CPD Thing 10 - Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation

Thing 10 - Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation looked at Graduate traineeships which are :-

Graduate traineeships are usually 12 month long posts which start in August or September and are aimed at recent graduates who are thinking about going into librarianship.

Masters degrees which are accreddited by Cilip. Which is what I have done.

Chartership which CILIP describes as:=

Chartership is CILIP's professional qualification. It's more than earning the right to have MCLIP after your name. Chartered Membership opens up new career opportunities and gives Members the skills and approach needed to develop their roles and make good job applications. By honing evaluative and professional skills through Chartering, Members also add value to their organizations and can advocate effectively on behalf of their services.

Thing 9: Evernote of 23 Things for Professional Development

Now i've never used evernote (or heard of of it, even though I actually have an account). But Thing 9 was dealing with evernote which is described as :-

You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access.

It can also save photo's etc from conferences. Therefore, if your going to write a long post (thats not me then) this is your tool.

How do you keep ahead of the library game?

In a recent post I discussed the new facebook page for librarians. In the four years or so of blogging, the way I've kept out to date has been via blogs. I've also used twitter to some degree to keep ahead. I did also occasionally pop into the library 2.0 ning site. I also created a daily google alert for the term library and library 2.0.
Anyhow, anybody else get there information any other way.

Can the social web save the public libraries in Britain?

I was interested to see that Mumsnet has started a thread entitled to think that we NEED libraries? This is horrific.. I had only heard about Mumsnet prior to the UK election of 2010.
Mumsnet had been responding to the threat that public libraries are presently facing.
I had noted that the good library blog had noted mumsnets interest in public libraries in a post earlier this week.
But who are mumsnet? Well its described as :-

a British community website set up by mothers to give advice on parenting and family issues.

As said previously, I had only learnt of Mumsnet during the last election, when they seemed to become the new essex man of political punditry and/or poor journalism.
Not all of the talk about mumsnet though was always positive though.
Mumsnet seems to me to also be a support group for parents and family members. Discussing the needs, advantages and disadvantages of parenting. In discussing the fear of public library closures seems a fairly symbiotic relationship, in that for those who work in public libraries, will know that parents are regular users of libraries. Many parents may bring there kids for childrens hour or to get books for there homework. Or so they can use it for free internet access and homework clubs.
But can the social web help us in stopping closures?
Well, yes and no. I do think mumsnet could be a useful tool in assisting in bring these closures to the forefront of politicans. Mumsnet, as said previously was very much seen as important to politicans in the last election. So there support is needed.
But I did not this comment on the mumsnet post:-

StuckInTheMiddleWithYou Sat 21-Aug-10 14:16:28
Would MN like to run a campaign on this?

Thats not good then, if they can't start a campaign on the site.
I also feel you would need greater support from other high end users (say kids, schools, pensioners). The support and iniative of other librarians and users to would help.
Anyhow, its the weekend. Enjoy.

The social library.....

(Found via here. The Wall Street Journal has an article entitled Libraries Have a Novel Idea. It looks at how the Internet Archive is:-

Starting Tuesday, a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, are joining forces to create a one-stop website for checking out e-books, including access to more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries.

and that:-

To read the books, borrowers around the world can download and read them for free on computers or e-reading gadgets. Software renders the books inaccessible once the loan period ends. Two-thirds of American libraries offered e-book loans in 2009, according to a survey by the American Library Association. But those were mostly contemporary imprints from the last couple of years—say, the latest Stephen King novel.

But the more interesting news is that the internet archive has set up Openlibrary.org

[which] goes a step further by opening up some access to the sorts of books that may have otherwise gathered dust on library shelves—mainly those published in the past 90 years, but of less popular interest.

If you take an item out, only one copy is available due to copy right restrictions. My main concern though (via a friend mentioning it). If you have a digital copy, could you not just make another another digital copy? Isn't it just trying to put an analogue answers to a digital world?

Definitely would check the two articles.

What future for the social web?

Recent news of the demise of Ning and the possible closure of Bebo has seemed to underline the disintegrating space for social websites. It seems the power of facebook has taken over the whole space.
Phil Bradley though has an interesting blogpost entitled Alternatives to Ning.

Big business makes poor decisions.....

Seems a couple businesses are trying to use the social web for there corporate means. Firstly, Reed Elsevier officials have admitted that it was a mistake for the STM publisher's marketing division to offer $25 (£15).
Secondly, Habitat have had to apologise for using Hashtags on the Iranian unrest on twitter to direct users to there website.
You got to laugh.

My 200th entry and a myspace for books

Yup, after nearly a year its my 200th entry which is good. So first off, thanks for reading this. Secondly, over on zdnet, there's news that Bloomsbury publishing are releasing a myspace for books. Sounds interesting.

My five non-library blog reads

Well, as mentioned previously, Rachel Singer Gordon on liminal librarian asked which 5 non library blogs one reads. Here goes.

1. A VC blog. A VC discusses social software and sport and family.
2. Tim Anderson's Media Studies Gateway Page. A guy I bookmooched a book off months ago, gave me his blog address. The rest they say is history. Musings of a communications professor of Denison University on TV, relationships and the social web (not in that order).
3. Tom Coates blog plasticbag is always worth a read. He describes it as:-
'A weblog by Tom Coates - quitting the fire to cold complexions needing it
Concerning future media, social software, mass-amateurisation and the web of data.'

4. Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine for his idea's on blogging, television and the media.
5. Stephen O'hear's Social web for similar reasons to Jeff Jarvis. Though his love of Twitter is tiring.

Twitter........IM for the dull classes

John Blyberg has a great comment on Twitter, entitled Thank God for the (twittering) voice of reason…. I love the descroption he gives for it as follows:-
'I say Twitter is the Paris Hilton of the social web. Slutty and unfortunate. The basest manifestation of the culture and systems it represents.'
I just don't get twitter. Some people say it's great at conference, where you can network etc. But I disagree. If your networking in a conference, two things will happen. You'll network with the top experts first and foremost. Which leads to my second point. If your 'stalking' the upper hierarchyy, what happens to the other people at the conference? They get left behind. I go to a few conferences on the social web to meet and SOCIALISE with other people because thats what I thought the social web was supposed to do.

The book I read maybe wrong......but I still like it

I've been reading Don Tapscott's wonderful book Wikinomics. I think its really good, even better than the long tail, as Tapscott really gets to the crux of API's and the sharing mentality on the web in the web 2.0 world. But, in some section 'I just think he's wrong. For example, when Tapscott writes:-
'Google's spectacular growth from the late entrant into the internet search game to dominant global company rest, in large part, on an open approach to innovation.'
Well, there not that open. Brin and Page have copyrighted pagerank even though it was there PH.D dissertations. I'm not knocking Google (viacom and microsoft are doing that a lot better). But, Tapscott's book is keen to mention how educational institutes work together with business, to improve tools. Google could see pagerank was an advancement (though Battelle's book says some of the idea's had already been there before). I would still recommend the book though.

The week that was.........

Here are the top 3 links I should have discussed over the last week. Coming in at the top:-
1. Tagging: LibraryThing and Amazon. If you like tagging then you'll love this article by librarything owner Tim Spalding.
2. I loved the story of the patron in Alaska arrested and his laptop confiscated for using the libraries wi-fi after hours. Whats that about?
3. About Five Weeks to a Social Library over on Meredith Farkas blog. This looks wicked, but I've just had no time to do it with a term paper to do.