My SLA2011 Experience, in video form...

A while back I made a video about SLA 2011, the annual conference of the Special Libraries Association. I was lucky enough to win a place to attend this - I've been holding off putting the video on my blog until the Leadership and Management Division, who sponsored my award, had put it on theirs, as I made the video primarily for that. Anyway, here it is:

I made the video using good old fashioned Windows Movie Maker, and I've used the same techniques as in my Library Day in the Life vid to try and keep the viewer diverted! So it's not just me talking at the camera.

The whole SLA experience was so amazing, really I haven't even fully processed it. I keep going over my notes and spotting new things to go away and think about. If you're interested in some more reflections on the conference, I wrote a post on the SLA-Europe blog; I'd also recommend reading the reflections of my fellow ECCA winners, Sam Wiggins, Natalia Madjarevic, and Chris Cooper. And I would SO recommend applying for the ECCA next year!

I do have one over-arching conclusion from the conference, though. Which is... in my next post. :)

- thewikiman

The Great Library Stereotypometer!

Okay here it is... After EXTENSIVE RESEARCH (I asked people on twitter what they reckoned) I proudly present (and then immediately duck behind the nearest sofa) the Great Library Stereotypometer - a new, up-to-date, piercingly accurate and entirely NON-SERIOUS look at library stereotypes!

As the caption says, click it to view full-size. Feel free to use it anywhere. Don't take it seriously. (Seriously.)

More to add? Why not create your own! :)

- thewikiman

3 essential things to do AS SOON AS YOU JOIN twitter...

When most people join Twitter, they don’t know whether they’ll stick with it or not. For this reason, they often start following a few people before they’ve really set up their profile, and this can actually end up being detrimental to their twitter experience.

The reason is, when you start following someone, in most cases they get an email saying ‘X is now following you’ – this email includes your bio, your pic, and a link to your profile. If you don’t have a bio, your only tweet is something along the lines of ‘Don’t really understand this twitter lark!’, and your picture is the default twitter egg, chances are they won’t follow you back. And seeing as you’ve gone out of your way to identify key people to follow first of all, this is potentially a huge missed opportunity to engage with people who you’d get a lot out of chatting to.

So to avoid this, and generally get off on the RIGHT foot on Twitter, here are 3 very simple things to do right away, as soon as you join, and before you do anything else:

1. Put in a picture, preferably a head-shot. If you’re really camera shy then put in a picture of a robot or whatever, but put in SOMETHING – lots of people refuse to follow anyone with the twitter egg, right off the bat. Twitter is a personal medium – even if you’re only using it for professional networking, you really need a picture of yourself up there.
2. Put in a proper, engaging bio. Remember, people get emailed when you follow them. Oh, who is this new follower and shall I follow them back? I don’t know who they are because they’ve not put in a bio – so I won’t bother. Twitter is about connecting with people – use the bio to say something about yourself, which will make the kinds of people who you want to connect with, want to connect with you. Try and avoid ‘reluctant twitterer’ or similar as the last sentence.
3. Write a couple of tweets. I know it seems silly to broadcast tweets to no one, but you need to give people something to go on when they’re deciding whether to follow you back. Everyone’s first tweet is roughly ‘Am trying twitter out – hello world!’ or something along those lines, and that’s fine, no one expects your first tweet to be a work of 140 character genius. But follow that up with something more meaningful, perhaps about what you want to get out of Twitter, the types of professionals you want to tweet with, or maybe a link to a really useful article or piece of information. .

Just do those 3 simple steps and you’ll hit the ground running, and have more chance of developing relationships with people who matter to you.

- thewikiman

More on stuff on Twitter from this blog:

• New to Twitter? Here’s what you do
• Why I’m glad I caved in and started using twitter
• 7 reasons people give for not using twitter, and why ‘It’s a conversation’ is the answer to all of them

Why I’d quite happily never read another comparison between Google and Libraries ever again

I’m a huge fan of Phil Bradley, and a recent very eloquently written post of his added to the canon of information professionals who have compared Google unfavourably with What We Do. However, I’d really be very happy not to read any more such comparisons hereafter. Here’s five reasons off the top of my head

1. It’s not a fight we will ever win. Ever. Unwinnable fight = this.
2. However valid our arguments are for libraries or librarians being ‘better’ than Google, we are not powerful or loud enough for them to stick. It’d be like a minor royal saying he’d be better on the throne than the Queen – that may well be, but no one is listening and in any case, it’s the frigging Queen. She is literally bolted down onto the throne.
3. It’s really hard to become popular by slagging something else off. You have to be really likeable to make this approach work; it reminds people too much of politicians who only ever talk about how bad the opposition party is. From a marketing point of view, librarians saying Google is bad is a disaster, because everyone loves Google – it’d be like goldfish trying to make a comeback as a popular pet with a ‘Kittens are bastards’ campaign.
4. It’s hypocritical. Lots of librarians love Google. I love it – I use it every single day almost a bajillion times. I use it for work, in my library. I know some people don't love it and use Bing etc, but really there isn't a web user in the world who doesn't get some kind of good use out of search engines.
5. See number 1, again. .

All we can do is help people to use it better, and emphasise that we provide access to information which Google cannot find. To step up to Google and try and compete for the same market is a waste of energy.

-   thewikiman

Average is no longer enough? Noted. Now let's move on.

A lot is being made of the fact that in librarianship, Average is No Longer Enough. Was average enough at some point previously? Possibly; it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are enough librarians in the profession who love it enough that they don't want to be average, rather than reluctantly excelling themselves because they've been told to do so at a conference or by a blog post.

I predict that the total number of information professionals (in the current understanding of the word) will shrink at a fairly steady rate during my career. The Average will probably be the first to go (the Really Bad being, in my experience, remarkably stubborn). It'll be a Darwinian process - the people that really love this will probably be strong enough to survive, because they're the ones likely to be enthusiastic about embracing new challenges.

In a job market where there are far more qualified professionals than there are professional posts, the whole idea of trying to turn the drifters into yet more super-librarians is perverse anyway. The people who think average is enough are probably never at the kind of events where people say it isn't. Let's stop telling each other what we already know, take the non-existence of THE SPOON as read, and use our time in conferences and on social media to talk about something more useful - like specifically HOW to find your 'extra' rather than just the fact that you need to.

- thewikiman 

p.s Please use the Comments section for all puns about what mean-spirited post this is. :)