How depressing!!!!

This article in The Guardian entitled Libraries will rely on volunteers to survive, says report incredibly sad. This comes from the Learning from the Future Libraries Programme Phase one. Oh well. Another advancement under the great con/dem government.

How much for the book?

With the rise of the kindle and alleged decline of publishing, The Guardian has an interesting article entitled The true price of publishing.
This looks at the argument of why hardbacks are so expensive in comparison to e-books, pointing out:-

publishing is a business that incurs high fixed costs. And it's this, to return to my initial question, that accounts for the high price of (indeed the very existence of) hardbacks. The publisher needs to maximise revenues in order to defray its outlay. Some people are prepared to pay top dollar to have the premium product – a hardcover copy that comes out, crucially, months before other versions. So it makes sense for the publisher to offer it to them.

Anyhow, worth a look if you have time.

How do you quote from a kindle?

Having had a Kindle for a month or so I've been using it extensively. One, thing I have been wondering, is if used at University can you quote it for foot notes or endnotes. I did find this link which says how its done though.

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.

Google Calendar Part 8 of CPD23

Part 8 of CPD 23 looked at Google Calendar. Google Calender would be used to create events and make them freely available on your blog etc.

Face-to-face networks and professional organisations part 7

Well I didn't get around to writting part 7 of the CPD, which looked professional organisations. With a link to Real life networking for #cpd23, looking at past library events. It also looked at paid for organisations to join such as CILIP amongst other. It also looked at Informal organisations such as Lisnpn amongst others.

After a holiday in Germany......

Well, after a week in Burgerfest with the misses, I have got back to here about Library Camp. Oh well, booked it. But work tomorrow.

3 years on

3 years ago today my brother was murdered. Its not really a day I enjoy, but one I seldom forget. Thankfully, I'm away on holiday from tomorrow, so that helps. I'll be thinking of you Jody.

23 Things for Professional Development Thing 6......The network affect

The CPD23 thing 6, looked at the use of social networks for library and information professionals. These sites would include:-
1. LinkedIn (mine)
2. Facebook
3. Lisnpn.
4. Welcome to Librarians as Teachers Network.
5. CILIP Communities.

I always feel as a professional, linked in is one of the best sites, as their is no data smog. Lisnpn is one I don't use enough. Short blog i'm afraid.

Out with the Cousin

My cousin recently got a first class degree from Falmouth (even better than me). Anyhow, he was up in London showing the work he'd produced on the course in Brick Lane. Anyhow, was fascinating to see his work, and meet the next night with his friends for beers. So, well done Phil.

Holidaying with a book

(Found via here). An article in Salon entitled Reading retreats: Paradise for book lovers. The article discusses the rise of holidays specifically for reading. It also looks London's School of Life has created Bibliotherapy, which is:-

Once upon a time, it was easy to find books you could enjoy and which felt relevant to your life. Now a new book is published every 30 seconds, and you would need 163 lifetimes to get through all the titles offered on Amazon. That’s why The School of Life has set up a bibliotherapy service: the perfect way for you to discover those amazing but often elusive works of literature that can illuminate and even change your life.

Great, but as individual consultations cost £70.00, I think I might use my own mind to choose my books thanks.

23 Things for Professional Development - Thing 5 – Reflective Practice

Thing 5 – Reflective Practice is available today. This looked at:-

1. Recall it: this could be an event you’ve participated in, a project group you’ve been part of, a workshop you’ve delivered, an enquiry you’ve responded to…

2. Evaluate it: Take some time to consider these questions
What did you learn?
What did you enjoy?
What worked well?
What, if anything, went wrong?
What would you change?
What (potential) impact could this have in your workplace?

3. Apply it: Take some action. What can you practically apply from the experience you’ve had?

I often struggle in this area. I mean I read some blog post like this one recently. My blog post are sometimes the poorly planned and poorly executed. Ummmmm....

