See you in Brisbane

I'll be heading to Brisbane in February to present at Information Online 2013. My presentation is titled "Hide and seek in the library: Geocaching as an educational and outreach tool". At this stage it's on the program on Wednesday morning, so if you're free come along! You'll learn about what geocaching is, and how we used it as an outreach tool to encourage people to visit the library. There's some information that I'd like to include in my presentation that I don't think will fit within the time limit, so I'll probably post it here before the conference.

The final post for June

June 30th is here, which means it's time for the last #blogjune post. Some days it's been easier than others to come up with a post, but I guess that's to be expected. I plan to blog a bit more often, but probably not every day. I don't think I have enough to say to be able to do that.

If I get the chance I'll try and blog about my experience at the ALIA Biennial 2012 Conference, which is coming up in just over a week. It won't be a live blog of the sessions that I attend, but will be more likely an end-of-day summary (or possibly end-of-conference, depending on how I feel each evening).

Thanks for reading over the past month, and I hope that you've found the blog entertaining.

Lunchtime geocaching

A new cache was recently placed on the campus, and I kept meaning to go and look for it. It's located near a carpark, so it's hard to search for the cache without being seen. Well, now that it's the mid-year break, there are a lot less students around, so today I took the opportunity to find it.

I'd done a bit of reconnaisance of the area, and had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for and where the cache was hidden. I had tried to find it this morning before work, but there were some workmen close to the cache location, so I had to give it a miss. At lunchtime, however, the coast was clear, and I was able to make the find. That takes us to 240 finds, which only leaves us 10 short of 250. Hopefully we can get to this milestone during our trip to Canberra this weekend.

Build the library of your dreams

Google and Lego have teamed up to create Build With Chrome - a site which combines Google Maps with Lego bricks. As the name suggests, it only works with Google's Chrome browser. Currently the site only has a map of Australia and New Zealand, so we get to have a play before the rest of the world.

The idea behind the site is simple - find a vacant block of land using Google Maps, and build your Lego masterpiece, using up to 1,000 bricks. Once you're done, you can publish it for everyone to see. In order to publish a Lego creation, you need to either log in to your Google account, or provide an email address and/or date or birth.

Some very creative designs have already been produced - the Parramatta Eels logo at Parramatta Stadium, the Captain Cook water jet in Canberra, and Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

I had a bit of a play around and built a couple of things, and it is a bit of a novelty. It's not the same, though, as being able to handle and assemble the bricks as you create your own Death Star or Star Destroyer.

A reading program with a difference

Reading programs or book clubs are a common service offered by libraries, especially public libraries. A recent news article discusses a book club with a very exclusive membership and offering rather unique benefits.

As reported on the ABC website, authorities in Brazil have come up with a scheme which rewards prison inmates who read books with a reduction in their sentence. For every book they read and submit an essay on, they will receive four days off their sentence. It's certainly an interesting approach which aims to help improve prisoners' lives and prospects once they're released.

First programming unit finished

I've just finished the first unit in the CS101 Computer Science course run by Udacity. I enjoyed the fact that it's self-paced, and that you get immediate feedback on your answers to the quizzes. It's taken me longer than a week to finish it, but that doesn't really matter - I haven't set myself a deadline to finish the course by.

It's been fairly easy to understand the concepts. I haven't done any previous programming or computer science study, and the content is nicely packaged and presented so that you work through it at your own pace, and you can go back and review any of the previous topics at any time.

I'm certainly not planning to make a major career change and move into programming/software development. I guess I'm doing the course to try one of these new online learning systems, and also to increase my understanding of computer science. It's more for personal development rather than professional development.

One unit down, six to go!

Day with the boys

Our day started with Thomas' last session of Ready, Steady, Go Kids. He's done two terms, which means he's done all 10 sports that they offer. He seems to have enjoyed himself, and has done pretty well at them. We've enrolled him in Socca Joeys next, which starts in a couple of weeks. He's seen a couple of classes and was interested in having a go. The only problem is that he doesn't understand the concept of "a couple of weeks", and keeps thinking we're starting it "tomorrow".

