Thing 23 Making it all work together

I'm glad that I have finally made it this far and just in time as well! I have really learned a lot on this journey from August until now and all of the new apps and tools I have started to use will have a bigger part to play in day. I know that there is a few of them that I found really useful such as screencastomatic and easel.ly and I am looking forward to using them a but more and learning how to use them to their full potential. In Thing 23, I yet again learned about more tools that I have not heard of such as Hootsutie and Buffer, I have been using Google Alerts for some time now and I do find in useful in order to keep in the loop about certain subjects. I set up a buffer account and linked to my facebook account. I then clicked some options to set up a schedule for posting. I use my facebook more for personal use for professional so I'm not sure exactly if it would be much use here. But if I had a page for a library, I can see how you could set the schedule so that you are posting consistently and that your followers or friends will continue to view content from your site. Finally, I would like to thanks all of the Rudaí 23 team for developing this course and putting so much time and work into monitoring and answering any queries that I had along the way. It has been very enjoyable and informative and I definitely feel that I am more aware of and some knowledge of the workings of many of the apps and tools presented during the course. I will definitley be visiting the page from time to time to re-read the posts. Thank you, Edel

Thing 22 Mobile Things

I do love my phone, I use it mostly for calls, texting, Whatsapp, Viber and facebook and that's it really. I know there is huge potential out there will so many apps out there. I had a look at the Play store to see if I could find anything new. The only problem is, is that my memory is full so I can't really benefit from any new apps at the moment. I decided the best option for me with regard to tasks for this Things would be the third one, to look at the 23 mobile things website, as I know I have fallen a bit behind the crest with all things mobile and I would like to see what I am missing. There is so much content on the site, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the mnay many apps. I could see uses for many of them, such as Remember the milk http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ I think that could be really useful, Because I do love my 'to do' lists. I also had a look at Zotero I had heard of this one before and I was interested in finding out more about how it works. I think I will spend some time reading through all of the 23 things and also explore the rest of the suggestions.

Thing 21 Creating Infographics

I really enjoyed this task. I have never created an infographic before but I think they are a good way of getting information across quickly. I used easel.ly and found it quite straightforward once I played around with it a bit. I will definitely use it again. I used a template but if I try a few more times I could try some more templates for different types of information.  The example above is aimed at someone at a careers fair how who wanted more information about becoming a librarian. I know it could do with some improvement as the text in one of the boxes is a bit small and too big in some of the others.
I added the Rudai23 site reference, I hope this is ok.

Thing 20 Presentations

I haven't done many presentation in my day, just a few in college. I had used PowerPoint for these so I have a good idea about how to use it.
I liked the post on knowing your subject inside out and also how to pitch it depending on your audience.
I decided to use some fictional statistics to try and show changes in usage to make a case for making some changed to service.

The trickiest part for me was putting in on Slideshare and embedding it in the blog, I had never used Slideshare before.

I have heard the Prezi offers some great options for different designs so I will have a look at that too as I have never used it before. I wasn't aware that is was free that is great to know.

In the meantime, here is my PowerPoint for Thing 20... I kept it very plain, if I had the chance again I think I would try and take photos of the actual library to illustrate certain points, eg a photo of a cramped and full study space..... Good to reflect on how you would change for the next time, all part of it!

Thing 19 The Legal side of Things

I'm very glad that this Thing is part of Rudaí 23. I have wanted to read more on creative commons and intellectual property for a while and this post gave me the perfect chance. 
I hadn't really thought about the copyright attached to blog posts until now.
I suppose, once something is posted on the internet, I feel like it is out there and it's so easy to copy text and images, even if there was creative commons attached, it is hard to ever know if people that would use your posts or images would adhere to the attribution rules - if they didn't would you do anything about it? So as for my own content, I would be of the opinion that if I wasn't ok with them being shared I wouldn't post them in the first place.


I did some searching just broadly to see if I could find any photos that I would get any inspiration from.
I like this photo as it makes the library user feel that the person behind the desk is approachabe.
If the person behind has their head down doing some work, the user might not always like to interrupt but this sign gives the green light.  This photo is available under creative commons through Flickr.
I have tried my best to attribute it correctly.

Title: Bother me
Creator: Tracey R 
Link to Creative Commons License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode


 The photo below is also a nice idea for signage in the library....

Title: Library: The Original Search Engine
Creator: Enokson
Link to Creative Commons License

Thing 17 Reflective Practice

I've decided to go with the first option - to write about how I could use reflection in my library experience. I have heard a lot about reflection and reflective practice and the benefits of it. But up until now I have on a surface level reflected on different incidents or events and perhaps analysed them and thought about what I could learn from the experience or what I would do differently the next time, but I have never actually applied a model to the process. I read some articles on the Gibbs cycle and I think it could be very useful for any project you are working on, no matter how big or small. I think taking some time to reflect gives you the opportunity to stop and assess and address what you have done so that the next time something similar happens you will hopefully make the right decision. For example....describe what happened. I will use a fictional library example. Library Ireland week is will be taking place soon. Your manager wants everyone to come up with ideas, everyone decides that an exhibition of photos illustrating activity in your county. Saying that your county is 'open for business' Photos of craft fairs, new business, new courses, successful initiatives, something that says your town and county is healthy and thriving and bouncing back after recession. What happens is a team is put in place to make this happen. Each person has responsibility for advertising the event, arranging a launch event, inviting local media, inviting guests to the launch. What happens - there is a big turn out but the content of the exhibition isn't as abundant as hoped. Some analysis on this would show that too much emphasis was given to organising the launch event and there was no through given to the risk that there might not be enough direct liaising with local photographers or camera clubs, which meant that there close to the event, it was realised that there wouldn't be as many photos to display as envisioned. I suppose the feeling would be some regret that this risk had not been considered before it was too late. Also a bit of embarrassment that the event wasn't as successful as imagined as it had the potential to be a great event. Conclusion would be to make a note of the time and promotion needed to organise an event like this and out a strict timeline in place, and also not to put work into a launch night until all of the content of the exhibition is finalised. I suppose I am looking at reflection as 'what have your learned from your mistakes' But you could also use reflection to evaluate a successful incident of event to consolidate actions and decisions that worked out and that resulted in sucess.

Thing 18 Communicating through Photographs

I love the idea of this blog, as photos can be a powerful way of getting a message across.
I set up a Flickr account and did a quick search for libraries and found the photo above.
It's from Stockholm Public Library, it's also free to share under Creative Commons.

I have heard so much about instagram, but have never used it. I tried to download it on my phone but my memory is full so I will have to try it another time. I couldn't therefore complete the task connected with Instagram but I did make some comments on Flickr.

There are many ways using photos could be beneficial for libraries.
You could use photos for example of something you want to promote in your library such as your reading room, an exhibition, and share the photo on instagram to promote the library.
You could also run competitions where library users upload photos of some aspect of the library to encourage engagement with the users and also to gather information on how they see the library.
This could help you  to tailor and develop services in line with users needs.
For example - how do use your library -  what books are you reading, what services are your using - is it for studying local history, for learning a language, for the book club, for planning your next holiday? You could then use a mix of all the users photos for promoting the library services.