whatever you do, do it for libraries

So a seemingly innocent conversation on twitter (it’s amazing how many of my blog posts could start that way!) became me being captain of the sparkly pants readahoopathon. The idea is that lovely lady librarians will raise awareness of libraries while hooping in sparkly pants and reading.

Now, I’d really love this to happen – not least because I managed to excuse myself from any hooping/sparkly pant wearing! But because it’s a different way to raise awareness of libraries. It’s something that might well draw in people outside the usual crowd – and people outside the area we’ve been aiming a lot of #echolib escaping efforts at. Yes, I’m talking about people who don’t read the Guardian or listen to Radio 4.

Let me clarify that I am in absolutely no way dissing Ian or Lauren‘s fantastic Guardian articles. I love them. I’m delighted that they were written, thrilled that they were published, and exhilarated and frustrated by the debates they provoked. But articles in a middle-class liberal newspaper will not significantly expand the library support demographic. They are unlikely to get our message into new ears. We need to look at alternative channels. We need to put library promotion into normalspace – and bring the world into the library.

Fine rhetoric (ok, medium-ish rhetoric), but what does that actually mean? Well, I think we often forget one of the main things we try to hammer into our users: Librarians Are People. Normal people. People with lives and interests and a sense of humour. And we’re not using this to our advantage.

This is where the (probably hypothetical) sparkly pants readahoopathon comes in. Having a bunch of people hooping outside the local public library would likely draw a bit of interest, no? Interest from people who might not usually go into the library? And then if they stop to talk to the hoopers, get taken inside, shown some learn-to-hoop resources by nice, friendly, interested librarians… well, who knows where it might lead?

Librarians have hobbies. Librarians often have hobbies that involve joining groups. Librarians hoop, run, bellydance, knit, sing, quill, garden, photograph, paint, bike, bake, row and a million and eight other things. How about this: do it in the library. I don’t mean on your own at 11 am on a Monday – you’ll just gets odd looks. Try to organise a meeting. Talk to local library staff – can they let you have some space outside the library for a get-together or a demonstration? Can you get a display of related books? or some related websites up on the computer?

It’s the old routine of finding out what people are interested in, and showing them how the library can give them more information about it – but we can’t wait for them to come into the library. We need to grab users – potential users! – by the interest, and get them through the doors, onto the website, into the mindset of ‘wow, my library does have something for me!’. Pander to your favourite spy fantasies by becoming an undercover librarian: make every group you join serve a double purpose.

I’m sorry if this sounds a bit didactic, a little overwhelming. Yes, of course you are allowed to have a life outside libraries. But we really need to take responsibility for advocacy, make it a part of our lives and everyday activities. Katy Wrathall puts it well:

We can’t sit and wait for somebody to do this for us, and we can’t assume that they won’t come for the college, academic, legal, or business librarians next. We have to stand up and be counted, we have to tell people what they are throwing away which they will never get back, we have to act outside the stereotype. And we have to do it now.

Stand up and be counted, librarians – and don’t stop hooping.

Keeping my balance

Ahh, the age-old topic of work/life balance. We’re always being told to take more time for ourselves, that we’ll regret working so hard. And it’s easy to argue that modern technology is making it easier than ever to overload on work. Left an important document in the office? No worries, you’ve probably got a copy in Dropbox. And now you have a smartphone (you do have a smartphone, don’t you darling?) it’s no longer just checking work emails from home, but on the bus, the train, the plane, the holiday cottage, that little bar in Tivoli with the wonderful wifi connection.

Now that’s not to say that working outside work hours is always a bad thing. It can be very productive – some people work best in the evenings, or without the distractions of colleagues – and for people with non-work professional commitments (committees, campaigns, mentoring etc) it can be the only way to get everything done.

But what if you don’t actively choose to work? What if you’re actually trying to have an evening off, without thinking about anything work-related? The prevalence of ‘push’ notifications often means you can’t escape. Work related items will be cropping up in your RSS feeds, your Facebook notifications, your Twitterstream. Sure, you can shut all these down too. But what if you don’t want to? After all, they form part of your social life online too.

