Now you're reading: ‘Six random things…’ —
October 12th, 2006…you didn’t know about me, and lianzacon06.
I encountered Sean Murgatroyd twice during the LIANZA conference, where I teased him for using the con’ internet terminals for logging into gaming forums (even as I logged into my flickr account right next to him), discussed playing WoW and the illustrious history of the big N.
This afternoon, I opened my gmail to discover that Sean had managed to track me down! His email linked me to a post he’d just made. Seanfish wrote:
Once tagged by this entry, the assignment is to write a blog entry of some kind with six random facts about yourself. Then, pick six of your friends and tag them; no tag backs. This explanation should be included.
So I’m continuing the meme, but theming my six points around my lianzacon06 experiences, and perhaps some thoughts leading on from that…
- I consumed blueberries for both of my breakfasts while in Wellington this week. On Tuesday I had Blueberry hotcakes at the classy bistro across the road from the town hall. On Wednesday I imbibed a large blueberry and muesli smoothie from a great health drink store just off Cuba St.
- I learnt that Glen Walker (of Library Life and UC Education Library fame) builds life-size Dalek replicas.
- Stephen Abrams threatened to “get comfortable” by removing his pants at the keynote panel! (don’t worry, he was only kidding)
- I’m on the team to look at the possible implementation of IM in our library! This may replace our AskLive service, which I feel is a little bit klunky (has browser and user hiccoughs and incompatibility issues.) and naff.
- The library’s IT manager (and some others) stopped by my desk today while visiting our library and asked me to show them AquaBrowser, which a great vendor chap (Jimmy Thomas, I think - I lost his card!) showed me at the conference. The Wellington public library is going to be implementing this on their catalogue, very soon! It would be awesome if Canterbury wanted to use it too.
- I got the overall (and slightly frustrating) feeling from my conference experience that many of the conversations going on were ones that had already been discussed in academic writings about the internets years ago! In answer to Rheingold and Turkle bashing (they’re too utopian!), I give you Nakamura and Mosco, who already made those kinds of arguments/criticism long enough ago that I would think it’s something that most people coming to the topic would have already taken well into consideration before getting excitied about the possibilities! It felt a little to me like we were re-inventing the wheel, and so hamsterising the disucssion.
Stephen Abrams got the final word in, before he raced off to the airport to fly off to a late dinner in Sydney. He said something along the lines of: ‘If you want to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself’.
I see that my new friend Sean is already keen to take Abrams’ advice to heart. His email to me suggests that
together we create and recruit for a wiki specifically aimed at creating an interacting core of technologically subversive librarians
I think this sounds like a great idea. I think we could try glomming onto LIANZA’s ITSIG (who have their own Wiki already!), and perhaps LASIG too. It would be an awesome thing to bring together a party of adventurers willing and eager to shake things up in libraries here in Aotearoa!
In the infamous words of Leeroy, who perhaps exemplifies the kind of fearless (reckless!) charge to cause librarians everywhere to tremble in their boots:
Alright chums, let’s do this…
LEEROOOOOOOY!!! JENKIIIIIINSSSSSS!!!
So, who do I tag? Anyone who wants to respond, really, and especially those folks who’d be interested in partying up to “raid the Library 2.0 instance for some sweet epic l3wt”. ^_^
October 13th, 2006 at 5:41 am
Hi Timothy,
That sure was Jimmy Thomas who showed you AquaBrowser. Mail me if you like his email address.
I am glad you liked it!
Jasper
October 13th, 2006 at 10:14 am
A more digested response later, but glad and excited to have you on board. Yarr!
October 14th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Great! Look forward to hearing from you, Sean. And, take your time, I’ve got two weeks worth of assignments to catch up on!
October 14th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
I’m not sure that I’m as much of a techie as either you or Sean, Tim, but this sounds like a great idea. Count me in, for whatever I can contribute.
(I’m a recent MLIS graduate, working as a reference librarian at Victoria Uni, and I’ve been blogging for 3 years or so).
Cheers, Simon.
October 17th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
I’m happy for you to have a page on the ITSIG wiki to get this started - maybe the wiki’s time has finally come to become a dynamic resource for the community.
But for now it will need to stay closed with a password. Anyone who wants to edit content can email me for the password.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Brenda, thanks for the word. I’m emailing Tim right now about possible forms - but I definitely think after our conversation today that whether we’re generating discussion in wiki form or not itsig wiki should be a portal.
