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Themes and messages from VALA2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:54:31 +0100

In February this year, I was fortunate to be able to attend VALA2012 in Melbourne. This was my second VALA conference, having also attended VALA2010. And just like last time, I found VALA to be an amazing experience in terms of content, presenters and attendees.

My attendance was funded by my employer, Charles Darwin University (CDU) Library, this time around (I paid my own way in 2010), so after the conference I put together a summary of some of the major themes of the conference as they applied to academic libraries for our management team. I picked out three top themes, but also cherry picked a bunch of other interesting topics that I thought were relevant to my workplace.

For me, the top three themes that came out of VALA2012 were:

Research data - There was a big focus on increasing the role of academic and research libraries in providing research data management services to assist researchers to organise and protect their data. Liz Lyon (UKOLN) noted that many research grants now require research projects to have data management plans in place as a condition of funding. Libraries can take a leadership role in this. Libraries and librarians need to re-skill for research, to meet the skills shortage in data informatics.

Organisational objectives - A challenge for the future: if the library doesn't work towards achieving organisational objectives, and measure (demonstrate) progress against those objectives, then its parent organisation has every right to question the library's existence and funding. The director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told library staff "don't stay in your library if you want continued support" - they now have embedded research support in every institute, and their services are evaluated by their clients. The Guinness Archivist stressed the importance of being clear on the organisation's mission, and applying metrics re: value to the institution.

Staffing & professional development - There was much discussion about staffing models, especially related to the online/physical divide. If the majority of our collection is online, the majority of our spending is on online resources, and (in CDU's case) the majority of our students are studying online, then why do our staffing models still lean so heavily towards the physical collection and on-campus services? Librarians need skills in strategic management. Understanding emerging technologies is important for all library staff, not just liaison librarians. Informal learning sessions (eg. lunchtime sessions, technology petting zoos) should be encouraged and participation recognised/acknowledged.

Other themes raised at VALA2012 and worth noting/considering:

The catalogue - There was debate at both VALA2012 and Library Camp 2012 about the future of the catalogue. Is it for users, or is it really just inventory control? Is it a special resource, or just another database of metadata? There's a lot of data duplication in the current system - why not point to records rather than store them, they could be added straight into discovery systems. And then we could use a simpler inventory system, or even stop lending materials out(!). Another question: Why isn't our catalogue content discoverable through Google?

Streaming media - University of Tennessee, Chattanooga has similar student numbers to CDU but mostly internal: 82% of library visits are online, more than half of on-campus bandwidth use was streaming media (mostly video). Curtin University has a videostreaming libguide - they say that faculty expects the library to take up the challenge of providing streamed video content (and pay for it).

Gaming - There were some very compelling arguments for gaming as a literacy tool. And for professional development (eg. library seminars held within World of Warcraft).

Content creation - In the past, libraries brought the world to their communities. In the future, libraries will bring their community to the world (through local/special/rare collections and community-created resources). What would the library look like if we spent half our collection budget on creating experiences for our community?

Access - Experiences create expectations, young people expect to be able to access media from anywhere. Services already exist to share books and journal articles on a 'fair use' basis outside database subscriptions. We need to understand that we can't always control access, and that libraries are no longer the cheapest and easiest way to access content.

New interfaces - People are now accessing content using touch-based interfaces (smartphones & tablets), gesture-based interfaces (XBox Kinect), and voice-based interfaces (iPhone4s). Libraries should be considering this when designing services and resources.

The reference desk - UNSW replaced their reference desk with a help zone that could be easily converted into student space when not staffed (their library stays open beyond staffing hours).

Trove API - The Trove API will be released around Easter, and it looks like there will be great opportunities to integrate Trove content into our own online environment.

Tablets and mobile devices in teaching - It was noted at the University of Adelaide that student use of tablets and mobile devices in class allows teachers to use lecture theatres but still do hands-on activities.

Discovery - The National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has an integrated discovery service, where if an item is not available in full-text online, there's a button right there to request ILL (the button is colour coded to indicate delivery time).

Many of these themes were raised across multiple presentations, as well as at Library Camp 2012 and in conversation. So the links I've used here are not intended to be a complete reference list. This list of themes / topics was compiled for my own workplace, so the subject matter reflects that. And of course I couldn't attend every presentation, so for that reason too my takeaway messages will probably be quite different to those of other attendees.

