Final Thoughts

Made it! So, in the end, what do I think?

Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay

I did this as a way of trying to stay connected with my library, its collections and its people.

Did it work? 

Maybe for a handful of the posts - let's not forget, this was an archive prompt list originally, so some of the posts worked better than others. I enjoyed the library people one, although I spent far too long on Canva trying to design a tree and not enough time actually thinking about the people I'm currently not seeing. And it was fun to rifle through a few of the items I'd brought home with me, trying to find something to match each prompt.

I definitely feel that I lost momentum towards the end, whether it was lockdown fatigue, prompt fatigue or a combination of the two I don't know. But I'm pleased that I still stuck it out - even on weekends! Hopefully I'll feel it has more value when I return to work (which I hope will be in a few months).

Communication and sharing

I thought it was quite interesting though that I didn't see many people share their own responses to the prompt list. I'm not an archivist, and don't follow huge numbers of archivists on Twitter, but I did expect to see a bit more takeup - though I guess lockdown has affected us all, and certainly not all equally. It must be pretty hard trying to share magnificent pieces in your collections if they've not already been digitised or available on the web before lockdown.

Would I do it again?

I do like prompt lists, whether I decide to stick with the prompt or not (see Something Scary). I need a breather from posting every day though! Give it a year and we'll see. Or maybe less time, but definitely let's have the weekends off in the future.

Verdict

Woohoo, and Phew, in that order. And give me a beer.

Musical (and other) developments

One of my non-work accomplishments
over the last few months: Jolteon!

I think it's been a long time and I need to update again. I have been blogging fairly regularly, just not here! 

Firstly (just to get it out the way), I got back into crocheting again, and finished off a number of projects, including a couple which I'd been working on for many months, so my crochet blog got updated quite heavily. 

Secondly, from mid-August to the end of December last year, I was lucky enough to get a secondment to the University Library Music Department and the Pendlebury Library of Music, and they have a blog between them, which I took part in updating. These were my posts - hope you like!

• Meet....Diana Wood
• A New Year Begins
• Hallowe'en & Birtwistle
• Marking time, pushing paper
• So long, farewell

In particular, I won't regurgitate my reflections about the time I spent there, since I covered that in my last blogpost with them. I will say it was wonderful to work with a team, to learn lots of new skills, to see how others works (and bring back the best/most efficient bits of their workflows, while helping them streamline theirs where possible!). I hope they gained something useful from having me there, too!

It did come at a rather odd time though (what with other things going on at my library and in my personal life), and I've come back to my work with something of a sense of frustration that time has rather stood still in the library while I've been away. There are some projects I'm very excited about that have been accomplished, including a massive bequest of books from an old curator having been processed so we now know what we have!

But there's a lot of work to catch up on, which is annoying when you come back with lots of fresh ideas and new initiatives that you want to try, and first you've got to get the general slogwork out the way before you can tackle anything new. Just don't mention periodicals to me for a while!

Still, while I do miss all the music, it is quite nice getting back to all the picture books! (Some of them, anyway..)

With every door that closes...

It has been a crazy-ass month and a half. I have done what I set out to do, namely:

• Written up and submitted my dissertation thereby (hopefully) finishing my Msc
• Planned, organised and got married at my wedding
• Gone on a wonderful 2-week honeymoon to sunny Mexico, where we explored various Mayan ruins and sampled local culture (also many, many cocktails).

Here's a picture of the view from our balcony. Luxurious doesn't even begin to describe it! (But I can't help but feel we kind of earned it!)

Now that they're done,  I've been reflecting on it all a bit (and frankly, putting off the mounds of work I've got to catch up on having been away from my desk for nearly a month).

It's done...so what?

I'm pretty sure I remember feeling overwhelmed and slightly bricking it at the prospect of getting it all done, to the very, very strict, absolutely-no-leeway-whatsoever deadlines (I'd be kicked off the course on 30th April, the date of the wedding was unchangeable). And yet, now it's all over, I'm emerging, blinking in the light of day and not only saying "What was I worried about?", but also "Huh, shouldn't I feel a sense of accomplishment?"

I do have to bear in mind that I haven't passed the degree until the university says I do. Academically, I feel I probably have, even though I felt that what I wrote was inadequate, but until the certificate comes through, there's always the doubt, particularly since hindsight is 20:20 and you can always spot improvements you could have made. But even so, it was a big deal, wasn't it? And I did it, no? I feel relieved, certainly, that it's all over, but not proud, exactly...