This is something I’ve been trying to deal with for a while. I separated out my ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ RSS feeds quite a while ago – and then did nothing useful with the work ones, leading to me being weeks behind on blogs and news. I had brief moments of regret that I’d given out my personal email address for professional-related activities – not because I didn’t trust people or want them in that space, but because it meant it was very hard for me to tune out. It meant that while emailing a friend late at night, I might spot an email with an action in, or a question, leaving me telling myself ‘It’s ok. You can answer it tomorrow. It’s ok. No-one really expects an answer tonight. Don’t worry about it.’ But, of course, I did worry. Even when things don’t need acting on immediately, just knowing that they’re there and that there’s another thing you’ll have to think about tomorrow can be stressful.

So, this week I’m trying to take control. I’ve taken my unused professional google account, and set myself up with an iGoogle page with my work related reader feeds and my work emails. I’m forwarding a number of professional emails from my personal account to my professional one, and skipping the inbox in my personal account. I know I haven’t got all my filters set up correctly, so it will be an odd hybrid for now, but I’m persevering, and it’s already better. This means I have a place I can use as my social media/internet hub at work, and when I choose to work at home.

But there’s still one big challenge. Yes, it’s twitter. I really don’t want to class twitter as being purely work-related. I don’t want to filter it out of my personal life. The people I follow on twitter don’t – shock horror! – post on purely work-related stuff. They also tweet funny, interesting things about life, the universe, and everything. They’re my friends, and I don’t want to shut them out. But they are still professional contacts. they do still tweet about professional things – even in the evenings! And that’s not even counting the US-based tweeps I follow, who are hard at work just as I’m trying to relax.

So what do I do? I can bookmark articles and favourite tweets to come back to later, when I’m in work-mode, and sacrifice being part of the immediate discussion. That works to a certain extent. But it doesn’t quite help with the sense of guilt, or professional shame. Yes, that’s right. When I see people tweeting about the great blog posts, articles, campaigns etc they’ve been doing in their spare time, and I’m sat there with a glass of wine, a bag of toffees, and Swallows and Amazons, well… I feel a bit ashamed. And yes, yes, I know – I work hard, deserve some time off, no-one can work all the time etc. I know the shame and guilt are ridiculous and unjustified. I just don’t quite know how to avoid them. Besides getting a more positive self-image, can anyone suggest how to manage this?

Ebooks – 6 tips for a better reading experience

So, Manchester Public Libraries now offer ebooks and audiobooks for download. How excited am I? Well, I read two in the first 48 hours, and have been on the site pretty much every night since, so yeah, I’m pretty gosh-durn happy

The problem? (you know there has to be a problem, or this would be a short & pointless blog post.) The problem is that the books are in Adobe EPUB format and, as I’ve said before, they will give you a headache. More than a headache: I read a lot of ebooks, and am used to reading on screen for 4-5 hours at a time; with EPUB it’s more like an hour before my eyes feel like they’re bleeding.

So why are EPUB so bad? Well, it’s not just EPUB. Basically, not all ebook readers are created equal. (I should point out here that I’m talking about ebook readers for the PC – not standalone devices.) Some will allow you to do much more with the appearance and format of your document that others, and in this case, the more flexibility the better. EPUB happens to be one of the ones that allows you to do, well, little.

I have 6 ebook readers installed on my PC: Mobipocket reader and Mobipocket reader pc; Microsoft Reader; Adobe digital editions; Amazon Kindle for pc; and Sony reader. Which do I prefer? Frankly, none of them.

Wherever I can, I read ebooks in microsoft word, which is – obviously – brilliantly customisable. You can change everything about the text, get the size and the colours just right for your eyes. Full-screen reading mode with the black/silver office theme is very easy on the eye. I have my background black, my text sans-serif, at least 20 point, and very light gray. When I can’t use word? Mobipocket reader is the next best, as you can easily change background and text colours and text size.

Unfortunately, with most DRMd ebooks, you won’t have that choice – you have to read in whatever format the book has been published. So what can you do to make your reading experience as easy on your eyes as possible?