To celebrate the end of Ready, Steady, Go Kids we went out for a babycino (which Blake was asleep for). After that it was a short walk to a nearby geocache which we hadn't found, and we found it after having a bit of a walk around the reserve that it's in. We're hoping to get to 250 geocache finds on our trip to Canberra this weekend. We seem to have reached our milestones when we've been on holidays - our 100th cache was in Port Macquarie and our 200th was in Port Stephens. We'd like to get close to 250 before we go so hopefully we can make it without too much trouble.

These boots are made for walkin'

This morning we all went for a walk to the park and the shops, and Blake walked along for a lot further than we thought he would. It was first time wearing the "monkey backpack" - one of those harnesses that are attached to a backpack that the kid wears. He decided that the hill was too hard, and got a lift from there to the park. It's great to see him growing up and becoming a bit more independent. He had fun at the park, and enjoys going down the slippery-dip by himself or with his big brother.

On the homeward stretch with #blogjune, I think I'm going to make it to 30 posts.

How now, brown cow

Today we went to the Family Farm Open Day at Hurlstone Agricultural High School. Dad went to school there, and he got an email about the day and let us know about it. The boys had a good time looking at all the animals, although I think Thomas' favourite was the fake cow which you could "milk". They were both a bit put off by the noise that one of the calves was making (Thomas decided to leave very quickly), and Blake wasn't too fond of the pigs. They were pretty big animals, so I guess to a 16-month old sitting in a pram down at their level they would have looked quite scary. We ended the day with a hay ride which they both enjoyed.

They boys do enjoy visiting farms and seeing the animals. My sister has done some house-sitting at a farm, and we've visited her while she's been there a couple of times. We've also been to the farm owned by a former work colleague of mine. We'll try and get to the Castle Hill Show next year, and maybe even take Thomas to the Royal Easter Show.

Are you an average Australian?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released the 2011 Census QuickStats. These show the totals and statistics within the categories of People, Families, and Dwellings. I'd thought I'd compare myself to these results to see if I'm an "average" Australian.

The median age of Australians is 37, so in that respect I'm slightly below average (I know that medians and averages are different concepts, but average is what I'm using. It's only a fun blog post after all). The median age of married people is 50, so in that regard I'm well below average.

English is the most common ancestry (25.9% of Australians), and with one ancestor who came out on the First Fleet and another who arrived on the Third Fleet, I fit into that category. Both my parents were born in Australia, which is the case for 53.7% of Australians.

The workforce data won't be available until 30th October, but there is some income data available now. My weekly income is higher than the median, so that's an above average for me.

My dwelling and household all appear to be average. We are a couple with children, which is the most common family type (44.6% of all families). Our dwelling is the most common dwelling type (occupied private dwelling), dwelling structure (separate house), number of bedrooms (3*), tenure (owned with a mortgage), and household composition (family household). When the Census was conducted we had one car (which was the second most common ownership), but we now have two (the most common ownership).

So it looks like I have the characteristics of an "average" Australian. How "average" are you?

* NB at the time of the Census we were using three bedrooms, but we've recently moved the boys into one bedroom, so we're technically down to two.

ALA Annual - ahhh, the memories

This year's American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference is on in Anaheim, starting tomorrow. Four years ago I was in Anaheim as a presenter as part of the New Members' Round Table (NMRT) President's Program. It was a great experience, and it was amazing at how massive everything was. There were over 20,000 delegates and there were sessions in several hotels within a radius of a couple of miles. There were shuttle buses to move people between venues. The exhibition was huge, and you could have spent a whole day just walking through it. I learnt the hard way that you needed to get to sessions early, as the very first session I went to was full by the time I got there. Often there were three or four sessions on at the same time that I wanted to attend, so it was hard to decide what to see.

There was time for fun too, because you can't go to Anaheim and not go to Disneyland (especially when the theme park is within walking distance). There was also the skill and elegance of the Book Cart Drill Teams. If you get the chance to attend an ALA Annual I'd recommend it.

New roles for academic librarians

The recent focus on research output and quality within the Australian higher education sector has had an impact on librarians who work in university libraries. There are two areas that have seen some new roles emerge which librarians are well-suited to.

