Thing 5: Online Networks [Part 1]

Facebook

I originally singed up to Facebook in my first year of college to keep track of the friends I made. This quickly turned into online gaming with those friends.

Now I am mostly a re-poster, re-posting images, videos, music and articles for me to look at later. You will often find my page littered with posts about cats, books and manga & anime.

I debated with myself about using Facebook in a professional manner as up until now I have used it mostly for personal use.

I had to remind myself that I have used it professionally when I was admin of several groups and when I updated the Epic-Con like and event pages.

Epic-con was an annual Sci-fi, fantasy & anime convention run by the Omega Society, NUI Maynooth for charity. I was part of the Omega committee that ratified the first convention and during my time as Convention Director for Epic-con 5. The name was changed to Phenomocon for its final year.

I would have no problem updating a like page or event page for a library I work in, it would be similar enough to what I did for Epic-con. But if it would require that I had to post as myself I would probably make a professional account because my current account is set up for interaction in the convention and gaming communities perfect for those scenes but may be off putting to some.  

So for Thing 5, I joined the Rudai 23 Facebook group and liked a few more library pages, for this thing I seem to be more interactive on the library front with Twitter than Facebook. I think this is because I have been on Facebook so long it is hard to create new habits.

Find out about my Twitter experience in Part 2!

Part 5: 23 Things Course Rudaí 23.
Tasks Facebook: Join Rudai23 Facebook group and say hi, follow a Facebook page that you like
Tasks Twitter: Set up Twitter account, follow @rudai23, tweet with #rudai23, subscribe to a list

Thing 4: Google

The post for this has been sitting unpublished, for the last few weeks. Stuff being added and taken out at random intervals, just waiting for me to get around to HangOuts. I think it is time I just publish it.

Now days it is pretty hard not to use a Google product unless you are affected by the great firewall of China. So I am assuming that everyone has used a Google Product at some point. 

I have used Google products for both work and leisure and some for both. 

I pretty much stumbled into using my first google product, which was Google Video, before Google bought YouTube their video service was called Google Video. I mostly used it to watch TV shows, Anime and AMV (Anime Music Videos). Now I look up videos for both entertainment and educational purposes.

In 2006, I inadvertently created a Google+ account. I was signed up to a Google account using my Hotmail address to track my Google videos and on one of my last times on the platform I was asked did I want to transfer my account to Google +. Which of course I clicked accept and have never really used until now. Eventually I signed up to a g-mail account so I could access to Google Calendar so I could keep track of social events.

 When I was working as an administrative assistant I used Google Analytics, a statistical tool used to track clicks and visits to webpages. I also had some interaction with adwords. 

I used Google Translate to translate work documents into English and quickly discovered not to just copy and paste the entire document. It was better to do it by sentence or paragraph and to correct the grammar along the way or you were left with an incomprehensible mess at the end.

Finally HangOuts…

I watched the Rudai 23 Google Hangouts live on YouTube and was inspired. (To watch the video click Rudai23 Hangout On Air.)

After exploring Hangouts more I discovered that there were interactive apps you can attach so that you can doodle on your friends videos, play games with them and lots more. There are even apps for story telling.

My impression of Hangouts so far is that it is a mix of video streaming and chat, kind of like a mix between skype and a webinar. This is definitely something I want to spend more time exploring this but my friends tend to use Skype instead.

While we are on the topic of Google, a few weeks ago I read an article about Google. I found it an interesting read.  The article talks about the steps Google have taken for restructuring the business into a model more suited for a conglomerate and how it is to be more transparent for investors. (The Economist August 15^th 2015, p 55-56.)

There was a nice timeline and I was tempted to attach a photo of it below but I was not sure about copyright. If anyone is interested in taking a look, Google Timeline: The Economist August 15^th 2015, p 55.

  

Part 4: 23 Things Course Rudaí 23.

Tasks: Open a Google account, set up Google+ profile, do a Hangout chat, Try Hangouts On Air (optional)

Catch up: All Things

This blog post was supposed to be for catch up week but we have been having internet troubles since our move.