Bookmooch closed

Many years ago I joined bookmooch, an international, on-line book exchange community founded by John Buckman. Forfive years I used it. Since buying the Kindle I've closed it down. I closed it due to the expense and that I was willing to send and others were not. I also got feed up with the complaints about it such as these.

Possible library job losses In Warwickshire

The BBC website reports Warwickshire libraries could face 120 job cuts. The report says:-

Library staff in Warwickshire have been told the council is looking to make 50 full-time posts redundant.

That could result in up to 120 of them losing their jobs as many people work part-time.

More bad news.

The return of Michael Casey

One of the reasons for starting this blog was because of Michael Casey and Library Crunch and wrote Working Towards a Definition of Library 2.0. Although Librarycrunch has now ceased. I'd noted he'd not written for ages, as his mum had passed away. He's now going to write more often (or hope so). Be good to have him back.

Worldwide Library 2.011 Conference in November 2011

I just got this via email, that might be of interest to you:-

This is our official call for presentations for the Library 2.011 conference, November 2 - 3, 2011. The conference will be held online, in multiple time zones over the course of two days, and will be free to attend. We encourage all to participate, and ask that you share this information where appropriate. Presentation submission instructions are at http://www.library20.com/pages/call-for-proposals.

The Library 2.011 conference will be a unique chance to participate in a global conversation on the current and future state of libraries. The conference strands are at the bottom of this email. Session proposals will be posted on the conference website, and we encourage making comments to and connecting with others based on their session proposals, as well as "voting" for session using the "like" button on the submissions. Session proposals are due September 15, and session acceptances will be communicated by September 30.

Good news for Somerset......bad news for libraries and librarians

The BBC has reportrd three Somerset libraries set to stay open. The article says:-

Three out of six libraries due to lose funding from Somerset County Council in three months are set to stay open.

Six libraries in the county will have their funding stopped from 1 October and another five will have their funding stopped from next April.

Volunteers have stepped in to pay for and run libraries in Bishops Lydeard, Bruton and Porlock.

The Conservative-led council aims to save 25%, or £1.35m of the library budget.

I'm not really one for the volunteers in libraries thing. I thing it won't work as there is little financial. intellectual or social pay back for the volunteers. Also, they won't have the skillset for users on copyright issues etc. oh well.

23 Things for Professional Development Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

23 Things for Professional Development new post discusses Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote.

The twitter part looks at join (which I did YEARS ago). It then looked at introducing oneself on twitter and using the hashtag #cpd23.

My problem with twitter is you need to be constantly on it to know whats going on.

The RSS section looked at what RSS does, what RSS reader to use. It also sites to perhaps add to your reader:-

Librarian by Day - transliteracy, digital library services
Phil Bradley's weblog - "where librarians and the Internet meet" - search engines, web 2.0 technologies
The Wikiman - library advocacy, marketing, social media
Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian - IT in libraries, digital divide, library news and advocacy
Agnostic Maybe - ebooks, library news. Hosts an "open-thread Thursday" discussion each week
Hack Library School - a must for LIS students, "hack" your library school experience using the web as a collaborative space
Rarely Sited - special collections and outreach
Mashable - social media and technology news

I was disappointed I wasn't there. I also think they should add you can compartmentalised different blog interest group. I did comment on this here (google actually said no to that on 10 occasions). My query was:-

RSS can also be used for multiple interest. For example sport, news, work. Maybe that might be something to add to cpd23?

The final thing was Pushnote. described as:-

a tool that allows you to rate and comment on any website. If any of your Twitter or Facebook friends use Pushnote as well, you can add them as a friend, and then share pages with them. You can also choose to automatically post your comments to Twitter and/or Facebook if you want to share them with a wider audience.

I've never really been a fan of this system, so I didn't sign up for it.

Gloucester libraries on channel 4 news

It was with some interest I saw Friends of Gloucester Libraries was on channel 4 news. The news discussed The High Court issues an injunction against Gloucestershire County Council over library closures. I did also get to see the delightful conservative leader Mark Hawthorne complaining about it.