Thing 23

Thing 23 - Reflection week

And so things draw to a close. What a fascinating and at times challenging experience this has been. And mostly very enjoyable too, if tiring.

For me, the best thing about the programme has been getting in touch with other librarians. It's been great to have a support network of other people exploring these things at the same time so that we can encourage each other and compare notes. Without wishing to single people out embarrassingly, I've been more impressed than I can say by Annie's apparently boundless energy and enthusiasm. For the past three months she has been everywhere - not just blogging on the Cam23 2.0 site (and on her own blogs) but also commenting and tweeting all over the place. So thank you, Annie.

It was wonderful, finally, to meet other bloggers at last night's wrap party. I'm only sorry I couldn't have done it earlier. I wish all the best to those graduate trainees who are leaving Cambridge. Those who are staying around, and those who are just arriving, I hope to meet (again) before too long.

It's also been brilliant to be able to follow people who are doing CPD23. It has proved an excellent complement to Cam23, and if similar programmes run in the future I look forward to being a part of them somehow.

As for the Things themselves, by far the most useful has been Google Reader. It's revolutionised the way I manage RSS feeds. How did I exist before? I don't remember. Also delightful: LightShot! How simple it is, and how effective. It was also fun trying out screencasting. Though I try not to dwell on negatives, my feelings about Pushnote are unchanged, I haven't used iGoogle for a couple of months, and I confess I have hardly visited LibraryThing since my initial excitement wore off. I haven't got into the habit of using my Twitter account much either, though I still log in periodically, and perhaps it will become a more regular haunt now that less of my time will be taken up with blogging. But at least it's good to have tried these things out. As librarians we ought to feel an obligation to keep up with new technologies, or we will run the risk of being left behind. They may be a useful weapon if we are ever called upon to justify our existence.

OK, enough of the Braveheart stuff. I've done quite a bit of Wordling here and there in the past few years, so I thought I'd use Tagxedo, which I was introduced to by Erin's post, to add a bit of colour.

Well. Where now? I'm sure I'll appreciate the Cam23-shaped hole in my life for a bit, but those inevitable withdrawal symptoms will steal upon me before too long. I think the blog will go into at least semi-hiatus, but I won't hesitate to resurrect it if I think of anything interesting to write about. And I hope some of the other blogs will also continue. I'll keep following everyone's progress. Until we meet again.

Thing 11

Thing 11 - Reflection week

I'm on holiday this week. Sorry not to meet everyone yesterday, but we have plenty of time.

But wait! Surely my commitment to Cam23 is not so great that I am sacrificing valuable time exploring the fascinating byways of German Gothic architecture to write this drivel? Well, no. I've written this in anticipation of reflection week, and am taking this opportunity to try out Blogger's 'scheduled post' option. If I come back next week to discover it's not worked, like those desperate occasions in my youth when I would return home to find the video timer had gone wrong, I will be royally miffed.

Kölner Dom at night. Image from Wikimedia Commons

I presume this is the occasion to think about what we have liked and not liked about the course so far, whether there are things (or Things) we have particularly responded to, and how we want to progress.

By and large, this has been a very enjoyable month. The thing I have liked most of all has been the chance it has provided for me to get in touch with other librarians in Cambridge. That isn't something that I've been in the habit of doing since I started working here five years ago. Of course, I see my colleagues, and very charming people they are too, but apart from occasional meetings with staff from other colleges, and the libraries@cambridge conference each year, that's about all the socialising I do.

I think it's important to keep up with people's blogs and post comments as often as possible, just to maintain momentum. I have been trying to be proactive about this. It's very encouraging to receive comments and tweets from other people doing the programme, especially if you don't know them personally. I'm fairly good at keeping track of what other people are posting, but the problem of starting to follow lots of blogs all at once is that it takes a while before you start to remember who's who. If I haven't commented on your blog yet, it is not (necessarily) a personal affront. I may easily get around to it in the coming weeks.

