Thing 7: Podcasts

I'm way behind with my 'things', I'm so busy at the moment, so I will try to catch up asap, but the posts just might be a bit short and sweet for now...

I'm not a regular listener of podcasts, but I did get sucked in by the 'Serial' hype in the summer of 2014,and downloaded all the episodes to my phone and listened to them  on my bus journey/walk home from work.

Way back in 2011 I made a podcast for another 23things course I did, I can't find it now, so it must have been really bad for me to delete it!

At that time we talked about doing regular podcasts to highlight various collections, new additions to the catalogue, new print and online journals, library/college events, interviews etc. but the problem was not everyone was interested in doing it and it would have fallen onto one or two members of staff to make it happen ans as we are pretty small in number, the idea just got left behind...

I recently listened to the excellent new podcast from the Academic and Special Libraries section of the Library Association of Ireland - the episode featured Jane Burns. I really enjoyed this and look forward to the next one. Have listen and see what you think LIbrarians aloud featuring Jane Burns

Thing 6: Reflective Practice

This is my second attempt at this post, I managed to delete the first one by accident, so I'm going to try and re-create it, and before you ask, yes I did try to retrieve it, I went into my history and tried the cache, but to no avail, it is well and truly gone! The moral to this story is - never delete a draft on the mobile Blogger app before refreshing it otherwise it is gone, gone, gone - see I've learned something already!

Our task for #thing6 was to take a look at other Rudaí23 participants blogs, comment on them and reply to comments left on our own blog. Well, I spent a very pleasant Bank Holiday Monday afternoon browsing through lots of blogs, commenting and replying and I am blown away by how good they are! Take a look at thelivedinlibrarian.This is a lovely clean, neat, well written blog with really beautiful images.  It really makes me want to try a it harder!

Reading the posts makes me realise how passionate we all are about our profession, and I don't care if you are qualified or not, if you are a 'librarian' or a 'library assistant' we are all competent, intelligent, hard working professionals, and our journeys into librarianship have been many and varied!


Over the last six months or so I have had to do a lot of reflective thinking, I applied for promotion and as a consequence had to tackle my very outdated CV, and I also had to write a page or two about the achievements in my career to date. I found this a challenging task, talking about myself and what I do, really doesn't come easy to a lot of us!

One of the reasons I volunteered to contribute a couple of guest posts to Rudái23 was to get me out of my comfort zone and do something I have never done before, and I feel more confident for having done so.

Also when I attend library events, conferences and seminars I will meet up with people I know, and, while it is lovely to catch up and network, which is very important for all of us, I make a determined effort to introduce myself to someone I haven't met before and talk about what I do, where I work and what interests me. People usually respond in kind. Initially I found this really nerve-racking, but the more I do it the easier it gets!

Thing 5: Online Networks

Facebook and Twitter

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, I have family in Australia and the UK, and I love that I can see all their photos and keep in touch with them, but I hate that I am expected to make friends with nearly everyone I come into contact with, I have a long list of friend requests that I just haven't felt the need to accept!

I keep Facebook as private as possible, I currently only have two friends who are not family members. I have joined Rudaí23 and I've said hello - this is my first and only group membership, and I really don't see that changing anytime soon and I have liked very few pages.


Twitter is different, I like Twitter, though it has taken a while for me to be comfortable with using it and I was  a lurker for quite a while, and initially I keep my account private. I've tried a couple of times to tweet while at library events and seminars, but gave up because I couldn't concentrate on listening and tweeting at the same time, and felt that I was missing the point in being there in the first place by spending my time tweeting!

I'm looking forward to the #rudaí23chat, I have followed a few library chats, it is an interesting way to find out what other libraries and librarians are doing. I see Twitter as being another tool in the library collection, a way of communicating information and also to get feedback from library users.

Thing 4: Google

I like Google, there I've said it! I was already a gmail user before setting up this blog, and working on #thing4, I currently have two gmail accounts on the go, but once this course is finished I will be deleting one of them - I set it up specifically to sign up to various apps, and felt it would be easier to have a separate account.

 I signed up to gmail and google+ from the very beginning, I pretty much persuaded all my family to switch to gmail. Setting up circles, and security/privacy settings was pretty straightforward. I check google+ maybe once or twice a week. I don't post very often, but that's not unusual for me, I'm a bit of a lurker on most of the social networks I've signed up to! I follow a lot more people, news outlets etc on google+ than I do on facebook, I just pick a circle and browse through the streams.

I would use chat quite often, and I have tried to persuade family members to use hangouts, but they are firm users of Skype! I do think video chat and hangouts would be great as an 'Ask the Librarian' service via the library website - they could be marketed, scheduled and recorded for particular groups of students.

image from Official Android Blog

I used google scholar quite a bit when I was studying for my HDip., linking it to my college library was very useful in finding access to online resources and I would recommend it to our students as well.

