Thing 17, Wikis, and Library Day In The Life Round 7

For #libday7-ers: I'm a Subject Librarian at an academic library in London.  This is a mixed 23 Things and Day in the Life Post - scroll down if you don't care about my opinions on Wikis!

I've had a bit of a mixed experience with Wikis.  My sole contribution to Wikipedia to date has been a one-woman crusade to remove the 17th century anachronistic 'à' from the middle of mentions of cantankerous old Thomas Becket's* name.


Wikipedia gets a lot of flack from all kinds of quarters, and there's definitely some flaws with it, but it's much easier to correct than the Encylopaedia Britannica, and about as accurate.**  My personal feeling on the matter is that I don't trust Wikipedia in the absolute sense, and I certainly wouldn't cite a Wikipedia article, but that it's a useful tool for getting a grip on background information on a topic, or understanding the meaning of words or phrases in context.  Much like any other encyclopaedia, in fact.***

I have contributed to several smaller, work-based wikis before as well, for recording training events at a previous job, for Library Day in the Life Round 5, and of course I use our current work one for looking Stuff up when I'm on the desk, which for me is the chief most important use of a staff wiki.  There was a bit of a fad for using wikis to Fix All The Things**** a while back, and whilst a lot of spurious and unsuccessful wikis were invented, I think they've settled into a useful tool, particularly for things like the Library Day in the Life.

Oh, yes, Library Day in the Life.  That's what I was going to do before I started banging on about Wikipedia. Ahem.

Wow. Get a load of that card catalogue! *wolf whistles*

Monday:

Had a nice day off.  Did not think about work.  Mainly knitted and watched films on the telly, although via the DVD player because my telly has been basically broken for about three years but I am too cheap to purchase a new one and too lazy to try to fix it.  Besides, that's what iPlayer and its weaker imitators are for.  I did read some library blogs, though, because I am a glutton for punishment.

Tuesday:

Back to work after a long weekend.  Spent a bit of time catching up with colleagues and avoiding my inbox.  When I eventually faced it, there were 105 new messages, and sadly most of them needed something actually doing with them.  I 'proposed new times' for all the meeting requests first, because obviously they all clashed with each other... that's why I'm normally completely meticulous about keeping my calendar up-to-date.*****

Then I did a bit of triage on the emails, responding to the important ones, putting some aside for later and generally firefighting 'em.  It was at this point that I realised my whole inbox needed seriously organising and things needed putting neatly into folders, a project which I've been slowly working on all week.

What else?  Hmm... a bit of CPD25 stuff, some 23 Things City blogging, sorting out some library inductions for my School for the coming year, a bit of collection management at some recalcitrant books, and generally getting on with catching up with stuff.

Wednesday:

This was a day of meetings.  A meeting of the library Induction Group to sort out logistics and plans for the general library induction for 2011/12 was followed by a meeting to finalise plans for introducing new subject guides - it's a system I've used in a previous job so I get to be expert for about three days until everyone else works out that it's really easy to use and overtakes my knowledge.  Then I was on the Service Desk reception for an hour and a half.  It was pretty quiet, so I used the time to catch up reading fellow 23 Things City-ers' blogs, and helped the few students that came to us.  It's mostly returning books and paying off fines at this time of the year.

Then I did a bit more thinking about some events I'm organising for CPD25 next academic year, and started on a few actions from the previous meetings, as well as attacking the inbox again, which by this point was starting to look a lot more librarianly.  Quite a lot of the emails were the bottom of my triage pile and just needed reading and absorbing, rather than responding to, and those are the ones I find easiest to let slide when there's pressing things to do, but I was a Good Librarian and read them anyway.

Thursday:

Sadly people keep selfishly sending me emails which makes the whole inbox-tidying thing much more difficult, but I persevere.  Thursday morning saw a sudden flurry of emails regarding induction, rather suggesting that there may have been a meeting about it elsewhere, so I've got a nice lot of times and dates to work with now.  Induction Week, as usual, is going to be Fun.

