80 New Professionals Walk Into a Bar...

Actually, they weren't ALL New Professionals, maybe 10% of them had never worked in libraries at all; plus it wasn't a bar, it was CILIP HQ, although later, a lot of them did go to a bar.... Friday saw the first of the New Professionals Information Days for this year (to read about how they came about, check out this earlier post) and I had a great time; everyone else seemed to do so, too. Kathy Ennis of CILIP's Membership Support Unit put together a little organising committee to plan the day, which I loved being part of. We tried to plan a unique day and one that improved on the previous years' Graduate Days and I think it worked - I liked the structure, I thought the content was useful, and most of all I liked the combination of speakers. We tried to ensure that New Professionals ran the workshops, but the keynotes were from inspirational leaders in the profession. The result was a day that, hopefully, wasn't like any other library event this year - and I'm certain you won't find another programme that good without paying considerably more for entry than nothing at all, which is what Friday's event cost the delegates...

I really enjoyed Lex Rigby (link below) and Katie Fraser's presentations (I couldn't see any more because in a late change I ended up doing a session myself, which I wasn't looking forward to but went fine I think) and I loved the keynote presentations from Phil Bradley and Maxine Miller, which I thought dove-tailed nicely. It was exhilerating stuff! Highlights for me included:

  • Phil saying "all bets are off"
  • Phil saying "this is the most exciting time EVER to be a librarian"
  • Phil saying "don't assume people know more than you - at least don't take it on trust. If someone says 'I'ved worked in this industry for 20 years' they may just have worked the same year 20 times..." (I didn't take notes at the time so aplogies Phil if those aren't exactly right)
  • Maxine giving a talk without notes which was, she later told us, completely different from what she had planned! I don't want to make too much of her ethnicity as the awesomeness of her talk had nothing to do with that, but it was so nice to see a non-white face presenting at a library conference! Also to be in charge of the Tate's library is a pretty cool job, too...
  • Attempting to use Muffins as a bribe to get the audience talking, and finding the one audience member who was so allergic to chocolate she couldn't even have the spiced apple one because it had been in the same bag.. (thanks for speaking up anyway though!)
  • Using my iPhone for my notes rather than a piece of paper - I only did that because of #epicprinterfail but it actually worked quite well
  • Meeting new CILIP CEO Annie Mauger who popped in at lunch time - impressive considering it was her first full day in the job!
  • Lots of people saying how useful they were finding the day

After the event there was a LISNPN meet-up in the pub around the corner from CILIP. There were many reasons that I loved this - getting to meet people properly and get to know them was one, seeing information professionals coming in out of the rain, not really knowing anyone but turning up and throwing themselves into the fray, was another. Plus, marvelling with Chris Rhodes that the network we'd created had progressed from online to face-to-face events so quickly, and not only that but events that were nothing to do with us! That's absolutely awesome - if all LISNPN members can take it upon themselves to organise regional meet-ups, using the network to advertise them, then that's just fantastic. The network is so much stronger if it is self-organising. Thanks so much to Bethan and Laura who've organised spontaneous events so far! Final highlight was meeting a very nice bloke in the pub who said he'd been wondering about librarianship for a while, applied for a few things but not got anything he wanted, and today was make or break for him in terms of pursuing it as a career. And we made him! (Rather than broke him - I don't mean we forced him...) He really enjoyed the day, it opened his eyes, and made him really want to do it for a living.

So 80 New Professionals went into a conference - I think the veterans among them were inspired anew, the brand new ones found out there was more support and engagement than they'd imagined, and the people who were not librarians at all at the start of the day either ended up committed to the profession, or scared off it entirely - and I'm fine with that; better to find out now what it's all about than get a job and realise it's much more intense than they realised later...

If you're in the North of England, book on the Newcastle one now! November 23rd, Newcastle City Library. Even if you have to take a few hours off work it's worth it; it really will be a great day...

Other stuff relating to NPID2010:

- thewikiman

New to Twitter? Here's what you do

[If you're not already on Twitter, just give up and join. It's really worth it, and it's really NOT like it is often reported to be in the mainstream media. There's a big myth that twitter is just people saying 'this is what I had for lunch today' - it's not like that at all. Celebrities understandably get the bulk of the coverage when Twitter gets into the news - you have to understand that someone like Stephen Fry (or whoever) is followed by literally 1.8 million people; he can't possibly interact with all of them, so his twitter stream reads more like a monologue than a dialogue. But you (almost certainly) won't have that many followers, meaning you'll be able to use Twitter for the purpose for which it is intended: conversation. It's full of useful links, it can lead to all sorts of opportunities, it breaks the ice at conferences, and it adds colour to professional relationships.] A twitter bird holding a 'follow me' sign

Here 10 top tips I wish I'd known about Twitter from the start.

