Schoolchildren meet special collections

Today was a first for me - I gave a tour of Special Collections and Archives to a group of schoolchildren aged between 12-15. The tour was organised by SHARE with Schools, SHARE being Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion. The idea was to introduce them to the idea of studying history at University, through some taster lectures, and visits to sites such as Special Collections and Archives.

Recalling how chronically unimpressed I had been with everything the world had to offer at that age, this was something I considered with more than a little trepidation. My usual approach of pointing at Kelmscott Press books and illuminated incunabula and saying 'look, pretty!' wasn't going to wash here.

I turned to Twitter for guidance, asking 'anyone have any advice on engaging schoolchildren with special collections?' It was unanimously suggested that I introduce them to objects which have a good story behind them, and ideally that story should be macabre, gory, salacious, involve illegal activity... you get the picture. So this gave me a jumping off point to start from. We try to feature items with good background stories on our blog, so this was a good place to start looking for key pieces.

I needed a context in which to ground these items, however. Displaying a bunch of weird stuff and pointing at it is much the same approach as displaying pretty stuff and pointing at it - I needed to show why it mattered. This is something I have never really had to convince anyone of before, my usual audience for tours and presentations being PhD students and academics - preaching to the converted.

How could I explain the difference between our special collections section, and the rest of the University library? It struck me that the key division was between primary and secondary sources. This concept was always hammered home by the national curriculum - I can still recall the photocopied, typed extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary. Imagine if I'd been able to see Samuel Pepys' actual diary? I think I would have been a lot more excited about history.

As I didn't have Pepys' diary handy, I decided to start out with one of our strongest pieces - a bloodstained letter found on the body of the war poet Edward Thomas, when he was killed in the trenches. It was the last letter from his wife Helen, writing how much she missed him and promising him that soon the war would be over... powerful stuff. It had the desired effect of getting their attention straight off. I then held up a copy of a recent award-winning biography of Edward Thomas, and told them how the author had spent hours, sitting where they were now, reading Edward's letters, and this got us into the value of primary sources.

At their age I was only aware of libraries as a repository for secondary sources: rows and rows of intimidating books full of other people's ideas, telling me - this is how it was, don't argue. I wanted to get across one thing - primary sources allow you to argue, to rewrite history, and that's why we have them in a University. I asked them why they think people still keep writing history books - and pointed out that because of libraries and archives, new information is always coming to light, and changing what we think we know. I showed them what will probably be my life's work - a room full of uncatalogued, unlabelled cardboard boxes, waiting to be opened, and their previously unknown contents interpreted and described. Part of the reason I love working with young people - they are all convinced they can change the world. They talked about the possibility that they might find something ground-breaking in those boxes, write a best-selling book and become famous! I pointed out that if they did, we would probably want their papers for our archive, which caused much excitement!

From here, we talked about unreliable sources, where I pulled in some examples such as the book purportedly written by 'Belzebub', and the zoology textbook featuring bizarre illustrations of entirely fictional sea creatures. Finally, I showed them a Victorian copy of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, and compared it with this month's Cosmopolitan. I wanted to emphasise that although we had looked at a lot of old books in the session, not all primary sources are old. I told them there was no difference between the two magazines except their age - they both told us what the women of that time wore, what interested them, their place in society, which products were marketed to them. People in the future would read the issue of Cosmopolitan to find out more about what it was like to be a woman in 2012. We also talked about how this was problematic - did Cosmopolitan represent all women? We know that they use airbrushing, for instance - in the same way, can we trust the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine to be representative of all Victorian women? Which sections of society might have been ignored and why?

We could have talked a lot longer, but before I knew it the time was up. I was surprised to found I had enjoyed myself, and they had too. All thanked me when they left, without prompting (!), and one boy came right up and said 'that was amazing, thanks miss!' High praise indeed!

More reflection

For Thing 19, we've been asked to write another post reflecting back on what has been covered in the course, now it is almost at an end.

The most significant outcome from my participation in CPD23 has been the establishment of a blog to publicise and promote the repository I work for, Special Collections and Archives. Prior to having set up my own blog for CPD23, the idea of a library blog had been an idea which had been tossed around, but none of us were sure how to go about it, and whether a considerable about of work or money would be involved. Once myself and two other colleagues had set up CPD23 blogs, we felt confident to take the idea forward, confident that blogs could be set up for free and maintained with no special IT support.

