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Turning the Page is a blog about professional development insights, ideas and opportunities for new librarians and recent library school graduates in Canada. |
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The other day I was browsing through Library Journal’s “Movers and Shakers 2012” (Vol. 137 No. 5). Among the featured information professionals was Emerging Technologies Librarian Stephen X. Flynn who has created a site for job seekers: It’s an open repository of samples of cover letters for a variety of professions to help inspire those among us who, like myself, get frustrated trying to craft the perfect sentences to grab the attention of hiring committees. Great idea!  Scan this code with your phone or visit http://rdc.libguides.com/goingmobile Saturday my co-worker Anne Marie Watson and I are presenting at the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper, Alberta. The topic of our discussion is affordable ways to integrate mobile technologies into library services, including text reference, QR codes, and mobile-friendly websites and apps. In other words, it will be about ways to go where library users are these days… on their cell phones, anywhere, anytime… Our presentation slides and more information about technologies and resources are available on a Going Mobile LibGuide I created to complement the session. I noticed an interesting post about citation pop up on the RDC Library Facebook wall today. Apparently, MLA has created a standard format for citing tweets. Learn more here. APA has this covered as well (explained here). Of broader interest, “social scholarship” is a really interesting concept that embraces the act of scholars using Web 2.0 to both conduct research and share their research findings with others. For more information about this, take a look at Social Scholarship on the Rise, a blog post by Laura Cohen written back in 2007. This post had a big impact on me while I was in library school learning about both information literacy and social software; I even wrote a paper on it that I have saved… somewhere. In any case, back then I thought, “How great would it be to hold a session on this topic for graduate students and faculty researchers?” And I still feel that way. (Makes mental note, and public blog declaration, to make this happen.)  Source: ppdigital A few weeks ago I led a session with RDC Library co-workers Yvonne Phillips and Lisa Wakefield entitled “You Are What You Read.” The hour-long session was done as part of a Wellness Day event held for faculty and staff over the mid-term break. It was a fun way to promote the Library and our services. The following is a list of some of the resources we sent out to the 13 people who attended our session.I just thought I’d share these since there is some great stuff out there to promote to both book works and ‘not-so voracious’ readers like myself. ————————- You Are What You Read Session Resources Find: www.earlyword.com: A blog with links to many, many review sites, award winners, books to movies, and more. Lisa’s fave! www.librarybooklists.org: A compendium of book lists, including “Murder By Toaster: Mysteries With Surprisingly Lethal Weapons”, “Quilting Fiction”, and several pages devoted to Read-alike fiction lists for all genres. www.webrary.org/rs/rslinks.html: The Morton Grove Public Library Web Sites for Booklovers page… a smorgasbord of links to explore! www.yournextread.com: Enter a book title, and this site generates suggestions for your next read in a fun & visual way. www.kirkusreviews.com: Billing themselves as “the world’s toughest book critics”… but we think the NY Times will give them a run for that title! www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html: Reviews, articles, columns: everything a booklover needs to kill a Sunday afternoon! www.publishersweekly.com: News and reviews from the world of publishing. http://www.salon.com/topic/books: The literary section of Salon features book reviews, interviews, columnists and publishing news. Do: Some websites to help you decide which e-reader is best for you
Share: Create bookshelves, share with friends, join a group, chat with authors www.bookmooch.com: Take your old books off the shelf & trade them online with other bibliophiles on this no-fee site. Your only cost: postage! www.onlinebookclub.com: An online community for book lovers.
Why WILU is my favourite conference:
I had Monday off for Family Day, yet still I spent part of the day in the library… taking “professional” pictures amid the book stacks. Having photos of yourself taken where you are trying very hard to look studious, professional and well-meaning can be an awkward endeavour, but a necessary one all the same. This is especially so when it comes to providing pictures for things like conference programs, and including photos of yourself in profile pictures on tools like LibGuides and on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. (Rest assured, employers do Google searches on job applicants [I certainly have when hiring staff] so it helps to look your best in the digital realm.) Anyway, I did it. Look out for my smiling mug looking back at you in the WILU 2012 program this May. Or just visit this blog post. (As an aside, Photovisi is a really neat free online collage-making tool.)  Thanks to Sona Macnaughton for being my photographer Everything is a Remix is a four-part video series exploring the production and reproduction of culture. These videos were expertly produced by New York filmmaker Kirby Ferguson. I’ve been waiting impatiently for months and months for the fourth and final edition of this series to come online and am very pleased to now be able to share it here in its entirely.
Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Everything is a Remix Part 3 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
In further documenting my days as a librarian at Red Deer College Library, as part of the Library Day in the Life project, here is how the last two days went. WednesdayWednesday morning I headed to the Black Knight Inn to discuss details about the upcoming RDC Faculty Association social (the Sizzler) I am helping to coordinate for a second year. After, I went to a doctor appointment then rolled into work at 1:30PM. After some class prep, a brief meeting with the Library Chair to discuss what I am up to, and doing a very quiet virtual reference shift, I went to the night class I teach each week. It was a work period so only a few students attended with questions about a project they have to do researching Web 2.0 applications. ThursdayToday I taught an education assistant class all about researching exceptionalities, so much of the morning was devoted to creating a handout and PowerPoint for them. We covered evaluating websites, finding books, and finding articles. Most of the class was hands on, with students needing to explore various resources while answering questions on the worksheet I prepared, followed by a review of what they had learned. It felt rushed, but went well overall. After my class, I met another librarian who had been showing some of his art work in the Library. Together, we took down his pieces and replaced them with some prints of photos I have taken from across Canada. (These images are available on Flickr.) I am a very amateur photographer and am very happy to have the opportunity to show my work. I ended my work day by attending the General Meeting for the RDC Faculty Association then attending the faculty pub the association hosts following each meeting. It was a good time to relax, and sell tickets for the Sizzler. I then went shopping for decorations for the event (including fishing twine to hang decorations, and organza bags) before calling it a day. … started yesterday (January 30) and goes until February 5. Take a look at how librarians around the world are documenting their days using social media by visiting the Library Day in the Life Project Wiki. Or check back here for my own daily updates. To catch up, here is how my Monday-Tuesday of this week went down. MondayI got a drive to work, still basking in the afterglow of a great few days in Edmonton, where I attended the Forum for Information Professionals at the library school at the University of Alberta, as well as Canmore and Banff, where I enjoyed a much needed weekend getaway filled with music, food and friends. I am teaching classes for the Computer Learning @ the Library program at Red Deer College this year, so I started my day by doing my office hours. A few students dropped by to ask questions. I then marked a few assignments, prepared for my Tueday classes, and worked a shift at the Information Desk in the Library. The highlight of the day was receiving an email letting me know my conference presentation proposal for WILU 2012 had been accepted. The presentation will report findings from a survey I intend to send out to health sciences librarians about the degree to which they educate students about open access resources. I will be using Canadian-based Fluid Surveys to create the survey and am really excited to move forward with this project. Tuesday (today)I woke up around 8am, sent a few emails, walked to work, and prepared for a class I was teaching on creating PowerPoints using principles taken from Presentation Zen, as well as editing images using copyright-friendly photography sites and picnik.com (which will unfortunately be shutting down in April). After a quick lunch, I made my way to the two other computer courses I teach every Tuesday. I’d given both classes a work period to complete their projects–one on Web 2.0 and another on basic Word Processing–so these were pretty laid back. At 4:30pm, my classes wrapped up and I headed to my office to drop off my things and join my co-workers at the Long-Term Service Awards ceremony the college holds annually to recognize staff. On arriving home, I signed in to the virtual reference chat service offered by AskOntario. I am in my second year of volunteering for this service, and do a shift for an hour every Tuesday night. Usually I get one or two reference questions but tonight it was dead quiet so I used the time to email an instructor back who had a copyright question. And now I am catching up on trashy TV shows and intending to add myself to the Library Day in the Life Wiki before bed. *BIG thanks to librarian Bobbi Newman for coordinating this bi-annual initiative. It is always a great opportunity to share experiences, and reflect on my own practice and that of others. “Social is just one part of what we do. We think of it as an information utility,” he said, describing Twitter as a personal news service as much as a social network. (Twitter is much more than social: co-founder Dorsey) Twitter is a social networking site I am not ashamed to check routinely throughout the work day. I primarily use it to follow other librarians and people/organizations in similar fields. It’s a great way to find out about tech news, conferences, job postings, interesting websites and articles, etc. Twitter feeds to follow (my recommendations):
Directories of Library Twitter feeds to follow:
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Registration is now closed [edited May 8] for 