  • Put in a bio. You need a bio, don't leave it blank or just put in a town or your job title. Twitter works because it facilitates conversation - to converse with people generally you need to follow each other. What happens when someone new follows you is you get an email - so and so is now following you on twitter, here's some more information about them. Most people will click on this and read about this new follower, and perhaps check a few recent tweets before deciding whether to follow or not - it's a tough crowd, generally, because popular tweeters get so many followers that you have to stand out for them to take an interest in you; no one wants information overload. If you don't say who you are or give people anything to go on in your bio, chances are they won't follow you back, thus reducing the chances of the two of you conversing, thus reducing the value you're getting out of using Twitter. I don't believe in amassing followers for the sake of it, but of the 40 or so people who I follow but don't follow me back, four or five of them I wish would do so (I'm looking at you, Helene Blowers...). If that figure was really high, Twitter wouldn't be working so well for me. For an example of a good bio, check out Buffy Hamilton's twitter profile - fantastic! No wonder she has that many followers.
  • Use a headshot of yourself. Twitter is a more personal medium than a blog - I started off using the wikiman logo, but changed it because people want to contextualise what you're saying with a picture of your actual face. Even if you're shy, try and go with some kind of picture of yourself if you can...
  • Cannibalise the follow lists of people you like. So for example, if you are an Information Professional, you'll probably know of a few people on Twitter than you can start following right away. But also look at the people they follow and start following the most interesting looking of them, and then do the same again, and so on, till you've got a decent sized group of interesting people. (If you're an information professional, feel free to cannibalise mine - everyone I follow is awesome...)
  • Don't just follow the Queen Bee, follow the workers too. Many, many tweets are @ replies. This means they begin with @[Insert Person's Twitter name here] and are consequently only seen by people following both the tweeter and the person they are tweeting at. So you could miss fantastic conversations if you're only following one of the parties - they simply won't appear in your twitter stream. (64% of my tweets are @replies, according to TweetStats, meaning that the vast majority of my output is only seen by some of my followers.) Therefore, if you really like someone on Twitter, follow the people they interact with too, so you increase your chances of serendipitous interesting conversation overhearing. :)
  • Give of yourself, from the start. If Twitter ends up working for you, you'll end up being yourself. You'll end up sharing more than just work stuff, probably, and being closer to your true personality than you might imagine - more unguarded. You have to make up your own mind if you're happy to be unguarded online, and how unguarded you are going to be. But the point is, don't be shy and don't try and hide your personality - people want personality, they'll forgive quirks if they get more character from you (and therefore more value), and as I say if you're here for the long haul it'll happen eventually anyway. Just be yourself from the start.
  • Tweet links to your stuff. / Tweet links to other people's stuff. Twitter provides a large percentage of hits on this blog. If you blog with wordpress, use a plug-in like Twitoaster to auto-tweet links to your blog posts, and draw the twitter conversation into the comments section of your blog. But don't, whatever you do, just use Twitter to self-promote. People will suss you out and switch off pretty quickly. People will be interested in what you have to say if you tweet links to a broad range of useful, pertinent stuff.
  • ReTweet. Don't assume everyone else will have seen what you've seen. If something's really worth reading, ReTweet it so that your followers can all read it - they may not follow the person who originally said it, or they may not have been online when it was said. Plug people in to the good content. What you want to achieve overall is a blend of useful information, thoughts, links, character and responses to other tweets. Don't be afraid to jump into conversations, either - certain people I follwed for ages without them reciprocating, but as soon as I @ replied to one of their tweets they started following me too because I demonstrated some value to them; we've since gone on to chat all the time.
  • Don't ever criticise your employer. Twitter is personal  - but don't forget that unless you lock down your account, anyone can read it. There's nothing to be gained from venting your frustration at your institution via this medium - just resist the temptation! You never know who may end up reading it. Or who may end up not seeking you out to give you an opportunity later. Generally speaking, unless you are going to tweet anonymously, discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to criticism of all kinds - by all means give an opinion, but always run this test before you tweet something harsh about an individual: would I say this to their face?
  • Investigate clients . I must admit, I've found Twitter's homepage adequate for my needs. But many people use clients, that access Twitter but present the information in a better or different way - try Brizzly, or Tweetdeck (and you can sync those with Twitter on your phone, too).
  • Prune. Don't just follow everyone. Followers are not an end in themselves - don't just automatically follow everyone back because they've followed you. If you are to use Twitter at all it needs to WORK for you - you need to follow a manageable amount of people, or at the very least use lists to sort the essentials from the occasionally interestings. About once a month, go through the list of people you follow, and if any of them are no longer giving you value, unfollow them. It may seem brutal, but you really don't want to end up viewing Twitter as a chore because there's so much irrelevant stuff in your stream.

