Thing 14: Zotero / Mendeley / citeulike

Organising your references... I can see why you might want to use these, but to be perfectly honest, I've never bothered.  To me, they seem like an extra layer of hassle.  I'm sure that those of you who have fallen in love with RefWorks, EndNote, or other such proprietary software may relish the chance to get your hands on a free version that does much the same thing.  My institution uses RefWorks, but I've never had the need to know anything about it.

I've never had so many references that I haven't been able to organise them myself, with a spreadsheet that I can colour-code, sort, filter and organise like any other data document.  I don't think I need another piece of software to do my collating.  If I'm researching something, I reference as I go, but seeing as I'm glad to be out from under the yoke of studying and I can't see me rushing into any further academic study, I really see no value for me in these tools.

If you're studying, they may be useful, and I was shown cite-u-like when I did my dissertation, but after the presentation I didn't bother using it.  Does that imply that my organisational skills are pretty good already, or that I'm just happy doing things my way (or that I'd completely forgotten about the presentation by the time I got home from the study school...)?

I might try out Mendeley (because you can scribble on pdfs, apparently, and it can organise your documents for you), however, I don't need the others because I'm not studying or researching and I don't do teaching.

Thing 13 - Google Docs, Wikis, Dropbox

Google Docs I have used for storage for about 4 years.  The disadvantage I have is that it does require up-to-date browsers and a fast internet connection.  On slower connections and older browsers not all functionality is available, and it can be quite jerky.  Having said that, I have shared some documents with other people and I'm hoping to use it on a collaborative document which is a work-in-progress playscript.

Some examples of the files I stored in my Google Docs:

pdf files of journal articles

scripts, rehearsal schedules, minutes from my amateur dramatic society

works in progress: plays, pantomimes, script ideas

christmas card list, party guest list, present ideas list

I do like the fact that the content is saved to the cloud and therefore wherever you are with an internet connection you can access it (useful if you're in a public library; should also work on smartphones - need to try that).  This feature also makes it good for backing up data.  I think I could use Google Docs more, but it tends to screw up the formatting of my carefully crafted documents so I don't think it will replace my trusty flash drives just yet.

Dropbox was mentioned to me by a friend as a good online storage facility, and I may use it to back up documents rather than emailing them to myself (which is an easy way to lose track of where your documents are if you have lots of emails!).  If it stores files as they are without altering source formatting then it may become my preferred backup utility.  It could be useful for sharing documents, but I would have to investigate this more thoroughly.

Wikis keep getting mentioned by colleagues in the context of collaboratively writing procedure manuals, but I'm not sure whether they are actually used for this.  I have to say that I'm not used to collaborative working.  So many years in academia ensuring that your work is your own makes you a bit precious about your documents, to the extent where you work obsessively to protect your ideas from others.  It was suggested that I use a wiki or similar to update a community website I run, but I'm loath to relinquish editorial control (partly because I'm quite precious about my writing style, and partly because I can spell and a lot of people can't - spelling, punctuation and grammar are really important, even in the online world, and it irks me that the world is full of incoherent written English).

So both Dropbox and Wikis need further investigation, when I'm on a computer that I have admin rights to.  I might revisit several of these Things at a later date, once I've used them for a while.

We're the Choir!

Saturday 3rd September was a new experience for me: the choir for a day event, where singers of all ages and abilities come together to learn a repertoire of songs to sing at an evening concert.  No experience necessary, just an enjoyment of singing and for the first time, no need to read music!

The event is organised by my good friend Sarah Burton, who sings in a Barbershop quartet called Sarsparilla.  She recognised that lots of people like singing, but either don't have the time to sing in a choir, or are too intimidated by choirs to join them.  Some people just want to sing for fun, without the pressure of learning complicated arrangements for lengthy concerts.

Many choirs in my area are either church-based with a religious slant to the music, or have simply disbanded because of the lack of willing pianists.  One exception is Witchford Voices: at 70-strong, they are one of the largest community choirs locally.  But they are oversubscribed, partly due to their formidable leader: Naomi D'Cunha.  Naomi has been teaching music for many years and is an enthusiastic singing coach.  I worked with her in pantomime a few years ago.  She can teach anyone to sing.