I would like to make special mention of a presentation that I especially enjoyed from a colleague at my previous employer, the Victorian Parliamentary Library, about semantic tagging. My colleagues there also delivered a VALA Showcase presentation on their open source reference software. I didn't include them in the above list since the content matter didn't directly apply to my current work - but both presentations were terrific, and I'm so proud of the work that's being done there.

Abstracts for all of the presentations are available on the VALA2012 website, and it looks like many of them (or perhaps all of them) already have the papers uploaded and video recordings of the presentations available. I strongly encourage you to check them out!

A lovely day in Warrandyte.

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:56:43 +0100

In a burst of sanity a few weeks ago, I convinced myself to stop working and get out of the house for a day! Warrandyte is one of our favourite nearby locations for a day trip, so Tim and I took ourselves there for a break from our too-busy lives.

I love visiting Warrandyte for its beautiful location alongside the Yarra River, as well as its wonderful collection of shops and cafes. On this particular day, we stuck to the riverside shops - but there are many more more places to visit and explore there.

First we visited Warrandyte Lollies & Treats, where I had a lovely time squeeing over the hard-to-find sweets. I bought a Perky Nana bar :)

Then we stopped in at Ratty & Moles Riverbank Antiques. It was an exercise in temptation, but I walked away without buying anything (we're trying to downsize!). I took this photo from the main entrance, looking back up towards the street:

We next visited Yarra Cottage Books, one of my favourite second-hand book shops. For lunch we stopped in at The Bakery, which has outdoor seating looking out over the riverside.

We finished our excursion with a walk along the Yarra River. It's always a popular spot, with long walking trails. Plenty of people were enjoying themselves - walking dogs, feeding ducks, picnicking, and paddling.

All in all, a great day for enjoying some natural scenery and recharging the batteries.

Tough times, busy times.

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:31:40 +0100

Oops, it looks like I've let a couple of months pass by between blog posts again ...

We had a tough start to the year. I still haven't decided whether I want to talk about it here, so for now I won't.

Then came the lead-up to the University first semester at both of my workplaces. My workload was (too) intense. I'm not sure if I want to talk about that here either.

Thanks to the professional development money from our team's Vice-Chancellor's Award, I was able to attend VALA2012. I also attended Library Camp 2012. I will *definitely* talk about that here - coming soon :)

There was a little bit of crafting, though not as much as I'd like.

We enjoyed a weekend away in the Rutherglen / Beechworth district. Gosh, I wish we did that kind of thing more often!

And I finished my final Uni subject over the summer semester. I've already got my marks back, and am proud to say I've now earned my Master of Information Studies. With an average mark of Distinction, thank you very much ;)

Catching up.

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:43:56 +0100

Wow. What a crazy couple of months it's been.

Sometime it's seemed like a string of disasters ... but there have been highs as well as lows. I haven't blogged (and probably won't blog) in detail about some of the things that stressed me out at the time - partly because I'm a bit of a slack blogger (did you notice?), but mostly because I prefer not to vent on my blog. So I've waited until I've got a bit of distance on recent events, and can now provide you with a brief summary of the ups and downs of the last few months.

Low points:

The CEO of Qantas chucking a hissy fit and throwing my air travel plans into disarray. Fortunately it was resolved before Roxy (our cat) and I left Darwin.
Rental stress in Darwin caused by a horrible real estate agent, but ultimately resolved successfully by our wonderful landlord.
Rental stress in Melbourne caused by slack tenants and a slack real estate agent. We did a lot more cleaning than we should have had to. And our poor garden was a disaster area, with weeds as high as the fence in some places. It obviously hadn't been touched in a year.
The moment when our removalists in Melbourne opened the truck and found that everything had "shifted in transit". We were lucky that only a few pieces of furniture were broken.
Springtime allergies. The worst I've ever experienced, I spent much of my first two weeks in Melbourne in bed as a result.
Terrible customer service from an online bookshop (it really upset me at the time). They were in the wrong, but it was their refusal to respond to any of my queries that left such a bad taste in my mouth.
My Christmas was cancelled, thanks to a bout of the flu (fever, chills, sweats, aches, the whole shebang). I missed Christmas with both my family and Tim's as a result.
The hail and thunder storms on Christmas day resulted in flooding in our garage - eerily reminiscent of the heavy rains in December 2003 that flooded our garage when we first moved into this house! Those are the only times we've experienced flooding here.

