MABUG Conference Presentation

I presented at my very first conference on Monday, October 3. The conference was the Mid-Atlantic Banner Users Group (MABUG) Banner in the Blue Ridge Conference, and it was held here at Radford University. My presentation was on Prezi. The session was well attended. There were about 20 people in attendance, and they asked a lot of great questions at the end of the session. I answered questions for over 15 minutes. Everyone seemed really excited about Prezi, and what it can do for their presentations. I even received a phone call from someone who had attended the session the following week. He had a few questions concerning the Prezi Desktop software.

Here is my MABUG presentation on Prezi:

cpd23: Things 13 & 14

I have been neglecting my cpd obligations over the last two months due to vacation, then an abscessed tooth, a root canal and a death in my family. Needless to say, my semester has started off rough, and hasn't improved much. Here I am now though to try to catch-up.

Thing 13:
I love Google Docs and Dropbox. I always wonder how we ever lived without these. They make collaboration and file sharing a breeze. I've been using both regularly since grad school. When I was president of the ALA student chapter at UNCG, Google Docs is how the other officers and I did all of our club work. I still use Google Docs today when collaborating across the miles with other librarians. Right now I'm preparing for a conference presentation and my co-collaborators and I used Google Docs to create and edit our conference proposal. I'm sure we will be using it more as we prepare of the presentation itself.

I use Dropbox to share files between work and home and between computers at work. It makes having to work away from you desk a lot less of a headache.

Thing 14:

I have never used Zotero, Mendeley or citeulike. My university subscribes to RefWorks and I am the librarian who teaches the workshops for it. So right now I am focused on the impending RefWorks up date. (I love it when sites decided to completely change how they do things!) I do need to check these other tools out though, and I will...someday.

cpd23: My Path to Librarianship

My path to librarianship has been an interesting one. I did not grow up wanting to be a librarian. I grew up wanting to be a dentist, an orthodontist to be exact. How did I go from orthodontist to librarian you might ask? To make a long story short, I had an extremely bad freshman year in college. This experience prompted me to go from being a chemistry major to an English major two months into my sophomore year. Goodbye dentistry career. Anyway, I had also been working for my grandfather's commercial plumbing company since graduating high school. I worked there part-time while I was in college. So after I graduated with a BA in English, I continued working for his company. I ran his office and pretty much handled whatever he wanted me to do. During the time I worked there, I thought about going and getting a masters degree in something. In 2006, pursued my MS in Accounting for a semester, but in the end I decided it was not something that I wanted to do. In November 2007, my grandfather announced he was retiring. I decided then that I was also finished with the plumbing business. I have several cousins who are also in the plumbing business and I could have easily continued with that, but I decided that I was done with construction (and working for family) for good.

I wanted to pursue a masters degree that would let me utilize my undergraduate degree. An MA in English was out of the question. That degree is basically worthless by itself. My husband has 2 masters degrees, and one of them is an MLIS. So, I was already familiar with our alma mater's library program, and they already knew me. So I took the GRE and enrolled at UNCG in March 2008. I started grad school in August 2008. During my time there I was a graduate assistant for the department, a member of the LIS department's curriculum committee, Representative for the department on the Graduate Student Association, a reference intern, and president of the ALA student chapter. When I started library school I wanted to be a cataloger. All of my research, along with my independent study and practicum, were focused on cataloging. However, when it was time to apply for jobs it became evident that I was not going to be a cataloger. There were no cataloging jobs out there. The ones that I did see wanted 3-5 years experience which is impossible to have straight out of library school. Thank God I was also a reference intern while I was in grad school. It is the only reason I got a job.

cpd23: Google Calendar

In my opinion, Google Calendar is one of the best things that Google does. I started using Google Calendar in grad school, and I really do not know what I did without. I love the fact the that you can share calendars with friends and colleagues, but my favorite thing that you can do with it is sync my Google Calendar with my iPod Touch and iPad. That way I have my work Outlook Calendar and my personal Google Calendar all together in one place. It is pure genius. Also lots of places are using Google Calendars. For example, the library I work at uses Google Calendar to post the libraries hours, etc. on the library's home page. It's also easy to post Google Calendars in blogs or on websites.

cpd23: Real-life Networks

It dawned on me over the weekend that I did not post a blog about the real-life or in-person networks I am apart of for Thing 7. You will have to excuse me, I spent most of last week working on my annual report. This is the first one I have had to write, and well it is consuming a lot more time than I anticipated.