The first is the use of bibliometrics by academic staff who are seeking promotion. Whereas previously a librarian may have been asked to check an academic's list of publications to ensure that it was complete, the same request now is most likely to also ask for h-index and journal impact factor information. As a result, libraries have had to come up with a range of guides and services to assist academic staff who are looking for this information. Indeed, the position of a "tenure librarian" has been suggested as a way that academic libraries can ensure that they are seen as an integral part of academic life.

The other new area where librarians are finding they have a role to play is in research data management. The Australian government has set up the Australian National Data Service to help make better use of Australian research output. Several university libraries have completed an ANDS-funded project to harvest research data produced by their academics, and add it to Research Data Australia. With universities focussing more on research data management, there will be more and more opportunities for libraries to be involved. We can use our skills in describing resources to help academic staff get their research output recognised and discovered.

Bubbles and towers

Today was the moment of truth for our washing machine. The technician was due between 7am and 12pm, and my wife and I had decided on the upper limit we were prepared to pay to have the machine fixed. If it was going to cost more than that, we'd replace it. So after getting up at 6:45am to be ready in case the repairman arrived at 7am, he arrived at 11:35am. The  verdict wasn't good - the pump and the electronic control unit both needed to be replaced, and for the price of that we could buy a new washing machine. So I think I know where we'll be going shopping this weekend.

The boys were really well-behaved this morning while we were stuck at home waiting for the technician to arrive. At Thomas' suggestion, we got out the bubble mixture and spent some time blowing bubbles. Blake wasn't too sure about how to blow them, and put the stick in his mouth twice. Of course, the couple of times he did blow some, I couldn't get the camera ready in time.

The technician arrived as we were packing up the bubble-making equipment, and once I showed him to the laundry I put Blake down for his sleep. While he was asleep, Thomas and I took the opportunity to build a tower out of Thomas' building blocks. We decided to try and use all the blocks and see if we could build a tower which was taller than Thomas. After a couple of shaky moments, we got there, and our masterpiece was complete.

So today was a bit of an alliteration day - Blake blew beautiful bubbles, and we built Thomas' terrifically tall tower.

Puzzling geocaches

There are several types of geocaches, including traditional, multi, virtual, and puzzle. As the name suggests, puzzle caches involve solving a puzzle of some sort in order to find them. Some of them give you a set of starting coordinates and then you need to gather clues in the area e.g. counting words on a sign, or getting numbers from a plaque, in order to calculate the final coordinates where the cache container is hidden.

Others require you to do some research beforehand to come up with the coordinates. These can range from brain-bendingly difficult (for me, anyway) to those which can be solved with a bit of brainpower. We're heading down to Canberra in a couple of weeks, and there are quite a lot of puzzle caches down there. I downloaded all the puzzle caches in NSW and the ACT a few weeks ago, and have slowly worked my way through them, starting with the easy ones.

I've managed to solve a few, and there's a wide variety of puzzle types. Some require decoding QR codes or nautical signal flags, or solving a Sudoku puzzle, or identifying Shakespeare's sonnets. There's a puzzle for everyone's interests and abilities. Hopefully I'll have time to find some during our Canberra trip.

That'd be right

The first fine and sunny weekend day we have for a couple of weeks, and I'm working. It wasn't too bad - there was enough going on to keep things interesting so I didn't get bored. The main excitement seemed to be at home, where our washing machine decided to give up the ghost halfway through a load of washing. Luckily it was the last load, so everyone has got enough clean clothes and sheets to last until Tuesday, when the technician is coming to check it out. Hopefully it will a quick and easy (and cheap) fix.

Toy storage solved

We think we've solved our toy storage problem in the boys' playroom. Yesterday we bought a shelving unit from Kmart, and when the boys were in bed we assembled it. To be honest I preferred assembling Ikea furniture, because at least there's a bit of variety in the job. For these shelves it was just a lot of threading nuts onto screws and tightening them - quite repetitive. We got into a good rhythm by the end of it, though, and the shelves are now in the wardrobe with the boys' boxes of toys all stacked away neatly. It's nice to be able to give the boys a room of their own to play in, and they seem to enjoy using it.

