Well, dear readers, you will perhaps be pleased to know that this exercise has inspired me to go forth and create other blogs. With the encouragement of my team leader, I have created a blog for our Monographs team to use. I have set up this blog so that it is only visible to blog authors and then invited my colleagues to become joint authors. Thus we can use this blog for internal news and communication without bothering the rest of the world with our specific business. I am still going about the business of getting all my teammates signed up and we will have to see how much use is made of it, but I am hopeful that it will become a valuable communication tool for our group.
As well as this new blog for work, I have also set up not one, but two new personal blogs of my own. One for general thoughts and random ravings and one for my poems. I don't know if these blogs will attract any readers but that is not really the point. If having some new blogs inspires me to write more then the small effort of creating them will have been worth while.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Out of sight, out of my mind?
I have been working in libraries for ... [quick count on fingers] about 17 years now. Sadly[?], apart from some of my early prac placements and a brief stint in the serials department at Sydney University, I have never been allowed to interact with actual library patrons. Having started my library career in Tech Services, first at NSW State Library and then Fisher Library at Sydney University, I have been typecast by my experience as a behind the scenes, tech services, resource discovery, type of Library Technician. Fortunately, some natural aptitude for cataloguing and by now a wealth of experience, has seen me develop a successful and, in its own way, rewarding career as one of the hidden library workers that the public never sees.
I do sometimes wonder though, what it would be like to join my colleagues 'at the coal face', actually meeting and [hopefully] helping those members of the public who [so I hear] actually come in to the library with their questions and their problems and their quests for knowledge, instead of participating in the great unseen work that makes it possible for those questions to be answered, problems solved and quests resolved.
There have been opportunities from time to time, to transfer to other areas of the library, or to participate in weekend rosters and thus come face to face with the fabled library patrons, but so far, family responsibilities and my involvement in various musical groups have kept me to the weekday, daylight hours of the backstage library worker.
One of my musical friends sometimes comes to the library to meet me for lunch. I get a phone call from Reception and emerge blinking from my hidden lair in the depths of the library. Lee tells my other musical friends that I must be locked away from the public areas lest I frighten the patrons with my unnatural pallor and haunted gaze as I emerge from the dank prison in which I work. I have perhaps played down the fact that I actually work on the top floor of the library with panoramic views of the Brisbane River and the CBD on the far side. It doesn't hurt to grab a little sympathy when you can get it.
Perhaps now that my children are teenagers and I have cut down on my musical activities, I will be able to take up any new opportunity to work directly with the public. On the other hand, perhaps I will just keep working away quietly in the background, as so many of us do, to enable the great Work of the Library to continue.
I do sometimes wonder though, what it would be like to join my colleagues 'at the coal face', actually meeting and [hopefully] helping those members of the public who [so I hear] actually come in to the library with their questions and their problems and their quests for knowledge, instead of participating in the great unseen work that makes it possible for those questions to be answered, problems solved and quests resolved.
There have been opportunities from time to time, to transfer to other areas of the library, or to participate in weekend rosters and thus come face to face with the fabled library patrons, but so far, family responsibilities and my involvement in various musical groups have kept me to the weekday, daylight hours of the backstage library worker.
One of my musical friends sometimes comes to the library to meet me for lunch. I get a phone call from Reception and emerge blinking from my hidden lair in the depths of the library. Lee tells my other musical friends that I must be locked away from the public areas lest I frighten the patrons with my unnatural pallor and haunted gaze as I emerge from the dank prison in which I work. I have perhaps played down the fact that I actually work on the top floor of the library with panoramic views of the Brisbane River and the CBD on the far side. It doesn't hurt to grab a little sympathy when you can get it.
Perhaps now that my children are teenagers and I have cut down on my musical activities, I will be able to take up any new opportunity to work directly with the public. On the other hand, perhaps I will just keep working away quietly in the background, as so many of us do, to enable the great Work of the Library to continue.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Dear readers
This blog has been created as part of the the State Library of Queensland's 'License 2 test drive' online learning program. This is not my first blog. I have been blogging on Myspace for about a year and a half. I expect the content of this blog will be somewhat different from what I have posted on Myspace.
While I don't consider myself a novice in the web 2.0 world of social networking and already have a presence on myspace, facebook, flickr etc. I am still expecting to learn new things through this program.
This blog has been created as part of the the State Library of Queensland's 'License 2 test drive' online learning program. This is not my first blog. I have been blogging on Myspace for about a year and a half. I expect the content of this blog will be somewhat different from what I have posted on Myspace.
While I don't consider myself a novice in the web 2.0 world of social networking and already have a presence on myspace, facebook, flickr etc. I am still expecting to learn new things through this program.
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