I'm really proud of our library blog, and I enjoy writing content for it, so much so that my own may suffer as a result, but I'll persevere to keep it up. I have to remember that my own development is as important as that of my workplace.

In terms of tools, I still use Twitter on a more or less daily basis and it continues to be a very useful source of information and an easy way to connect with others in the profession. I also plan to use Jing in the near future to create a visual guide to using our new archives catalogue.

During Thing 14, I casually mentioned that my essay writing days were behind me, so I had no use of citation software. Turns out I was wrong about this, because last month I began a standalone module from Aberystwyth University on Rare Books Librarianship. I've just finished an essay on the impact of technology on the book trade, and in my haste to get started, I neglected to take time to learn how to use any of these automated citation tools. Faced with the very real prospect of plugging in my footnotes and bibliography by hand, I'm somewhat regretting this. But there are more assignments to come, and time allowing, I will give them a go.

Advocacy

A short post for this Thing, the last one wore me out!

Thing 16 is advocacy, speaking up for the library profession. I'm not currently very involved in this, though I always sign petitions and (re)tweet positive library articles I see on Twitter. In a more casual way, I have to explain my job to people, who think I stamp books and say 'sssh' a lot, on an almost daily basis. I am very supportive of those who advocate more fervently, and will resolve to find out what I can do to get more involved.

Thanks to Lauren for flagging That's Not Online, which I had seen on Twitter but hadn't had the chance to fully investigate. I'm sure I can find plenty to contribute, seeing as only around 20% of our collections are catalogued.

Go libraries! : )

Some reflections on social media

I won’t write much for thing 12, as I’ve covered many of these points in previous blogs. I feel strongly that social media has considerable benefits for everyone, not just those in the library and information profession. But for this group in particular, where professionals can often work in isolation, social media allows communication, collaborative working, the development of a virtual and real-life communities and access to breaking news and developments taking place in other fields. 

My Twitter account follows the thoughts, experiences and interesting-things -found-on-the-web gathered by those working in all manner of international libraries, archives and museums, at all stages of their career from library assistants to services mangers, as well our ‘stakeholders’, those working for bodies which fund heritage projects, and also students, our ‘customers’, in the fields which our archive principally supports – humanities and book history. Twitter is like attending a 24 hour international conference solely filled with speakers that interest you.

The only disadvantage I can see to social media is to those *not* taking advantage of it. I get very frustrated by those who refuse to avail themselves of this free source of targeted information, particularly those at a senior level whose role necessitates active networking and awareness of the very latest news and developments in the field – but who would rather use JISCMail. Also more archivists should use it.

That is all.

Online networks

Thing 6 is online networks, of which I belong to several. I currently find Twitter to be the most useful. I was an early adopter of Facebook, but lately I’m more likely to check in every few days to see what family and friends are up to, rather than several times a day as I would in the past. On the whole I find it is much less heavily used than it used to be, obviously not just by me but also by the friends that populate my news feed. If people don’t write status updates, or post pictures and links, the news feed doesn’t update, there’s no need to check it as frequently, which means I don’t add content as frequently, and the whole thing winds down. A social network is only the sum of its members’ activity. 

How much of this perceived fall off in user numbers is due to Facebook’s control over the content I see? For some time, Facebook has only shown content from friends you ‘regularly interact’ with, which makes this cycle of disuse more apparent. If I only regularly interact with 10% of my Facebook friends, and their use of Facebook decreases, that means very few news feed items for me. If anyone knows a way around this filtering of updates, I’d love to hear it.

Twitter is at the other end of the spectrum; it shows you every post from every person you follow, with no filtering. As a result, those I follow get culled very frequently as space in that feed is at such a premium. I brought Facebook habits to Twitter – thinking that I had to scroll back to the last comment I’d read before reading up to the most current post, which for a while made me quite overwhelmed and resentful of this ‘tool’ which was eating every spare moment I had. There is just too much content on Twitter to follow it all 24-7. I could use lists but have never found the time to organise this – in any case it would be the same number of tweets to read, just in different boxes. I try to keep those I follow under 200 – I could pare it down further but fear I would miss things. My interests range between archives, rare books, library advocacy, book history, digitisation, social media... many people only tweet about one of these things, so my net needs to be fairly wide.

