Category: Blogging

Time to shut down?

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what my blog is actually contributing.
I’m not a leading ‘thinker’, I’m not an investigative reporter, I’m not really great at anything, I’m just, well, here.
It’s been great for meeting other law librarians, both in the UK and internationally, but do I actually really contribute anything useful or new?
I don’t think so, to be very honest.
So what’s the point of me continuing this blog?

I can now post (hopefully) useful stuff to the law.librarian collaborative blog, which I would otherwise have posted here, so this blog has become kind of surplus to requirements really. I started it to post items I thought were relevant to my field, so I could refer back to them easily, but law.librarians does a far better job of it together than I could ever do on my own!

I may continue to post items of relevance to Scots law only, or the more fun / frivolous that doesn’t really fit on law.librarians, but I think that I’m going to take a break from blogging here, and perhaps in general, and see how I feel about things in a few months. Maybe I’ll become filled with opinions and thoughts, and they’ll be clamouring to be typed out, and I won’t be able to shut up for more than a few days…..who knows!

Teaching technology

The Scottish Government has announced plans to teach children about blogging and podcasting, as part of the Curriculum for Excellence. I’m particularly impressed they’ll be teaching when text speak is appropriate, and when it isn’t – it’s hard to project yourself as educated or professional when it appears someone’s been stealing half your vowels. But you’ll only know that if someone teaches you!

The whole plan sounds pretty good to me – I seem to be one of the ‘assumed’ generation. It was assumed when I arrived at that Uni I’d know how to touch / speed type (I don’t, I fumble with a few fingers, while staring fixedly at the keyboard. I’m awaiting the development of RSI.), and word process (I didn’t do secretarial studies at school, so that passed me by)…then it was assumed I’d know how to use email…and the internet…assess the relevancy and accuracy of the sites I found on the internet….then finding and using blogs, RSS feeds, wikis…

Everything I know, I’ve taught myself, by hearing about it somehow, then digging for more information, trying things out, and making lots of mistakes along the way. It’s been assumed all along that I would just know things, when the reality is, I’ve had to fight to get that knowledge. And now, I have to teach others, based on my (admittedly) imperfect skills.

Just think of the time these kids can save by having someone real, in front of them, to ask all sorts of questions that they’d otherwise have to accept not knowing the answer to, or would have to waste precious time looking for the answers. And then assessing the trustworthiness of where they got that answer.

Google Librarian Central

Link from Library Stuff

I have to confess to removing GLC from my Bloglines subscriptions late last year. Not only was it not being updated, but it went through a phase of having all its old entries appearing as new entries, repeatedly, and this went on for days. In the end, I got so irritated with it I removed it.

It did seem very odd that it stopped, with a promise of a return after the Summer, and no update posts since, even if just to say that they might have decided against continuing the blog. I found it often had useful tips, even for non public / school librarians, which it seems to be mainly aimed at.

Hopefully they really do like librarians, and will be back at some point…but if it’s in the Spring, just in time to warm up for the American library conferences, I have to admit, I’ll be giving in to my lurking cynicism!

la-la-la-la…

For various reasons, including the library move, a pile up of work, and personal issues, mean I’ve not had a chance to blog lately.

Hopefully over the next few days I’ll get time to write up the course I went on on Friday the 9th November, “Practical Uses for Web 2.0 in the Library Environment” with Phil Bradley…until then, back to the huge cataloguing pile, the current awareness backlog, and wondering why the partner at the desk next to me seems to have brought a windsurfing sail into work….