And in conclusion...for now anyway

So, here we are, give or take a year later, and I have reached the end of my Professional Training Plan which I have completed as a requirement for professional registration as a librarian in New Zealand.

Each of the tasks required has its own page (see the list down the right hand side of this page) and I have concluded it all with a self-reflection.

It has been assessed by my mentor.

The blog itself is my submission for professional registration to LIANZA (the Library and Information Association of New Zealand).

Once it is assessed I intend to continue to develop and refine it as a blog for librarians redirecting my focus onto the areas of interest that have developed through this process e.g., libraries and Maori, libraries and the disabled, the professional development wiki 'What's uPD with you?', and further investigations into Index New Zealand (INNZ) title usage by its users.

The end is nigh...

After nearly a year of working on (and off) my Professional Training Plan as part of the process is becoming a registered librarian in New Zealand, the end of this first step is in sight. I just need to finish off a couple of the tasks, tidy up the rest, right my self-reflection on the whole experience and then get my mentor to write her own assessment. Then I'll be able to start my own revalidation journal as the next step in the process!

What's UpPD With You?

Here's the prototype of a regular post where people can enter in their latest PD thought, idea, concern, etc. Or they can add a comment to a post already published.

Well, here we are five months later and this prototype post turned out to be just that - a prototype - an idea that ended up as something else completely but a good idea at the time.

What it ended up as was an email within the Content Services group of the National Library sent out on a Friday and highlighting additions/changes to the What's uPD with you wiki.

Going live - mentor response and the importance of costing your professional training plan before settling to it

Good news this week. My mentor gave me the thumbs up to push my blog out to people within the larger area of the Library I work in. Now I am faced with the implications of putting my thoughts and musings out into this 'public'. How will I come across to others? Will this blog fill a gap or a need? Will people respond? The idea has just struck me of introducing it to a couple of selected people who I know are doing MIS papers to get their input first. I like it. Let me think on it.

But more pressing, it's now time to investigate further the code of conduct within our organisation in terms of being aware of discussing issues or actions in a way that will be 'fair', 'impartial', 'responsible' and 'trustworthy' (Code of conduct, July 2011, p.4). While this blog will be launched properly 'in-house' the plan is for it to be pushed out nationally (at the moment it has been pushed to a limited number of people), outside the library into the wider world so care will need to be taken that these criteria are always kept in mind.


If only hindsight could be reversed perhaps I would not have included in my Professional Training Plan (PTP), as part of addressing knowledge and skill gaps not covered in my qualification or required for my job, attending some Oral History workshops. They cost money! More money than I feel comfortable with paying when it's part of my job requirements. I've sent an email to the appropriate person looking at possible options that would allow me to pay less, i.e., only attending one of the two days of the course. I'm still really keen on Oral History just not on the cost involved. I should have spent more time investigating the cost and been aware of its likely increase due to inflation(?). Bah humbug.

Taking my PD blog to the library - thoughts

So here they are, my first thoughts at how to develop a PD blog within my library, inviting other librarians to contribute to it as part of their own PD requirements (e.g., participating in professional networks and activities) and as a tool to share with each other what we're all working on.

The idea at the moment is to send a general email to Content Services introducing the blog and it's purpose, inviting interested people to visit it and hopefully join both the blog and also follow it on Twitter. Then, on a weekly basis, I will email and tweet something along the lines of 'So what PD are you working on now?' as a way to start conversation.

I had thought that my own blog would be the PD blog, using the Post aspect of it, with my own PD within the blog's pages. I'm not sure though whether posting like this, where people can sign onto my blog and add comments, will work, or whether another way (perhaps a Wiki?) would be better...time to run it past my Mentor.

Any other thoughts from anyone will also be appreciated...

Time for self promotion of blog? Twitter and Kaupapa Maori

Self promotion
Now that I have been creating this blog for a few months now I am realising that it is getting closer to the time when I will need to start promoting this blog within the Content Services area of the Library I work in as part of my Professional Training Plan (PTP) requirement to 'Invite other NLNZ librarians to contribute as part of their own professional development requirements, whether they be starting out on the registration process like myself, part way through, or have finished and are looking for ways to add to their revalidation journal activities'.  

There are also several areas within the PTP that require me to present my findings and newly acquired information to my immediate colleagues and I am thinking that it would be better to do this bit by bit as I go, rather than all at once at the end of the process.

Twitter
In my last post I said how I would try and log on to Twitter more regularly to see if I could reap more benefits than I was previously getting. Since then I have logged on each morning and kept an eye on it during the day, checking out each new tweet as it came in. Overall, while the majority of tweets have not been of interest to me, there have been the odd one or two that piqued my interest requiring me to investigate further. It seems that there is a process of culling and restocking that I will inevitably have to start to go through weeding out those tweets that are not offering me anything new or interesting while continuing to search for more - the overall objective being to keep the amount of 'Following' at a manageable number.  