Correcting newspapers in Trove

I've come across another pastime which I've been working on over the last few months. I'm helping out with correcting the OCR'd text from digitised Australian newspapers which are being loaded into Trove. It's a very simple, but addictive, task which anyone can do. All you have do is search the newspapers on Trove, and see if there are any corrections which need to be made to the electronically translated text. If so, you can make the corrections straight away. The original text remains untouched (so that any vandalism can be reverted), it's only the OCR text which changes. The aim is to make it easier to search Trove by making sure that the machine-readable text is accurate.

The Manager of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Project at the National Library of Australia, Rose Holley, has written several publications describing this crowdsourcing effort, including:

• Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It?
• Many Hands Make Light Work: Public Collaborative OCR Text Correction in Australian Historic Newspapers
• A success story - Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, 2009
• Harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation: new opportunities for libraries in a time of change

I think helping out with this project is something that librarians are well-suited to. We generally have a good eye for detail, and we like to ensure that our clients have access to accurate information. So next time you're searching in Trove, do a quick search in the newspapers on a topic that interests you, and see what comes up. Maybe you could see if there any articles that relate to your local area e.g. on historically important people or places, or even your own library. However, I should warn you thast it's quite addictive once you start.

There are similar crowdsourcing projects whhich have been set up by libraries around the world. Rose Holley lists three of them in her blog - one in Finland (correcting newspapers), one in New York (correcting digitised recipes in the New York Public Library's collection), and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University (describing digitised music scores). There is also Distributed Proofreaders, which carries out proofreading and formatting of public domain e-books for Project Gutenberg and other public domain e-book providers. There's something for everyone, so why not become part of the crowd?

Thank goodness for duct tape

When I bought the luggage box for the roof of the car a couple of weeks ago, there was a sale on duct tape (half price), so I bought a roll. Since then it's been used to re-attach the handle to the boys' magnifying glass, fix the neck of the broken toy guitar, and tape together one of the struts in the boys' collapsible car-shaped tent. Very useful stuff - no wonder the Mythbusters could survive on a desert island with nothing but a pallet of duct tape.

Strictly speaking, I don't think the tape I bought is duct tape, as it's black rather than silver and is more vinyl than cloth. Still, it's handy to have some around the house.

MOOCs - a student's perspective

MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) are a relatively recent addition to the education sector. They're already having an impact on the way that traditional universities think about and teach their courses. The faculty Learning and Teaching Committee that I'm on recently held a meeting where we had a look at some of the MOOCs that are out there, such as Khan Academy, Udacity, and Coursera. Some of the common features include the ability to enrol at any time, the self-paced nature of the coursework, and the focused nature of the online content that they produce.

I thought I'd give it a go, so I enrolled in the Udacity course CS101 - Intro to Computer Science. It was easy to enrol - all I needed to provide was a username and password. So far I've watched a couple of the videos and answered the first two multiple choice quizzes. It's nice to be able to study in my own time without the pressure of having a timeframe to meet. There is a final exam which is held every eight weeks, so you do get a final grade at the end of the course. However, you can take the course again if you're not happy with your mark and try to improve it.

What can librarians take away from the emergence of MOOCs? I think the main one is to keep our online content short and sweet and to the point. Most of the videos produced by MOOCs are fairly short, and they don't try to cram too much into them. Students can dip in and out of them and only watch the videos that deal with the specific content that is relevant to them. This is something that librarians should keep in mind when producing online tutorials.

I'll let you know how I go with my programming course. Apparently we'll learn how to build a search engine in seven weeks, so it should be interesting to see how they work.

Play School and e-books

I took the boys on our regular trip to storytime at the local public library this morning. While I was there, I borrowed the biography of John Hamblin, who was one of the presenters on Play School when I watched it as a kid. Sounds like it could be an interesting read.

This is actually the first hardcopy book I've borrowed from the library in a few months. I received a Kobo e-reader for my birthday in November, and since then all my reading has been done with e-books. The vast majority have been borrowed from my public library, which has the Overdrive service. I've bought a couple of e-books, but only because I had a voucher to spend.