High points:

I'm slowly getting into the swing of working remotely. It's a little too quiet sometimes, but my productivity has been high. And I need to work at staying connected with my team - happily we all seem to getting better at this already.
My little work team (the liaison librarians) won the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Exceptional Performance. We were over the moon, and even more so when we discovered it came with a generous amount of money to be used for professional development.
My prize for the best presentation at the Top End Symposium arrived in the mail - a bookshop voucher, and some terrific National Year of Reading merchandise.
I've just started doing some casual work at a university in Melbourne, which I'm very excited about. It will be a great opportunity to work with some new people and hopefully get some fresh ideas off the ground.
The shopping in Melbourne is pretty good, especially when you've been away from it for a while (craft shops, great restaurant food and prices, Haigh's!).
I loved catching up with some friends from interstate who visited Melbourne not long after I got back.
I did a temari ball workshop at Kimono House - a craft that I'd been wanting to try for ages! I've put some photos of my first attempt on Flickr, and a blog post will be coming soon.

I wish I could have added more about catching up with friends to this list, but there haven't been a lot of opportunities so far. I'm looking forward to making up for it in the new year :)

Anyway, there you go. I've got my positive face on now, and am looking forward to some time ahead that is a little quieter, yet productive and interesting. Wish me luck!

Ch,ch,ch,ch,changes

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:21:20 +0100

I've made a few veiled references lately to being busy and making plans, but have been keeping the details under wraps until things were a bit more solid. Well, I think it's pretty well confirmed now, to the point where I feel comfortable talking about it online ...

For family reasons, we're coming back to Melbourne for about six months.

We're already in the middle of packing the house up and arranging the move, which is why we've both been so under the hammer lately. I'm flying out next week, and Tim will arrive in Melbourne a week later, as he's driving down. We'll stay with my mum to start with, before moving back into our house in December.

Tim and I both want to return to Darwin. We enjoy it here, and there's still a lot that we want to do. And I really enjoy my job here. I work with a terrific team of people, and I've had fantastic opportunities to contribute and to make the job my own. It's been a bit frantic and stressful at times too (that's client service!) but the positives have far outweighed any negatives. So when I asked my manager about the possibility of taking leave without pay, I was thrilled and extremely grateful when they made me the counter-offer of continuing to work in my position part-time from home, on a remote basis. I'm really excited that I can keep my job, and continue to work with my team and my clients. And I have heaps of projects to keep me busy!

So, it's a temporary goodbye to Darwin for now, and hello again to Melbourne. I'm looking forward to spending time with family and friends, as well as revisiting some of my favourite places. I'm also looking forward to meeting the challenges of telecommuting, so you can expect some future blog posts on that topic :)

Presentation at the ALIA Top End Symposium

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:46:44 +0100

Gosh, three weeks have now passed since I delivered my presentation on "Twitter for professional development and career progression" at the ALIA Top End Symposium. I didn't mean to wait so long before posting about it, but life has been so busy!

My presentation time was 10 minutes, so I didn't have time to discuss all (or even most) of the findings from my survey. So I selected some of the key results and findings that I hoped would resonate with my audience, along with a few of the fabulous comments that the respondents contributed.

I've uploaded the presentation to SlideShare. You can either view it from this blog post, or click HERE to see it on the SlideShare site. My speaker notes are included at SlideShare.

Twitter for professional development and career progression

View more PowerPoint from Sally Cummings

My presentation received great feedback from the symposium attendees. I had some really good questions from the audience, and lots of people chatted to me during the breaks. There were also quite a few Territory librarians who were inspired to reinvigorate their languishing Twitter accounts and give it another try - and it was great to meet them during the symposium :)

To top it all off, at the end of the symposium I was selected for the best presentation award! It was a real surprise and honour, and I'm very grateful to the Northern Territory Library, who sponsored the award.

P.S. In my last post, I mentioned that I had heaps of blog posts on the way. And I do. In fact, many of them are already written (well, scribbled on pieces of paper at least). The problem has been finding the time, and sometimes the energy, to complete and publish them. My next post should go some way towards explaining my recent busy-ness and lack of bloggy-ness ...

A real treat!

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:42:47 +0100

The ALIA Top End Symposium was on last weekend, and the following day I headed off to Alice Springs where I spent a week working at the campus library there. So I have heaps that I want to blog about, but I'm going to start with an unsual experience I had in Alice this week.

My colleague Leonie took me on a tour of the uni campus - she was a great guide and introduced me to lecturers and staff all over campus. One of the highlights of my campus tour, though, was meeting a staff member called Sue who is also a carer for rescued wildlife.

