Information Anxiety and Web2.oh

The pressure to remain relevant in an society where everyone and everthing competes for your time and attention is overwhelming at times. If you're a person who suffers from bouts of depression and anxiety and you're a female who's susceptible to the occasional PMS or PMT, then this won't be news to you. Already, the overwhelming and all-encompasing nature of web2.0 has me in it's grips.

Lately, the term 2.0 has made me increasingly uncomfortable. Perhaps even just in the last hour or two. It's got to a point where if I'm surrounded by talk of it, I want to physically curl up into a ball and hide for a wee while to get over the anxiety of being surrounded by this huge thing that you can't get away from. Interestingly, this is somewhat similar to the physiological nature of an anxiety attack. The feeling that the world is out to get you and it's all just about to crash on top of you. It's a really scary feeling, I can tell you now.

How I can justify that the term web2.0 caught in the same sentence as the word library, prompts such a reaction, is in referring to articles and sharing my real experiences.

I am currently in the process of writing a proposal for social media use by the library for management at my workplace, including incorporating a trial of a twitter account into the libraries services. I haven't even written the full proposal yet. I'm still in the groundwork, writing it up, fleshing our ideas out stage, but I'm finding myself flipping between the full spectrum of the web2.0 in libraries debate. Is it even a debate??

On the one hand I remain positive in the face of doubt and challenges.
On the other hand, I take the doubts, cynacism, pessimism, and overall negative energy to heart.
Maybe it's because I'm female and I tend to let my emotions rule me. But I have often thought that I have an larger than normal amount of testosterone in my chemical makeup which makes me tend to hang out with the boys, and ahere to the ”harden up” school of thought more often than not. My cat's veterinarian recently complemented me on this way of thinking towards my cat's new [smaller] dietary requirements. < br />Anyway, back to the point – negative thinking gets me down. What can I do about this?

In regards to music, one of my all-time favourite auditory past-times, I am currently listening to

”I shall believe” by Sheryl Crow

Update

Am still pondering what to do about negative thinking around me. I say, just walk away. Then you're away from it at least, if it's coming from someone else. If not, then... drugs perhaps? Yup, drugs. And the power of positive thought, and a cat lying next to you :)

Meme: Library Day in the Life

I'm a bit slow catching on to this one, (aren't I with everything? I'm now wearing black leggings and short dress things every day), but there's this meme [definition from dictionary.com, and urban dictionary.com too] about documeting a Librarian's day to share with everyone what our working day's are really like. The aim is to dispell the myth that we just spend our time twiddling our thumbs, shelving [and reading] books and getting our knickers in a knot answering repetitive questions like,

"Excuse me, but do you know where the toilet is please?"

I think that's the aim anyway. Here's the official page where you can participate too. I'm quite late starting this as we're into round 4, and round 4 was in January. But I've been busy. So here's my belated "Library day in the life".. :

Wednesday January 27, 2010

7:45am - Partners alarm goes off. Continue sleeping.

8:15am - Awoken by cat being annoying. Realise I have work today, starting at 9am. Get up. Feed cat.

8:35am - Decide what to wear today – Pink sparkly tights; they make me happy and I'm sure little girls like them too.

8:45am - Leave for work

9:00am - Hear from colleague that one of my reservations for a display at the library has arrived. Find out it is "Blades of Glory" DVD. Display is on upcoming Winter Olympics. *outward smile on my choice* .

9:15am - Begin piecing together/designing the display area. Decide on blue Wainuiomata rubbish bags as the base (for ice) and something that looks like cotton wool for snow.

9:45am - Admire my handiwork with the display as I add books.

9:55am - Open all available windows in library as it's going to be a scorcher.

10:00am - Start serving customers – regular duties for the day as it is the crux of my job.

11:45am - Bins and bags with returns and reservations from other libraries arrive. Assure library literate boy that his reservation will be here soon and to check back with us in an hour. Engage in quick conversation with the courier as I manage to nip a couple more books to go in the outgoing bags.

1:00pm - After a rushed hour or so, realise it's time for me to take a break and enjoy some MSG filled 2-minute noodles. Yumm. My favourite kind (not kidding).

2:00pm - Back into it.

........

…..

I truthfully don't remember the rest of that day. I can tell you that I was quite tired that evening and I had to get up at an unseasonally hour of 5am the following morning to catch a 7am flight. I didn't actually document any more of that day, and outside of lunch it would've been near impossible to sit down and record what I was doing. And the added objective to make it exciting and interesting just wasn't possible.

