Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 8: Blogging reflections

The reflection on my Youth & Popular Culture blogging assignment demonstrates this ALIA core value:

Information literacy education, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    understand the need for information skills in the community;

o    facilitate the development of information literacy and the ability to critically evaluate information.

As well, the ability to reflect on my processes blogging is a showing of this skill:

o    critical, reflective, and creative thinking

Link to assignment:

Youth & Popular Culture blogging reflections 

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 7: INN330 Information Management Reflections

My personal reflection on information management as both a concept and a subject at university was highly informative for me on my journey as an LIS librarian.

This reflective assignment related to two ALIA core values:

Knowledge of the broad context of the information environment, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    understand and interpret the contexts in which information is originated, stored, organised, retrieved, disseminated and used;

o    comprehend the ethical, legal and policy issues that are relevant to the sector;

o    envision future directions and negotiate alliances for library and information sector development aligned with corporate, social and cultural goals and values.

Information seeking, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    understand and investigate how information is effectively sought and utilised;

o    identify and investigate information needs and information behaviour of individuals, community groups, organizations and businesses.

Link to assignment:

 INN330 Information Management Reflections

Evidence of Professional Work - Assignment 6: INN533 Information Organisation Report

This assignment directly relates to the ALIA core value of information organisation. The report provides the foundations for a database of a movie club's items.

Information organisation, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    enable information access and use through systematic and user-centred description, categorisation, storage, preservation and retrieval.

Link to assignment:

INN533 Information Organisation Report 

Evidence of Professional Work - Assignment 5: INN533 User Experience Evaluation Report

This user experience assignment showcases the ALIA core value of being able to follow information services:

Information services, sources and products, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    design and deliver customised information services and products;

o    assess the value and effectiveness of library and information facilities, products and services;

o    market library and information services;

o    identify and evaluate information services, sources and products to determine their relevance to the information needs of users;

o    use research skills to provide appropriate information to clients.

As well, the analysis of user experience paper relates to these skills & attributes:

o    information and communications technology and technology application skills;

o    appropriate information literacy skills. 

Link to assignment:

INN533 User Experience Evaluation Report

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 4: Video games and player positioning post

This blog post discusses the positioning of a player as both audience and character in video games. I wrote this post for my Youth & Popular Culture elective, and the understanding of wider infrastructure of video games as a means of giving player narrative information, meant that I could talk about the deeper aspects of the video games mentioned, such as the morality questions they pose.

Games criticism is something I'm deeply interested in, and its application as a way of teaching people about life is a valid way to engage and much better than a dry textbook or academia.

This assignment relates to the ALIA core value of Information Infrastructure.

Information infrastructure, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    understand the importance of information architecture to determine the structure, design and flows of information;

As well, this second blog post combining my passion for video games with a critical environment comes under this ALIA generic skill and attribute:

 - critical, reflective, and creative thinking;

Link to blog post:

Video games and player positioning

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 3: Typing of the Dead blog post

This assignment was a personal favourite of mine, and it showed my ability to talk about learning through doing something fun, which is something I see as a great skill in critiquing books, films, games and art. Too often these media are disregarded as mere entertainment, when really if you apply them to certain concepts they can be a great way for someone to learn something they might otherwise have been unwilling to engage in.

After this post was published, it went viral after catching the eye of John Birmingham and being linked on both his Twitter and Facebook page. The post received ~1,500 views.

This assignment relates largely to this core value:

Information literacy education, demonstrated by the ability to:

o    understand the need for information skills in the community;

o    facilitate the development of information literacy and the ability to critically evaluate information. 

Assignment blog post:

Gamification of Touch Typing -- Typing of the Dead

Critical Evaluation of Portfolio

I see my portfolio blog as being a place for me to gather my thoughts and various examples of learning throughout my degree. This has also been the place for my first semester's work through Professional Practice.

Those modules are thoughtfully discussed and academic readings are used reflected upon for the benefit of my LIS journey.

The later entries relate to portfolio elements themselves, and I encountered some issues putting these together as most were in retrospect. For example, the fieldwork journals were needed to be done without having a supervisor's comments, as the placements were either ongoing (my job) or taken place just prior to my degree. But while I needed to fill these in individually and without that external input, I'm sure my supervisor's would've instead seen the fieldwork journals as merely extra work!

My 'development' entries are short, largely because at this time I'm unsure of my development. In all honesty, I don't know what I'll be doing career-wise in 5 years. I tend to bumble my way in and out of things.