For more info on the nuts and bolts of it, check out Twitter's official guide.

Happy tweeting!

- thewikiman

UPDATE: since writing this, I've come across a lot of people ReTweeting a link as part of a reply to a person. So for example I might tweet "Check out this presentation [URL here]" and someone else wants to ReTweet it but does so like this: "@theREALwikiman really useful presentation [URL here]". If you reply to someone then the only people who can read the tweet are people who follow you AND the person you are replying to - in other words, no one new will see the Tweet. So - don't do that. Does that make sense?

That's the explanation; the rule is, if you want to draw people's attention to something, make sure there is something - literally ANY character except @ - before you include the name of the person who originally tweeted. So in the example above, the tweet should read "really useful presentation via @theREALwikiman [URL here]." That way, everyone who follows you will get the message. Got it? Good!

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NPID2010: New Professionals Information Days

Newcastle City Library, via Flickr CC (ricaird) For the last few months I've been working with Chris Rhodes, Maria Cotera and Kathy Ennis to create a new CILIP event. Actually it's a refit of an old one - the CILIP Graduate Day that I presented at last year. We've re-thought it from scratch, introduced some new ideas, got in some fantastic speakers, and rebranded it as New Professionals Information Days - the reason that is 'Days' plural is that we're doing the programme twice, once in London and once in Newcastle, to try and make CILIP more inclusive and a little less London-centric.

Some of the ideas we've incorporated came from the many people (most of them New Professionals Support Officers) who took part in the initial brain-storming session at CILIP HQ. Our little working group then took these ideas on and honed them into what I think will be a truly excellent pair of events.

The London event takes place at CILIP on October 1st, and the Newcastle event takes place at the City Library on November the 23rd. You can find full information, including times, speakers, topics, how to book and so on, via CILIP's website. For now, here's a few points I'd like to highlight:

  • The events are free (and you get refreshments too!). I'd be really surprised if you get to another event this year, with such a good line-up of interesting speakers and topics, without having to hand over a big chunk of change
  • They are aimed at people who've joined the profession in the last few years, and also those who haven't joined it yet at all
  • The days are structured in such a way that many people will be able to attend without having to take a full day off work - so for example, the London event runs from half-nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, but the last session is a repeat of the first session (with the keynote speakers sandwiched in between). So you only actually need to come from 9:30 till 1pm to see everything - OR, if you prefer, from 12 till 4pm. Good eh? I think this is a mint idea (got a feeling it came from Bethan Ruddock in the original brain storming session) and more conferences should make themselves flexible in this way
  • The theme is great - pursue your passion through librarianship. This is something I've written about before - how the information profession allows you to pursue your existing passions and bring them into your job; I'm thrilled we've managed to build the entire conference around this idea. We need to publicise this aspect of librarianship more, it's ace.
  • The speakers are fantastic! First we put together a list of the subjects we'd like to hear about as New Professionals, and divided them into different strands. Then we put together a wish-list of who we'd ideally like to hear speak on the subjects we'd come up with. And basically they all said yes! One person couldn't make it so I'm having to fill in with a talk about technology (and the Prezi I'm going to use for that will be lovely :) ) but otherwise we've got a stellar line up - including Phil Bradley, whose keynote will be entitled "Around the world twice on a library degree"! How cool does that sound? I've never got to see Phil talk in the flesh before, and we're honoured to have him.
  • Newcastle City Library is beautiful... It's a fantastic modern building - if you live Up North, try and come along just to see how a brand new library operates, looks, and feels. You can always nip in from 15:45 - 16:45 and just hear Phil and Maxine Miller's keynotes!
  • If you can't attend, you can follow on twitter using the hashtag #NPID2010, and either way you can get to know the speakers a little bit better: @PhilBradley, @katie_fraser, @LexRigby, me(!), and, coming over all the way from Spain, @nrobinsongarcia. We'll also be doing something with Wallwisher that will allow in-the-flesh attendees and virtual-attendees to interact together. WOOF!

So a free event, organised flexibly to fit your schedule, great networking opportunities, in ace surroundings, with online elements, and brilliant speakers. How can you resist? London is nearly full already by the way, so book soon if you want to go.