I am a member of the America Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the New Members Round Table (NMRT), and the Virginia Library Association. Unfortunately, I have yet to attend one of their conferences. This is something I hope to rectify in the near future. (I'm planning on attending the VLA conference this October.) I am a former member of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and I did have the opportunity to attend one of their bi-annual conferences. In my opinion, in-person networking is more rewarding than online networking. I also had the opportunity of attending the 2009 conference of the American Association of School Library (AASL). I was there volunteering, helping out the professor that I was a graduate assistant for. Even though I was not going into school libraries, I found the conference experience to be most helpful. I was able to meet a lot of wonderful people and I felt I learned a great deal about librarianship during the week of the conference. I would love the opportunity to volunteer at a national conference again. It is very informative to see what goes on behind the scenes.

I am also involved in the Library Exchange Observation (LEO) program. LEO is a group of instruction librarians from the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley area of Virginia. We meet twice a year for mini conferences, where we exchange ideas about instruction, offer feedback and discuss what works and what doesn't in our instruction classes. We also have the opportunity to observe other instruction librarians who are members of LEO. I had two librarians observe me during the Spring 2011 semester and I found their feedback on my classes to be invaluable. I hope to do some observing of my own during the Fall 2011 semester.

cpd23: Online Networks

I participate in several online networks. I use these to connect with other librarians in my field and in other fields and I also use them to stay up on current event and trends in librarianship. I have already written about many of the networks that I participate in, but I'll recount them yet again for the sake of this week's topic.

First off I have a LinkedIn account. I admit that I have not been as active on this site as I could have been. I do try to keep it updated, but I am not currently looking for a job, so its usefulness is lost on me.

I love the network that my Twitter account let's me participate in. Twitter is a great place to connect with other librarians. We have a very large showing in the Twitterverse. I love it because I can ask a question and in no time I have several replies from librarians in the know. It's a great place to get feedback on projects or ideas you're floating around.

Another great online network I'm apart of is the listservs I follow. I follow the ili-listserv, which is for ACRL's instruction section. This is a great place to share information and connect with other instruction librarians. I also follow the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv. All three of these listservs create a great network that can be very useful for professional development and furthering your career.

I also have an account on ALA Connect. This is something that I have rarely used and really need to look at again. I have no one in my network on this account, and I really need to work on it some. As a matter of fact, I found out today that I never updated that account after I got my current job. I really need to do better with that. I wonder if there's an app for it. That would help me keep it up-to-date. :) This is something I will be working on this week.

cpd23: Reflection Week

This week is for reflection on what we've learned over the past four weeks and how it will help our help us grow in our careers. This venture has been very helpful for me already. It has helped me blog more consistently, and it forced me to reassess the layout and structure of my blog. I am very happy with the changes I have made to it thus far. I feel it is a much better representation of me than it was. Branding yourself is key! That's what we learned in week 2 right? I feel more dedicated to participating in the library community, and I can only imagine that this will grow as each week passes in this course. I am excited about the coming weeks.

cpd23: Staying Connected

There is so much information out there that can be useful for librarians. The magnitude of it can be overwhelming. I, of course, read all of the important publications, American Libraries, Library Journal, C&R News, etc. I also use my RSS feed and Twitter to stay current. This week's cpd assignment is to begin to use (if you are not already) an RSS feed and Twitter. I've been using Twitter for 3 years, as I said in a previous blog, and I've been using an RSS feed for nearly a year.

On Twitter, I am currently following 380 accounts. That is a lot to keep up with. I organize my Twitter feed by using the list feature that they provide. I have lists for:

• Librarians
• UNCG friends
• News
• Job feeds
• Work
• Star Wars
• Brands
• Weather
• Music
• Football
• Literature
• Food
• ASC friends

And the list goes on and on. I believe I have about 20 lists at this point. I use the lists to keep up with what I think is important. If I do not have time to go through all of my tweets, I pick a list and go through it. It saves me time and separates the important tweets (@cpd23) from the unimportant tweets (@ew).

In a previous blog I listed all the "library" blogs that I follow in my RSS feed. In addition to those I also follow some blogs my friends write, and the blogs of my favorite theater company the American Shakespeare Center. The RSS feed is a valuable tool. I use the one that is in my Firefox browser, and every morning when I get to work I check it and see what is going on out in the blogospere.

Another way I stay connected is through the ili-l listserv. This listserv is sponsored by ACRL's instruction section, and is a great way to stay connect to other instruction librarians. People offer ideas, ask questions and look for feedback through the listserv. I've been following this listserv since I started my current job, and I have found many of the posts useful. You can subscribe to it by going to this website. I also added the ALA InfoLit listserv and the ALA LITA listserv to my subscriptions today.