Kaupapa Maori
Due to an IT issue which meant I couldn't carry on with my usual work flow I spent the time researching information for the first part of my PTP question 7 about the ideas and philosophy behind kaupapa Maori methodologies in terms of understanding the needs of Maori clients of Index New Zealand (INNZ) - the database I work on.

It turned out to be the kind of research when you start out reading with one point of view in mind and you finish with another. In this instance it was the idea that in order to understand the needs of Maori clients we need to make a long term committment to the relationship between INNZ and its Maori users. We need to go outside the institution and meet with Maori users and learn where each of us is coming from and how we can work together to achieve common goals.

CPD23, Reflective practice, Delicious and Twitter

After finding out last week through one of my Twitter feeds that the CPD23 online course was starting up again I had great pleasure in signing on to it and finding my name on the Participants list. I also took the time to reacquaint myself with Delicious, the social bookmarking service, as I linked into it through CPD - once I'd worked out how to do it - it wasn't that intuitive. One of those times when you think you're following the correct procedure but you're not entirely sure. It seems to have worked out all right though.

Spent some time on CPD23 Thing #5 'Reflective practice' which is something we should all be doing regularly although, if I'm honest, it's a hard process to motivate oneself through - there's always something else new to learn rather than reflect on what you've already learned.

As I walked around the block during my morning tea break I had an idea of how I could better utilize Twitter. I could Tweet what I have done in this blog for each week. Sounds obvious I know, but sometimes the most obvious things only seem that way after you've realised them (profound, huh). So I sent out the tweet. Included my blog address to see if I can hook anyone...

Oral History in New Zealand journal, 23 Things Take 2! and Tweeting

Well it took a few weeks longer than anticipated due to other work committments for me to get to the Oral History of NZ journals sitting on my desk, but today I got there (No. 4 in my Professional Training Plan (PTP) requirements - see 'Pages 4'). The incentive was the fact that my colleagues and I are about to move back into the renovated National Library of New Zealand and we need to clear our desks of any extraneous materials

that we don't want to pack up in our allocated boxes to take with us. Plus other people were wanting to use the journals! I was glad to get round to reading them though as I got some good ideas to use when I get around to my own oral history interview project (which is weighing on my mind as something I need to do and something I may need to pay for).

During the week an email arrived heralding the restarting of the CPD23 Things online learning course on Monday 7 May and this time around I am getting into it right at the start, not after it finished last year as I have been doing. That was easy! Signed up? Done! Thank you to the CPD23 team for starting up again and thank you to dpgreen.net for going online about it. I've just realised that's why my Google page CPD link has refreshing itself!

Returned to Twitter after a month's absence (thus blowing my idea of checking in each day) to find a screed of tweets from people and institutions I am following but who I am beginning to notice do not tweet anything I am interested in following. In fact I get more useful information out of the blogs I am subscribed to. I have rid myself of some of the big tweeters of little information. Also changed by profile picture to a picture of me and not a wet, bedraggled penguin I admired so much. Searched on 'disabled librarian' to see if I can follow people/institutions with similar interests, especially as in one of my PTP requirements I am looking into the resources available for disabled people on the Net for librarians. Found and 'followed' seven.

New weird blog post layout, National Library NZ Wellington Staff Mini-Conference

Not sure what I've done, or if it just an update, but I'm entering this post in a new layout which is a little disconcerting. You get used to the look of one way and then it changes on you. Oh well, progress I suppose ... and whaddyaknow? I like it!

As I attended the National Library Wellington Staff Mini-Conference yesterday at the Westpac Stadium I thought I would write up about it here as one of the workshops especially had some very relevant information pertaining to blogs.
The workshop was entitled 'Social media and Learning Futures' and was run by Lisa Oldham (Development Specialist School Library Futures) and Dylan Owen (Development Specialist Creating Readers & Collns). They talk about their Create Readers Blog as part of their Services to Schools and some of the online tools they are using to generate traffic to it (exactly what I mentioned as a goal in my last post). Here are some of their suggestions:

• Twitter
• same name as the blog
• use it to advertise new content and develop conversations over time ("it won't happen overnight, but it will happen")
• Scoop.IT
• link to trusted content both yours and others
• Pinterest
• to curate content
• Stitch.it
• Library Thing
• Facebook
• Bit.ly
• good for Tweets when you want to include a URL but you need it shortened so you do not use up too many characters

There were also three important ideas behind these suggestions:

1. The idea is to meet your prospective blog visitors and users where they are online already.
2. Whatever you instigate on your blog has to be sustainable. You as the blooger have to be able to add weekly content updates otherwise people will loose interest.
3. Visitors need to know that if they take the time to write anything on your blog, what they write will be read by others

Looking at Thing 5, enquiring after National Library Oral History workshops, and investigating librarian misconduct

First things first - I got my first comment on this blog! Only one but it proves that it is out there for people to find and read. Exciting. Next step is to spread the word. Forgot to keep logging onto Twitter which means that I had a mountain of tweets today which I just could not be bothered looking at - information overload. BTW: had a question at Quiz Night on Wednesday asking how many characters were allowed per tweet - why did I say 134 or 136? It's 140!

