RSC Northern's e-Fest 14 - an e-Ventful Tale

Guess what? As usual I've left this too long from the event to writing it up. Bad practice I know, and not what I was taught whilst doing my Chartership. So first of all any action plan I have should start with must reflect sooner on training rather than later.

What can I remember about the e-Fest?

I can remember tweeting all day rather than taking notes. This is a first for me and something I would like to continue doing. What I haven't done is collected the tweets together so let me put that as another point on the action plan.

I am a digital native apparently, this came as a surprise. I'm not saying i'm no good at it and I'm not scared of it, I just don't find it as intuitive or as easy to use as (some) other people - especially those who are younger. I do though make the Internet my first port of call when I want to find out something which is what supposedly makes me a digital native. I'm still not convinced!

Minecraft - using it as an educational tool. I tried to do a bit of homework before this session, I'd heard of Minecraft but never seen or played it, so I decided to take a demo of it and get a feel for what it is about. I was so inept I drowned myself 3 times in about an hour of play :( Anyway as an educational tool, I can see the benefits of Minecraft, build something collaboratively, project management, teamwork, decision making etc it is all there and in a fun way.

Sensory Pods - definitely the most fun thing of the day. An immersive learning experience where you have smell, sound, climate and movement to accompany the topic you are learning about or you can go in and chill out, which makes it ideal for learners with special needs, as it is a safe haven for them. This is todays version of Star Trek's holodeck, we are not quite as advanced as in Star Trek but we are getting there.

Marketing my LRC

Over the last few months, things in the LRC haven't gone very well. We feel like we are not valued at all by the senior management and despite efforts to convince that we are a very valuable service, we have taken a hit. So what to do to futureproof?

Marketing is my answer.

And that is why I have Ned Potter's Library Marketing Toolkit on my desk at work with post its sticking out all over and why I chose to go on the Marketing Libraries: strategic and creative communications for information professionals course.

The first session How do you like your eggs in the morning? provided a fascinating insight into how the University of Sunderland library market their service. They have created a 7 step toolkit to create marketing plans:

1. Identify strategic direction
2. Do SWOT analysis
3. Profile customer segments
4. Match offers to segments
5. Transform offers into benefits
6. Translate benefits into messages
7. Plan communication campaign

I think that I already do part of this unconsciously and that I would benefit more by writing and recording it as they do at Sunderland.  I especially like the trees they used for feedback, which were visible and fun. You can see more about their marketing campaigns on their Pinterest page.

I have been told by my manager that he will get us (him, our e-Learning Manager and myself) a monthly slot on the senior management team meeting agenda, where we can promote our services and shout out about what we do. I would like to use the 7 step toolkit to start planning which services to promote. I therefore expect the handouts from this session to end up on my desk alongside the Library Marketing Toolkit book.

The second session was about Social Media Marketing for Libraries and this session reinforced what I have read in the Library Marketing Toolkit. Currently I have a Twitter and Facebook account for the LRC and that is quite enough. They are not updated as regularly as they should be and I wish to address that. I have started with Twitter by tidying it up and tweeting more, I now need to turn my attention to the Facebook page, to see what needs sorting and to start to use that more effectively. I know that there are College Flickr and You Tube accounts too and hope that I can make use of those in my social media campaigns.

The third session was about being consistent and creative with branding. I have spent the summer trying to do this with the current marketing materials that we have and the few new ones that we had to do. I am pleased with the overall effect of what has been produced, it builds on the excellent LRC Guide that was produced last year with bite size information and everything now has a College logo on, so that we are aligned and a part of the College brand. This I think may go some way to help build the reputation and value that we desire.

The final session of the day was about marketing in small specialised libraries (in this case York Minster Library) and looked at the library being a place to belong not just visit. Although this session was a very different type of marketing to what I would expect in an academic library, it was still useful, as well as being very interesting and excellently presented by Antonio Jiminez-Milian. What I got out of this session was that you can promote your values and what you want to be associated with by using status updates. To do this you retweet or like updates from bodies, institutions etc that share your values. So I will be reviewing my Twitter account again (and looking into this when I review the Facebook account) and looking at following people who share the same values as the College and LRC want to promote. 

I hope my efforts are not in vain and that indeed the LRC does build its reputation up and start to feel like we are valued and are an important part of the College.

ARLG Conference 2012

This post is going to look at the workshops I attended as a delegate.

Writing Right for Twitter by Meg Westbury. 