I have never used Pushnote. So I signed up for it, and it searched my Facebook and Twitter accounts to see if any of my friends use it. I was surprised to discover that no one I am connected with uses it. I am not sure how useful this tool will be for me. I have yet to run across a site that has comments. I will continue to experiment with it, but I fail to see how this can be useful for me personally.

cpd23: My Personal/Professional Brand

During library school "the personal brand" is something that was talked about a lot. It was always referred to in conjunction with networking and building your professional presence. To that end, during library school I began blogging and posting on Twitter. I also created a LinkedIn profile during my last semester in library school. I thought long and hard about the names I would use for my blog and my Twitter account. After all, these accounts would represent me.

When I created my blog (in May 2009), I wanted a name that would represent me as a librarian and also would reflect some of my personality. So I started with the URL. I chose librarianjenrae for my Blogspot address because it told the world that I am a librarian and it offered a little personality by using my childhood nickname Jen Rae. The title of my blog came from the Library Foundations (LIS 600) class I took my first semester of library school. During one of the classes the professor said that librarians were the gatekeepers of knowledge. This proclamation tickled quite a few of us in that class for some reason. I guess we are easily amused. Anyway, it became a running joke amongst my library school circle, and when I decided to start a blog, I felt it was the perfect title. I came up with the tagline "I am a lighthouse in a sea of information" myself. I felt it described a librarian perfectly. What else are we but guiding lights to our users, pointing them in the appropriate directions for their information needs? How clever I felt when I came up with that. ;) I do occasionally have good ideas.

I created my Twitter account on March 18, 2009. My original username was JenniferWhicker. I kept that for awhile, but I eventually decided that I wanted something that represented me as a librarian and that also showed off my personality. So I decided to use my Blogspot address as my Twitter username. This way I would be identified as a librarian and it would also be "connected" to my blog.

My blog and LinkedIn account both contain strictly professional musings. My Twitter account is a mix of professional and personal posts. (I am always very aware of what I am posting on Twitter since this account contains both personal and professional information.) I also have a Facebook account, but that is reserved for family and friends so I keep the privacy controls very strict on it, and I do not engage in much library discussion there. I have also chosen not to be friends with anyone I work with on Facebook.

This exercise has really helped me to re-evaluate my brand. I have changed the design of my blog and some of the information I have on it. I have also made some changes to my LinkedIn account. I think it is very important for us as information specialists to be aware of the information that is out there about ourselves. We need to constantly monitor what message we send out via our social media outlets and how that message effects our brand.

cpd23: What blogs do I follow and why?

I follow several library related blogs using my RSS feed. Here is a list of the blogs I follow:

• American Libraries Magazine: I follow this blog to keep up to date on news and information from ALA.
• lauren's library blog: This is Lauren Pressley's blog. She is the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University. Her blogs tend to focus on information and the Internet.
• ACRLog: This is ACRL's blog. I follow it to keep up to date of news and information from ACRL. The blog's tagline is "Blogging by and for academic and research librarians."
• the outreach librarian: This blog is maintained by Lizz Zitron, who is the Outreach Librarian at Cathage College in Kenosha, WI.
• lyndamk: Lynda Kellam is UNCG's Data Services and Government Information Librarian. She does a lot of instruction and attends lots of conferences, and she blogs about it! (On a side note, she was one of my mentors in library school, and I cannot say enough about how much she helped me gain real-life library experience. She is one of the big reasons I was able to get a job after I graduated. This women is a real library rock star!)
• The ALA Learning Round Table Blog: This blog contains posts about conferences, continuing education and professional development for librarians.
• A Ghost of Daisies: I went to library school with this newly minted web librarian. (She graduated this past May.) She blogs a lot about web design and Drupal. I don't always understand what she blogs about, but I try.

These blogs help me keep up with trends in libraryland. I also follow lots of librarians on Twitter. It's great for networking and professional development.

What is cpd23, and why am I participating?

I have decided to participate in 23 Things for Professional Development. (FYI: CPD stands for continuing professional development.) This is a program that is being hosted on a blog (http://cpd23.blogspot.com/), and for 16 weeks this blog will feature activities related to the "topic" of the week. Each week you will participate in the activities listed on that week's blogs and then you will blog about them. It is designed to introduce participants to different tools that will assist librarians and information professionals in personal and professional development.

I decided to participate in this program because, first off, it's free, and we librarians love that word. :) Secondly, I thought it would be a great way to share some of my knowledge about these tools and to gain some new knowledge about the tools featured. I also believed it would be a good way to network with other librarians and to create useful professional connections. Lastly, I thought it would help me blog about something other than the reference questions I get while at the reference desk.

The program began yesterday and this week is all about blogging. Blogging is something that I really need to do more often. Hopefully this program will help me reach that goal. I look forward to interacting with all the other participants in the coming weeks.