From the latest issue, v41i2:
First of all, apologies for the insanely long list of reports, white papers, etc. I'm clearly obsessed. I think they are all freely available, although a couple may require registration to demonstrate a higher ed institutional affiliation.
This is a potential game-changer in the citation management wars.
The Beta version of Zotero 1.5 has been released.
The most notable new features are:
Syncing
- Automatic synchronization of collections among multiple computers. For example, sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home.
- Free automatic backup of your library data on Zotero’s servers.
- Automatic synchronization of your attachment files to a WebDAV server (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, or university-provided web storage).
Other New Features
- Automatic detection of PDF metadata.
- Automatic detection and support for proxy servers.
- Trash can with restore item functionality
- Rich-text notes
- A new style manager allowing you to add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats.
- Support for Endnote® export styles
Wow, is this ever a blast from the past.
For over 150 years, world's fairs have fascinated the general public with their blend of futuristic optimism and desire to entertain the masses. In 1967, the city of Montreal played host to Expo 67 from April to October. This particular world's fair also set a single-day attendance record when 569,000 visitors came on the third day it was open. The Library and Archives of Canada has created this virtual tour of the fair, complete with information about all the pavilions, activities, and special guests. In the "Pavilions" section, visitors can watch a movie about these unique structures, and also learn about how each country chose to represent their nation at the fair. Another section that's well-worth checking out is the "News Report" area. Here visitors can read some of the news headlines from that heady time. You won't want to leave the site without downloading the Expo 67 logo for your screen saver or checking out the theme song to the fair, "Hey Friend, Say Friend".
Yes, I know, I only planned two parts to this series but I have to admit that it's something that really interests me and I'm passionate about and I do keep finding more interesting posts to highlight. In that spirit, I hearby declare this series open-ended.
Once again, as Daniel Lemire so aptly puts it, Blogging is really part of our day jobs!:
I decided to copy Daniel Tunkelang’s idea and maintain a list of some people who read my blog. This is not meant to be an ego-boosting or name-dropping project. My goal is to prove that blogging is a serious business. Blogging is part of my day job! Indeed, this list proves that professional networking results from my blog.
The original idea of an e-portfolio was to help students keep a record of the work they did. This was intended to help them learn and show progress (the faculty and institution value) and get a job (the student's value). While there is some tension between the faculty and the students with their respective values, both are good simple goals.
Companies were set up to build technology to facilitate this collection and distribution of information, but times changed and new methods have become clear, easier, more effective, and cheaper.
Blogs are a much better way to go.
A simple rule of thumb: it's not an e-portfolio if Google can't find it. (emphasis added)
Some think marketing yourself is what you do when you need a new job, but in fact that’s not the case at all - it’s actually about having a voice in our industry, creating a name and reputation for yourself, and shaping the future. Also, there is a symbiotic relationship between any company you work for and your personal brand. Smart companies embrace this behavior because they understand the value in nurturing talent. Ideally, all parties win.
Take on marketing yourself as your personal challenge and an ongoing project with no end date. If you were an interior designer, would you hire someone else to furnish your house? I doubt it, what would that say about your skills as a designer? An interior designer’s proudest work should be their own interior, just as you should be your own personal case study of success.
The real trick isn’t to make it about you
Here’s a hint: market others, share their content, put them in the spotlight - don’t even worry about directly promoting yourself. The smartest way to market yourself is actually to make it not about you.
Ok, this is seriously odd:
What a great idea! In an area where there is lots of snow, and where most people are accomplished Nordic skiers, why not mobilise the chess enthusiasts amongst them to take part in a Chess Biathlon. You ski and stop, not to shoot at targets, but to solve chess puzzles. Is this the first time that such an event was staged? It is certainly worth emulating.
*snip*
As the students navigated the course, they stopped to write down solutions for the mate puzzles at the different stations. Some worked in pairs, others were solo. At the finish line everyone's course time was recorded. They each turned in their solutions sheets to the trail assistant. For each correct solution time was subtracted from their finishing mark. Incorrect solutions added time to the finish. Skipped puzzles added double the time.
And how come none of them have librar* in the title?
Here's a bunch of books I've read (or will be reading) to help me figure out what's going on.
Welcome to Part II of my musings on how a blog can help you in your professional life. Before going any further, you might want to check out Part I if you haven't seen that already.