This week is catch up week and I feel like I am not making a dent in my assignments. With the motivation to catch up from The Google Hangout Rudai23 Hangout On Air and Twitter chat #R23chat smoldering away I decided to come up with a plan.

So far I have been tipping away at my blog posts at home in 10- 20 minutes a day and grabbing a few minutes here and there during my breaks at work to Tweet and browse my LinkedIn. I am finding that although with this I am getting through some of my posts, they are sitting unpublished on my blog waiting for me to complete some of the tasks.

Ten to twenty minutes does not provide enough time to have a good sit down and explore the new software and networks to my satisfaction.

My life is hectic still, after moving into my new apartment and I am still behind, so I need to set up a system where I can claim more than 20 minutes a day to work on my Rudaí 23 Things 4-15.

So it is time for a new strategy…

I am hoping to publish at least one post a day until I catch up… I know this will be hard to do but I am determined to do it.

This week I have been trolling through my unpublished posts polishing them off and dividing them into categories. Completed, Revisit and Explore.

Completed, as it suggests these posts are complete and ready for publishing but not published.

Revisit, these are posts that can be published but I want/need to revisit some of the tasks.

Explore, these are the posts that have tasks with software/platforms I have never been on and require in depth exploration. I literally only have a few note as reminder of what I want to write for these.

A Rudai 23 Google Hangout

I watched the Rudai 23 Google Hangout live on YouTube on Sunday. 

I even tried tweeting, my first tweets ever. I am still familiarising myself with Twitter, so not sure if I did it correctly. I used the hash tag in the video (#r23hoa) and not in the blog post (#R23CHAT) . 

I found the feedback from the participants encouraging and interesting and I have a new found motivation to catch up. I am moving apartment this Friday so I will try my best.

To watch the video click Rudai23 Hangout On Air.

There were a few sound issues which my partner who is a computer scientist commented on. Saying that some of the sound issues were caused by a microphone being too sensitive. It was picking up feedback from the speakers when the other participants of the Hangout were speaking. So if you are doing a Hangout and are having sound problems check your microphones sensitivity, it may need adjusting.

Thing 3: Your Professional Brand

I have been busy both at work and home the last few weeks, so I have been completing the tasks for Things 3, 4 and 5 slowly but at the same time.

When the course started I was in the middle of doing a bibliometric report. I published my first blog post the day I submitted it.  I was filling in for my supervisor who was away for the last four weeks, so work has been busy.

I have been on LinkedIn for years and have used it on again off again. I updated my profile by adding my most recent job and title and also fixing some errors I noticed. Click here to view my LinkedIn page.

Then I went looking for a new photo... I have never been too good at getting photos off of people after they take them and I discovered the most recent photo I had were from a year ago and was not suitable to use on LinkedIn. 

We tried the camera on both my partner’s phone and mine, but because of the lighting in the house we could not get a picture that was not under/over exposed. So, then I go looking for a camera and discover that it has been taken on holidays and the only other option is broken. I arranged to borrow a camera and half an hour later we had a picture.

I have been in many different professional profile platforms and I have found the about.me platform the most annoying to fill out, but managed to complete the profile. Click here to view my about.me page.

When I joined about.me the first thing it asks is for a landscape photo (which I did not have)...I spend a few moments wondering what to do until I spot the leave until later button very small in the corner.

The rest should have been straight forward adding content about myself but was not as easy as it seemed. Half of this was as expected easy to fill in, this was the side bar profile, arranging the page layout and choosing the colour scheme I wanted.

The annoying part started when I started to fill in my information into the backstory section. The first time I tried to fill this out I was getting an error message and all the information I had just added was wiped. This happened three times and I decided to try again another day.

The second time was a bit better. But not by much I got an error message every two to three minutes. Upon receiving the message no matter which option I hit the page would reload and ninety percent of the time I would have to input all the data again. Five percent of the time I would only have to re-input some of the data. For the last five percent the data thankfully was complete.