I joined LinkedIn as part of Thing 3: online brands, as LinkedIn results feature highly in Google and I wanted to ensure a presence on a search for my name. I must confess to not having yet learnt how to use it effectively – I’m not job seeking so have little impetus to do so, but I have ensured that my CV is up to date so that anyone who does Google me is met with accurate information. I didn’t know that you could join groups, so I’ve joined 23 Things, CILIP, Archives*Open Network and Archives Professionals. I have been hesitant in adding people to my network – what’s the thinking on adding people you don’t know personally? Faux pas?

I joined LISNPN and Librarians as Teachers network. I had never heard of the latter and am very grateful for its existence. I’m expected to teach undergraduates and postgraduates as part of my job, but have never received any training in this area, which is one I can feel quite nervous about. I’ll explore these networks over the next week or so. I haven’t joined CILIP Communities as I‘m a member of the Archives and Records Association rather than CILIP, but ARA have a similar network in place which I have joined.

My colleague Helen Price-Saunders made a particularly astute point on her blog, that with the advent of the internet, the world of networking is a much easier place for the introvert to inhabit, and for this I’m very grateful!

And... reflect

Thing 5 is reflective practice – simply, what have I learnt so far and has it been useful? I’m glad this is being addressed as a ‘thing’ in its own right - reflective practice is becoming central to professional development. Whether a librarian seeking Chartership or Archivist seeking Registration, both schemes require a reflective presentation of a portfolio of developed skills. 

The professional body for archivists, the Archives and Records Association, recently surveyed its members on the question of long-term CPD – one question asked, should Registration expire and require renewing via a fresh application, every 5 years for instance? I would personally welcome such a move – but may be in the minority on this one. I feel strongly that information professionals shouldn’t consider themselves ‘safely’ Chartered or Registered – reflective CPD should be a ongoing activity throughout our careers. The alternatives – ranging from apathetic disinterest to outspoken complacent scorn toward any new practice or technology – will leave us at risk of being left behind by the bright young things of the future. 

So far, I have found CPD23 extremely useful in a number of areas. One would be building networks – not just virtually using tools like Twitter, but right here on campus. I can feel quite isolated as the only archivist in my workplace, surrounded by librarians. Taking part along with them has helped me to feel on an equal footing as a fellow information professional, and I feel we’ve got to know each other better through reading each other’s blogs.

Another major benefit has been the development of a Special Collections and Archives blog, in the last couple of weeks. This has been the subject of theoretical discussion for a couple of years, but upon three of the five members of the new ‘blog team’ setting up their own blogs for CPD23, the subject of blogging came to the fore and we were able to push together to set one very quickly and with minimum fuss. I’m not permitted to launch it publically yet, but watch this space in the coming weeks : )

I have been using Twitter for some time and have found it extremely useful in building networks, sharing links, keeping up to date, and generally feeling part of something larger than my desk in the basement. RSS feeds were new to me, and I’m using them regularly now I’ve downloaded a Google Reader app for my Android. This pushes new notifications at me, which helps a great deal, otherwise I would never find the time or opportunity to check it.

Lastly, I’m really looking forward to a South Wales librarians’ meet-up next week as part of Thing 6. This wouldn’t have happened without CPD23 to provide the impetus and Twitter/blog comments to help with the organising. I’m going to meet several people I only know through Twitter, one of which works in a library 200m from my workplace, which I have never visited. 

More generally I have learnt to speak up and participate more online. I’m working to get over the feeling that I have nothing original, or of interest to say. 

Less lurking, more interaction.

Staying connected

This week, thing 4 is all about current awareness via tools such as Twitter, RSS feeds and Pushnote.

I signed up to Twitter two years ago, and tweeted a grand total of 5 times in the first six months. No one I knew used it, so I followed my interests - bands, events, venues, comedians, and general arts media. I glanced at it occasionally to see what was going on, a bit like the glossy supplement in the weekend papers, but I couldn't see where I fitted in. I later realised that Twitter doesn't make sense until you have followers.

