Treasure trove and medieval madness

Into the third day of week six and I've almost caught up! Today it is Slideshare. I had a good look at the four suggested Slideshare sites and here are my thoughts: slides are great for reminding you of a talk (including Andy Preistner's excellent 'Marketing your library') - however, in general they are not so good if you haven't been there (they lack the detail).

That said, I found Phil Bradley's slides really good. I was hooked in by his slides on Facebook privacy and found the instructions on the slide easy to follow - so easy that I have used the application and tightened up my Facebook settings. Thanks Phil!

Facebook Privacy options

View more presentations from Phil Bradley.

Because this is a small library, we don't do formal presentations using slides. However, inspired by Phil Bradley, I can see that Slideshare could be used to give step-by-step instructions on how to find e-journals (for example), or how to use other resources provided by our library.

Anyway, I searched for Cambridge libraries and found Tony Hirst's link to a great UTube video called Medival Help Desk - it had me laughing out loud!

Time For A Library Shift

View more presentations from Tony Hirst.

Slideshare can be a lot of fun and informative too! I hope I will find the time to use it for our library in the future.

Creative Commons

With my new resolution of "One thing a day keeps the doctor away", I am launching into Thing 10 and Creative Commons licensing. Interesting that doing yesterday's search but limiting it to "Creative Commons licensed content" cut the number of images down to a third. However, there are still wonderful images of the library available and here is my favourite taken by 'erase':

It is so atmospheric of the library at night! I'll be looking at other photos in his Networkshop 37 Cambridge folder on Flickr... and I've made a decision that any photos I load onto Flickr will be under Creative Commons so that anyone can use them!

Flood of images

The Voyager upgrade has given me time to catch up on the 23 Things. Hooray! So here I am on Thing 9 and exploring Flickr... I've found some wonderful pictures of the library - they will be really useful for library guides, the website and publicity. Here's a screenshot:

I love the Library of Congress page of Mystery Pictures - what a great idea to get the public to help identify images in your archive. As for the photos of inside the UL - they are absolutely wonderful. If I saw such beautiful images of my library I'd be really pleased!

Brave New World (of Tagging)

Well, Clay Shirky's article proved to be really interesting. If you went to Dan Cohen's Arcadia Seminar then you will have encountered all these views before, but it was really useful to take some time out to read and ponder about classification on the web. Google's flexible searching has made Yahoo largely redundant as a search engine. I have to confess that I have hardly ever used Yahoo - I went straight to Google when I started using the web for work. Now it seems that we are at the beginning of a new revolution with Web2.0 tags providing flexibility for retrieval that the Library of Congress subject headings can't.

I think the Ann Arbor library catalogue is great. I'd love to see Newton look like that too. It's an exciting way to rejuvenate your library's online catalogue. The list of most popular tags is interesting - but perhaps not as helpful as it might be! You get the dross at the top: i.e. "Picture book" and "Picturebook" which account for thousands of tags and is not a very helpful search term. I went down the list until I found something more specific and clicked on "Anime" (281 tags). I then narrowed it down to "Books" instead of DVDs. Here's a screenshot:

It's great to introduce some interactivity into subject retrieval! Even for a trained librarian the Library of Congress headings present problems: you have to be familiar with the way the headings are constructed and also the headings change over time. Recently, we have been updating our history of art records and the bib check programme has been rejecting a lot of records with the (obsolete) heading "Art and power". With Web2.0 tags the user could add "art and power" as a tag for retrieval - the flexibility is there!

Sands of time

I've got temporarily stranded on the sandbank of Thing 8. The reason for it is the instruction to read Shirky's writings about the Internet - help, it's pages long! I've started on the book-check in the library this week and I've got NO TIME at all. Well ... I've printed Shirky out and his article will make good bedtime reading. Despite this setback, I HAVE reviewed the tags on all my posts in this blog - so I hope they will be more useful for other Cam23ers now!

Tweet ... I think I need help!

Well the Twitter account is up and running and it looks like it might be fun. However, I have failed miserably in my search for other Cam23 participants ... Oh dear, I must be doing something wrong. I have found the Jerwood Library in Grenwich, London, so now I am having a massive IDENTITY CRISIS. Surely my library is in Cambridge and has nothing to do with the performing arts? Help! It's late on Friday, so I'm going to ask my trusty right-hand-woman to help me out on Monday to find other cam23 tweets. There must be lots out there!

I was going to do a screenshot of my first tweet. However, suddenly everyone is tweeting and Twitter is over capacity - so here's that instead!

Well, I'm back on and excited now - I've picked up one follower already and become their follower too. Twitter is definitely getting better!

So what about Twitter for libraries? The Jerwood Library now has a Twitter account set up by 'girl Friday' so we can start tweeting. I think Twitter will be useful for general reminders to students (along the lines of 'Vacation borrowing starts today') and for advertising new developments with links to our web-page (for more info). Twitter should be great for this (and like email) will go directly to our users. We'll definitely use Twitter in future!

Jury's out

Well, my google Calendar is up and running.

Having somehow circumvented all Google's nosy questions about myself until now, it turned out that the calendar wouldn't work without a first name and surname (Duh! OBVIOUSLY when you are sharing your calendar with others, they need to know who you are). Still, feeling rather taken over by Google recently, I dug my heals in and set myself up incognitio as 'News Nowhere'.

