For thing 2 I looked at a handful of blogs from the list of participants on Delicious. How did I choose which blogs from the many to go to? Well, it’s all in the name for me. I did however try not to go to too many UK blogs, as I see the global reach of this programme a great benefit. I also tried not to pick too many academic librarians.

Of the 20 or so blogs I looked at I commented on four and I will be subscribing to their RSS feeds to follow their progress through the programme. They are:

• Info Glut
• Lib Gloss
• Miss Scarlet in the Library
• Odd Librarian Out

And finally, I will leave you with a picture that sums up exactly how I feel about comments:

by miss miah

Over the next few months I will be participating in the CPD23 programme, 23 Things for Professional Development. Whilst the tasks that I complete as part of this will form the bulk of content on this blog over the summer I will also try to post additional stuff too. I did consider setting up a separate blog but as I use this blog as a reflection tool for my CPD already it seemed foolish to separate the two.

This is the third time I will be taking part in a 23 things programme, but this time there are some key differences…

by  familymwr

Firstly, I am in no way involved in running it. Which is great! My two previous experiences of the programme have been as a member of the team delivering the programme so I’m really looking forward to taking part solely as a participant.

Secondly, the content and themes covered in this programme have a different focus. Both Ox23 and UoW23 were about introducing the participants to social media sites, showing their relevance to libraries and how they can be used by librarians. While CPD23 covers some of those topics, blogging and current awareness for example, it goes broader than that. It also looks at creating a personal brand, networking offline (as well as on), opportunities for training, and advocacy.

So that’s me and thing 1 done.

I have 43 subscriptions in my “Information + Libraries” folder in GoogleReader. Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about dropping a few as I am finding that more and more the unread items are building up. I’m sure I can cut it down simply by taking out a few that are no longer being updated but that doesn’t sort out the mountain of unread items. So the actual number of subscriptions doesn’t matter it’s the frequency at which they are updated. Should I then just drop the prolific authors? Surely not if the content they’re posting is relevant and interesting. It’s clear I’m going to have to find some other way of identifying which feeds to keep.

There are two ways I could approach this

1. I could create a wonderful algorithm that takes into account the frequency of posts, their relevance, how often I skip over them, link through to them, mark them as favourites or to read later.
2. I could get drastic and say if I were forced at gunpoint to choose just ten, which would I keep?

You’ve guessed it, I’m going for the latter. These blogs made the list because they are consistently entertaining, informative and inspiring. Without further ado here they are:

• In the Library with the Lead Pipe – a group blog discussing issues that impact academic, public and school libraries.
• Info-mational – written by Char Booth, E-Learning Librarian at UC Berkeley.
• Information Tyrannosaur – written by Andy Burkhardt, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Champlain College.
• Joeyanne Libraryanne – written by Jo Alcock, Resources Librarian at the University of Wolverhampton and current ILS student.
• Librarian by Day – written by Bobbi Newman, transliteracy guru.
• Librarians on the Loose – written by Emma Illingworth and Sarah Ison, librarians at the University of Brighton.
• Library Bazaar – written by Fiacre O’Duinn, a librarian in Hamilton, Ontario.
• Libreaction – written by Andy Priestner, Head Librarian at Judge Business School.
• Organising Chaos – written by Laura, aka Woodsiegirl, law librarian and current ILS student.
• Swiss Army Librarian – written by Brian Herzog, a reference librarian at Chelmsford Public Library, Chelmsford MA.

This year in Oxford we have 23 graduate trainees working in different college and OULS libraries. Last week I attended the first of their weekly training sessions. This included a discussion of their hopes and concerns for the year ahead and a presentation from a former trainee who has gone on to qualify and is now working in a government library in her first professional post.

My part in the session was to talk about the use of web 2.0 tools in libraries. This was really just an overview of some of the tools being used with examples of libraries in Oxford who are successfully engaging with their readers using social media. I began by asking them which tools they were using personally. The majority of the group were on Facebook but there were only a few on Twitter and just one who writes a blog. This is all about to change however as they become authors on the new Oxford Trainees blog. Their first task is to publish a short post introducing themselves and the library they are working in. The first one was posted yesterday and I’m very pleased to see that it was written by Charlotte Brooke the new trainee at my library

I’m really interested to follow the development of this blog. I think it is a much better platform than a static website to get the trainees talking and sharing their experiences from the year ahead.

Wow, I’ve finally done it and moved my blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org and you know what, it really wasn’t that hard. The hardest part was trying to choose a theme from the thousands now available to me!

For those of you who have ever wondered how the transition works here’s a brief run down of the steps I’ve taken today:

1. Found a host – DreamHost – and set up an account. This includes registration of a domain.
2. Used the one-click install available from DreamHost to set up wordpress.org
3. Followed the instructions sent by email from DreamHost to set up my WordPress admin account and import my existing wordpress.com blog.
4. And finally the really fun stuff, chose a new theme and worked on the look of my new blog.

Now I know I’ve got a long way to go to get my head around all the plugins and extras on wordpress.org but I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved in just a few hours today.