My first use of Twitter at a library conference changed everything - and I would recommend it to anyone. It might take a while to get the hang of typing and listening simultaneously, but it is worth it.

Why you should tweet at conferences:

• Tweeting allows those who can't attend to receive a point-by-point feed during the presentations from those in attendance. I now follow all conferences that interest me from my desk, six or seven so far this year, whereas in the past I would have to be content with picking just one to attend, if I'm lucky. With budget restrictions tightening throughout the sector, this is a very welcome development. 
• You know those indecipherable notes you take and almost immediately lose? The ideas, impetus and enthusiasm you had when surrounded by a forum of like-minded individuals which inevitably passes on returning to the daily grind? No more of that - you have an online record, not just of your own tweets made in the moment, but those of others. For anyone who has to draw up a conference report on returning to work, to justify the funds spent, or for chartership/registration purposes, this is invaluable.
• Develop an instant network of professionals working in your area - follow all those tweeting and they will usually follow you back. Now the conference can continue long after the event itself, and you will have made some valuable contacts.

After the conference I found myself with actual followers. Then it happened - the first time I was mentioned. I was hooked from then on - I was talking, people were listening, and talking back - a genuine multi-way network was taking shape. My followers were retweeting my content, and their followers began following me. I wanted to add to my numbers, and went follow crazy for a few days. When I realised I couldn't keep up with the feed, I dropped all the celebrity/media stuff, and retained solely library/information people who regularly conference tweet and are otherwise helpful and informed. I still purge occasionally, so if you've made the cut, feel proud! If you're new to using Twitter to keep up with library news here are some of the top people I follow, in no particular order:

@librarianbyday
@cjclib
@SmilyLibrarian
@anniemauger
@Philbradley
@sue_mace
@OrkneyLibrary
@AnneWelsh
@theREALwikiman
@ScrewyDecimal
@bethanar
@Girlinthe
@naldasaid
@Minimorticia

RSS feeds - I must admit to being entirely ignorant of these until setting up this blog a couple of weeks ago. I'm using Google Reader, and have added a few blogs to it. It seems straightforward enough, but I'm not sure I'll remember to check it all that often - I think I'd prefer some sort of email digest which is forcibly pushed at me at intervals.

Pushnote - Hmmm. I don't get it. No one I know seems to be using it. Browsing some other CPD23 blogs, I don't think I'm alone in this. Though I felt the same about Twitter, so I will wait to be proved wrong : )

Developing a personal brand

I never imagined I would say this, but I have recently been considering my online ‘brand’, prior to my involvement in CPD23. The reason for this being that my use of Twitter has lately both increased, and become more professionally focused. More on Twitter in next week’s ‘thing’, but suffice to say for now that I’ve moved from being a passive follower of comedians, bands and journalists, to a more active engagement with my peers - following and being followed by a merry band of librarians, archivists and other information professionals. As soon as I received my first notifications that VIPs of the library world were following me back, I realised I needed to get my virtual house in order.

I was initially tweeting as @alisonharvey27 – like many Twitter usernames, derived from my gmail address, which was in itself poorly thought through - set up when I was, you guessed it, 27. The address has not aged with me, and (believe it or not), I don’t really want to be perceived as 27. Nor do I want to be perceived as wanting to be perceived as 27, which is worse. The name had to go. At first I changed it to a nickname, an in-joke, which I later decided entirely missed the point of being open and outwardly-connected. When I realised that I should probably use the name to brand all my online activity, including my professional activity, it seemed too frivolous and too inward-looking to keep. So I decided to just use my name, minus any misleading numbers.

I like my name - so much so that when I married I set aside my feminist principles in order to obtain Harvey in exchange for Smith. Well wouldn’t you rather be ‘battle-worthy’ than the guy that makes the horseshoes? Unfortunately, since there’s a few Alison Harveys out there, and I didn’t want the username getting too long, a strategically placed underscores (the only symbol allowed), created @alisonharvey_. Alison Harvey has become my brand, thus also my blog domain name, which was luckily available. And if I write down it enough times, my Google search result position might even improve!