Meg was looking at how companies / institutions can engage and connect with their users rather than just putting information on Twitter. Her top tips are:

• Know your audience
• Clearly state the idea
• Make the Tweets frequent and varied
• Well thought out
• Use short, descriptive and action words
• Use headline formula
• Write them knowing they might be shared i.e. don't use all 140 characters, leave room for comment

The workshop built in time for the delegates to rewrite example Tweets using Meg's tips. This was very popular and illustrated the need to think about Tweets before writing them. I will be trying to use these tips when Tweeting both at work and for my own account.

How to Make Yourself Almost Irreplacable by Steve Lee. 

Steve started the session with asking us to work in groups and write down what we dislike about supermarkets. The comparison being that as it is a customer facing business many of our dislikes of the supermarkets transfers to a library too.

His suggestion for improvement is to get out of the library. Go and talk to the tutors and find out what they want and need from the library, then see how we can meet those needs.

Top tips are:

• Send new book and journal information to staff. This may take time initially but then the process can be automated, saving library staff time whilst still giving the tutors what they need
• Respond in a timely fashion to any issues
• Trial new ideas, if they don't work you can go back to your original way of doing things
• Do surgeries in departments, you may need to be proactive to start with but it breaks down barriers and eventually work of mouth leads to people approaching you for advice and help. It was noted that roving skills are useful when doing surgeries.

At work there is a desire for the library staff to eventually become partly based in the departments. I think that if I can trial surgeries in the new academic year, this will help to make that transition.

LRCs and Flexible Learning Environments by Sue Caporn and Vicki Bowd. 

This was one of the most amazing ideas I've seen. Their library at City of Bristol College has no boundaries, basically if you are in a communal area, you are in the library. They have technology for people to borrow (all are catalogued on their LMS), the classrooms don't have PCs, they borrow laptops from the library and all the library staff have an ePICT qualification to ensure that they can help with any queries. They are hoping that eventually everything will be self issue.

This kind of idea, whilst innovative, would have to be a concept that is bought into throughout the College and might not work in buildings that have not been designed to cope with this strategy. I very much like the idea but somehow can't see it working where I work, although we do have equipment for loan and are looking to extend this.

Putting a Face to a Name by Leanne Young.

This looked at using technology with overseas distance learners. Leanne told us that currently distance learning is not done by VLE and that to help students she has been trialling free resources, as she doesn't have a budget to buy anything. She has used AnyMeeting to hold sessions with students. This requires a lot of preparation which she has done via Google docs to collate the information she has gathered in order to set up the meetings. She also makes heavy use of Tumblr, so that information is easily available to the students and in one place.

The scheme although quite small at the moment is very popular, with students being able to see Leanne and know that she is their to help them. She made the point that in some countries the librarian is not expected to be there to help students and part of what she wanted to do, was to get the message out that it is her job to help them and that they should feel free to contact her whenever they needed to. 

Although I don't work with distance learners per se, there are students who are not traditional learners and I think that some of Leanne's ideas could work with them. I look forward to trying some of them out.

I have totally enjoyed the Conference and have so many new ideas to think about. Some of them can be implemented straight away and others will take some planning. I hope that all will benefit and enhance the library experience. 

Chartership Chat: Evaluative Statement

This was the first Chartership chat I managed to attend, previous ones I was working and had a family birthday. I was especially keen to participate in this one because I am currently writing my evaluative statement. This post is going to look at how I managed with the chat rather than what the chat was about, as this has already been blogged (Thanks to Katy Stoddard) and the chat archived (Thanks to Jo Alcock). I don't want to duplicate.

I found it quite difficult to keep up at first, I think this was because of how I use Twitter. I don't have a Twitter manager, I just use Twitter as is. I am considering using a manager but haven't got round to sussing out the best one (needs to work with Android, if anyone has any suggestions). I ended up having 2 Twitter pages open because the search results page doesn't have a compose a Tweet box, so I had my Home page open for this - going back and forth between these didn't help me in trying to keep up.

I thought initially that an hour might be difficult to fill but actually it went very quickly and Tina Reynolds did a great job of keeping the conversation moving forward. After the chat had finished, I was tired, I don't know if this was because of the fast pace of the conversation, normally I follow in my own time rather than real time, or whether it was the way I was following it.

I really enjoyed particpating and getting useful tips and ideas from others who are doing or will be doing Chartership. I look forward to the next chat on 12th April about mentor/mentee relationships.

Thing 19

OK I'm going to do a run down of what i'm doing now because of participating in cpd23.