I wonder did anyone else have this issue when using about.me?
It was not internet connection problems because I tried both a wired and wireless connections and internet ping test said I had full internet connection. I also tried two different computers.

The only straight forward thing I did for my backstory was choosing the colour scheme. I apologise if there are any typos in the data on my about.me page but after taking two hours to do, I decided I had spent enough time on the page.

What I thought was going to be the easy parts for these tasks turned out to be the hardest.

Part 3: 23 Things Course Rudaí 23.. 
The tasks: Create a LinkedIn and/or about.me profile, join Rudaí23 LinkedIn group and say hi, and create your professional brand (i.e. update my photo and information)

Thing 2: Writing Your First Blog

The second part of the 23 Things Course Rudaí 23. The second task is to write about how/why you became a librarian.

Well technically I am not a qualified librarian yet. Currently I am a Library Assistant and Research Analyst Intern in Teagasc. I will be starting my MSc. in Information and Library Management in September. This is the part-time course in DBS.

I am a graduate from NUI Maynooth. My undergraduate is a Double Honours BSc. in Applied Mathematics and Chemistry and my Higher Diploma is in Pure Mathematics, I did both in Maynooth.

I am Dyslexic, so, I have not always liked books, until the age of ten I would do anything not to read a book. In a last attempt to get me reading my mother started reading the Harry Potter series to me. She was reading it so slowly that the story acted like a magnet and I took the book and tried to read it before I knew how. This is how I started reading and I was soon collecting my own books. Now you cannot get me to put down a book!

Over the years I was given an abundance of book vouchers and had to set up a system to find the books I wanted to read. This involved a lot of boxes, organization and lists on paper. I did not know it at the time but I had set up my own catalogue.

In my second year of college I was nominated to be the Society Librarian for Omega, the Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Anime Society. I was told all I had to do was open the locker (full of books) and let society members borrow the books, comics and manga. The only rules were I had to get everything back at the end of the year and only committee members were allowed to borrow the DVD's.

It turned out the library was in fact three lockers with books, comics, manga and DVD's thrown in with out order. The first thing I did was to round up volunteer society members and sort the 789 books, 52 comics, 10 manga and 25 DVD's into alphabetical order.

When all the sorting was finished I created word document and excel databases, set up protocols for borrowing books and returning books and organised opening times.

During my second year the society set up their annual convention Epic Con. For this I volunteered to be in charge of the reading room. The reading room was a room where convention goers could sit back, relax and read. The room was full of books, comics and manga, that I had to choose from the library to bring over for the event. I had to supplement the manga collection with some of my own extensive collection for the first few years, to the point that most of the reading room consisted of my books.

I did a CELT(Certificate in English Language Teaching) and an SNA course because I was interested in pursuing a career in teaching. This eventually lead to me teaching in China in a summer camp setting and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Before I went to China I got my first Library Internship. It was in Scoil Oilibhéir, Coolmine and I had to set up their library software and catalogue all the books in the school. Again I rounded up volunteers and we managed to catalogue over 10,000 books in three months. The software was operational for the following school year.

So, now I am in Teagasc as a Library Assistant and Research Analyst. For the library assistant part I classify materials using Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system (which is fun), as well as Cataloguing and Serial Control using the Symphony Library Management system. I also work with the Repository and Document Management System, as well as ordering books and articles on Inter Library Loans, the usual everyday stuff.

For the research analyst part work in Bibliometrics, which is the study of metrics on publications (lots of fun). I have recently finished my first Bibliometric Report, which had a tight deadline but I enjoyed every minute. Currently I am compiling databases for the InCites tool linked to Web of Science used in bibliometric analysis.

I am very interested in Bibliometrics, especially the data analysis and calculations and Cataloguing, in particular Classifying material using the UDC . 

In the future I look forward to learning more about classifng material, also more about Bibliometrics and Altmetrics.

Thing 1: Setting up your blog

I have just  signed up for the 23 Things Course Rudaí 23. The first step is to create a blog.

Ta-Dah!