Really excitingly for me, the London event is being followed by a LISNPN meet-up that evening, in a pub of Woodsiegirl's choosing. The idea is to come together, set the world to rights, and plan a fool proof future for the profession... There's one in Manchester soon too (tomorrow at the time of writing), and both have been organised spontaneously by the members of the network. This excites me more than anything we've done with LISNPN so far - if it provides a platform for Information Professionals actually coming together and shaping their future collectively, then it's worth its weight in gold.

-thewikiman

5 ways to make life easier with Evernote

The evernote elephant logo

I didn't use the bit.ly sidebar for ages - I thought, how much better can it be if I already use the bit.ly website whenever I need to? Then I installed it and found out the answer - it's actually much quicker to be able to shorten the URL of any page you're on, rather than copying and pasting that URL into bit.ly's homepage, plus you get useful statistics. With that in mind, I started to look for other 'how much better can it be?' scenarios to see if they too could make my life that bit simpler or more efficient.

I'd heard people raving about how good Evernote was, but I'd never used it. My rationale was similar to the bit.ly thing - I can make notes in Word on my PC, or my laptop, and I've got a note-pad app thing on my iPhone; how much more useful can a specialist note-thingy be? The answer is much, much more useful - go and download Evernote now. It's free.

The point of this blog post is to catch people like me who've never bothered to investigate Evernote and tempt them into taking the plunge - I'm not going to tell you much you won't know if you use it already.

  1. Create ONE TO-DO LIST TO RULE THEM ALL For me the main reason Evernote is so instantly useful is that it syncs between all devices. So if you have it on your Work PC and make a note there, then press 'sync', the note will appear on anything else you have Evernote installed on - home PC, laptop, phone etc. This really appeals to me for various reasons - mainly the idea of always being able to access key information where-ever I am, and whatever I've forgotten to bring with me... Also, not having to faff about when I think of something important at home, remembering to then write it onto my paper to do list when I get to work etc. I have several to-do lists in Evernote now - work stuff, home stuff, blog stuff, LISNPN stuff, career stuff, plus a self-explanatory one called 'Today'. The fact that all these things are no longer fragmentary and I always know where they are, all in one place, and how to get to them, soothes me to my very soul.
  2. Take notes at events Why take notes in Word or whatever, which involves later emailing them to other devices / accounts or saving them onto a stick, when you can just use Evernote? No more getting home from a conference and calibrating all your notes into the right place - if you use the basic word-processor-esque note-taking functionality in the Evernote on your laptop, then press 'sync', it'll appear on your Desktop, your work PC and your phone, instantly. If you don't have your laptop with you, use your phone to take notes and hit sync and it'll be on there anyway. And so on. (As an aside, I also take notes of things I see which I think may suitable for future birthday / Christmas / anniverary gifts for my wife - I use the notepad functionality on my phone, but I'll start using Evernote now because I can discreetly photograph stuff she says she likes without it being obvious I'm filing it away for future giftage... the point being, you can take notes about LIFE, not just work.)
  3. Photograph cool stuff You can use the camera on your smart-phone to take a picture in Evernote - this then appears as a note. Similarly, once you have Evernote installed, your Print Screen button works in the same way (and you can choose which parts of the screen to 'print' too). Examples Evernote use are of taking pictures of wine-bottles, or business cards, when you're out and about. You could also take pictures of slides if the presenter you're watching hasn't provided paper copies, or a printed schedule at a conference, or building or room plans, and a whole host of other stuff which may violate intellectual property rights and should therefore not be attempted by anyone. The great thing is turns any writing in your photos into searchable text, so you can easily locate what you're looking for later. (This also means you could do really ace stuff like, someone leaves a post-it note stuck to your monitor with "Phone John Smith, British Library, 01482378" written on it, and you don't have time to phone them right away, so you take a picture of the post-it note, then when you get a chance later on you type 'British Library' into the search box and it finds John and his number.)
  4. Combine it with Twitter If you allow Evernote to access your Twitter account, you can then create notes in Evernote by putting @MyEn in a tweet, or DM'ing @MyEn. So if you want to check a link when you get home or read an article later, or simultaneously tweet about an event and make notes on it, or just write yourself a to-do list on the move, you can do so using Twitter and the relevant info will appear as a note. (A note on your desktop PC, your work PC - etc etc, you get the idea...)
  5. Put everything on it for conferences In 2008 I wrote all my travel info down on a piece of paper (stuff like reservation numbers for train tickets, departure times, hotel references etc); in 2009 I began writing them down in Word and printing them out; in 2010 I've added them to my Outlook Diary which I can then check on my phone, at the station/hotel/etc. From now on I'll put them into Evernote - they will be on all my devices, they're accessible on the move, and I can get at them even with no reception and my phone in airplane mode. If I'm speaking I'll put a copy of my notes on it, a link to the Prezi / Slideshare etc - even if my USB stick with all that stuff on is stolen I can still access the necessary info from my phone, and even if THAT is also stolen I can just download Evernote onto a PC at the venue and get what I need that way. I may also put a CV on it, with a list of all the trainings I've attended etc, because I have to have that stuff somewhere so why not have it easily findable and auto-synced across all the IT stations in my world? And who knows who you might meet on the move, who might be interested in your work history... - thewikiman

