— I'm Timothy Greig. I live in Wellington, New Zealand, and work
for AIM Proximity. I'm interested in game design, information architecture, librarianship, and transmedia storytelling. Updates? — Try the RSS.

Tee Morris is a tech speaker (and sci-fi and fantasy writer!) who’s coming to New Zealand in June. (I think he’s keen to try the beer).

Looking at videos of what he’s currently speaking about, it looks like he’s advocating a critical, more reasoned, look at appropriate use of social media. This might be quite good for libraries in New Zealand. I rather like his presentation style and that he’s moved beyond the “Wow web 2.0 – we should all get involved” stage.

If you’ve got a minute (or 15), watch the start of a recent talk of his here, and let me know if you’d be interested to hear him speak if/when he comes to Wellington. (Non-library folks too- I’m sure there would be a session that we all could attend.)

Last week I filmed Dr. Sydney Shep giving her new students (for INFO536, ‘Books and the Information Society’) a tour of Wai-te-ata Press at Victoria.

Tomorrow, I’ll be following the same class to the Alexander Turnbull library, to film them as they study rare books and manuscripts, and discuss physical description and cataloguing. When my new job is awesome, it really is very awesome!

On Friday, I’ll be leaving my job as Assistant Librarian at the Architecture and Design library, to take up a new position as Senior Tutor for the Library and Information Management programmes at Victoria’s School of Information Management.

I believe this new job is going to be a pretty interesting challenge for me. I am hoping it will give me a whole range of new opportunities, such as:

• lecturing in select MLIS papers (I’m particularly looking forward to INFO561)
• helping individual students get the most out of their course of studies (both in practical class tutorial sessions, and one-on-one consultation),
• developing and supporting online teaching and community spaces to aid both the school’s distance education programme and on-campus students,
• promoting the LIM programmes and getting to know a lot of great people in the process – students, librarians and academic staff.

In particular, I am really looking forward to working again in a distance learning environment, something I remember fondly from Canterbury University.

For many people I’ve gotten to know during my time at the library, this actually means that I’ll be coming closer, not moving away. You’ll probably see more of me now than you did while I worked for the library – because my office will be nearby in the Easterfield building, its windows overlooking the quad on the main Kelburn campus. (more…)

We’ve just started talking amongst ourselves at the Library about the purpose of our subject guide pages (see Architecture & Design’s Subject Guide for an example). I’m really excited to be talking about these at last. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, over the past year an a half that I’ve been here at Victoria.

The comments in the two articles Rachel (our new Head of Research and Learning Services) gave us to read do hit close to home for me–

“…academic librarians devote much manpower to the development and maintenance of [online subject guides], but relatively little is done to monitor their use by patrons”

–I probably do spend more time thinking and worrying about the Architecture and Design subject pages than their usage by patrons probably warrants! However, I believe that online subject resources can be very useful; I’m really interested in developing them further and figuring out their role in the wider academic experience.

I think the point that both articles make about the need for usability testing is important. I think it would be excellent if we could run some tests and focus groups of our own to discover exactly how different user groups make use of our web spaces and resources. We have a real opportunity now, as we’re looking forward to re-designing our website, to test the existing site and get a lot of feedback from users – before we’re invested in a new design. We can be critical, and open-minded about making changes, trying new things, because we know that we’ll be moving in a new direction soon.

This is a grab-bag of a few of my thoughts on online Subject Guides after reading the articles (more…)

Michelle, Keith, and I went out to Titahi Bay this afternoon. It’s a sweet little beach about half an hour’s drive out of Wellington. Michelle and I even went for a swim in the water, which was freezing, but so much fun- especially as I’ve not been to the beach in years. (more…)

Last month (early October) I went on holiday to Melbourne to take some time out from everyday life. I wanted to take stock of my life and career, consider the direction I was headed, and think about my options for the next five years or so.

Since about July I’ve been feeling, with uncomfortably intense conviction, that I want to make sure that I’m spending my time in a way that is meaningful and engaging, both to myself in the doing of it, and to others who might be impacted by my work.

I’ve been feeling I’m just not making adequate time to realize to realize the many dreams that I have for my life. In visiting Melbourne, and in the last month since returning home, I’ve been trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone, re-prioritize, remember, and act on these goals. (more…)