Working in a public library in a customer service role, for me, means that I am on my feet 90% of the day and rarely get the chance to sit down and reflect, let alone write about it. Stealing moments is what it's all about. I've only been in my current role at a community branch for a couple of months and since I recorded this day (Wednesday 27th January 2010) my role and responsibilities have expanded. I'm now looking after Storytime for the wee pre-schoolers aged 2-4 years old. It's lovely, and refreshing and a change from sitting in an air-conditioned office ordering and receiving material for an academic library, or just in general, working in an academic or special library, which is all I've known up to this point.

I love my job and Library day in the life participants no doubt, are all expressing the very same thing in their posts. Go on. Go check 'em out, and register your own :-D

Definition of a Weblog

When is a list of my thoughts on a website, not a blog? When it's in weblog format – i.e. date, title, thought. Hrmm, ok.. so this is a blog.

Since I've been showing my site to a few friends, letting them know that yay I made it all myself handtyped xhtml and css blah blah blah, I've found a flaw in something I clearly state that I'm not doing. In the about site section on the about page, I say "This is not a blog". Funnily enough, I don't really back that up or clarify that in any way at all. I was informed the other day that my site is actually a blog, or a weblog, as it logs my thoughts.

Here's a good definition of weblogs from someone that sounded authorative and had the links in all the right places for clarification and authority, has prepared for us beforehand. The writer of this, Rebecca, wrote this in 2000, a substantial amount of time ago. She has some relevant perspectives on the difference in style of weblogs and how that has evolved over time with the introduction of blogging software (blogger).

So.. library.geek is a weblog. And I'm ok with that. :-)

Music and copyright (or copywrong?) - rethinking my beliefs

I am writing this whilst listening to Brooke Fraser on youtube over and over and over and over again. Basically on repeat. Many songs, but not so many, many times she could've got a profit of some sort. I think I've been listening to about four at the most from her Albertine album which I have not bought, but am most likely going to buy now after listening to her music here. Ahh youtube, you do do wonders for the music industry. If not affording the artists a profit from allowing the free distribution [and copy] of their work, it gives them absolute exposure on the best musical network today – youtube, who google bought of course. Brooke Fraser is fantastic. Just listen to this song. It's nearly blowing the speakers on the headphones.

Recently I lost a CD wallet of mine, had 48 pockets in it, wasn't filled right up though, but dang it, I lost it!! Having a organisational inclination, this CD wallet was orderly and in rough genre order. I also have enough CD's in my posession to divide my music into two wallets, NZ musicians and everyone else. This is actually the second time round I have misplaced/lost/missed my CD collection. A few years ago I had my life's collection of CD's stolen in a break-in. Approximately two grand worth would you believe. This actually destroyed me and I cried. A music collection is so incredibly personal to any one individual. Golly am I dribbling on or what?!

Anyway, on with the real point. With this loss of music (which is very important to me of course as you can gather), I've begun to think about my belief of not copying music, the respect of the sacred industry of the tangible music format, production, and how it may be time to review my personal policy on music copyright.

Currently, my policy on music copyright is not to copy New Zealand music, but others are ok as I don't really care about looking after someone's musical career when they are not from my homeland. Don't get me wrong, I do buy music, in CD format in fact. I must be one of the only people of my age left, who still does this. It's the artwork and production of the format that I am buying. The work that has gone into this very effort is huge. I have made variations on this policy however to make myself feel better after finding I hold and receiving from family, a couple of burnt copies of New Zealand artists. I adjusted my policy to state that I won't copy NZ music if I myself haven't bought the CD before, or if a core family member already has it. I know all this sounds stupid, but I think, in the consumer-driven-click society that we live in today, my policy is quite sound. Again, note that I still buy CD's all the time. Over the past couple of years I have begun to download and copy international artists music; download shit quality from peer to peer sites, and copy from acquaintenances that have bought the CD.

Sadly, I have started to do this with library owned music that I have borrowed. Other people must do this too. It's not just me. I feel like I've let myself and my morals down by engaging in this activity. After all these years of respecting the art of producing music to sell in a tangible format, I've gone against it. Damn.

To end with, I'd like to point to that fantastic song again, by Brooke Fraser of course, if you didn't click on it before - C.S Lewis song. It's an amazing uplifting song with a message, brilliant writing and performing as well. I am going to buy this album.