I use Google Keep on my smartphone (android), it's great because it is so easy to write a note or list and set a reminder on the go, you can colour code your notes, for example I use one colour for work related stuff, another for birthday reminders, you can also label your notes, which is like assigning them to folders. No time to type in a reminder, not a problem if you have an android device you can just add a voice note, tap the wee microphone icon and away you go, your note is saved in text and as recording. I've added a shortcut for the web version to the google apps menu of my home email, that way it is always available when I am logged in, I just click on to the Keep icon and check my lists, tasks and reminders

I share shopping lists with my daughter so that we don't buy the same stuff - once it is ticked off on my list, it will update in real time on hers and vice versa! It's also handy for setting joint reminders for family get togethers.

The only drawback with Keep is that it doesn't sync with my calendars, but you never know that might happen in the future.

We've been using google apps in work for over a year now, the amount of storage is fantastic the fact that you can send/share large files via google drive is great. Calendars has to be one of my favourite apps for work, I have a least five on the go at the moment some shared with all the library staff, some shared with just one or two people and my own private calendar, with all my reminders set for the next month or so! Docs and Sheets are easy to upload, download and convert to Word, Excel etc., and I have been playing around with Google slides for a presentation to run on the reception desk screen.

So as you can see I'm an bit of a Google junkie!

Thing 3: Your professional brand

I must admit I have never really thought about my professional brand in any great depth before! I'm extremely lucky to be in a permanent position, have recently been promoted, and I'm no longer particularly ambitious or looking for a job or a new position! I know that isn't all that having a brand is about, but I'm active on twitter and regularly attend library events and seminars where I network face to face, so I don't really feel the need to have a public presence.

I've been playing around with LinkedIn  today, but I have to say I don't particularly like it! There is a lot going on the sign-up page, and in all honesty I don't think I really need to have that much detail about me out there somewhere and in the end I decided to go with and about.me after I checked outWayne Gibbons page!

Setting up the page was very straightforward, though I did upload a profile photo and took it down again pretty quickly! I'm not sure if I will ever be comfortable with my image publicly online for all to see!

Click here to see my page.    

Thing 2: Writing your first blog post

On being a librarian.

I had no real burning ambition to be anything when I was younger, other than older! I grew up on a farm in England. We were a family of readers, though, Dad preferred the newspapers to books, and the mobile library came around every five or six weeks, so we always had a good supply of new reading material. When I left school I did a bit of this and that, moved to Ireland, got married, had children, got separated, and when my youngest daughter reached thirteen, I realised that, as a stay at home single parent, I needed to start planning my future. 

At the time I was doing some voluntary work with a  charity and was talking to one the leaders about what to do next and she advised me to go back into education - I had left school with one GCSE (in Art, but that is a whole different story!). I went to the Northside Partnership for advice, and without whom none of what came next would have been possible, they advised me to bypass the Leaving Cert and look at doing an access course which would lead into a degree course, due to what they called 'my life experience skills'.

Cartoonstock.com

I was a bit dubious but went ahead and applied to NCI, and got a place, only to realise that the cost of the bus travel alone would stop me from going (NCI were based in Ranelagh at the time, right over the other side of Dublin from where I live!), again the Northside Partnership came to my rescue and furnished me with a monthly bus ticket and a grant to buy books. I was the oldest student in the class which was a bit daunting, but I persevered and came away after a hard year of study with pretty good marks.

I applied to St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra to do an Arts degree. This was way back in 1997 and mature students applied directly through the college, not the CAO, I was called to do an interview, an aptitude test and had to write an essay on why I wanted to go back into education! I was petrified, having never sat a formal interview or aptitude test before.

 St. Pat's was and still is very supportive of mature students and I was very fortunate to be offered a place. I graduated in 2000, once again with the question what will I do next, saw that there was a job going in the library in St. Pat's, applied and started in October 2000. I have worked here ever since! I have worked in acquisitions, cataloguing, journals, circulations, issue/information desks and I am now managing user services and the library reception desk. Along the way I completed the Dip in Library and Information Science, by distance through Robert Gordon University, so like my tagline says...always learning!

So, that's how I became a librarian. The why is...because I love it! I love working in an academic library. St. Pat's is a smallish college, so you really get to know both the staff and students and mature students are always fascinated to hear my story. No two days are ever the same, I'm often challenged, but I'm never bored!

Thing 1: Blogging

Setting up the blog.

I have used Blogger to set up my blog, as I am familiar with it and have used it before.  I also like how the blog looks on a mobile device.I played around with the templates and settings a bit and managed to upload one of my photographs as a unique background. I've uploaded a profile picture, fixed the time stamp, added a twitter button and I'm currently trying to figure out how to use my phone and ipad to publish posts, but haven't quite got there yet!
Well that's it, Thing 1 is sorted - here I go onto Thing 2.