As for the things themselves, they've been a mixed bag but mainly good. You don't get much time to try them out before reporting back, but Cam23 has to move at this kind of pace. iGoogle has not become a regular haunt of mine, and I suspect Google Calendar and Pushnote won't either, but I really like blogging, screenshots and RSS (as I already did), and can see that screencasts, Doodle and Google Docs are likely to be the perfect tools to use when the necessity presents itself.

I'm not quite into the swing of Twitter. I do get it, having used it for a couple of years already in a non-professional (I may say very non-professional) capacity, but I'm not sure exactly what kind of tone I want to pitch. Part of me would like to be posting very worthy stuff about new technologies and projects all the time, but I don't think I could realistically maintain the pretence. My mind is simply too trivial to be continually occupied with thoughts of professional development, and so what I have tweeted so far has been essentially light-hearted, if by and large library-related. I sort of hope that taking part in Cam23 will somehow mould me into a more professional (or at least more professionally aware) person. I know, not desperately likely, but perhaps it will have at least some effect on how I approach my work.

I am now compelled to go and shove some things in a suitcase, but I shall see you anon. Have a lovely week.

Things 5 and 6

You will have to excuse me if things seem a little rushed in this post. I haven't had much time to play around with the things we're exploring this week, but I wanted to write this before I go away for the weekend tomorrow evening. I am going to be singing in this concert - and incidentally, if you fancy an impromptu excursion to Somerset, which I admit is unlikely, there can be no better way of spending your Saturday lunchtime. Plug over.

Thing 5 - screenshots

Although I can't claim to be a master of the art, making screenshots was at least already within my capabilities. I haven't used screenshots in my previous posts in any demonstrative capacity, merely to provide a minimal amount of visual appeal. My attitude is that one picture is better than none (depending on the picture, I suppose). But I had just used the old and cumbersome way of Shift + Print Screen, then pasting into Paint and cropping as necessary, and saving as a PNG to minimize image loss and graininess.

A very brief acquaintance of LightShot is enough to convince me of its value in saving time and effort. After installing the Firefox add-on, it can't have taken me more than 30 seconds to create this screenshot from the BBC homepage with my first attempt:

I haven't tried downloading the LightShot application, but if I find myself using the add-on a lot then I'll explore further.

Thing 6 - screencasts

Now we're starting to get outside my comfort zone. I've never done anything like this before. But when it comes to demonstrating a procedure, a video will suit some people better than a series of stills, so I decided to try and make a screencast showing how to place a hold using the King's College webcat. We have an in-house catalogue which operates independently from Newton and LibrarySearch, and it might be useful to be able to direct confused freshers to a demonstrative video.

Unless I have misread the small print, Screencast-o-matic offers only limited functionality free of charge, so it is not possible to do any retrospective editing of picture or sound. Everything has to be executed in a single take, and you cannot add any commentary afterwards, so making a screencast is effectively a performance in real time. No pressure then.

After some tentative experiments, I decided that my video could do with title cards at the beginning and end to brighten it up, which I designed using Paint (very retro of me), and also some background music. I'd have preferred to use a relevant song like this, but thought I'd better choose something which wouldn't present any rights issues. Searching my computer I found a little MIDI arrangement of this song that I'd made at school. I wonder now if it's a bit intrusive, but if it bothers you then you can always turn the sound off. Anyway, without further ado:

I like that Screencast-o-matic shows the movement of the cursor and of each click with little animations to aid the viewer's focus, though I had to be careful to click on each button when I would normally simply press return to save time, remembering that such a demonstration has to spell everything out. I also paced myself quite slowly. Having a piece of music with a set length (about 40 seconds) helped me in this respect - my first attempts would have been too fast for most newbies to follow.

I uploaded my screencast to YouTube and called it 'How to place a hold', but didn't give it any tags. Perhaps if I had, there might be a more germane selection of videos in the right-hand column instead of i.e. 'How to pick a lock'.

It's been really fun exploring these things, especially screencasts, and if I get a bit more fluent I can see them both being useful tools in the library.