I think it's pretty safe to say that I've made the switch from print to electronic books for my reading. It wasn't a conscious decision on my part, but since I've had the Kobo, it just seems natural to focus on electronic books. There's a good range available via Overdrive, so I'm happy for the moment.

Another wet Sunday

We haven't had much luck with the weather over the last couple of weekends. It was wet last weekend for our trip to the Central Coast, and now it's wet again today. After a couple of busy days rearranging furniture, it was nice to have some fun at home with the boys.

This morning we all got dressed in our wet weather gear and went out in the rain for a little bit. The boys enjoyed jumping in the puddles in the gutter, and Thomas put a bowl and cup out in the rain to collect some rainwater to drink. Afterwards we had nice warm baths and showers, followed by soup for lunch.

The new playroom continued to pass the test, and today we had a fold-up car-shaped tent in there. Somehow all four of us managed to squeeze in there at the same time. It was a bit like one of those "how many uni students can you fit in a Mini" competitions, but we all made it. A good fun day to finish off the long weekend.

So many toys, so little space

Well, today was day 2 of our room rearranging project. We had a brainwave late last night which we put into action this morning. It involved returning one chest of drawers back to its original room, and then moving the bookcase. It all went pretty smoothly, and the way the weather turned out, it was a good day to be inside.

I took the boys out for a play on a pirate ship-themed play area at a local shoping centre, so they could get out of the house for a little while. They also got a treat (babycino and cupcake) for being so well behaved while my wife and I were moving furniture.

As I mentioned yesterday, it's the toy storage that's our next problem to solve. We just need a bit more shelving or some other sort of storage unit to finish it all off. All in all, though, we're pretty happy with what we've managed to achieve over the last couple of days.

What a day it's been

In the words of Hoot the Owl, from Giggle and Hoot, "What a day it's been". As I mentioned in a previous post, we were thinking of moving the boys into one bedroom, to free up a room for a play room. Well, this afternoon we made the move. A bed was disassembled and reassembled, chests of drawers were moved, and the craft cupboard was relocated. There's still one big job to do, and that's to move the bookcase from the bedroom into the play room. We're pretty pleased with how much we got done in a fairly short time.

The boys seem happy with the new arrangements, so hopefully we won't need to move everything back. All we need to do now is figure out how to store all their toys.

What's this geocaching all about, then?

I've posted previously about my geocaching activities, and today my post about geocaching and libraries was published on the ALIA Sydney blog as part of #blogjune. Have a read if you want some ideas on how geocaching can encourage users into your library.

Academic libraries in the news

Over the last couple of days, three reports and articles discussing academic libraries have been published. So what is the current state of play with regards to academic libraries? Do these North American trends translate into the Australian environment?

Inside Higher Ed has a blog post titled "Academic Librarians As Campus Hubs", written by an academic at a US university, who thinks that academic librarians are uniquely placed to help make connections between other staff and groups within a university. There are three characteristics of the library and librarians which makes this possible:

• Physical space - usually in a central location on campus
• Interdisciplinary focus - librarians work with a range of academic staff from across campus so can see possible connections easily
• Service orientation - making connections could be seen as an extension of the other library services which are provided

The ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) released a white paper "Connect, Collaborate, and Communicate: A Report from the Value of Academic Libraries Summits", which came out of the Value of Academic Libraries Initiative. The key findings from the summits were:

• Increase librarians’ understanding of library value and impact in relation to various dimensions of student learning and success. 
• Articulate and promote the importance of assessment competencies necessary for documenting and communicating library impact on student learning and success.
• Create professional development opportunities for librarians to learn how to initiate and design assessment that demonstrates the library’s contributions to advancing institutional mission and strategic goals
• Expand partnerships for assessment activities with higher education constituent groups and related stakeholders.
• Integrate the use of existing ACRL resources with library value initiatives

Finally, the June 2012 issue of College & Research Libraries (the journal of the ACRL) has an article discussing the 2012 top ten trends in academic libraries. The trends which were identified are: 

• Communicating value
• Data curation
• Digital preservation
• Higher education
• Information technology
• Mobile environments
• Patron driven e-book acquisition
• Scholarly communication
• Staffing
• User behaviors and expectations

There are a couple of themes which are coming through in these discussions. Ensuring that the library is able to let the rest of the university know what they're doing and the benefits that can flow from working with the library is one of them. Building on our strengths in service provision to look for non-traditional services that the library can provide, e.g. research data management, is another area that academic libraries can pursue.