NB: See the comments section for a sixth thing to do with it - tracking online reputation.

Blogging is growing up: why be merely commentators when we can be activists?

I get really wound up when people dismiss blogging as a dead medium. I feel the same instinctive aggressive defensiveness that older professionals must feel when we New Professionals suggest their ideas and methods might be out-moded, because I like it and I've invested so much in it, and I'm ill equipped to move on from it. Recent events have given me cause for optimism that my faith in the medium is justified, because in the library world there appears to have been a subtle shift from those of us in the biblioblogosphere just being 'describers' to becoming 'doers' as well. There's just as much conversation, but a little more action too.

Even in the short-time since Laura and I did our Echo Chamber presentation (and if you missed it, we will hopefully be doing it twice in November both Up North and Down South, so stay tuned for that) a whole load of people seem to have gone out and broken free of the Chamber - particularly gratifying for us is that Lauren Smith (aka @WalkYouHome) was catalysed by the presentation into thinking she COULD actually make a difference herself, and SHOULD actually start trying to make things happen. Since then she's turned into a veritable one-woman media savvy library saving machine... Guardian articles, appearances on Radio 4 and 5Live, a Save Doncaster Libraries campaign getting wide recognition and generally actually making a difference - and, in fact, the use of 'one-woman library saving machine' in that description isn't accurate as she's clubbed together with several other library bloggers to launch Voices for the Library.

Voices for the Library involves no less than 8 librarians, many of whom have previously provided much comment and analysis of library problems (via various online platforms) but all of whom now felt moved to get out there and DO stuff. The result is an excellent website which is getting thousands upon thousands of hits, is being promoted in Library Campaigner Alan Gibbon's blog (great to see librarians and non librarians working together), and contains loads of stories and accounts highlighting the value of libraries and more particularly, librarians. More than that it has a page entitled 'What librarians do' - I love that, I've argued so many times I'm bored of hearing myself say it: if people knew what we do, they'd value our services and use them more. It's ignorance of our actual existence in 2010 that is at the route of a lot of the problems regarding library perception, and it is OUR job to right that perception.

Right before I started this blog, I presented at my first proper conference on the subject of how we're defined by our building, as librarians, and how unfair that was (and, indeed, is). I was quite happy to see my job as flagging up the problem. But actually it is my job to try and change that perception, at every opportunity, and by multiple means - not just talk about how that's what we should do. When the echolib thing first started, I was happy to just identify the problem. But now the presentations we're doing are offering up solutions, and because the Prezi is acting as a living archive of suggestions, more and more solutions will be added over time. And if just one person in the audience at each event (we're booked up for four so far over a 12 month period and we may end up doing more) is moved to try and change stuff in the way Lauren has been, then things really will start changing.

People are quite immunised to the argument that if we all did something little, something big would happen. People say, well I could take the train to this conference so as to save the planet, but if everyone else takes the plane anyway it won't make any difference. But what people seem to be proving recently is that actually you don't need EVERYONE to do something for it to be effective - even just a few people are able to be agents of real change. Me taking the time to explain to someone what librarians do next time I'm asked why I need a degree in it, rather than shirking the question, will make a tiny difference. But if the three or four hundred people who read this ALL take the time next time they're asked that question, and continue to do so as time goes on, that'll make a small difference and a worthwhile one. That's really the LEAST you can do - take serendipitous opportunities to enlighten people. And if you're feeling gutsy, go a little further and create opportunities for yourself. [preaching mode disengaged :) ]

Since I wrote all of the above, @reddite tweeted the following: "There is a difference between wanting libraries to be saved and wanting to save libraries". I'm really excited that people in the biblioblogosphere seem to be understanding of that difference, and moving from the former camp to the latter.

-thewikiman