I'd also like to be more explicit about chicken/egg of interplay between our passion and commitment to the profession that blogging brings out and how that directly feeds into concrete reputation-building and the benefits that may result. In general, I believe that if you blog to become famous (in other words, to explicitly build your reputation, with cynicism not passion), that will be your reputation. If you blog to share and grow and explore, it's that passion that will hopefully influence your reputation-building efforts and that any concrete benefits that you accrue will reflect that.
Blogging isn't for everyone. Blog because it's what you want to do, not because you feel you have to.
That being said, I really I really like how bluntly Neville Hobson puts it: Your Blog is Your CV.
What do you want people to find out about you? Time to think about that. And if there’s anything you’ve posted about yourself that you’d rather clean up, let’s say, read Scoble’s post as it has some good advice on what to do to sort that out.
Hmm, let’s change the title of this post. This works better: Google is your CV.
Barden
1. You Need to Choose a Topic You Know and Like. (This is number one)
2. You need to enjoy Writing. (You need to enjoy thought promotion and learning. I hated writing before I started blogging. Just believe in what you are writing about)
6. You don’t usually get links by asking for them.
8. Your posts need to be different
10. You’ll meet some great people. (Amen)
Lacy
4. Use Google Alerts for content ideas. It has worked for me numerous times.
6. Get out into the community and network offline. It will help build further support
7. You should always put your blog URL on your business card and email signature.
8. Always measure the time you are spending online. If the return is not there… switch up your strategy.
9. Do not focus too intently on content. Get the thing written and change it later.
But I want to. I lead a hectic (possibly crazy…) academic life where I get to work with experts in many disciplines - I get a unique, perhaps privileged, view of the world and it’s one I want to share. For example, when I’ve been in a good panel, there is information to be shared and debate to be continued too - time to blog. And from where I sit, not only do I get to see things but I get to see the connections between things - what better mechanism than a blog for communicating that interconnectedness? So for me it’s not ego, it’s duty and the appropriate tool.
And it’s part of my research - research is about connectedness and i want to understand how to achieve it. I see a compelling analogy between the informal communications of the great scientists of old - the “invisible college” communicating by letter and annotated book margin - and the emerging research practices of open science and Science 2.0. I see the benefit in understanding how the scholarly knowledge cycle can evolve, especially in the context of the shift to digital and data-centric research.
But blogs are the professional’s curriculum vitae. They are a standing record of strong thin king about a subject. When you devote the time to put together a blog post covering your field, you’re likely doing this:
- Research
- Analysis
- Linking to others
- Establishing your voice
- Influencing the thinking of others
- Showing the ability to pull together longer form thinking, a requirement in professional work
My own experience is that if you blog, every so often you pop out a signature piece. The kind of post that resonates with others and establishes your position in your field. These blog posts receive a lot of views, get linked to and turn up in Google searches. When you get one of these, congratulations! You have successfully put your flag in the ground for your field.
Tweets don’t do that. Tweets create a tapestry of someone, they foster ambient awareness. This has value in its own right. But they’re not vehicles for heavier thinking. They don’t demonstrate your capacity to size up an issue or idea and bring it home.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn now lets you add blogs to your professional profile. What’s going to be more valuable to you when people are running searches? Tweets or well-thought blog posts?
I just registered for something called BookCamp Toronto:
BookCampToronto is a free unconference about:
The future of books, writing, publishing, and the book business in the digital age.
DETAILS:
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009 (9am-5pm)
Location: MaRS Centre 101 College Street [map]
Cost: FREE!
What to bring: Your ideas about the future of books.
For more info see:
http://bookcampto.pbwiki.com
or, contact:
Hugh McGuire
hugh@bookoven.com
+1.514.464.2047
A couple of conference announcements have crossed my real and virtual desks lately and I think that they are both more than interesting enough to warrant a mention.
First of all, thanks to Sharon Murphy of Queens for bringing The Sixth International Conference on Innovation and Practices in Engineering Design and Engineering Education to my attention at OLA this past week. The conference is July 27 - 29, 2009 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
From the general call for papers:
The sixth CDEN International Design Engineering Conference will focus on design innovation and engineering education that are such essential ingredients of creating a new future for the people of Canada and the world. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the philosophy of design; tools and techniques for effective and successful design; methods and tools for designing to meet needs; methods for and research into the assessment of design; teaching and promoting design; humanitarian design; design successes and failures; tear-downs of designs and design-processes; the infrastructure required for design; lessons and methods used in non-engineering design fields; design for commercialization; and related topics.
The goal of the conference is to explore design practice and teaching that leads to better lives for Canadians.
