resuscitating the blog

hello! it's been quite a while since i abandoned the 23 things and gave up on this blog. real life got in the way for a bit, but i'm going to make a concerted effort to post more/at all from now on. let me give you an update on what i'm up to!

- my contract at the rnib national library service has been extended, thankfully. i still enjoy it very much and i still feel like i'm learning, which is the most important thing.

- i've been accepted on to a distance learning masters degree at the university of borås. the course is called 'digital library services' and i start at the end of august (i think). i already have an undergraduate degree in librarianship and many of the masters degrees at uk universities look as if they go over similar ground. and they're expensive!

the borås course looks really interesting and a bit technical too! i am usually a bit rubbish at that kind of thing, so i'm looking forward to filling large gaps in my knowledge. and also the course is free. and also also, the once a year trips to sweden will really help me improve my swedish. hopefully.

- i'm planning on doing some cataloguing volunteering with the north of england mining institute in newcastle. they have a lot of marc records that need cleaning up and you're able to do it remotely, so i'm going to use it as an opportunity to get more practice.

- i recently bought anne welsh's excellent 'practical cataloguing' and was very excited to see that something i wrote had been referenced! amazing. it was a terrible article i wrote for catalogue and index, cilip cataloguing and indexing group's journal. i'm still pleased though, as long as nobody looks up the article. i'd definitely like to try and write more stuff and do a bit of presenting, but i just need to think of something to write/present about first. i don't feel as if i'm enough of an expert yet!

- i'm on the committee for cilip north west branch. i'm currently assisting with events and we have a couple of things in the pipeline that i'd like to get involved with, so that's something to look forward to as well.

so all in all, i should have loads to blog about. it'll be interesting to see how much time the masters course takes up. i'm both excited and nervous about it! i managed to do a full time undergraduate degree while working an almost full time job at the same time, but it was extremely hairy at times. this is only a part time course so it should be a doddle! time will tell.

anyway, hopefully i'll have lots to say on here from now on!

bye!

thing 4: current awareness

i think i may have covered some of what i'm going to discuss in this post in the last one. that could either be legitimate crossover or me just going completely off topic for the last thing. anyway, i apologise if this is a bit repetitive. who am i even talking to? is anyone reading this?

twitter

as i mentioned, i set up a twitter account a while ago and use it semi regularly for personal stuff. i tend to go through phases of using it a lot, and then i don't bother for a while, and then i'm back using it again. in any case i do tend to check it regularly for stuff that other people are saying. i find it useful to keep up with what people i know are up to and what they think about things that are happening. i have only used it once for 'professional' purposes and that didn't go particularly well.

let me explain. as i think i have mentioned previously, my employers were generous enough to pay for me to attend the second day of cilip's umbrella conference last month. i went with the intention of live tweeting the sessions that i went to, providing those who weren't as fortunate as myself with an opportunity to hear about the inspiring stuff that was going on. i completely failed. during the first session i tweeted a couple of quotes from the speakers about the future of libraries. i read some other people's tweets about the session too. then i froze. i had no idea what to say! i retweeted a couple of things that other delegates had tweeted, but that was about it. my phone went back in my pocket for the rest of the event.

this, i think, was partly down to one of the problems i identified in the last thing. my twitter account is my personal twitter account. i had visions of the people i know that follow me reading my tweets from the conference and thinking 'this is incredibly boring, why do i want to know about this?', while people at the conference looking for posts with the umbrella hashtag would be thinking 'why is this '@jamonbreadyay' guy just aimlessly repeating things that other people have said?'. i think next time i go to a conference i need to think carefully about how/why/if i'm going to try and tweet about it. or maybe just get a 'professional' twitter account. i still haven't made a decision about this.

in the mean time i'm going to follow more library people on twitter. i've looked at the list on the 23 things blog and chosen a few people that i recognise from various places. i've also followed some people who work in the kind of jobs that i'm interested in. i'll keep you updated on how useful this is for me!

rss

again, i mentioned this in the last post, but i do follow several lis blogs using google reader. i check this every day and i enjoy keeping up to date with people's views on library related stuff. the list of lis blogs on the 23 things site was really useful, though, and i've added a few more to my subscription list. i've also shed a couple of blogs that weren't really interesting me or that i didn't think were completely relevant to my needs. sometimes you have to be brutal.

pushnote

i had a look at this and i don't think it's for me. i can't recall a time when i've read something on the internet and thought 'i want to comment on this and get into a discussion with other people about it'. maybe that comes back to my lack of confidence in my ability to articulate my opinions properly. maybe i'm just thick. or maybe i just think my friends are thick. whatever it is, i'm going to hold off on this one until i can see a situation where it might be of more use to me. i'm not ruling out using it or anything, i just don't think i need it at the moment.

that's it for this thing! i'm doing my best to try and get through all these and catch up. if i can do the last thing along with everyone else then i reckon i'll feel like i've achieved something. to both of my readers, thank you for taking the time to wade through all of this.

ps. in other news

there's talk of my contract being extended here! i can't really say much about it yet, though. if it happens, it'll be doing something that isn't catalogue based and may actually involved speaking to library users more. this is a bit nerve racking but i'm excited about a (possible) new challenge. i'll keep you updated! see yer!