I’ve never really used podcasts, but as someone who hardly listens to the radio, that’s not surprising. The only podcasts I’ve used are Emma Smith’s Approaching Shakespeare lectures at Oxford. Her authoritative talks confirmed my understanding of some of the plays without having to select and delve into a lot of secondary literature, which wasn’t necessary for my purposes.
YouTube
I find watching a video of a talk is much more appealing, if only because I try to be a super productive multi-tasker when listening to podcasts, and consequently focus less. Most of the TED talks I’ve seen have been great examples of short, persuasive presentations. Surprisingly for such a visual medium, most don’t have a lot of pyrotechnics on the screen behind. They’re masterclasses in engaging public speaking. I particularly like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk on feminism.
I also know that I’m more likely to browse for other things through YouTube’s suggested videos than I would be to trawl through Slideshare or iTunes. Whether that will make someone who’s adverse to public speaking choose this medium is another matter. I imagine this will a concern for many others who want to be in a profession which is increasingly involved in online outreach.
foxingclever 