Going (changing) with the flow

I used to be very interested in managing course reserves, though the work I was doing uhhh at work. I can see now, that loaning a physical item for a restricted period of time has a death notice written on it. It was just a couple of years ago though that I was quite interested in this. I can see the future in reserve collections, and it doesn't involve physical items a lot. Funny how much my professional interests have changed in just a couple of years

Digital is where it's at.
Just this morning I listened to Kim Clayton of Wellington City Libraries talk about the public not knowing that we at public libraries also can give you access to a myriad of databases, on top of that work of fiction and that Jamie Oliver cookbook.

Perceptions of public libraries and those that work in them are funny.

"Ohh so I can issue this book to myself? Wow. This must be putting you out of a job..."
No no. It just frees us up to do more intelligent things.

Heehee hee.

Oh, and, so long Library Life. It's been nice knowing you.

Ho ho ho but more about Google

My my this year has flown by. I started this site over a year ago and look how much I've done with it! (Not much really). To compare, have you heard of Digitalnz? I am just, (as in, now at the moment of writing this) rediscovering the joys of having your own personal laptop, that feels like a digital extension of me. Everything on here is tailored to me, it's like my digital home. That sounds bad... And along with rediscovering the joys of my laptop (having tweetdeck back, using PC keyboard shortcuts again as opposed to macs, shortcuts, bookmarks) I have found that I really need to touch base on google, and their all encompassing dominance in the social software, aggregator market. Something has to be said for a company that has an answer for everything. Everyone has something to say about google. Whether good or bad. I just want people to know that google isn't the only search engine out there maan! Try ask.com, sounds nice and simple doesn't it? Or bing.com, sounds catchy ay? That one automatically comes up in IE I think. Or dogpile.com. Mmmm now that one sounds fetching!

My Return

So I am back home in Welly (aka Wellington, New Zealand) from my sojourn in Perth, Western Australia, which I loved by the way. It's quite funny being back. But not really. I am jobless, as you may be able to figure out from the sort-of-recently added twitter widget in the column to your right. I have a myriad of things to do at the moment. Sigh. One such thing is/was to contact the folk at the ALIA libtec conference and let them know that unfortunately, due to financial reasons, I was unable to attend the conference as a delegate. I was going to add, "If you have any sponsorships available...", but didn't. It's only a month away, and I have zero money.

Ok, back to ... fence painting... Sigh.

All in a Twitter talk

Musings re: site architecture, direction, rss feeds and idolising

I am torn between getting wordpress.org going on this site and keeping it raw, the way it is right now (at the time of writing). Admittedly, I'm scared. I need some chocolate mousse to think about this... *goes off to get chocolate mousse from fridge*. It would be nice to have a nice looking website, but I like doing things for myself, the hard way. My stubborness really shows itself sometimes.

Ummm so yeah, should I or shouldn't I? Delve into wordpress, or just push-button-publishing in general, OR keep learning the hardway very very gradually? I'm torn. aargH!! Either way, I'm going to be learning so it's not all bad if I go the wordpress way. Also, another option is whether or not to integrate wordpress into one section of my site (e.g. this page) or let it take over the whole thing and get all the info arch tied up seamlessly.

I used to be fully in awe of Jessamyn's site over at librarian.net, but Kathryn Greenhill's librariansmatter.com is coming up fast. It's good to be able to aspire to something and model yourself or your 'thing' on it. That said, don't idolise. Not good. How old is Barbie again?? Bet she's been smoking in secret all along and that she's going to need a blood transfusion or a kidney or new liver or something soon.

But seriously, I need to get wordpress going and an RSS feed so people actually KNOW what I'm writing about. I think I know my answer. "Just do it" (Nike).

Wordle and summarizing my first talk

I found out how to use Wordle today and create my own "cloud". Essentially it's a sort of tag cloud for a block of text. I decided to paste in the text from my first proper talk that I did back in December 08 with Kathryn and Con. This is what I got, and I think you can see from it what I so eagerly wanted to tell people about in talking professionally for the first time and what this meant for me to getting my voice out there. I quite like it. It's me to a t. A mixture of statements of the obvious, "maori", "indigenous", "library", "conference" and emphasizing words like, "actually", and "want". Heh. I will endeavour to make an improvement in my vocabulary in future talks/papers.

