Thing 3 of Rudaí23: 23 Things for Information Skills

There are two types of people in the world, those that like pubs decorated with job lots of de-accessioned library books and those who are appalled by the idea.  I happen to be a type 1, as I see this fashion as both a perfectly good way to upcycle unwanted titles and an excellent insulator (as I suspect was the purpose in the image posted below).  However, when an interior designer redecorates a pub with wall-to-wall shelves of books and it is then renamed The Library, I do find it distressing to take an interesting-looking book out of an immaculately neat line of books to find that it has been cut in half to fit!

Thing 3 is about using imagery, and the task is to post an image to one’s blog.

Pixabay has been my go to image bank over the last year or so when designing event invitations and web postings.  Pixabay is a source of free images with no attribution required and contains photos, illustrations and vector graphics.

So I’m posting this pic because it caught my eye and because it reminds the viewer that in this born-digital age, printed books still possess aesthetic qualities discrete from the information they contain.  

My first blog post

Well actually it isn’t! In a previous life I participated in communal blogging with other research librarians on the Read Around Research blog when I was a Research Support Librarian at NUI Galway and I used Twitter and a Facebook page to promote and effectively build community and public support for a trial marine passenger service between Galway and Clare.  

The blogs that I actively read nowadays are the ThesisWhisperer and the LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences.  I read these because the posts are written in an engaging style, often by guest writers so the content doesn’t get samey and I like reading.  I have only just discovered Libfocus but expect I will enjoy this too.

About me

For the next few months I am acting Librarian at Shannon College of Hotel Management (NUI Galway) based at Shannon Airport, Co. Clare.  Before this I was in a variety of roles in academic libraries and in a couple of hospital libraries too though I’ve had a break for the past 5 ½ years due to being made redundant, so I am very pleased to be back doing what I love to do and it is truly a joy again to go to work every day.

I have set up this blog because I have decided to do R23: 23 Things for Information Skills.  I missed it the first time and thought it would be an ideal way to brush up my digital skills seeing as I have been out of things for so long.

Reasons to blog include:

·         to communicate within the profession and share ideas and knowledge best practice with other librarians and the library profession in general

·         to communicate outside the profession and advocate for and promote the profession

·         to share knowledge

·         to promote and build the visibility of the blogger and/or collections and services

·         To  generally network, interact, and invite feedback

(Dalton et al., 2016)

However, I am not sure I will be blogging for any of the above reasons!  I don’t have a lot to new knowledge to contribute to the profession yet, and locally we have a good communication channel  through our College app so I use this to promote library services.  Instead, expect this blog to be filled with random trains of thought and lots of free writing (just like this).  You see, aside from the wonderful day job, I am now studying part-time so all my disposable free time is spent reading and thinking about project management.  My hope is that I will be able to fuse information skills and project management in the months to come but for now I am content to absorb all the new stuff I’m learning and spend my writing energy on assignments.

Dalton, M., Kouker, A. & O’Connor, M. (2016) Many Voices: Building a Biblioblogosphere in Ireland. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 22(2-3), 148-159