Work of art or merely artifice?

One thing I distinctly felt while I was in the process of writing up, was just how artificial the process seemed. I couldn't shake the feeling of "you're testing my ability to compose a structured 10,000-word essay, you're not testing my library skills". I had a major problem in that my supervisor and I were largely incompatible, and I got little support, which meant that right up to the point where I had to submit it, I'd received little feedback, and I had pretty much no idea whether what I was doing was right. My "research", for I am singularly loathe to call it that, was not good, but I can write well, and argue convincingly.

But the librarian as an academic researcher is only one of the avenues librarians can take. Why then, should it be such an integral part of the degree? I have pretty much no intention (currently!) of undertaking any further research in this way, so to spend half of a degree to prove I can, rather than finding out whether or not I can actually help the patrons/would-be-patrons of the library I work in (which to my mind is far more important), seems unnecessary. To all those who exited with the diploma, I say "good call", and wish I could have done more modules to get the Masters instead.

To thine own self be true...

So the lack of sense of achievement, but the fact that I got things done, and the feeling that coursework is guff - these are all leading up to the fact that ultimately, I'm an exams person. I know this, and that's why I planned it so that the wedding and the dissertation submission date were close together. Give me pressure, see me thrive. So I got everything done in time, and that was fine. But the other aspect of being an exams person is the single focal point of achievement. It's kind of like needing instant gratification, I think. I need a "crisis moment", a sink-or-swim event, to know whether I can really deliver. Exams, concerts, tournaments, or even just having someone come into the library with a really tricky question - these are how I know whether the work I've done has been sufficient.

I hated coursework at school. To my mind, being left to do the work with resources on hand gives very little idea of whether the individual actually knows anything. Exams, where I had nothing except the knowledge I'd gained and the analytical skills I possessed, felt like a much fairer test. I know the arguments for and against, and the people who suffered exam panic, and being able to memorize facts not a true test of knowledge, so I'm not going to say outright that exams are the true test of a person's knowledge and understanding. But they felt a true test of my knowledge and understanding.

This sounds terribly negative, doesn't it? I don't mean it to, and maybe with greater distance I'll feel more positive about it! But I guess the greater implications of having done the degree are yet to be borne out. We'll see, and in the meantime, I've still got thank you letters to write, wedding gifts to find room for, and a job to return to!

Oh to be an Aaronson...

I wonder how many of my fellow Cam23ers are doing the same as me? "Have done something not entirely unrelated to 23 Things - MUST BLOG ABOUT IT!!!"

The Closing Ceremony was a typically glamorous and glitzy affair, featuring wine and balloons with a strong performance by supporting nibbles. I felt overwhelmed by the number of little groups all chatting and laughing uproariously but was swiftly adopted by a couple of UL staff.

The talks were so good. Helen's ability to orate so fluidly without props or cues of any kind is nothing short of amazing, and Angela's dissection of the experience was very humorous. And I'm signed up to TeachMeet as a lurker and really looking forward to it now! (Oh dear, there's that word really again. Didn't my Wordle teach me anything?)

But it was then to be the most gruelling experience of my life¹ as I waited with bated breath to hear whether or not I had actually passed. I mean, I was fairly sure I had, but until I had that certificate in my hand, I wasn't going to be popping the cork on any champagne.

And then?

It flippin' ran alphabetically, didn't it! But after 60 rounds of applause, I heard my name called, and if that wasn't sufficient (I know for a fact that I'm not the only person with my name in the University), there was a picture of my blog, with my lolcat image filched for my blogpost about Wikipedia. Phew. I passed. Officially.

And here's the proof.

Success!!!

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¹ Okay, maybe not the most gruelling. Perhaps the nineteenth most, between having to teach plagal cadences to A level students at number 20 and falling out of a bobsleigh² travelling at about 30 mph in the Netherlands at number 18.

² Just a few friction burns and the feeling of life passing before my eyes, other than that I was fine. Wasn't allowed to go on the zipline afterwards though.

And finally...My Word!(le)

I did a Wordle when I first started this blog - you can see it in the sidebar on the right. (If it's not, go here.)

Now check out my latest one!

I'm quite pleased with the big words that feature there - think, use, like, library...if nothing else I can say I probably "got" the purpose of the 23 Things! Obvious Web2.0 words appear too - Googe, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr. The one thing I have noticed is that I really need to stop using the word "really"! (But you'll be hard pushed to find a "very" there!)

