Reflecting - #cpd23 and #cam23

Now I've started on the Chartership journey, I need to work on my reflecting skills. The reflective writing chapter in Margaret Chapman's Building your portfolio book was a good starting point and kept me busy on a recent train journey! I found Random musings of a librarian, almost's post on reflective writing really helpful. I have been thinking about attending a reflective writing workshop but couldn't make the recent one in my area, so it is useful to read a summary of one, and how participants found it.

So, how have cpd23 and cam23 things been going so far? Well, I'm still behind and playing catch up, mostly due to generally being busy and doing both 23 things programmes at the same time. There is some overlap with the things, which is always a nice surprise - it feels like getting to tick off two thngs in one (and I'm a big fan of ticking things off to-do lists!) Sometimes it's hard to fit reflection in, so thanks 23 things for making sure I do this.

Networking
I attended both cam23 and cpd23 networking events in Cambridge and enjoyed putting names and faces to blogs, and meeting people whose blogs I hadn't read but now follow. For me, this is one of the key benefits of 23 things.

Cam23
Things I like (or These are a few of my favourite things):
Twitter, but mostly to follow people and tweet my blog posts. I don't log in regularly enough to really join in conversations, so this is something I might work on.
Screencasting - both useful and fun!
Doodle
Google calendar
What I have learnt: Cambridge Libraries widget is really useful! Also that Google documents can generate forms that can be embedded in websites, and that there are some creative bloggers out there!
What will I use most in my working life? Hard to say at the moment, but perhaps Twitter. Currently many of the things are more useful for my general professional development than directly relevant to my day to day job, but this of course may change.

Cpd23
What have I learnt and how can I apply it? So far, the most useful thing for me has been finding time to think about my online presence so it's not just accidental but has a little more thought to it, even if more work is needed on it! I'm looking forward to a lot of catching up and many new things to explore over the next few weeks.

This was actually quite a hard post to write, so I must need some more practise at reflecting - roll on cpd23 things 19 and 23, and cam23 things 18 and 23!

#cam23 Google Docs

Embedding Google Docs in a website is something that I hadn't realised was possible until Thing 9 and the example of Faculty of Classics Library book recommendation came along. This has much potential in a library setting, and I'd never realised that these kind of things could be generated by Google Docs and not some complicated and expensive software - a pleasant surprise! As well as the classic things like book recommendations, comments and suggestions, I'm sure there are many other uses for the forms that can be generated. I had a go at creating a form for people to sign up for an imaginary cake-eating contest at the library (must have been feeling hungry when making it!), and found it fairly straightforward, although I haven't quite got as far as making it look nice when embedded in a blog post.

I sympathise with Murmation's post about how Google Docs could have saved her worrying about emailing copies of documents to herself, and saving them to memory sticks then trying to work out which was the most up to date version. Despite having used Google Docs before to share documents with other people, I never think to use it for this purpose, and resolutely stick to using memory sticks (if I have one to hand at the time) or emailing documents to myself (if I don't). I'm not too sure why, perhaps it's just habit? Next time I need to work on a document on two different computers, I'll try and remember about Google Docs...

Organising - Doodle, Google calendar and library widgets

I've previously blogged about Doodle, and how useful it is for arranging meetings and events, so won't repeat myself here. I've also blogged about Google calendar before. I still use this regularly outside of work with a rowing club (we've also been using Doodle to schedule rowing times). The fact that it is so easy to share is useful for teams. Having set up a personal Google calendar last time round for 23 things, I don't use it as much as I expected to. I managed to get hold of a paper diary and I actually prefer this for my personal work use. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned! My department already has an shared online diary on the intranet, so I don't think we'll be using Google calendar any time soon. However, being able to embed calendars in websites is very useful for libraries and other organisations as it allows them to share details of events, talks and opening hours with the public/their users.

The Library widget is something that's new to me, but I think it's important to be aware of things like this so that I can help library users if they ask about it, or help promote it to them if they don't already know about it. I don't have any loans out so haven't tested all the features properly, but it's been interesting to see what options are available. I wonder how many students use the iCal calendar feed to view their loan due dates in Google calendar? This is something I would have really appreciated as a student (not that I often had overdue loans, but it's a neat way of checking!) I like the fact that there is a mobile version as well, handy for use on the go. The screencast is really helpful, and much better than the one I created for thing 6! I like the way the instructions/commentary are written underneath. Overall, so many great features. Another favourite is being able to see the libraries you are registered with and your borrowing rights at each - apparently mine has expired, oops, better get that sorted! I am often asked by readers how many items they can borrow and for how long - so I will point them in the direction of this in future. Thanks to Cam23 2.0 I now know all about it.

Screencasting

Well this is fun! Screen-o-matic is really easy to use and a great way of demonstrating things that library users frequently ask. I created a basic screencast of logging in to an eresource via Raven authentication as this is something that I have often had to demonstrate. Then for something library catalogue-related I tried another very short basic screencast showing how to print selected results from a search in LibrarySearch.

It's not very polished at all and if I'd had more time I would have added an intro with some text at the beginning, and perhaps some commentary but it's a start! I'll look out for opportunities to create some screencasts in my work, as there is great potential to help demonstrate common online information tasks to library users.

Here are my tips for first time users:
1. Make sure you enlarge the capture screen enough - my first attempt cut off part of the left hand navigation on some pages and the search button at the bottom of another page.
2. Decide before you start what you are going to do, e.g. if you're demonstrating a search, decide which term you are going to use, and pick one that you know will bring up the results you want.