Which leads on nicely to the guilty pleasure of Googling oneself. Searching for just ‘Alison Harvey’ surprisingly finds me on the bottom result of the first page, underneath a chiropractor, business manager, biomedicine research fellow, immigration law practitioner, and a travel writer for the Observer. Unexpectedly, the result found is my Archives and Records Association profile. I only joined this in order to be able to contribute to a discussion, and had not populated it in any way, so I was very surprised at the high ranking of this page. I don’t feature in Google search results again until the bottom of page 4. The ARA profile was registered under the nickname, which was also in the URL, so I deleted it and created a new one registered as, you guessed it, alisonharvey. I also added plenty of detail to it – a photo, my location, position, blog address, and interests. 

A search for ‘Alison Harvey Cardiff’ brings up 9/10 pages related to me. They include, again, my ARA profile, Twitter profile and one post (careful what you say on there!), news articles from my repository’s website about work I've been involved in, a conference programme featuring a paper I'd presented, and my profile on Archivists. This is a social network for archivists, which like ARA I had joined, not populated, then swiftly forgotten about. As with the ARA profile, I added a photo, location, blog address etc. The top seven results for ‘Alison Harvey Archivist’ are all related to me, and along with those listed above, include a teaching profile and my Diigo bookmarks (all work-related). 

So it turns out an employer or colleague could find out a great deal about me via Google, but there is nothing there that I wouldn’t want to be, and in fact I think it makes for quite a rounded portfolio of my professional activities over the last few years. I followed Dave Fleet’s advice and created a LinkedIn profile, as I couldn’t see any argument not too. I’m not job seeking, but you never know who may be a-googling...

Blog stalking

CPD23 Thing the Second - reading some other CPD23 blogs, making some comments, responding to comments, making some contacts and finally, writing about all of the above!

Now. I started at the participants page - opening blogs with good titles randomly, then stopped when I realised there are over 500 of us taking part in CPD23. There was so much I wanted to read, and so little time. The internet can feel like one giant conference, going on 24-7. It's very easy to feel overwhelmed and left behind by the sheer amount of stuff going on. This is not the first time I've encountered this - Twitter can induce a similar feeling of mild panic in me, of being incapable of keeping up with it all. Of course, no one can, and this is why as information professionals we of all people are best equipped to roll up our sleeves and tackle vast amounts of information carefully and systematically. So I thought about what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to take a look at blogs by colleagues, blogs by people who had commented on my blog, blogs by people I know via Twitter, and also try and find some fellow archivists/rare book librarians.

My colleagues darklecat and Helen Ceridwen are taking part, so I wanted to see how they were getting on. Darklecat is a cataloguing librarian, who edits the Staff Development and Engagement Newsletter, and I'm hoping she'll write a piece on her experiences of taking part in CPD23, and encourage others to take it up. Helen is also a cataloguing librarian with an extensive career, and blogged about how she hopes to use CPD23 to keep up with the latest developments in librarianship - having already witnessed and adapted to many a transformation of the library sector over the years! Apologies to colleagues I didn't get around to - I will endeavor to track you down and follow you, in a nice way.

I have virtual colleagues on Twitter - librarians I've never met but who tweet interesting links, helpful information, and participate in an engaging daily public dialog with their peers. Bethanar and Marie Lancaster had both left comments on my blog, and make regular appearances in my Twitter feed, so they seemed a good choice. Bethanar has taken the brave step of using Tumblr, a relatively new blogging platform, and her blog is looking super-professional. Marie Lancaster blogged about how she had decided to get involved with CPD23 to get herself up to speed on professional developments, having recently returned to work after maternity leave.

Finally, I used the very useful delicious list of bookmarked participants to find bloggers tagged with rare books, or archives, to find new contacts working in my specialism. Librarian Lou was, along with myself, tagged as 'rare' and 'special' on delicious, which I thought was rather nice. Headstrong Ways is a librarian working in an institution with archives - so I think I may be the only archivist taking part in CPD23? This makes me sad - if you are an archivist, make yourself known!

I've spent some time this week learning how to soup my blog up. I've added an email subscription widget and a twitter stream. You don't have to keep the BBC Micro-style black background and lurid green text it defaults to - there are options to change the colours to get it to suit your blog background. Other useful widgets for blogs here. I've also registered the blog with Google, to make sure it's found in searches. And finally... got my links in Blogger to open in a new window, by following the html instructions here.