I'm thinking that it's not a good idea to leave this PD until Friday afternoon. It was a struggle to get through it with a modicum of focus. Hence my idea to work through Thing 5 about Reflective practice amounted to reflecting on how I really couldn't be bothered doing so.

Instead I fired off an email enquiring about possible Oral History workshops coming up at the National Library and realised that in order to complete them I would have to pay up to $300. Ouch. I already knew that but still, ouch. I'm going to see if I can get some sort of monetary recompense. We'll see.

My other goal for today was to start another item in my Professional Training Plan. I decided on the second item looking at the Librarian Code of Professional Conduct so I began searching the internet for examples of librarian misconduct which was harder than I thought. Still I've saved some links to look at next week (I'd better make a note in my diary to remind me - done).

P.S. Also worked out how to re-order the pages which I will have to do each time I add a new page for my next PTO item.

Finishing off Thing 4, Twitter revelation, RSS feeds and rant

First, the rant...

After not being able to afford the time for this blog for the previous two Fridays I began feeling the pressure of committments against time, i.e., more and more work committments but the same amount of time to do them all within. And seeing as I am the only one who will be let down if I do not work on this blog ( and everything else I do will affect some one else by my not doing it) my professional development (PD) slips, yet again, by the wayside.

A further aspect of this inability to get ahead with my PD is the inability to deal appropriately with the endless stream of emails concerning the latest library 'thing'. Being unable to afford the time to read and digest I inevitably end up bookmarking the page with the plan to return to later in my PD time. That's the plan. The reality is an ever-expanding favourites list. Best intentions. 

Then there's the guilt. I've been working on this for two hours now and the thought keeps popping into my head that I should be doing my real job. But no, this is important. The amount of new learning that is occuring is pleasing to the soul (and goes to outweigh the guilt).

By having another look at Twitter, a new look at RSS feeds and not bothering to look at PushNote I was able to complete Thing 4. I think I've had a breakthrough with Twitter, adding enough people to follow to start getting a range of interesting tweets. For so long I've waited for nothing to happen. Now I am beginning to see how it could work to keep me up-to-date with things going on. In terms of RSS feeds my first issue was working out where to put all the bookmarks. Only ended up selecting a couple as they were the only ones that peaked my interest. Will see what having an RSS feed means (and hope that the websites I have chosen will update themselves often enough to warrant the feed). As PushNote was about rating and commenting on websites, and I have no inclination to want to do that, I did not bother with it. Perhaps later?

Great ideas come to those who wait ... after remembering my Wiki page I finally thought to add a link from there through to this blog at the top of the page where people might see it and might visit?

Adding Twitter link, Thing 3 and where did the '23 Things' page go?

The goals for today were to add the Twitter link to my tweets and complete Thing 3 and 4.

Now that I know about the template designer I found adding the link relatively easy, finding my way around the blog and back again (I was also able to enlarge my title heading to be more easily read against the background picture. All I have to do now is start using Twitter as the three entries displayed are the only ones I have made and they are at least a year old!

It was while I was working on Thing 3 I realised that my 23 Things page had disappeared. As I had been particulary vigilant in saving drafts I was suddenly distressed that all that work ay have disappeared. Thankfully I used the 'back page' button, found it and copied it to a word doc., just in case. Man the fallibility of these technologies keep you on your toes. Ahhh...eureka moment - posts are saved then published, pages are saved as drafts, which you then have to publish.

Thing 3, about personal branding, was a most worthwhile exercise, getting me to think about my online presence, what is presented about me, and how I wanted it to attract like minded people with similar interests within the library world to spur and broaden my own. I have added to this blog accordingly but imagine I still have a way to go.

Thing 4 introduced me again to Twitter, this time with a couple more clues as to what it was for, but I have still come away non-plussed. Need to do further searching for interesting groups. Will continue with Thing 4 next week.

Throughout the morning the internet was incredibly slow which meant frustration at trying to get things done within the time I have set aside.