Although curriculum reform has been on engineering minds for some time, it is clear that reforms are difficult to sustain and diffuse, and often even when innovations are won, it is difficult to maintain the organizational will to continually improve and adapt. Indeed, the problem of effective educational transformation is as much organizational and political as it is pedagogical and curricular; and it may be the case that effective engineering education transformation requires not a top-down approach, but rather an open-source approach in which diverse voices gather at the grassroots with a variety of views and methodological approaches and openly and actively share best practices.
To explore this possibility, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and the University of Illinois have joined forces to put on the Summit on the Engineer of the Future 2.0. The event will be held on April 1, 2009 (Wednesday, with opening reception the night before) at Olin College in Needham, MA and will feature a keynote talk by Dean Karan Watson, Texas A&M, a panel discussion of successful engineers of the future (recent grads 5-10 years out with a track record of entrepreneurial, corporate, organizational, or societal success), and brainstorming and involvement sessions in the afternoon. The event will be followed on Thursday with the opportunity to visit Olin College.
I was just going to call this post "On Blogging" but I decided I like Robert Scoble's rather provocative statement better. This is not to say that I agree with his rather extreme stance, because I definitely don't, but I think it's an interesting way to frame this rather long list of links I've collected over the last little while.
The point here is to make the case that blogging is good for your career. It's been good for me and it's been good for a lot of other people and I think it has potential for everyone.
Now, is everyone a blogger-in-waiting? Of course not. Would absolutely everyone actually benefit from blogging? Probably not. And if absolutely everyone did take up blogging, would the massive amount of noise generated actually cancel itself out and end up hardly benefiting anyone at all? Probably.
That being said, let's take a look at what's been making me think about blogging lately.
First of all, let's take a look at the Wired article that started all the fuss:
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.
Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.
Beyond brand-hungry strivers, masses of free laborers continue to toil without ever seeing a payday, or even angling for one. Many find compensation in currencies that predate the market economy. These include winning praise from peers, earning an exalted place within a community, scoring thrills from winning, and finding satisfaction in helping others.
Attention is easy to measure:
- You can record the number of people subscribing to your blog.
- You can count the number of people citing your research papers.
- You can point to your number of followers on Twitter or your number of friends on Facebook.
However, I do not blog or write research papers merely to grab attention. Instead, I seek to increase my reputation. While attention fluctuates depending on your current actions, reputation builds up over time based on your reliability, your honesty, and your transparency. To build a good reputation, you do not need to do anything extraordinary: you just need to be consistent over a long time.
A list of reasons why every library school student should become a blogger:
- Self-promotion.
Let's face it: when you apply for your first full-time gig after graduation, your potential employer will be going through a stack of CVs from people just like you, and every single candidate will have an MLIS, and the vast majority of them will have some experience working in the field. If you don't make your CV stand out, it will never make it to the top of the pile, so you need something to show how special you are. Blogging shows that you're interested in the field and have ideas to contribute, so when you include your blog's URL on your CV, employers will take notice...- Becoming part of the community
As students, we're already part of a community; library programs tend to be small enough that we get to know most of our classmates, and this is important since we will likely work with many of these people in the future. But wouldn't it be great to have a network of contacts outside of school, made up of people who share your interests and are able to provide advice and support?...- The opportunity to put your thoughts into writing
If you're like me and enjoy writing, then keeping a blog is a fun way to organize your thoughts. If you're not like me, then keeping a blog is a way to encourage yourself to practice your writing.
Blogging is dangerous for non-tenured faculty: Blogging will not get you tenure. Neither will giving talks worldwide. Tenure is usually granted because you were able to hold a decent research program, and you showed respect for the students. However, if blogging prevents you from getting tenure, something is very wrong with your blogging or your school...
Serious researchers have no time for blogging: Indeed, there is always another paper to write and more time to spend at the library, isn’t there? Let me quote Downes on this: If you are spending time in meetings, spending time traveling or commuting to work, spending time reading books and magazines, spending time telephoning people (or worse, on hold, or playing phone tag) then you are wasting time that you could be spending connecting to people online.
Blogging distracts you away from the research: bloggers do not tend to write about their latest research results. We tend to write about ideas that will not make it into our research papers. Is it a distraction? It might be, but does blogging cause you to lose focus in your research? I doubt it...
Thanks to Kris Fitzpatrick of the IEEE for pointing me to this rather extensive list of business books from 2008.
The catagories include General, Strategy, Life Stories, Marketing, Rhetoric, Innovation, Globalization, Human Capital, Capitalism and Community, Management and Miscellany.
In particular, there are a number of very interesting-looking books on community building. The relevant ones from all the lists are here:
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