• Blogging - I hadn't blogged before cpd23 because I didn't think I had anything interesting to say to anyone. It turns out that actually some people have read it and that I'm not as bothered about how many people read it (or not) as I thought I would be. I'm finding it a very useful tool to record my thoughts. My Senior Librarian has asked if we can use a blog to share information between the LRC staff. Although I haven't looked into this yet, it sounds like a very good idea.
• Twitter - I am trying to Tweet more, I rediscovered my Twitter account in the summer after attending the CoFHe Conference and I am checking it everyday but not necessarily posting anything. I've also started favouriting things I think would be useful to go back to in the future.
• Reflective practice - primarily driven by the fact i'm doing my Chartership. I know it is good practice and am trying to do it more in the workplace to help make the service better.
• LinkedIn - I joined this a few weeks ago and have sporadically dipped in and out of it since. I really like the LinkedIn Today feature, I've joined some groups but not yet participated in any discussions.
• Google Calendar - I'm still not using it, as I have Outlook at work and an electronic calendar on my phone. I've ditched the paper based diaries though and think I need an iPhone now. My phone is old and doesn't do apps - iPhone 5 possibly in October, my birthday in November.....
• Google docs - I've started to use this to help virtualise myself! I am using it for back up of personal docs, I probably won't use it at work as I don't have any need to.

Thing 4

Twitter I sporadically use. I like Twitter as it is straight forward, easy and doesn't allow for excessively long posts. I should probably use it more, however I spend more time on Facebook so tend to put status updates on there. I do try to send any from my mobile to Twitter. My Twitter and Facebook accounts are linked so any Twitter updates go onto Facebook.
RSS feeds I tried a few years ago and felt like I was being spammed, there was so much information. I cut down the number of things I was subscribing to but still ended up feeling overwhelmed with the amount of information that was coming through. In the end I abandoned the whole thing. Since setting up this blog, I have added about 7 or 8 feeds and so far I'm coping with that.
Pushnote I haven't tried, I'm using IE at the moment, as Firefox and Chrome are playing up on me today. I don't think I have Safari on here, so this is something I will need to go back to. I don't know whether I want to comment on websites though. I guess I need to try to find out how I feel.

Thing 3

Branding myself. I looked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google produced pages I expected, a few Twitter links, some that were not me but have the same name and the others that were professionally related - a recent presentation and 2 things that are quite old now. Yahoo had results that were not me until about 5 or 6 down, where it has picked up an old professionally related thing and then Bing, very interesting, mostly it was all other people with the same name except for 1, the recent presentation that Google picked up.

Does this bother me? Looking at the things that are actually me - no I think I'm OK with it. You may see lots of mentions to Mistee Mog, who is in fact my cat, alongside it is my name. There may also be a black cat as my profile picture (Twitter account), she is the real Mistee Mog. I've failed dismally in finding a picture for Blogger, I can't find anything suitable in my photos, my Facebook profile picture was taken at the computer with my web cam and went straight to my Facebook profile, I apparantly can't do the same thing on Blogger.

Splitting everything up, Facebook is my most personal profile, Blogger is my most professional and Twitter is somewhere in between. Although I recently went through it and made it more professional and may indeed change my profile picture to me rather than my cat. This will still leave me with the Mistee Mog moniker, so I wonder whether it is worth it.

That brings me onto why I used Mistee Mog to start with, well because it is consistant. If I use my work e-mail address and leave to work somewhere else, it is not defining me anymore and I would have to update various bodies with a new e-mail address (presumably my new work one). By using Mistee Mog, I have something that is still me no matter where I work. I chose this to start with, over my own name, because at the time, it was suggested it was a way of reducing spam (and yes it did work). It was a way of keeping in touch with personal friends only. Then I moved jobs and realised that if I use my work e-mail, I will have to update it everytime I move on, so I started to use Mistee Mog for more professional reasons.

The visual brand - I guess you could say that Mistee Mog currently is part of that. The colour scheme I have never really thought about, I just choose something I like. It does tend to be lilac / purple (I love Joeyanne's purple flowers), as these are my favourites colours. I occasionally venture into a light / pastel pink, which is not my favourite colour but I think works better as a background than others I've seen and certainly better than my next favourite colour - black. This would also make Mistee Mog blend in too much. The green and blue of the blog is OK, it is inoffensive and hopefully accessible. This is my task for the week now, sorting the colours on my various accounts and still trying to find the right picture for my blog.

Twitter

That's excellent, I've successfully managed to post the blog link to my Twitter account, which is linked to my Facebook account, so it should be showing there too. Yes it is, I've just checked. 
Tomorrow I will try to add a picture of myself and work on my profile a bit.