1. Download different readers, and try them out. All of the readers I have are free to download, and they usually come with at least one free classic text, so you can try out a few pages and see how the reader works for you.
2. Try different setting within the reader – what you’re aiming for is as little light/glare coming off the screen as possible. If you can’t adjust the colour or brightness within the reader, alter your computer/monitor settings
3. Have big text. When you open most ebooks, the text will be set at ‘medium’. Turn it up – you need much bigger text on screen that in a book (partly because you’re further away). This will mean less text on each page and more page turning, so…
4. Figure out the various ways you can turn pages within the program. Does it have to be mouse wheel down? A click? A click in a specific part of the screen? Arrow keys? Most programs will have at least a couple of options. I use arrow keys if I’m leaning forward, mouse wheel if I’m sitting back. General rule: the less movement you have to make, the better, as you’ll be doing it a lot!
5. Don’t be tempted into full-screen mode, either. Yes, it looks very impressive, and no, you won’t have to turn the page as often, but it’s very hard on the eye. What works best – unsurprisingly! – is a line length approximately the same to that in a printed book. It’s a length your eyes are used to, and they won’t get lost part-way along. Again, try out slightly different window sizes/shapes until you find a good fit for you.
6. Take breaks! Yes, I know we’re all fully aware that we should take screen breaks, but somehow it is that much harder when you’re trying to find out whodunnit than when you’re collating stats or writing a report. Even looking to the other end of the room for 30 seconds at the end of each chapter will really help to rest your eyes.

This is fairly basic advice, and probably just seems like common sense if you’re used to reading ebooks. But what if you’re not? Many of your users may never have read an ebook before they borrow one from the library – why not give them some advice about getting the best reading experience from their ebook? Tailor it to the formats you have available, and show your users that you don’t have to squint at a bright screen filled with tiny black writing. As well as saving some eye strain, it might even increase takeup of ebooks. While much of this information will be available on the software websites, we should be delivering it to them, rather than making them go out and find it for themselves.

I’ve seen library sites that explain that you *can* change font size etc, but not saying *why* you should. Is anyone doing this? I’d love to know!

Growing up in public: social media for professional development

The NoWAL Exchange of Experience event yesterday (hashtag #nmee) was hugely enjoyable! Most people spoke about how they were using social media in the workplace, but I’d been asked to do something a bit different, and talk about how I used social media for my personal and professional development. Not one to waste effort, I’m posting my talk here as a blog post. (NB – this isn’t exactly what I said. I can’t remember exactly what I said. But it’s the script that my notes were based on, so it’s pretty close. Apologies to those of you who already know my social media story!)

From pretty much the start of my career, I’ve lived my professional life in the public eye. I first joined Twitter in March 2008, when I was a library student at MMU. I realised no-one I knew was on it, and did nothing with it for about 6 months, when it started being talked about in the media. So, I started following my friend Kendra, and Stephen Fry, who at that point had a mere 50,000 followers or so, and followed everyone back. Well, I was so overwhelmed that Stephen Fry was following me on Twitter that I promptly ran away again, and didn’t dare tweet for months.

I started using Twitter as an information professional in Feb 2009. Looking at my followers list, it starts off slowly, with colleagues, and then a few external contacts, and then gradually my followers build up and up and up – and most of them are people I’ve never met. My very first tweet – which said ‘Bethan is discovering that no-one she knows is on Twitter, which makes it kind of pointless’ couldn’t have been more wrong. I now rely on Twitter for a large amount of my professional interaction and networking, and I have to admit that I can’t really remember the early days!

I started blogging in October 2009. At this point I was reading a lot of library/information professional blogs, and I was also in the process of chartering. I decided to start blogging to force myself to take time to reflect – something which I was having real problems doing. I don’t think I ever really expected anyone outside my immediate social network to read my blog – but they do! I’ve got 79 subscribers and – more importantly – people who engage with the blog, comment and start discussions. It makes me focus on issues, and put my thoughts in a coherent order. Reading other people’s blogs gives me an insight into a) what they do and b) what they think.

I’d like to tell you a couple of stories about social media, and what it’s done for my – and others’! – careers.
Firstly, some of you may have seen an article recently about what I do in CILIP Gazette. That article is a result of my use of social media – I’ll take you on a journey to it

Earlier this year, I was named as a Rising Star of SLA. This is an award for SLA members in the first five years of their career, who show ‘exceptional promise of leadership’. No, I don’t know what I did to deserve the award. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything that other people aren’t doing – but what I did do, I did visibly. I got involved in the debate about the proposed SLA name change, writing several blog posts, and talking about it on Twitter; I started a ning for SLA Europe – all things that are obvious and available online.

When the announcement of the Rising Stars came through, I didn’t tweet about it. I didn’t need to – my peers did it for me. I find my twitter group wonderfully encouraging and supportive – always ready to tout any triumphs that peers and friends have had. So, my twitter group tweeted it, and SLA and SLA Europe blogged it, and soon I got a message on twitter from Debby Raven, editor of Gazette, saying ‘congratulations’, and asking if I’d like to be interviewed for Gazette about the award. I said ‘yes’, told her my email address, and it went on from there. I’d never met Debby, and our original point of contact was purely social media based. Of course, once the article was published I didn’t need to promote it either – again, my twitter group promoted it for me, and I gained loads of exposure – and a reputation for modesty!