It is an exciting time to be an academic librarian, I think, and it will be interesting to see how these trends play out.

Robots revealed

One of the most prominent features of the new Macquarie University Library is the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). It's a high-density storage system which houses 800,000 of the library's 1.3 million items. The items which are in there are books which haven't been borrowed or purchased in the last five years, as well as bound serials older than two years, and all our DVDs and microform material. Due to its climate-controlled environment, it's also the perfect place to store our Rare Book Collection and other restricted access items.

This is the first ASRS in an Australian library, and we worked hard to explain the technology and the requesting process to olur clients. There's more information available about our clients' perceptions of the ASRS in this paper by Jenny Peasley, Deputy University Librarian, which was presented at the VALA conference earlier this year.

In order to remove some of the mystery around the ASRS, the library has uploaded a video to YouTube which goes behind-the-scenes to explain how the system works. Now everyone has the chance to see the "robots" in action.

Day 5

Today I attended the last meeting of the ALIA 2012 Biennial organising committee. I've been involved with the conference since preparing the bid in 2009. With the conference now five weeks away, all our hard work is paying off. It's been a great experience, and the rest of the committee have been a great group of people to work with. Hope to see you all in Sydney in July!

In my first #blogjune post, I mentioned that my posts from Monday and Tuesday would tend to be non-work-related. This is because I am lucky enough to be able to take parental leave two days a week to look after my sons, aged 3 1/2 and 15 months. I've been doing this since February, and the leave will run until February next year. We've got a bit of a routine going: we go to Ready, Steady, Go Kids on Monday morning, and storytime at the local library on Tuesday morning. I did the same thing when our eldest son was born, and it's quite a bit different with two of them to look after. It can be a bit trying at moments, but I love it.

Home sweet home

After a wet couple of days, today dawned fine and sunny for our drive home. Typical - the day with the best weather is the day we leave.

My "idiot of the day" award goes to the driver on the F3 who was driving behind a marked police car in a 40 km/h roadwork zone, and then decided it would be a good idea to overtake the police car on the left. Surprise, surprise they got pulled over.

While we were away, the two boys shared a room for the first time, and they both seemed to be happy with the arrangement. Now we're wondering if this could this work at home. With a bit of furniture rearranging we could put the boys in together and give ourselves a spare room/craft room/office.

With everyone back in their own beds, it should be a good night's sleep for everyone tonight, hopefully.

It's raining, it's pouring

As we expected, it was raining this morning. Not the best way to celebrate my wife's birthday. We enjoyed a breakfast of Weet-bix, coffee, and croissants.

Our next stop was the Erina Fair
shopping centre for lunch. We also managed to buy some toys to keep the boys occupied while they were stuck inside. We'd even thought of taking the boys to the public library, but ran out of time.

We're off home tomorrow. It would have been nice if the weather was better, but it was nice to have a couple of days away.

Phew, that was close

Made it with 35 minutes to spare. We're spending a couple of days on the Central Coast for my wife's birthday, and this is thr first chance I've had to write a blog post. The new roof box we bought for the car passed its first test and got out luggage hrte safe and sound.The weather isn't the best and it looks like it's going to be a rainy day tomorrow for the birthday. Hopefully we'll find something to do to keep the boys entertained.

The start of the journey

Well, I’ve signed up for the blog every day in June challenge for 2012. This is the first year I’ve taken part, so hopefully I can think of enough to say. I have participated in a couple of the Library Day in the Life projects, but this is a much more daunting prospect.

I’ve had the blog for nearly two years, but have never regularly posted to it. It was created as part of a Web 2.0 training program which I helped to organise at my workplace, and contains a mixture of work-related and non-work-related posts. My posts during June will also be a mixture of content. I'm imagining there'll be a bit of a pattern to my posts, with the posts from Wednesday-Friday being work-related, and the others days tending more towards non-work-related topics. I’m hoping this will be a fun experience!

One down, 29 to go …