It's been fun, but now I'd better get back to my backlog of cataloguing. Those books aren't going to magically process themselves, more's the pity.

Thing 23? I'm not stopping here!

A week ago, when the end was in sight, but not quite in reach, I thought I'd be writing this post with relief.

Instead, what I am finding is a remarkable sense of pride at the Things I have accomplished. In just a few months I have learnt so much about what Web2.0 has to offer and how I can use it, and share it, and enhance our services with it. I am in awe of those who put together this programme for us in Cambridge - the enthusiasm and drive behind it is inspirational, and really serves to demonstrate just what we can do with a can-do attitude!

The fabulous Cam23 Team. As Wayne and Garth would say: We're not worthy!

It's been an interesting "12" weeks (okay, 16 then) - I came to it with a skeptical attitude, but with the willingness to learn and explore - to at least have a go without dismissing anything outright. There's still so much I have to discover, and experiment with, but I don't feel so completely overwhelmed by it all as I did even ten Things ago. There have been Things I've really struggled with (like podcasting and image use), but there's always been help at hand, and somehow or other I finally got there in the end!

I think the course itself was excellent. While I don't think there was an issue of too little time to achieve everything, I think perhaps a course like this would be better rolled out earlier within the academic year. What with exams, and end-of-year returning of books, then stock-takes and summer holidays, this time of year can be frenetic! (It didn't help that in our library, the entire staff was knocked out at some point over the last two weeks with illness.) If the course were to be repeated, I think it would work better starting in November or March. However, Web2.0 is the sort of thing you want to know about as soon as possible, so I'm glad I did it now rather than wait for a more convenient time!

On the whole, I found the instructions each week to cover pretty much everything I needed to know. The only real exception was the podcasting, and that was probably more due to my preferred learning style and my antipathy of all things Apple than any deficiency in the instructions themselves. I found most of the further reading interesting (though I have to own up and say I did only skim-read the Shirky article).

Since completing each Thing there have been Things I have stuck with, and Things I intend to try when I come to a point where I'll find them useful, and Things that I think I'll probably not return to. I have been logging in with greater and greater frequency to my iGoogle page (which I think I now have pretty much exactly how I like it), which automatically checks Twitter and Google Reader. I hadn't seen the attraction of Twitter at all before I started (despite being fond of updating my Facebook status quite regularly) but now I'm beginning to see the allure of a feed with no cruft on. And it was thanks to Google Reader that I got to go and see the utterly gorgeous Rhod Gilbert, courtesy of BBC's free tickets RSS, so I'm completely sold on that now!

I think I can cross a few of these off now...only a few hundred left to try!

Things like Zotero, Delicious and Slideshare I haven't yet really used beyond initial exploration, but before the 23 Things I didn't even know they existed, so for now it's just reassuring to know they're there when I need them. I do intend to try out Zotero when it comes to working on my next assignment, so we'll see how it goes then. However, despite having never heard of the Creative Commons aspect of imaging, I'm now sourcing images for every post, both through Flickr and elsewhere, so that Thing definitely counts as a success! Meanwhile, LinkedIn didn't really do anything for me, and I think if I were going to use Facebook for work, I'd set up another account for the "professional" me, rather than use the one I have.

Finally, I think I might just continue blogging (she says, before the next update comes three years hence). It's been a good record of what I've tried out, and I intend to keep learning about Web2.0, so hopefully I'll still feel a need to keep the record. I also could incorporate it as a study diary for my degree, as there's going to be some overlap. A few modules from now I will be looking at marketing of library services for one of my assignments, and Thing 19 will come in very handy for that!

One thing I have appreciated since doing the 23 Things is that there is almost a dichotomy between the spirit of social media ("just do it!"), and the way libraries have approached it. Social media is easy to use, and often free (as in beer and speech, and frequently as in kittens). That means that you can "just do it", but there are limitless examples of social media poorly utilised on the web. The good Web2.0 libraries have recognised this: that the strategy is key. There's absolutely no point saying "everyone's using Twitter (or YouTube, or Delicious), so we should be too," and then creating a presence simply for the sake of being there. The interaction between content-producers and their readers (or listeners, or viewers) is what makes Web2.0 so vital and dynamic. This should be why you're using these tools - to engage with others, to collaborate, to find shared meaning in an increasingly chaotic world, to create multi-directional channels of information - or just to share with the world what you had for to eat that morning...