And she really proved her skill on Saturday.  A motley group of singers was transformed into a fully-fledged choir, singing African songs, traditional spirituals and pop songs, all with only four and a half hours of rehearsal.  During the performance, we got the audience to join in the chorus of What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor, which rounded off the evening nicely.  Naomi's enthusiasm really pulled us through the day which, although tiring, was well worth it.

Thing 12 - Putting the social into social media

Consider the role of social media in building up networks and a sense of community.

com·mu·ni·ty   /kəˈmyunɪti/

1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

2. a locality inhabited by such a group.

3. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually preceded by the ): the business community; the community of scholars.

4. a group of associated nations sharing common interests or a common heritage: the community of Western Europe.

5. Ecclesiastical . a group of men or women leading a common life according to a rule.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/community 

Social media has, undoubtedly, brought me closer to people in definition number 3, the "Librarian Community" (oops! space for me in Private Eye there!) and I follow several virtual colleagues via Twitter.  Of these, the most prolific is @joeyanne, whose blog I've been following for a few years now (so long, in fact, that I can't remember how I discovered it).  Now I can keep up with little snippets of Jo's experiences via the handy medium of Twitter, and its lovely 140-character limit.

Unfortunately I have found that, with very little of any interest to discuss, my tweets seem to revolve around annoying things that happen at work and topical news stories, interspersed with retweets of content much wittier/more interesting/of greater worth than mine.

Do I feel like I am part of a wider network of librarians?  11 librarians follow me on Twitter, I follow 8 librarians - not a very wide net, more like a sieve.  What I have found is that the initial excitement of social networks disappears quite quickly, and people you followed stop tweeting.  This is also true of blogs and forum sites.  Many people start off a blog with good intentions, but of the twenty or so cpd23 blogs I have been following, probably a third haven't posted in a while.  Now I know I'm not the world's most regular blogger, but I thought I was being really slow in keeping up with the programme until I saw that some people haven't posted since Thing 4 (automatic smug points for me then).  It's a little disappointing to follow someone who posts some really interesting things to return to their blog and find out that they've got bored or gone on holiday to Outer Mongolia for six months.

Although I have been reading other cpd23 participants' blogs I have not made contact with anyone (not even posted a blog comment).  I have found Google Reader and Twitter to be the most useful tools for keeping up to date, and I'll probably keep using those after cpd23 has finished.  I can't say whether I'll get more involved than just reading and digesting other people's blogs and occasionally making some contribution of my own.

In terms of the "sense of community" that social networking may help to foster, I'm not really sure if librarians form a "community".  Then again, it is an overused term: count the proliferation of "communities" used in official soundbites - "the gay community"; "the muslim community"; "the traveller community".  Such phraseology only imbues the term with pejorative connotations.  It separates the group of people being referred to, it makes them "other".  A lot of people, especially those who read the Daily Mail, are afraid of the "Other", assuming that it's some Bogeyman ready to break into their houses and steal the deeds to the property.

But I digress.  The "Librarian Community" is quite active on social media, and it is a good place for advocacy (although whether it filters out of the echo chamber remains to be seen), however, I do wonder at the people spending so much time online.  I haven't got a lot of time to spend online (indeed, when the students some back, my worktime internet use will really drop) and I take part in a lot of real-life community-based activities (with people who aren't librarians) out of work time.  There is a danger of spreading yourself too thinly.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that the online community of information professionals are a really great bunch of people, but I have a life outside librarianship, and at the moment it's too busy to contemplate adding a new dimension of socialising (whether online or in person) to the mix.

Thing 11 - Mentoring

I don't have a mentor. Maybe I should get one.

In all seriousness, it's useful to have someone around you can bounce ideas off of and who you can chat to about your professional development and career progression.  I think I'll return to this at a later date when I start to consider Chartership.