23 Things, Aargh! and template designer

So today's tasks were Things 1 and 2 on the 23 Things. We got there in the end but only after the sudden vanishment of a good hour's work on this blog - hence the Aargh! The first rule when computing anything worth saving - regularly save it! I know that now. Certainly makes you think about what you're writing about, trying to remember it all, especially the good bits, for a second time.

This Aargh! moment occurred as I was writing about what I hope to get out of the programme (see Thing 1). One moment everyting was as it should be, the next gone. But wait, a new development! In creating the previous 'Thing 1' link I have discovered my vanished work - as a draft within 'Edit Posts', and here it is ...

First task this morning was to check if my sign-up to the 23 Things had been registered. It hadn't. After reading through previous sign up messages I discovered that as the 23 Things programme is no longer 'live' the people responsible for the blog are not updating their registrations as often on either the blog or the del.ic.ious tags. Following the lead of previous registeree's I have left a message asking them to confirm that a) I am registered and b) it is still worthwhile contining through the programme even though it is no longer 'live' (previous reply comments to messages suggest it is).

I'd forgotten I'd wrote that so good to find it. Unfortunately it wasn't all I remembered writing but I've managed to rewrite what I need.

Looking around some of the other blogs on the 23 Things blog gave me an insight into how much (and how little) people had done. Also, by following the instructions on Thing 2 and my own nose I was able to add an image and change the header colour (through the Template designer edit function) to make my own blog front page a bit more inviting to the visitors (none thus far) I have now ensured can access and leave messages. Even managed to add a profile picture and brief blurb.

23 Things and Mātauranga Māori

After a week on annual leave I am back to blogging. As I do more posts and pages I am becoming aware of layout requirements, in this case what post headings to use, thinking into the future about how I want titles to look and how easy it will be for reader's to locate archived entries. Hence the date title, although I'm still not certain that this is the right information. I need to look at other blogs for ideas.


I also need to look and see if my enrolement to the 23 Things library blog has been either accepted or even acknowledged. I will do that now...


Well that was wierd! Wondering if this blog was actually live I searched for 'Librarian Grazer' on the web and instead found, listed as the first result, the 23 TfPD site with 'Librarian Grazer' aleady signed in! It seems I am indeed accepted...still don't know if this is a live blog or not though.


Just back from a look around this site and the web. While I cannot find any links to this blog online I still somehow think it is live... I also realised that using the date as the post title is redundant as each post is dated anyway. Back to the drawing board on that one.


And back to my Matauranga Maori write-up page to finish that off.


Two hours or so later and I have finished the Matauranga Maori  pages. I have also changed the name of this post to reflect the topics within it in the hope that doing so increases the hit rate of people searching under these terms.


The 'two hours later' aspect reminds me of the conversation I had with my Team Leader regarding the Libraries acceptance of people spending library time working on their professional development. I do not feel so guilty now about blocking out so much (and more) of my Friday.

Voting for LIANZA AGM

Back again with less time to spend on PD as my other Indexing work got away from me after lunch. Have to watch that.

Have just spent 15 minutes voting online for the LIANZA AGM and incoming Committee. I realised last week that I had missed the first Wellington region meeting for the year (as did alot of others by all accounts) and so felt I owed it to the Library Gods to appease them by filling out the LIANZA AGM online survey.

This afternoon, for the next hour until home time anyway, I will attempt to work on my Mataturanga Maori work.

First blog and NLNZ Wiki

So today I embark on my Professional Training Plan in order to become a registered librarian here in NZ.

First thing I need to do is to set this blog account up so I can sign up to the '23 Things for Professional Development' self-directed online blog course which is Task #1 on my Professional Training Plan (PTP). I have also signed up to a wordpress blog with the idea of seeing which is the easier of the two to use - so far this one. - blogspot (wordpress already is telling me I need to update my IE browser which I am unable to do).

Sign up message

"23 Things for Professional Development

Thanks! Your response has been recorded."

So now I presume I wait for confirmation. I am quietly hoping that this '23 Things' blog course is an ongoing course and that I am not joining it at the end of its life (the last sign up seems to be Sep 2011). Therefore awaiting confirmation takes on a little more significance. 

And now I will attempt to link to this blog from my page on the National Library Wiki.
Done. Easy.

Before I attempt to link from the Wiki to the work I have already done on Task #7(1) I am pausing to consider which one of the blog or the wiki would be best to invite other people from the National Library to participate in ... I've got the feeling that I will decide one way, run with it, then find that the other way might be better - such is the way of exploring technologies ...

Couldn't work out how to create a new page on the Wiki so I created a new one on here and pasted the http address onto the Wiki instead. Bingo. Now all I need to do is update/edit the document to actually say what it's meant to say according to the Task instructions.

And I still don't know when the next Wellington LIANZA meeting is ...