Self indulgent blather..

This one's for all those who think that blogging is just self indulgent blather. It's just a quick post to see whether my feedburner feed (now on my sidebar as "subscribe") is picked up properly by bloglines .

10 THINGS I DID TODAY
It's the type of day that I have about once a month, but people think Stay At Home Mums have all day every day.
1. Scanned my teddy.
Work colleague reminded me in an email to bring in my teddy for Library's Midwinter Lunch, which has a Play School theme. She used many bear smilies in her post. I scanned Coco just to show her what a real teddy looks like. My Co-Pilot has warned me that posting it here risks creating a "Scan your Ted" meme.
2. Watched Play School with my 3 year old
A rare treat, as usually we are a "One hour of TV between 5 and 6pm household".
3.Folded 5 baskets of laundry
Only half a week's worth.
4.Sewed up the 8 year old's school jumper
5. Went to dance class at the gym
Thursday nights, 6:30 pm. Body jam class.
6.Watched "Vera Drake" on DVD while the 3 year old napped
How else would I get through 5 baskets of laundry without climbing walls?
7.Cleaned up a couple of day's dishes from the kitchen, then cooked dahl, rice, poppadums, corn
8.Was hot water bottle for Nougat, the furless Cornish Rex cat all day
Yes, I did 2., 3, 4., and 6, 9. and 10. all with the cat stuffed up my jumper.
9. Listened to 8 year old's reading, timed his timed reading passage, helped him stay on track while he did his homework
10.Made an appointment with a Real Estate Agent to appraise my dad's house

Librarian 2.0 jobs.

So, you're a skilled up Librarian 2.0 looking for a place to flex those bloggy wiki muscles. Where do you go?

Probably not anywhere in Australia. Yet.

I suspect Librarian 2.0 positions will be created as people in existing positions redefine their jobs and add a bit here, drop a few responsibilities there.

But, should you want to travel to the US, you could try out for one of the below..

1. Virtual Branch and Services Manager at Tapeka and Shawnee County Public Library. (open now)
The Virtual Branch & Services Manager will provide vision and leadership in designing, bringing online, and supporting the Virtual Branch, bringing ideas to the table with a high “wow, cool, nobody else is doing this!” factor.

2. Nextgen Librarian I/II/III at Wayne State University Library System. (January this year)
Wayne State University Libraries are currently seeking a dynamic, creative, and self-directed individual to join our talented team of librarians, web developers, multimedia specialists, instructional designers, and systems administrators. As the “NextGen Librarian” you will play a leading role in exploring, implementing and supporting transformative technologies that will enhance access to our electronic resources and services.

3. Specialist of Library Technologies at Genesee Valley BOCES, an educational services site. (March this year)
While the posting is for a school certified librarian, the key word is librarian. We need someone to manage Web 2.0 tool development to support member librarian blogging, podcasting, a Moodle server, Drupal, and other services. (Link is to reposting in Jenny Levine's The Shifted Librarian blog)

4.Librarian 2.0 at Kingston Frontenac Public Library (March this year)
We are looking for a Librarian 2.0 in preparation for the 2.0 World

• Lead our virtual reference team, implementing transformative technology such as IM, podcasting, and streaming audio/video as well as participate in our traditional reference services
• Recommend and implement new and developing technologies such as wikis, blogs, etc
• ....

OR sit back, wait.

Anyone want to wager how long it will take for a 2.0 job to spring up here in Australia. Maybe it already has. Any informants out there?

OMG! Embarrassing initials I have known

Maybe if I blog this it will seem funny...perhaps tomorrow.

I'm currently administering a site where I do a weekly poll. I had made some introductory screencasts, without voiceover, and wanted to ask whether the speed of them was OK.

So...I put up a poll question "How are you finding the speed of the screencasts?". One of the options was "Waaaaay toooo slooow", and of course for one of them I did the opposite and made "WTF (Way too fast)".

About 24 hours after I'd posted the poll, I noticed what I'd written and thought "OMG..that's got a double meaning".

Now I'm not the most prim and proper of librarians and I was worried that my colleagues would think it was deliberate. Or that I thought they were so behind the eight ball that they wouldn't notice if I swore.

ASAP I changed the option to "Way too fast", but wondered whether I should have made it "WTQ(Way too quick)" or changed the poll question to include an apology for inadvertently being offensive. But then it all seemed to highlight something they mightn't have noticed.

Either way, I'm red and mortified.

Well tag my blog Capt'n.

Things I want to do to personalise my blog....

• Change the image at the top to something equally ethereal, but mine.
• Switch around the "last posts" and my profile boxes.
• Add my bloglines blogroll to the right sidebar
• Add my facebook presence
• Work out how to use technorati and de.licio.us to tag my blog entries.
• Try to add my blog RSS feed to the MULTA site to check whether the site accepts feeds from recent blogger blogs (it doesn't accept them from old sites).
  

I'll view source on a couple of blogger blogs to work out how to redo the template.
Some information about how to tag my blog entries are here and here.

The "I" meme...my answers.

Took up CWs meme tag challenge from this morning.

I AM: going to a party this afternoon.

I SAID: I would go straight back to work after I had my baby.

I WANT: to live long enough to see both my kids turn 50.

I WISH: I had more time.

I HATE: being phoned at work at 3pm on a Friday by my son's daycare and being asked to pick him up because he developed a cold sore after he woke up from his nap.

I MISS: the certain steady world of being a kid.

I FEAR: beetroot.

I WONDER: whether I'll finish this meme all in one sitting.

I REGRET: not much. Not having more time with mum when she was dying.

I AM NOT: getting enough sleep.

I DANCE: every Thursday night in dance class at the gym.

I SING: songs from musicals with the kids, all day, every day.