I can see that this is another application that has lots of potential: it was easy to set up and use; and I'm impressed that the UL and some other libraries are already using it.

Personally, I'm not so keen because I already have an online calendar / shared calendar, using Outlook, and it works very well. I can see that Google Calendar would be useful to link colleagues or friends together who do not use Outlook. The disadvantage is that they would all need to have an iGoogle account. But, when all is said and done, I will certainly keep an open mind about using Google Calendar in the future and I'm thinking of using it to record bookings for Old Library visits which can be shared between the group of people who act as guides.

Here's a screenshot of my Google Calendar in operation:

Coffee spoons at midday

Doodle has been great. In the past I've responded to other people's Doodle requests, so it's not entirely new to me. However, it's great to be given instructions as to how to Doodle. I was quick on the draw and set up a coffee meeting using Doodle for some Cam23 'buddies'. I found Doodle clear and easy to use. It takes all the hassle out of arranging a meeting of a group of people. Top marks for this application! Here's a screenshot of our Doodle meeting. I'll definitely use this application a lot from now on.

Cracking the code

Can anyone help with this handwriting? I'm in the middle of cataloguing a special collection, recording provenance as I go along. This signature has me scratching my head! I can read the first name "Thomas" but I'd appreciate help with the surname. The suggestions so far have been "Grengreys" or "Gringreys".

What do you think?

OMG just remembered to blog about Thing 4

Spent a glorious time looking at other Cam23 blogs - I wonder if it could be called "bloggeling"? There must be a word for it already! Anyway, hours passed and I was still only halfway down the list .. help, I need to speed scan my way through.

What can blogging offer libraries? Well, from all the wonderful blogs Cam librarians have created already - it seems there's plenty. Firstly, it has created a vibrant web community of Cambridge librarians who are sharing ideas, helping each other and getting to know new colleagues. Secondly, it is a way to get information out to library users. Perhaps I could use it for weekly new accessions lists (the RSS feed only provides data for the previous day)? Or perhaps I might also create a blog for the Old Library to provide news and updates on our on-gong cataloguing project? I'm sure people have lots more ideas - I'd love to hear from them!

Meanwhile continuing the emerging Cam 23 cat theme here's some pics: "Getting to grips with the 23 Things"

Talkin' posh

Do you want people to think you are intelligent within seconds of opening your mouth? Bettina's McMenemy Seminar on Wednesday would have helped you out! But just in case you weren't there ... it's all in the pronunciation.

Bettina has conducted a number of experiments assessing how intelligent people are considered to be when speaking English with the following accents: BBC English or RP, regional English accents, English spoken by native German speakers and English spoken by Native Greek speakers. All listeners of the three nationalities rated people speaking BBC English as more intelligent. Moreover, the closer the accent of a non-native speaker is to BBC English the more intelligent they were perceived to be too!

However, other studies have shown that people with rural English accents are rated as much more trustworthy than people with RP accents. So it's your choice - would you rather sound intelligent or trustworthy?

Spagetti junction (my brain...)

Having an instructive and crazy time doing things 1, 2 , 3 and now 4! Starting off is easy - it's when you decide to customize that things go pear shaped... So many choices, so many clicks that do something you haven't expected, so many clicks that don't do ANYTHING at all. Thank heavens for the cancel button!!

Well iGoogle was fun (in the end) after the shock of finding out that I already had an account (well I must have created it for a Google application at some point) plus the dreaded password (which I couldn't remember). Half an hour later, I hit on the right password and was on my way. I spent happy hours (is this the best use of my time I ask myself?) customizing my site and choosing toolbar images for different pages. Then I added links to some blogs and to Copac and did some searches. I have never used Copac (Worldcat, RLUK and the ESTC are my choice) so it was good to explore it.

What can iGoogle offer libraries? It is a great aggregator of information for an individual user - through the choices you make information comes to you rather than you having to go looking for it. However, there are disadvantages: the iGoogle account is password protected and so is not a suitable platform for disseminating information. By setting preferences it could make you lazy and narrow your options by taking away some of the serendipity of web-searching. The main advantages: 1. It helps individual librarians to organise their professional lives, through gathering links and blogs in one place; 2. It helps librarians to understand the different formats we need to use to get our information out to our users.

We already use an RSS feed for new acquisitions - but I have now added some more RSS feeds to my browser toolbar: arcadia@cambridge ; 23 Things Cambridge ; Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog. I'll keep adding feeds when I find useful ones in the future.

These 23 things are taxing at first but once you get the hang of them they are fun!

Where is Here?

Who owns my digital property after I die? Can digital assets be passed on to an heir? Or do they belong to the platform? Can my family access it after I die? These are big questions ... and no-one knows the answers! But if anyone might it is Lilian Edwards.

It seems that by default most digital assets belong to the platform and if my family wants to access to my digitally created material they may have to go to court. But which country's laws apply? Is it the laws of the land of the platform or the laws of where I live? Many platforms have undisclosed and multiple locations of servers - they are literally "Nowhere"...

Week two

I'm having fun exploring the virtual world. I joined Cam23 to learn about all these wonderful things in cyberspace. Why? So I can put library information out there in a way that students and academics can pick up on easily.

Our library web and intranet pages have been up and running for several years. I have also dipped my toe in web2.0: an RSS feed for new acquisitions and Facebook fan pages for the library and our special collections.

The programme may stretch me - but I'm looking forward to finding out more!