If I should not return, think only this of me...

I’m about to go on leave for a week so thought I should add something here before I go. Little in (internet based) life is more depressing than page upon page of dead and forgotten blogs, twitter accounts and similar. Like a graveyard of the electronic age.

There was one I saw for a new library area that was opening up at a university once. It was announcing the opening for sometime in August 2008 and saying people should link to the Twitter account, keep an eye for exciting developments, check back after the event for photos and prize winners, contact their new media manager, etc.

I was reading it in March 2009 and there had still been no updates. You ended up thinking did the person with the CMS password die? Was there a massive fire and the whole place burned down? Is it some sort of elaborate Web 2.0 media hoax and Chris Morris is behind this somewhere? It really sent out the wrong message and if I had been interested in the new Bronhiddlitch Anglo-Saxon Library at the University of Wessex (or whatever it was for) it would have been a real disappointment and may have even led to me to not applying to study there.

The same is very true of commercial internet haunts. If the website hasn’t been updated for an age, the blog lies dormant, the messages on the forum or guestbook unanswered you can’t help feeling the place is no longer a going concern. That may not be accurate – they may be thriving off line – but the internet really does apply the maxim The First Bite Is With The Eye with ruthless efficiency.

Coming back to the education / University sector, TFBIWTE is clearly apparent but is something that can easily be gotten wrong as pages are often too austere or too busy. Clean pages are developed to show clear headed professionalism, but often look bare and uninviting. Social media is copied to make visually busy sites but these can be confusing and look unprofessional and be abandoned as well.

It’s possible to get a happy medium of course, but that is far harder than it would appear.

And with that I’m off into the Heart of Darkness. I’ll miss the next stage in this interesting programme but catch up when I return.

End of Chapter

After being away for an excellent training course (seriously, it was. We all drank the Kool Aid by the end and I see some good changes coming from this and soon) I return to find many more blogs on the 23 Things programme. Excellent!

I believe that some of these are from part time colleagues at Cass, so they really are people I may never interact with in the normal execution of my duties (that’s rather a pompous statement I know but I do like the phrase ‘execution of my duties’, it sounds so pointlessly sinister). Hopefully the experience of us all blogging and going together through a course may bridge some of the gaps between sites.  For example I know there are people at NSQ that I simply have not met and it’s not because they are new – we just simply never have an opportunity to interact, work different shift patterns, attend different meetings, etc.

At a previous place of employment it was a very global corporation so you didn’t expect to know people in your team stationed in Israel or San Francisco well, but you still had to interact with them on a regular basis. This meant many, many hours on the phone which was the corporate business but not conducive to good working as it set up barriers. E-mail was the same. Despite being a (then) multi-billion dollar technology corporation they simply could not get multi site working and collaboration sorted out. Perhaps something simple like a 23 Things programme would have been better....?

After popular demand i looked but couldn’t find a picture of me looking like a member of the Geheime Staatspolizei, so here is one of me as a Bavarian. It carries a similar message but people don’t sing the Indiana Jones theme tune at me as much.

Interactive Librarians

Whilst looking into the kind of services that other (international) universities offer through their libraries, an interactive ‘Ask A Librarian’ chat function was quite common. It would usually only run in core service hours but was a way for professional library staff to answer questions remotely. Very useful on large or multi-campus sites.

Nothing new about this as a general service idea and many corporations use some sort of system like this as it is. They will often have video responses as well so it’s like you’re talking to an actual person rather than just a chat box. Personally I prefer it in text form as you can refer to the instructions as you received them but that’s just me.

I really think that, done right, this is a great ‘force multiplier’ for libraries and I look forward to City developing one as well – I know that some thought and investigation of this is going on already. I’d like to chat to people who already run one at their library to see what the difference in questions is to the kind one gets on the issue desk. Are people asking ‘do you have this book’? Or are they more in depth questions? The patron will be at their computer so you could take them through quite complicated issues step by step but you'd need to be sure it didn't become an open ended online training system.

Wouldn't you...?


Cool Thing

Okay, let’s have my very own cool thing in a blog post. Push those boundaries!

I recently came across this service which is an interesting use of similar technology to answer questions. My, sometimes startling, resemblance to various TV and movie Gestapo officers aside (which is why someone sent it to me) I think it’s a good little site using tech that would have been out of the hands of most people only a few years ago.

http://www.askflick.com/

A New Week

I see that there are some more blogs now for 23 Things City and I even have some followers. Rather like a cult leader. But as they all seem to be people in my team I know they already see me as some sort of cult figure for SCHS Libraries. Can I order white robes and a sickle made from meteoric iron on petty cash?

One of my e-mails this AM was from the SLA (Special Libraries Association) and they had a link to their 23 Things. I hadn’t realised this was so popular but I suppose it is a good way to roll out knowledge sharing, skills, et al.

SLA are a little like CILIP but less on the ‘that will be £300 for a training session please’ and more on the ‘we’re having a cheese and wine evening, why not come and network’. I intend to blog about CILIP at some point so I’ll save which side of the fence I come down on. They’re also more USA based and have their conference in Philly this year, which is where cheese steaks come from. Which sound both disgusting and the best food ever.

http://www.sla-europe.org/2011/06/07/resource-review-23-things/

Day Two

Well it was pretty easy to set up the blog. Some features of it seem a little annoying and clunky but on the whole it has been easy and quick.

Unsure about tagging. Experience in the community space has been that tags are done to death and just end up filling up space on screen. I suppose that consistency is the key and to make sure that a spade is always called a spade. If you start calling it a shovel in one post, then a spade, then an earth mover, then a spade again, then a tool, then an implement then a shovel and then a spade again you'll never be able to find all digging related posts.

And that's enough digging for now.

Post The First

And so it came to pass that I created a blog for the upcoming 23 Things City programme. I was sure that my first statements would be full of true wisdom but as I finished this sentence it became clear that this would not be the case.

"How could this be?" I both wondered and typed at the same time.

"Because you are being too meta-narrative." was the obvious answer.

And with that, my first blog post ended.  Doubtless, better things lay ahead.