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?