Staying relevant in changing times

I was reading Incite and liked the new ways that Librarians are describing their roles. The job description hasn't really altered but the focus on access is now more pronounced. I'll add more examples as I come across them.

Here are a couple of samples:

* Librarians manage information to deliver a useable result for our clients.
* Librarians and information services are about helping others educate themselves, for whatever reason.

The focus is on accessibility - so all the tools we use to assist our client's access to the resources in our collections should definitely be one of our major tasks in the job. Eg. LibGuides creating user-friendly environments where print and online resources merge.

Picture: The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593)

ALIA's PD scheme

Well, I'm still feeling inspired and motivated since attending the Biennial 2012 Conference. So I have decided to join ALIA's PD scheme again - this time to actually track my professional development items to ensure I earn my 'CP' initials. And it's so much easier to do now! 'My PD' (recording system) tracks your activities and points and allows a short note to state learning outcomes. Now no-one ever needs to be frightened of the dreaded audit. By adding your activities as you go, it'll be a snap. Previously you had to keep all of your own documentation and track your own points. Hoorah for better technology!

Useful tips for Kindle users

More useful information about the Kindle is available on the Wired website:

How to do (almost) everything with a Kindle 3

Simple tip turns Kindle into ultimate news reader

Ok... still gushing about the silly toy!

Long live books!

My Kindle has arrived and it is truly magnificent. The reader is very easy to use and wonderful to read - the 'paper' is easy on the eyes and the device so lovely to use that it makes you want to read it all the time. Every spare minute! Downloading ebooks from Amazon is a doddle and the 3G means that I can browse for books, or get a new book, whenever and where-ever I like. I already have a number of books that will take me a few months to read!

A number of the classics that have entered the public domain are a couple of dollars on the Amazon site but they are also available freely at numerous other places on the net in the right format for Kindles. Sometimes however, the convenience of getting the book right there on-the-spot is worth a couple of dollars.

The new Kindle also comes with 'Experimental' features - a web browser which although limited still enables you to access your twitter feed, or download books from free ebook websites. It's a wonderful feature and I hope that Amazon develops it further as it makes the Kindle more multi-functional than just a ebook reader. Other experimental features include the ability to play MP3s on your Kindle, and a Text-to-Speech feature.

I love the dictionary too! It's fantastic to wonder about a word and then get the meaning of it within a few seconds. Hopefully my vocabulary will improve, as well as the depth of my reading.

Admittedly I haven't used other ebook readers but the latest Kindle is a wonderful thing. ****3/4

The world has changed... again

I'm getting a Kindle. It hasn't arrived yet but it's coming soon. It's being shipped now and I'm quite excited. Not just because it's a new gadget. But it's also a representation of me becoming even more involved with technology and the ever increasing need to keep up with it.

I had thought that getting a Kindle would not be not a great change... just reading books on an electronic device, instead of printed format. But I didn't realise that the world has changed... people are reading on various portable devices and sharing content and using interesting software that I had no idea about until now. I'm feeling very green.

So far I've learned a lot about e-readers. I've learned that the reason that Australia is offered a more limited number of publications than the U.S. has a lot to do with Digital Rights Management or DRM. I've also learned that I don't have to only buy ebooks from Amazon but can get them from other sources - I just have to upload them onto my Kindle which I can do with software like Scribd or calibre.

If you're looking to find out more about ebook readers and ebooks in Australia, then check out Kathryn Greenhill's blog Librarians Matter.

I should have my new Kindle by Monday!

Online Learning to teach Information Skills

I was completing a survey for QUT and one of the questions was "What skills do you think you will be using most over the next 5 years?". My response was: Skills to create content for Online Learning.

There has never before been so many easy-to-use tools to create interactive learning content in education. Well, that's how it seems to me. Perhaps it's only because I'm beginning to use Adobe Presenter and Captivate that it seems that way. But the tools are great and they produce things of reasonable quality without too much effort.

I think that more library training will be delivered online in the future. This will expand the audience and hopefully make learning easier. I know that I learn a lot quicker when I'm interacting with content, and engaging with it, rather than just reading it or being lectured about it.

I can see a number of positives for online learning or 'e-learning':
* Online collections and journal databases will be used more.
* Students can learn at any time.
* Information can be quickly updated.
* Less paper used as brochures and guides are accessed online.

Negatives:
* Need for up-to-date technology
* Less students may be physically coming into the library.
* Students need to have a certain level of e-literacy to be able to use online learning tools. However, assisting students to gain that level of e-literacy is important anyway. Another negative though is the staff time required to assist the students who require additional assistance to use e-learning tools.
* Students are not always self-motivated, independent learners.
* Creating online learning modules takes staff time, and staff need to have a relatively high level of skill to produce them.

Although this list of negatives is longer than the positives, I still think that online learning is a fantastic thing for libraries to utilise and that the positives are more valuable than the negatives. What do you think?

Moodling with Information Literacy

I was checking out some of the papers at the ALIA Access 2010 conference and enjoyed reading a paper written by a couple of librarians from Sydney Institute, TAFE NSW. The paper is called "Moodling along with Libraries - supporting online flexible delivery in TAFE NSW". The paper discusses the way that Librarians are collaborating with Faculties to create content that assists students with Information Literacy. It is quite an exciting time to be working in the Education sector as there are many fantastic tools to assist with content creation - that look professional and are easy to use. Moodle and Equella are used by TAFE NSW, and a number of Institutes have recently invested in LibGuides to create subject guides. The hype about LibGuides is large, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with them sometime soon.