This portfolio is a good representation of me as an LIS professional, to the point and using only what's needed.

Professional Personal Development Program

Relevant professional associations I should join:

- ALIA

- SLQ membership

- Queensland Writer's Centre

- ALIA Academic and Research Libraries

Journals I should be reading:

- The Conversation (Online)

- New York Review of Books

- Crikey's Daily Review (Online)

- Griffith Review

- Australian Library Journal (put out by ALIA)

Conferences I could attend:

- ALIA quiz night

- ALIA QLD mini-conference

- QLD National Advisory Congress

- Griffith ILS End of Year meeting

- ALIA Wikipedia and Libraries - Information Evening

I should get involved with ALIA, as my colleagues are and much of the library scene in Brisbane takes place within the organisation.

Statement of Career Goals

Thinking back on my career goals at the beginning of this course, my single career goal was to be employed in the industry. Current employment figures in Australia, and especially Queensland, have not been high. I wanted to have somewhere to go after university, and somewhere to start my journey as an information professional. My main motivation for this was moving out and beginning the 'adult' phase of my life, which nowadays really doesn't begin for someone until their early 20's.

Thankfully, in the penultimate semester of my university degree I was able to land a job as a librarian at a university library. It was an environment I'm familiar with, and dealing with students for me was easier to connect with as a librarian, and the queries I've received have been ones that I myself have had as a student.

In terms of my career, having this footing as a part-time librarian is fantastic. In the next few years, I see my career goals being squarely within this environment and workplace. My team is friendly and treat me as an equal, which is something I value the most, as some of my previous workplaces saw me as merely an upstart uni student.

If I had to nail down any specific career goals, I see myself in the next few years hopefully going from part-time to full-time (now that this university degree will have been done!), then staying there for a few years to get used to the employed life. I was asked by my boss where I saw my career in five years, and I honestly couldn't tell him. This job has been a whirlwind, and I'm still finding my feet in terms of the office life.

I honestly don't know where I'll be outside of a standard librarian at the front desk. Possibilities are endless and I really don't know where I would fit.

Professional Development Reflection -- Referencing

NB: As this is my current workplace, I am choosing to anonymize this information. Given my learning journals, it should be easy to tell the place I am referring to.

My workplace held a meeting and tutorial on how to properly answer queries from users about referencing. We had a person come from another of our workplaces to give the lecture. She explained that while we do point users to places where they can find information on referencing, we do not have an established set of referencing, unlike other workplaces in our field. I raised this with the presenter, and she responded that that’s just how our workplace runs.

As an information professional, I found this perplexing. It leaves us as information professionals unable to fully answer a query. For example, if a user needs a certain APA or Harvard reference style, we can’t ascertain which variety of APA or Harvard style to use. The presentation itself was straight forward, and I was glad to learn about a variety of different reference styles, and in a way look ‘behind the veil’ of how referencing worked, especially given my university education relies so heavily upon them for each assignment.

For me, referencing has always been an awkward task and knowing where to look is crucial for success. Specifically we aren’t allowed to help users with referencing in-text, which is understandable given we can only indicate to different reference types and we work without a set standard.

Then again, I guess it’s the same as at the other workplace in our field, who also did not specifically help with in-text referencing, only to put to where their set standard is. When you have so many queries in the day, you cannot focus your time on only one user.

While the meeting was illuminating, I disagreed with the implementation and voiced so. This is healthy in a workplace, and especially a library workplace. To have discussion and difference of opinion is perfectly valid, we are all humans after all, each different and with a unique point of view. I remember when I started my job, my boss always said to let them know if I thought there could be somewhere to change or improve. I’ve done that in most instances that I’ve seen thought we could improve, and as information professionals, change is something that we should always be doing, as information, and the ways in which information is sent back and forth, is constantly in flux.

I appreciate my workplace taking the time to guide us through these presentations when it becomes clear through multiple queries that something needs to be made concrete. We recently had another presentation for the document delivery system, which proved fruitful too (although the document delivery system is still just as daunting for me!). 

Professional Development Reflection -- How To Deal With Difficult Users

NB: As this is my current workplace, I am choosing to anonymize this information. Given my learning journals, it should be easy to tell the place I am referring to.

My workplace sent me to a half-day presentation run by the Human Resources department on how to deal with difficult clients. I believe this was more of a rite of passage in the workplace, as we rarely have any users come to desk with queries that would be termed a ‘difficult client’. As usual for these special events, I was at least five minutes late with wrangling the proper public transport routes to get there.