Going offline

In the past 12 hours I have deleted accounts with linkedin, myspace, oldfriends.co.nz, secondlife and countless applications on facebook. Also recently I deleted my bebo account. It feels good to go offline and interact in the real world. I prefer the real world. So I'm reducing my digital footprint. I feel so refreshed already. Yay :-)

Finding out meaning

So I found out what 'vignettes' means today. "(very short stories)..." cheers Freakley, (2008). There are several more meanings but Dictionary.com also says, "5. a small, graceful literary sketch. ". Lovely.

Me me me...and work work work

This site seriously needs an overhaul in information architecture and web design. Also, not to mention, Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui's LIANZA pages as well. Oh wait, I already did... I wish I'd actually done that Web design course... oh well, another time perhaps. Meanwhile, I am trying out tweeting a conference tomorrow at Educause in Perth. Should be fun. Follow me or have a read of what I tweeted and what others were saying.

Sidenote...
I am sooooo sick of writing < a href=" some interesting URL here "> something catchy here < / a > this site will be the death of me. Touch wood.

Sunday musings; aftermath

I made a comment on facebook recently (check my friendfeed) about a workshop that I went to yesterday. I apologise. I was directing the comment at the women that were at the workshop (about six library technicians from around Perth) and their opinion of me, as a result of my general opinions, as indicative of the library community over here. Some opinions were favourable, some blatantly not so. The latter always seems to rise to the top of your brain and stay in your memory longer though, like cream... (to be continued later, have momentarily lost my train of thought as I'm unsuccessfully multi-tasking at the moment (when is it ever successful??)

On another note, Kathryn Greenhill's sites (Librarians matter and hername.com) are down. Wonder if it's got something to do with the Darien Statements hoohaa that came up not too long ago. I can't remember where I read all the 'hoohaa' but it surfaced in twitter library circles at the time I think and some people just thought it was all, well, hoohaa. Librarian's getting up their own collective ass and the like. Which brings me on to my next point. Oh my god, there are soo many differences between Australia and New Zealand in this industry! I really wish I had more than 15 minutes to talk at this ALIA libtec conference in September! hooo am I going to have a ball or what!? (ECU, I promise I won't bag you).
(Man am I sick of writing a href=" http blah blah blah, must get wordpress going or something!). Ok. rant over. xox

Push-button publishing vs ...

The fact that it took so long for me to get here from the thought first coming into my mind says a lot, but what are the benefits of push-button publishing versus the alternative (doing precisely what I'm doing, or heaven forbid, going the very traditional route of submitting something to an actual publisher in a building in another country even), besides the obvious "push-button publishing" aspect as the name suggests. Why do people even still have websites and content management systems? Why isn't everything on the internet just run on blog software by some "not-for-profit" software company? Does google have blog software?? Would blogging software just be too easy for them? They're getting every other market. Ok, enough of a rant. Get back to work Hana! *grumble grumble*

Thoughtless

Forgive me readers, it has been a while since my last library related thought worthy of html. I'm not thoughtless, I just haven't had the inclination nor motivation to type it up here or even write my thoughts down anywhere. Life seems to move so fast. Information overload indeed. However, on a similar note of thoughtlessness; my abstract got accepted! And I haven't written anything down about my experiences over here in Aus! uh oh. That is definitely on my to-do list. Check it out (my to-do list).

Professional Registration

Yup. I am applying for Professional Registration through LIANZA, New Zealand's Library and Information Association. Wish me luck, hope my application gets accepted!

Library techs vs LA's

I get paid $133.42 more a fortnight, as a Lib Tech, than I did as an LA, for what seems like a lot more stress. Why am I so much more stressed now, as a tech, than when I was as an LA just a couple of months ago? In the same team no less. Money isn't everything.

The responsibilities of a copy cataloguer

So you have a weighty text in your hands. You find out it cost AUD$231.15. You better bloody make sure that it’s been catalogued right, because if you haven’t, you’ve just wasted your organizations money by “cataloguing” an unsearchable text. Effectively lost it.

Lost it. Don’t lose it.
Take your job seriously.

Blogging. Just another word for writing. Nothing to be scared of ay.

What are the differences between a blog and website? Do blogs laugh in the face of the fundamentals of good web-design?

JUST realised why so many sites these days have a skinny screen template – mobile browsing! Muh, I feel like such a dummy – please correct me if this theory is wrong

So I was reading about html’s core feature – "the very reason for its existence" – is to provide links to other networks, anywhere on the Internet. Not the world wide web. The Internet. What’s the difference between these two again??

Geeking on about libraries to come shortly...

Ps. Google Chrome is cool, you should try it out.

Archived Thoughts