I AM NOT ALWAYS: tidy.

I MADE: 36 black poplin capes for my son's Harry Potter party.

I WRITE: not nearly as much as when I was a teenager.

I CONFUSE: people who look similar.

I NEED:time away from people to recharge.

I SHOULD: be sitting at the dinner table.

I START: what I think I'll finish.

I FINISH: most things eventually.

I BELIEVE: that I don't need to make sense of my world, just live in it.

I KNOW: how to breastfeed

I CAN'T: whistle by blowing out (only by sucking in).

I SEE: changes in my environment that other people miss.

I BLOG: because it's the only way to see what it's all about.

I READ: copiously, continuously, eclecticly and voraciously

I AM AROUSED BY: smells. Male sweat of the right type.

IT PISSES ME OFF:when I'm in a room of people talking about something I have no idea about.

I FIND: most people nice.

I LIKE: being the age I am

I LOVE: being healthy

I TAG: If you're reading it, consider yourself tagged.

A blogger fully formed.....and the best book I ever read....

I've only been blogging for 2 months, but this post isn't your usual "I'm new to this so hold my hand and forgive me" type of post.

I was thinking of it taking a while to learn how to do this, how I'm not as good yet as I will be. I thought of Athena springing fully formed and adult from the head of her father, Zeus.


That got me on to the best book I ever read. Mainly due to when, rather than what. I was eight when I first discovered it and I know that I borrowed it at least 3 times a year from the school library until I left that school at 15. It is D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths .

It had the most wonderful illustrations...the one of Athena giving dad a headache is striking. It never talks down or minimises the adventures to anything too safe and sanitary. Oh yes, Zeus did have a large number of wives (rather than raping young maidens)...but the tales of Hercules and the jealousy of Hera were vivid. A number of minor tales are told also, like the Tithonus who was so loved by Eos (gentle dawn) that she asked that he be granted eternal life. But..oooops..she forgot to ask for eternal youth as well, so over the years he shrank to a grasshopper.

I remember ordinary life looking that little bit more magical because now I knew that the constellations were really ancient heroes, and Europe was made from a magical cow, and peacocks were once bodyguards with 100 eyes and the world was held up by a single strong guy and somewhere Prometheus was having his liver eaten out daily by an eagle, Persephone was mourning eating a pomegranate and Eros may just have been lurking about ready to pierce someone's heart.

I bought a copy of it last year from Amazon when (harvesting the Long Tail) I bought a swag of books that I had loved as a kid and thought should be in the house for my kids.

A modest proposal concerning the Library 2.0ing of Our University Library

Where the flights of fancy may go.....

I had coffee with C.W. from Curtin last night after CARCIT. A snippet brought up in the converstation obviously gelled overnight. She mentioned that Flickr (which started as a photo sharing site) frowns on people adding screenshots or posters or even scans of their kids' artwork, as it wants to focus on photography. The users have poo poohed this and are using it as an image exchange site, rather than a photo appreciation site. A case of a service set up to do x, being flooded by users who find it useful and are demanding it now take form y.

This morning I was speculating that maybe Flickr would be forced to create ''Flickr Scholar'', in the same way google created google scholar. And then maybe all these types of sites would create a ''scholar'' version...del.icio.us scholar, digg scholar?

Which of course led me to the logical outcome... (University name) Scholar.

C.W. and I were speculating last night about what our role will become if library bypass happens and all we are used for is paying for databases that people want to access. She suggested that we would have a role in matching best RSS source with best website, with appropriate other technological source/site. I thought this was exciting and useful, but even further from librarianship than we have gone before. I wondered what other profession may fulfil the same role..."Educators" came the answer. I agree.

So...what does (University Name) Scholar look like? Well....

• it has to be a "single search box" web site that meets all the research needs of our University.
• It combines the resources of the Teaching and Learning Centre and the Library.
• It has a budget that pays for access to passworded journal sites (although with Open Source journals even this function may decrease).
• It has live chat for users, with staff who can advise the best source for their query, whether it uses sources "owned" by us or not.
• If the tools we use are too hard for the user, then we use them and provide the answers, always making the tools available for the more savvy user to use themselves.
• Instruction in tool use (not just "owned" by us) is provided for users
• Instruction in researching, not just searching is provided.
• We are where the users are...so we have a facebook and MySpace presence.
• It provides communication/social networking with information finding...providing forums, blogging spaces for the University Community.
• It has a physical presence which allows real people contact.
• It still curates bookstock...but has a bigger focus on delivery to the user where the user is.
• It allows device independent access...whether people use PDA's, wireless laptops, converged PC with mobile phone...they can still find the information they need.

Now...is this merely a modest proposal...or where we may go? I don't know.

Blogs I've had before...

I was asked at work to look into blogs and RSS feeds and how we could use them in our library. Started one Monday public holiday (ANZAC day) while I staffed the ref. desk. That was April 25th. It's now June 23rd....

In 2 months, I have created:

• Kathrynarium at bloglines. First blogging site I found. Used it to track my progress.
• A dummy blog on my iinet account, using SimplePHPblog software.
• Sirexcite here at bloglines (pronounced Sigh rex sight...named after my cat)
• MULTA here at bloglines.... a blog outlining a project I wanted to run at work.
• Kathrynarium at the MULTA site. Currently am blogging there and here in tandem. Most posts there go here
  

I hope this will be my last blog for a while....

About this blog...

I am posting to this blog in tandem with a blog I am keeping as part of the MULTA (Murdoch Universtiy Library Thinking Aloud) project.

This two month project is designed to run until August 11. It is run on a TikiWiki site set up to allow library staff to read about new web tools (forums, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social tagging), use new web tools, and discuss them to find where they fit in our library.

Visit us at: http://multa.murdoch.edu.au