The talk itself was illuminating on different strategies for dealing with problematic users. They used an acronym, PROUD, each letter standing for a different element of how you should approach the user. Identifying the Problem, Respect the person, Understanding, Distancing yourself emotionally from the situation if you feel the client’s frustrations are hurting you on an emotional level. As well, we worked in groups that were given specific situations, and told to brainstorm possible ways of dealing with the client. I met many people from different departments that day, and they all had stories to tell of times with difficult clients.

As an information professional, so close to the public, we always have the fear that someone may become angry or unruly, and my workplace isn’t really designed for those situations. A few weeks prior (and really what brought on us being enrolled) was a member of the public coming into the library in a visibly annoyed state, and asking my colleague for the phone. Hesitantly, my colleague gave the phone over, as while not something explicit, it is a service we offer to users if they don’t have a mobile phone. It’s common courtesy. The member of the public called his mother on the phone, and proceeded to have an angry, yelling conversation, leaving my colleague surprised. The climactic moment of this exchange had the user pelting the phone past my colleague’s ear, where it smashed upon the glass behind front desk. Situations like these are why we must be trained in dealing with difficult users.

I’ve taken to jokingly calling that moment the “Russell Crowe Incident” (he found this nickname amusing), but it was at the time quite distressing for my colleague. We have added measures for dealing with possible stresses related to these events, as a colleague will take over desk if one feels they are unable to continue after the stress of such an encounter.

Another thing that struck me was even with our security department being only around the corner, women in our workplace felt unsafe working the single shift days on the weekend. Given the prevalence of misogynistic attacks, whether they be verbal or physical, endemic to society today, this is completely understandable, but to have the fear even in a workplace as nice and accommodating as mine, where 99.9% of users are laid back and kind to staff, was something I didn’t see coming. I guess that speaks to the prevalence of the problem.

Professional Development Event Reflection -- Makerspaces

My time at SLQ's Makerspaces day was very informative for my professional development. I learnt a lot. For one, I learned just how 'on the cusp' we are with the emergence of 3D printing. We had a lecture from someone whose expertise in design may not have been at an academic level, but with access to the resources at the CSIRO, as well as other libraries, he was able to read up on 3D printing, and begin to print his own stuff.

It was inspiring to hear about all the leaps and bounds being made with this technology. We even made little take home robotic toys.

3D printing is a fantastic opportunity for libraries to further integrate themselves into the digital landscape. This is one in action:

I saw the Makerspaces day as an eye-opener to where my career can go in the future. This is of course the far future, but eventually the digital will replace standard printing and scanning, and we'll make our own data and real-life objects organically.

Professional Development Event reflection -- An Evening with Neil Carrington

For the end of semester 2, we attended an eats and greets event with a motivational speaker named Neil Carrington. It was the end of semester, and I remember us all being pretty tired from constant assignments, and a few of us were still completing them. Still, we turned up.

The motivational speaker first stated he'd used his techniques on famous Rugby players and a few cherry-picked celebrities. He didn't speak as to whether they got anything out of the session, merely that they'd attended. I've found these things to be hit and miss. You can either take a lot from motivational talks or see them for what they are -- pep talks that cost money.

Nevertheless, the motivational speaker gave us some interesting activities, made us work with others (I remember meeting an interesting person from another library that I forgot to return the pen of), and just in general learning things like selling yourself, proper networking, and the value of the self.

I did enjoy this motivational speech. It was inspiring, we wrote down stuff which is always nice. But I feel like motivational speeches happen in echo chambers. You listen to positive and upbeat strategies for how to be confident and conduct yourself thusly, but I find most of it isn't taken away when the speech is concluded. Even now, I remember barely any of the strategies employed. In a way, this kind of positive talk boils down to 'sell yourself!' and 'network your strengths!' and everything else is just snake oil selling.

I'd much rather a motivational speaker explain why it is that we don't feel motivated at times, scientifically, and again, scientifically, how we can be motivated. Because there are so many strategies from these self-proclaimed 'motivational speakers' that amount to very little for most, and for some, enamoured by the confidence of the speaker, it sinks in.

In terms of my professional development, I felt this had little effect. I mean, you can talk all you like about giving your speech to Rugby players and celebs, but if the speech itself has little lasting impact, there's not too much point.

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 2: Wiki & blogs

The skill of reflection (as shown in this assignment and on this blog) is one that's needed to see both qualities in one's self as well as in helping others on a reference desk. I also learned the value of teamwork on this assignment, how to meaningfully contribute, and why some people simply won't contribute anything meaningful at any opportunity.