We also had a site meeting, which was a chance to hear about some upcoming developments and a bit of strategy - it's always nice to know where you're supposed to be going!  That was followed by a nice positive One-to-One with my manager where we caught each other up on Stuff, had a nice discussion about 23 Things City and generally went over things.

After lunch I wrote a review email to the head of our service about the LIS DREaM Conference; I'd totally forgotten that she'd asked to be briefed about it, but luckily I remembered not too long after the event.  It always takes longer than you'd think to digest things like that down into a Short Version for Busy People, but it does help to clarify your own thinking.

In the afternoon, Helen and I had a great time playing Film Director in the library lobby area, persuading some lovely students to be videoed answering a few questions about how the library.  We didn't prompt them for positive answers at all, but to a person they were incredibly complimentary to us and said all the right things - one even said how much like like the electronic resources - clearly we're doing something right!

After 5 I had a bit of time to spare, so I polished off another Thing blog post (I'm catching up!).  Then a few current colleagues and I headed off pubwards for an pre-wedding party for a former colleague we'd all worked with.  Libraries are pretty small worlds!

Friday:

Today I've finally won the Battle of the Inbox, and turned my attention to my atrocious-looking desk.  I have a terrible habit of writing Important Things down on scraps of paper and leaving them in a pile on my desk (it's a bit like a Hipster PDA, but less organised).  It's surprisingly effective, but it does mean that you actually have to have the bit of paper with you when you need it, so I'm trying to reorganise them into a more useful format... but more about that in another post, for it utilises some Cool Extra Things.

When I came in this morning, there was much talk about publicity materials, and I somehow found myself invited to attend a meeting about it this afternoon at another campus I've never been to before.  I was supposed to be joining this group next academic year anyway - now I'm early and unprepared - fabulous!


A bit of shift-swapping ensued and I found myself on the desk again, this time balancing lots of queries about fines and book returning with doing a bit more filming for our video - it's going to be a masterpiece, I tell you.  My favourite bit was a user who told that they'd never heard of libraries charging fines before...


This afternoon before the meeting I'm going to carry on organising myself a bit better - this time of year is really the time to do this sort of thing as it's (relatively) quiet for a subject librarian.  Then I'll make a start on my new subject guides :D.




Back to wikis....

So, that was my week.  Our Thing this week was to blog Library Day in the Life or add our blog to the UK Library Blogs/Bloggers list.  I was a bit of an overachiever and tried to do both, I'm afraid - the blog list was fine, once I'd worked out how to log in, and I'm just waiting to hear if I have permission to add myself to the other one.  I've done it before, but clearly I must've been using an old work email address.

I love the whole Day in the Life concept, but I'm never sure what happens afterwards - I like reading them just for a bit of fun and an insight into other peoples' days, but it'd be great to see a bit more than that - has anyone ever used the posts for research?  A library school dissertation, perhaps?




*Interested parties should investigate the further reading section on the Wikipedia article - all great books.  The easiest to read and most up to date****** is Duggan, Anne (2005), Thomas Becket, London: Hodder Arnold.  Which I have a signed copy of, which you CANNOT borrow, because Anne Duggan was my dissertation supervisor, and I am That Cool.  Those of a stronger constitution should also read both enormous volumes of her translation of his Correspondence, which is fascinating.
**At least, in 2005.  Fine, you want a proper citation?  Bloody librarians.  Here: Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a; Published online 14 December 2005.
***Apart from this one.  Don't use this one. Almost entirely NSFW but the front page *should* be okay.
****Read this blog post, immediately.  Seriously.
*****Well, that and scarring from a previous job where I was an administrator for lawyers who either couldn't use Outlook, or just plain old refused to use it.  It was hellish.  Scheduling a meeting was a nightmare, and when it came around people just didn't turn up, or were hugely late, or demanded to know why they hadn't been formally invited when they had, or turned up three days early.  AWFUL.  Use your calendar, people.  
******Yes, actually, it does matter in history, just as it does in every other subject.  People discover new stuff about the past all the time and come to new conclusions even more frequently.  Sometimes even two or three in the same sentence, if my UG essays were anything to go by...