INF506 Delicious commentary

Dealing with Delicious

After registering and a brief struggle of setting up the Delicious save button on my browser, I was set. I saved a few websites of interest. But what next? There wasn’t a help button or an instructional video that I could find easily. The help button was at the bottom of the page and the information wasn’t very comprehensive.

After experimenting for a while I found I could import my links from Facebook. Most of these links were rubbish and I didn’t want to keep them so I learnt how to delete them with the edit icon in the top right hand side of each box.

Tagging wasn’t intuitive. The important ingredient is to use the “Enter” button before pressing “save”. Multiple tagging and then using the “bundle” option in the side bar were obvious next steps.

Connecting with others was a nightmare. Putting people’s names into the search bar revealed nothing. I had to put the complete URL in. This makes searching for like-minded colleagues problematic. The help button says:

·        When you come across a user on Delicious who's collecting great stuff, click on their profile pic or user name to go to their profile page. Then, click the green "Follow" button.

Well, excuse my ignorance, but just how do we come across other users when I can’t find them through the search bar? How do I know when I save a site on ‘discus throwing’ that there are other people collecting the same thing? No red light flashes. To me it seems that I am bookmarking in a vacuum. I see the value of Delicious in keeping favourite sites but the connectivity with others eludes me.

ETL503 Selection Woes

Selection is undoubtedly a fun activity. You have the right to choose large quantities of books, DVDs and other resources. It's not your money that pays for these items either, it's the school's. But there is a downside. What to choose? The TL has to cater for the school it serves. This includes all patrons: staff, students, parents and the community. Students of all reading abilities need to be catered for. teaching resources also need to be considered and staff can help to guide selection here. But ultimately it is the TL who is the last word on selection.
   The TL therefore needs a strong policy on selection to help guide their choices. They can also refer to reviews, existing bibliograpies and publisher/vendor websites and catalogues to aid selection.
TLs need to be mindful of the authority of the material, the physical quality and design, the appropriateness, currency and cost. This leads to the TL having to do a lot of decision-making, and being able to justify her selctions through policy alignment.Then there is the ever-present spectre of censorship.
   Omission is in itself a form of censorship. Items could be omitted because they are from small independant publishers who don't have distribution rights that give them the exposure of the larger publishers. Items may also be omitted due to controversial content. Libraries support the democratic notion that information is for all, regardless of the bias/disturbing content/extreme views that may be presented.
   It's all a lot to contend with; selection is more than just grabbing a few books off the vendor's shelf and signing a blank cheque. It is complex decision making, a task suited for a professional.

INF 506 Assessment item 1

I am naturally reticent. I hate talking on the phone or addressing the class for prolonged periods. I dread public speaking events and as an author this makes me a marketing liability for my publisher. But with Social Networking I can connect with the world without having to speak.

Websites where people with common interests or shared histories can publish their own content and connect with others are called Social Networks (De Rosa, Cantwell, Havens, Hawk and Jenkins, 2007). Those in vogue currently, and they are rather transient beasts, include Facebook, Twitter, Google+1, Flickr, YouTube and Linked In. There are countless others.

A few years ago, on the advice of my publicist, I started up a blog and an author’s page on Facebook. I enjoy blogging. I can surround myself in book reviews and thoughtful comments and feel as if I’m closeted. I have neglected the author site and aside from linking it to my blog I rarely use it. However I post to my personal page weekly and check statuses every day. I try to keep my author self and my personal self separate as many in the writing world do (Woodhead, 2011a). I also find I waste a lot of time when I could be writing (Baverstock, 2011).

I’ve tried Twitter and hate it. It’s like a crowd shouting different messages with no-one listening. Twitter connects strangers, not old friends (Woodhead, 2011b). As a retiring type this makes me nervous. I am concerned about privacy and making an idiot of myself. But in the writing world Twitter is an ideal way to build your profile and connect with readers as its medium is concise text (Woodhead, 2011b).

I am keen to master Twitter and use it as a marketing tool.  It would help if I bought a mobile phone, I guess, and learnt to use it. As a budding T/L and blogger I see merit in Linked In, Delicious and Flickr. All I ask for is the time to master these tools. Then hopefully I could be a connected professional librarian and a marketing success.

References

Baverstock, A.(2011). Using Facebook to Promote Yourself as a Writer. Writers’ Forum #115, June

De Rosa, C., Cantrell, J., Havens, A., Hawk, J. & Jenkins, L. (2007). Sharing privacy and trust in our networked world: A report to the OCLC membership. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC. [ebook] Available http://www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/sharing.pdf

Woodhead, R. (2011a). Facebook: Share but Beware. Writing Magazine, May

Woodhead, R. (2011b). Build Your Profile on Twitter. Writing Magazine, Feb

 

ETL503 Collection Management

Collection Development or Collection Management? The latter term is the more traditional and is coming back in vogue. Collection Development has its roots in American Library lingo and is sometimes meant to mean the buiding of the collection, not so much its maintenance.
So what is collection development? It is selecting, aquiring, evaluating, preserving and ultimately disposing of items in the collection. In short it's the library side of the work the teacher librarian does.



What to select? A perennial question for a TL.