Sue had a little black-footed rock wallaby staying with her, and he was nestled very comfortably in a fleece beanie. While we were there, he decided it was time for a little afternoon exercise, so we had the great pleasure of watching him bounce around the office for a while :)

He was quite a curious little chap, so we each got our feet sniffed and examined. I took a few photos - he's a fast little mover, so they came out a bit fuzzy unfortunately. But he was so adorable, especially when having a dance/wrestle with the hem of Sue's skirt, that I had to share them!

When the rock wallaby is ready to look after himself, he'll join the colony at Heavitree Gap in Alice Springs. These wallabies are accustomed to human company, and hand feeding them is a popular tourist activity.

This was such an unexpected treat - thank you to Sue and Leonie for a wonderful opportunity to meet a beautiful little fellow :)

Wordle

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:58:02 +0100

I've been looking for a good excuse to use Wordle for ages, and I finally found one :)

This Wordle was created using the comments made by respondents in my recent survey about "Twitter for professional development and career progression". It will be part of my presentation to the ALIA Top End Symposium, 7-8 October 2011.

(click on the image to see a larger version)

Wordle generates "word clouds" (similar to tag clouds) that display the most commonly used words in the text that you provide. The words that appear most frequently appear in larger font, so that prevalent ideas come to the fore.

I love the words that pop out here - professional, people, network, library, development, contacts, useful, personal, learning, conference, information, social, ideas ...

Taking a stab at needle felting

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:59:44 +0100

Do you see what I did there?

Well if you don't, maybe you haven't come across needle felting before ... :)

It's a craft technique that involves shaping wool roving into, well, shapes. And then stabbing it again and again with a small barbed needle until the wool sticks (felts) together to become a solid mass in whatever shape you desire. There are many different colours of wool available, and different needles (fine or coarse) allow you to control the amount of detail.

Needle felting is most commonly used to create small animal sculptures and other three dimensional objects. It can also be used to felt two dimensional designs onto other materials. I'd show you a few examples from Flickr, but they would outshine my own poor efforts so much that I think I'll save it for a separate blog post ;)

Here's my first attempt - in which I discover that flowers are not necessarily suited to needle felting. They look awfully fuzzy *lol*. I was also making an attempt to move outside my colour comfort zone, so these colours are quite different to my usual choices. I've tried some shading here, using four different colours in the flower itself as well as another colour to stripe the leaves. The leaves are made from a purchased felt sheet, but I think it makes a nice contrast here.

For my second effort, I decided to go back to basics and concentrate on making some simple shapes. So I created this colourful little egg basket. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and think it will make a nice brooch or Christmas tree ornament.

I'm not convinced that needle felting is the "next big thing" for me in terms of craft techniques. It's trickier than it looks, and I've found myself very frustrated on more than one occasion. I think maybe it's because I like neatness in my craft, and I've struggled to create the firm texture and surface on my early attempts that I'd like. It could just be that more practice is required. Or maybe I need to learn from another person face-to-face rather than from YouTube!

Anyway, I still have a bunch of wool roving and ideas for what I'd like to make with it, so I'll persevere a bit longer and see how my efforts pay off over time :)

A big thank you :)

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:08:12 +0100

Whoops - I thought I'd already published this blog post, but I just found it still languishing in my drafts folder *slaps forehead*

I received an absolutely amazing response to my survey on Twitter for professional development and career progression. I'm so grateful to the many, many people who took the survey. And to all those who retweeted (passed along) my survey info to their own Twitter followers - you definitely helped the survey reach a wider audience than it would have otherwise, and I really appreciate it!

I closed the survey after a week. I'd originally intended to keep it open for an extra week, but the law of diminishing returns was kicking in and the rate of survey responses was dropping off. And I got such a fabulous response that I was really happy with the numbers that had already come in :)

*drum roll* 161 survey responses! Yay! I told myself I would be satisfied with 20 for the purposes of my symposium presentation, but I was really hoping for 50 or more. The number of responses surpassed that figure in less than 24 hours. In fact they were nudging triple figures only a day after the survey was released!

I think that's proof in itself that Twitter is a fantastic tool for professional development and career progression ;) but of course I also now have 161 much appreciated pieces of evidence to work through and analyse on the topic. And I'm really looking forward to it! People have been so generous with their time, in not only answering the survey questions, but also providing valuable comments, and in many cases their contact details so that I can follow up on questions in future.

With such a great body of material to work with, I would be crazy not to do as much as I can with it. So once the ALIA Top End Symposium is over, I'll be investigating potential library journals for publishing the results in.

Again, thank you to all the people who helped me out by completing the survey. I will spread the word when my symposium presentation is available online so that you can check out for yourself the very interesting responses that were received :)