Portfolio reflection -- Web 2.0 Wiki & Blog assignment

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 1: YouTube presentation

I thought this presentation was a great example of my public speaking skills, which are required on a reference desk. My confident demeanour has been required many times in my job on the reference desk. And considering this presentation also has excellent insights about social media policy between both the State Library of Queensland and the National Library of Australia.

Professional Development Event Reflection -- An evening with Helen Partridge

Late in first semester I attended an evening with my university peers that was hosted by Helen Partridge, our course coordinator, and consisted of three speakers discussing their careers and giving us advice.

The first wasn't at all memorable. I remember the cheese and crackers more than any of the content in that speech. The second speaker discussed their work in a medical reference library. She mentioned it being difficult work, and not many users came through reference desk. I thought working in a medical-type library wouldn't suit me, as medicine had never been of big interest to me.

It was the third and final speaker that I found great disagreement. She pushed that we should join LinkedIn, and while it is required in this course, the idea of networking with this site is one that in hindsight (since writing the post extolling its value on here), LinkedIn is a terrible platform for this. LinkedIn invades privacy and forces people to spam all their email contacts with multiple emails inviting them to use the service (my father has been guilty of this, signing up and absent-mindedly clicking something to be sending out multiple emails to colleagues and family friends) and there have been accusations that LinkedIn sells people's data for recruitment purposes.

I just disagree with some of these web 2.0 concepts being pushed at these talks. Sure, LinkedIn is useful as a space to keep a resume (however that space is limited, and you can't customise the resume as much as you'd like to) but it's not the be-all and end-all of networking. You still need to attend events like this one and speak to people, grab a few wines and make a few pitches. I can tell you I didn't get my job using LinkedIn. As well, LinkedIn displays to the owner who viewed their resume, which while interesting to see which employers care, is also a breach of privacy to those having a look at other profiles. For reference, I accidentally clicked on a resume of someone I'm not friends with anymore. They now know I've viewed their profile, and there will be some tension based around that.

Social networking is excellent online, but it needs to happen in real life too. And I feel at some points in both this speaker's talk, and the course in general, this idea was left to the wayside for the latest Twitter thing, or LinkedIn profile.

Media monitoring -- State Library of Queensland

I've followed the State Library of Queensland's tweets and Facebook posts for the past year and what's stuck out at me is how much insight they have into using social media to engage. Now granted, I do have some idea as to what happens behind the scenes, as I did an internship in their marketing department for a month back in 2012, in their transition to their new All Yours tagline, and complete restructuring of site design and image, but even then, I didn't expect a change so rapid and uplifting.

Before this time, the State Library of Queensland seemed like every other run-of-the-mill library's limp attempt at social media. They'd rarely engage, and when they did, it would be auto-updates of events, and with social media hidden (if used at all) in the online landscape of their pages. Now however, with the reinvention soon after the establishment of The Edge department, they have both a Twitter and Facebook, and the same for The Edge. And they make avid use of their collections, deviating from the standard 'here is an event -- book now'-style cop-outs being given by so many organisations that miss the point of social media -- engagement of the audience.

The State Library grabs photos out of their collections and posts them on Facebook and Twitter, inviting users to guess the locations and events shown, or taps into current events and posts something historically relevant. In one of their best decisions (and a project I loved doing at my time there), the State Library of Queensland joined Historypin and have their collections uploaded with geo-mapping on the Google Maps infrastructure.

The State Library of Queensland are on Flickr, and allow use of their collections online to save users needing to go to the library itself to find images for personal discovery or use. With the photos being uploaded to Twitter, State Library of Queensland have also tried to get engagement going through hashtags. The most recent, #thisisqueensland, tapping into an ongoing discussion of different photos that represent our state, is proving to have much traction.

I attended an event called "Makerspaces" (discussed elsewhere in this blog) and SLQ were tweeting about it, and in addition, SLQ employees were joining in discussion on their own Twitter accounts. I followed a few, and participated in discussion, and they responded to my tweets, without me directly mentioning them. This shows that even the employees themselves 'get' social media, and are willing to engage outside of the standard and 'official' accounts.

The State Library of Queensland has proved to be a leading library organisation in the use of social media in Australia. Its integration of both Facebook and Twitter as core outlets for giving users access to its collection is an example that should be taken up by any library wanting to be forward thinking and looking for ways to be a part of the digital future.