Another story – and one, I’m afraid, which doesn’t have an end yet, is that of Ned and Laura. They met through blogging, and set up the Library Routes project, which is a wiki to collect stories of how people became librarians. This now has over 130 entries, from librarians in all sectors, and from across the world. It has been promoted through social media, in articles, and at conferences.

Not satisfied with this success, they started a debate on twitter about how to get discussions by/about libraries and librarians outside the echo chamber. It started as a hashtag: #echolib, and grew into blog posts (by them and others). From this, it grew into an article, and a presentation, and now they’re submitting a proposal to turn it into a book chapter. All of the ideas that have fed into this (you can see them on the presentation) have come through social media – tweets, blogs, videos, and the LISNPN social network. The tweets tagged with #echolib are stored on twapperkeeper, and Ned and Laura are updating the presentation on Prezi as new ideas and suggestions come in.

The #echolib idea is being picked up by leaders in the profession in the US, too, and has the potential to have a really positive impact on the profession. It’s fantastic that the genesis of this idea has taken place in social media settings, under the public eye – you can chart the growth of it through twitter and blog posts, see what has influenced it, and how it has evolved. And it’s great for Ned and Laura – they are directly connecting with many of the leaders in the profession, getting their names and ideas recognised.

I brought a lot of these stories together in my presentation earlier this year at the CDG New Professionals conference. I was presenting on ‘proving the value of peer networks’, and gathered all of the information for the presentation from my peer networks – mainly my social media networks.

I decided that I needed real-world data to make the presentation of value, and so I put together a questionnaire, and asked people on lis-link and in my twitter network to fill it out. I got 104 responses, many of them very detailed, which was fantastic. My definition of peer networks was ‘contact groups consisting of fellow Library/Information professionals, workers, or others associated with the profession. These may include groups such as work colleagues; fellow members of an association; members of a social group such as a ning or facebook group; conference attendees; twitter followers; and other groups with whom you interact on a professional basis.’

I included social networking via the web on the same level as more traditional, face-to-face networking, and didn’t ask any questions specifically about web 2.0 social networking. However, a number of respondents specified that they used social networking tools, with twitter, facebook, linkedin, nings and forums on various sites (library and non-library related!) all getting a mention.

One question which I did ask was ‘has being involved in peer network contributed to your career? (eg have you become involved in a project/found a job through peer networks?)’. 50% of respondents said that it had, and again a number of them mentioned social media in their answers. Respondents using Twitter said that they had been invited to speak at events, become involved in committees, written articles, given presentations and become involved in projects – directly through their use of Twitter.

Twitter, blogs, and social networks are mentioned as keeping people up-to-date; providing quick & easily accessible sources of good information; providing a wider perspective on the profession; being great places to make friends and meet like-minded info profs; helping with CILIP Chartership and Fellowship; finding out about resources, projects and events.

One quote which I particularly like:

I’ve only recently started to feel properly connected to a peer network -and this is really due to twitter and blogging. Funnily enough I ‘know’ more new professionals this way than I do in ‘real life’ in my own region. So I find a sense of community in this online network and that helps me to feel motivated and engaged with professional issues; to feel that I am a librarian rather than someone who just happens to work in a library. I’ve become more reflective about my professional activities and I think I’ve also become more ambitious because I am tapped into the interesting things my peers are doing. I’ve started to blog more, and I’ve ended up joining the CDG in my area (which has in turn has allowed me to meet other new professionals).

Social media gives you easy ways to help others in their professional development, as well as helping yourself. My Chartership portfolio is available online – on my blog, on the LISNPN network, and on CILIP communities. Having my portfolio available gives other Chartership candidates another point of reference – beyond the 3 official examples on the CILIP website. It also means that I’ve been forced to look at my portfolio after submitting it – rather than just stick it in a drawer and forget about it, I’ve had to go through and make sure that there was nothing confidential that needed removing before I made it public. This, of course, made me groan with horror, as I thought ‘ugg! Could have done that better’ – which means I’m already thinking of ways I could have improved my – successful – portfolio.

This use of social media also means that I can track my own growth online – which is fantastically useful for appraisals, applications etc. My professional development is archived and searchable! And, of course, I’ve made loads of good friends