#blog12daysxmas Post 9 Yay for Helene Blowers!

Fox Hotel , Collingwood

Yes, I am behind again but I have two posts ready to do today.

On the ninth day of Christmas I had a wonderful social media inspired time at the Fox Hotel in Collingwood.  We were having a Melbourne Flickrup for members of the #2013PAD and #fp13 Flickr groups. My involvement in both of these groups started in late 2010 when I joined the #2011PAD along with Caroline Ramsden, the only other Australian in a group that we got involved in because of UK library Twitter friends.

Those of us who gathered were @emerald_j, me, Nicky from Civica, @birdsey7, @pru (a prospective member!), and Fiona and Terence who are fiant and their two children.  Unfortunately @csmramsden, @kat_frame, @bonitoclub and Pat M2007 all couldn't make it because of other commitments or last minute ill health. How amazing that we could have a face to face gathering with more than a couple of people!  That was unbelievable in 2010.

It was great to meet the people behind the photos and work out how we were all connected. We discovered that Fiona and Terence, the non library people in the gathering, had become involved via @csmramsden's daughter.  There were those of us there who reported that we were taught by @csmramsden's father in library school.  So now there is a hash tag on Twitter #ramsdengenerations! Unfortunately we were so interested in our face to face interactions that we forgot to take photos of the people.  But photos of the Fox Hotel were taken and posted on Flickr.

Fox Hotel, Collingwood

This probably sounds like a very personal little gathering of no interest to anyone else except a few Flickr geeks.  But I think it was a very significant gathering.  I joined Flickr as part of Thing 2 (I think - the number is the query not the process) in Helene Blowers' 23 Things when we did a Victoria wide roll out of it to all public libraries. And I am still there using it as an integral part of my life. A couple of others mentioned above did that Victorian 23 Things program too.  Many of us also started experimenting with a new thing called Twitter at that time and through it we made UK contacts and so the story goes on.  And we are still there enjoying our world wide networks.

All of the Melbourne people who are mentioned above have come together virtually and physically via various combinations of Twitter, Flickr and personal connections that can be traced back to several of us doing and embracing 23 Things as part of our lives.

So I say:  Yay for Helene Blowers!

A change in the wind for public library managers?

SLCPL Director application instructions
Originally uploaded by hblowers

I was surprised recently to see this ad featured in Helene Blowers' Librarybytes blog. She was also surprised to see the ad! It looks like a change is in the air. I might have to start looking at key selection criteria for jobs. Helene's post had a comment from someone who thought she/he wouldn't want prospective employers reading the blog. What do you think?

Life after #23?

I think that I have been having withdrawal symptoms since the end of Learning 2.0. I have missed the intensity of learning and the excitement of experimenting with new things. I haven't been wasting my time, however. I have spent quite a bit of time going back and exploring things that we touched on in the course. I have explored Flickr, its emailing, and its networks and in the course of this have found some great photos and struck up a correspondence with someone about Collingwood's history, as well as communicating with people I know virtually and physically. I have explored LibraryThing a bit more and signed up for some of the book discussions. I am still monitoring them via Bloglines but I don't really think that it is for me. I use Bloglines and del.icio.us regularly still and occasionally glance at Technorati. I have also been intending to get on with setting up some wikis on some historical topics, starting with Boroondara's hotels, but I haven't quite got there yet.

But the really exciting thing I have been spending my time on is Ning. Fiona introduced me to this and we have set up a Ning network for City of Boroondara Library Service. You can see the link to it on the side panel. To date, the network is pretty embryonic with Fiona, Jonathan and me rattling around in it. However, we have had some good discussions particularly around Christmas books and will no doubt have more as we encourage more people to join in the New Year. Today I have been experimenting with setting up a Ning network for Hawthorn's history - again the link to it is in the badge on the side bar.

One side effect of poking around in Ning was that I discovered the Learning 2.1 Ning network and discovered that indeed there is life after Learning 2.0. It is Learning 2.1 and there are many more things to learn. Apart from the Learning 2.1 Ning network, there is also a Learning 2.1 blog as well as a Learning 2.1 wiki which I notice several Australians have already registered on. I have been spending too much time on Ning today, but my brave new world will start soon and I will embark on #24! How exciting! Helene Blowers may have moved on to Ohio, but this program continues and continues to have an amazing world-wide effect on libraries of all types.

#21 Podcasts, Smodcasts

Topic #21 is Podcasts, Smodcasts. I took a look at the suggested podcast directories,

• Podcast.net
  
• Podcastalley.com
  
• Yahoo Podcasts

They all seemed pretty straightforward to use. I have been listening to podcasts for a while but hadn't subscribed to any properly. So I went to the ABC site and got some of them linked to my Bloglines account, The Health Report, At the Movies and Mornings with Margaret Throsby. It was as simple as that! Now I will get them fed to me and not have to go hunting for them if I remember! This was another Duh! experience for me.

In terms of libraries, I think there is huge potential for the use of podcasts and have been saying so for some time, so that Boroondara staff think I'm a broken record. Aside from providing links to podcasts from other sites and people, we can use them e.g. for our Chinese storytime so that this is available to the world 24/7, or for other programs such as booktalks. In terms of local history, we could use them to provide oral history over the web, for providing podcasts of talks, for giving informational sessions, like Helen Blowers has done in this course, but on a local history topic like where to get started on how to trace your house - these could be for staff and the public. So there is lots of food for thought here.