I can’t remember who (maybe Mr. Abrams) was talking about designing communities around existing paths, but it seems to apply here.
Simon - You probably are. Well maybe. I think Tim’s way ahead of me in any case. Either way it doesn’t matter, please do join us in learning from each other and teaching those around us.
October 18th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Sean’s an MLIS grad - of course he’s ‘techie enough’!
I agree - technical ability should not hinder involvement! I would think that one of the key goals of Web/Library 2.0 is to open up technologies to all interested people, particularly without high levels of technical skill.
Web 1.0: HTML & CSS coding from scratch.
Web 2.0: WYSIWYG editors and drag and drop AJAX layouts.
My boss Derek (at Interact) actually complains that most wikis in general aren’t 2.0 enough for him - because they usually require users to learn a wiki code! He looks for wikis that have inbuilt wysiwyg editors.
I think I’ll be posting soon (Thursday, I hope) to raise questions about what a good platform might be, and what we’re seeking to accomplish here; I just have to finish Brenda’s assignment for INFO 541 first!
October 18th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Uh…
No, I’ve got a library studies cert from the second to last cohort before they introduced the open polytech.
HAHAHAHA!!! (or whatever manic laughter you prefer to insert here… muhahaha perhaps?)
Hence, dear Tim, my arguments in our emails against Tara Brabazon’s stance on credentialism.
Yes I’m tending to agree that expecting contributors to take on wikicode (while I’d find it a fun challenge) is very much 1.0, and providing a barrier to engagement. Perhaps good old PHPBB with a link from the ITsig wiki?
October 18th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
>_< I actually meant "Simon's an MLIS grad...", but I got confused and used the wrong name... sowwie.
Is the library studies cert the one that lets you still do single MLIS papers from time to time if you want?
I do like the idea of an old skool bbs of some kind - perhaps if it is just well worked in to a CMS-style frontend so there's some amount of nice-looking "about us" information and extra documentation up front.
I used to have a phpbb at the back of my Blog for doing online research! I wonder how easy it is to mix WordPress and a php forum together?
I'm thinking something like:
I bet someone’s tried to do it before. I think Gamer Theory (which is built on WP) has elements of this, too. I’ll have a look with google, later on.
October 18th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
I was going to say, I didn’t recall a point in our 1.2 or so conversations IRL when I claimed to have a MLIS… I save the identity jumping for here
The NZCLS still gets respect, but it’s a long and sad tale regarding myself and my degree; involving gross ill health and a persistent wish to not risk such ill health thereafter leading to my only really want to take on study this financial year, to complement my CYA role.
The degree was nearly completed and in teaching (5 years into my library career I decided to try the alternate path). As I say months of very serious ill health .9 of the way thru it. We’ll see what the future holds for me in the way of study, I’ve got no idea what NZQA could take my disparate training and experience and combine it into. For now I’m going to just run on acumen I guess, although I don’t like a challenge I haven’t met being in my life.
Ok, enough disclosure.
So, blog: standalone blog, anyone can post to, then discussion under forum? Why not just have forum with topics competing for currency through posting as per standard phpbb forums? Then we don’t have to have user profiles spanning anything - one gateway, one environment. A front page with links to a shared flickr acct (login communicated privately), and section linking to top 10 discussions (we can decide on ranking factors) so people can leap in to hot topics. If people want to “blog”, we can and should have a subsection within the forum that’s designed for just that. People having their own subforum that’s their blog - they and they alone can moderate it, except for us (I guess we’d have to be the overseers) in case of emergency. So they can post and edit out responses they don’t like.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I told myself that I’d stay out of the discussion, but I suggest you consider using a range of tools
phpBB is great for threaded discussions, but wiki pages might be better for collections of URLS or contact details, for example
Isn’t part of the whole 2.0 movement the notion of having a range of online tools to use, each offering a specialised ’service’?
October 20th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Brenda, by all means please don’t stay out of the discussion! We need you.
And if 2.0 is about having a range of previously offline tools being online for free, I’m picking 3.0 to be about the fight for one megatool that does the lot - myspace being the first (terribly ugly) try.
December 6th, 2006 at 1:06 am
I’m coming to this a bit late bute… Any luck with this so far? I’d be interested in following whatever you set up…I too graduated from Vic with an MLIS (mid-2006) and would love to see more library tech discussion etc happening in NZ.
I’m Now on my OE in the UK working for a health library, and bored out of my brain throwing books away! Haha, damn that 12 month working-holiday visa!