Training... and More Learning 2.0

Today the library gathered its staff who are, in one capacity or another, engaged in library-related study and offered training in the use of electronic databases. The emphasis was in using the databases to study more effectively.

It was a low-key but terrific session, and I suspect everyone involved learned at least something to help them in their studies. There's a time saving factor in arranging for the library's experts to address various questions only once, rather than repeatedly for each student -- but it's also quite interesting to see the library playing to its Lifelong Learning strengths on behalf of skilling up its own staff. More sessions are planned, apparently, covering various study and library-related skills, and I think that's a very good thing.

Once all enthused about learning, it seemed a natural progression to spend some time with the library's Learning 2.0 program, through which I am working very slowly.

Not much time, today, so I simply returned to Delicious to have a bit of a poke around. Delicious I like, to the point where I could waste rather too much time on it if I weren't very careful. And it's a useful site, given the way it allows you to accumulate bookmarks for use on any of the computers you regularly use. This will be one of the tools I use.

Playing Catch-up in Learning 2.0

I've allowed myself to fall way behind in the Library's Learning 2.0 program, mainly because the Flickr and mashup discoveries were simply not my thing.

Flickr looks great to me in theory; I can see why those who love it love it, but I'm not someone who works with photographs or images. Even to play around with Flickr would mean I'd have to use other people's images, or copyright-free images from the web, and without that connection through personal interest, there's just no point.

Mashups, on the other hand, leave my creativity completely cold. I can't explain why. I've seen mashups and mashup tools that strike me as clever or funny, but I don't feel the slightest urge to do it myself. My creativity tends to express itself through language, and it's pretty stubborn about not showing up at parties where it doesn't enjoy the music.

However, after talking it over with fellow Learning 2.0er Ducky, I felt sufficiently guilty that I dragged myself out onto the Learning 2.0 path in a bid to catch up.

I signed up for Flickr, uploaded a photograph, toyed with a few tools, and concluded that I did, in fact, not enjoy it at all. Happy to pick up a few skills to share with customers, happy to use Flickr in the workplace if it ever comes to that, but most probably won't use it for myself.

Mashups, weeelll... I re-read the discovery post, contemplated it all for awhile, and conclude that no, that's not where I want to be putting my creative energy. At present, I'm short-changing those areas of my life that deserve as much creative energy as I have, so I can't justify to myself spending time in a creative area that doesn't meant anything to me. (Sorry, Learning 2.0 program.)

Tagging interests me more, since it's a means of keeping track of things, or organizing the daily deluge of information. For now, I contented myself with retagging the posts to this blog.

Leaving the delicious and digg activities (but practically no time left in the afternoon to do much with them). Both sound terrific. In the end, I signed up for both, and I'll play around with them on another day.

Librarians

After having now received a great deal of help in the way of research and organisation tips from another librarian I work with (thank you Leftwinglibrarian) I find myself consumed with pity for people who have to study something without being surrounded by librarians. After all, what they don't know they know very precisely how to find out.

Of course, thanks to the existence of actual libraries, everyone does have access to librarians, but I suspect people don't use them nearly as much as they could, or should, and many would be astounded by what a difference they can make to things like research or study.

Free Online Databases

As study is compelling (erm, inspiring) me to expand my information literacy, I've just cornered our Corporate Librarian, Nina, and asked for a hand selecting professional journals for regular reading.

Nina gave me a very thorough introduction to the free online databases provided by CityLibraries Townsville and the State Library of Queensland (accessible to staff and patrons through the SLQ website and our own website).

Of course I knew of the existence of our online databases, and I'd used them very occasionally for simple searches. But having a highly skilled professional give you a guided tour -- and more than a little instruction on how to search -- just made me think these databases are an absolute hidden gem.

Among other things, they provide full-text articles from hundreds of encyclopediae, newspapers, journals and magazines covering the entire gamut of human knowledge, fully searchable, with the ability to set up e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to subjects of interest.

After demonstrating how to use all this to easily take care of keeping my information literacy current, Nina then showed me how to use the databases (particularly ProQuest Science, available through SLQ) to research for purposes of writing or pursuing a hobby, and again the amount of good, reliable, searchable information available (full-text or abstract, with a number of options for setting up alerts) was simply breath-taking.

Which is to say to my colleagues if, like me, you haven't explored our free online databases, do and, if you do, Nina is a supremely skilled and cheerful guide.

Catching Up... Or Not...

Well, finally scratching up some time to return to... well... everything. Week before last (and a little of last week) I was pretty sick, and let everything drop. Didn't write, didn't study, didn't keep up with the Learning 2.0 program (or read or eat or much else).

That was then, this is now. Catching up seemed as if it should be easy -- but it's not as if the world stands still. Backlogs grow, and work has been busy. Learning 2.0 can be hard when each day ends with the basics barely addressed.

I have gotten around to rewriting the rejected story and sending it off elsewhere (to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, for the curious), and I've gnawed at the bones of the final assessment of my current subject, and I've at least read through the posts I'd missed at CityLibrariesLearning -- working through the discoveries likely to take me awhile.

Why is there never enough time?

CityLibrariesLearning RSS

The CityLibrariesLearning RSS activity is up, providing a bit of information about RSS and encouraging us to choose a reader and subscribe to a few feeds.

To the extent that I use RSS at home, I use an excellent Firefox add-on called NewsFox. Doing without at work felt like a bit of a hardship. Still, I elected to use My Yahoo! as my reader, to subscribe to the feeds of some of the blogs from our Learning 2.0 program.

The first thing that leapt out was that none of the blogs seemed to have RSS links or buttons anywhere on them (again, I'm used to Firefox displaying available RSS automatically in the URL bar). It took a disgracefully long time for me to realize that adding /feed/ to the blog's URL made it into that blog's feed URL. Then I thought I'd better take a moment to add a link to my own blog to spare other's the suffering (not that the audience is there, but, you know, that's not the point).

(Fellow confused Learning 2.0 people, can find help at Neal's Analog is Here blog.)

Still, minor frustrations aside, I did enjoy the exposure to other RSS readers, and I probably will keep using My Yahoo! for work-related feeds just for its convenience. The hard part is trying not to feel old simply because I still kind of prefer Usenet (a kind of social network popular during the Bronze Age)...

Rejection

One of my short stories was just rejected (specifically, the first submission of the first story I wrote after deciding to get my writing back on track).

Not the depressing experience it could have been. This rejection was in response to a rewrite request, and it was extremely kind and constructive, so a "good" rejection. Given that this was the first of my new attempts, I find the result heartening. Not as heartening as a sale, of course, but still not remotely soul-destroying.

Despite having a bit of a time shortage at the moment, I know I need to get more out there -- so I'll naturally send this one on to someone else as soon as possible, and get some new things out there as well. The goal becomes having enough out at one time that individual rejections don't... matter as much.