Thing 20: Advocacy and Engagement

This Thing dealt with advocacy for libraries however the issue is no less relevant to archives. In fact, public libraries have the advantage of being public and familiar, whereas archives are generally perceived as something more mysterious or less easily accessible.  Advocacy is an important tool for breaking down such misconceptions and presenting archives in an approachable and visitor-friendly light. Few people know what archivists do, and raising general awareness of this, and of the vital contribution archives make to the preservation of and access to information, is another thing advocacy can enhance.  Elsie Freeman Finch, a prominent figure in the promotion of archives, has gone as far as to suggest that marketing and customer relations should supersede the traditional functions of acquiring, describing and preserving records as the core activities of archives.  It makes sense, for what is the point of preserving records if nobody uses them?

I confess I broke out in a cold sweat when I saw the exercise for Thing 20!  I am not sure if I can complete every section, but I'll give it my best shot.

Exercise 1: Name three detrimental effects to a local community when a public library is closed.

1. The community loses a safe space where children and teenagers can relax, engage in learning activities, and learn to enjoy reading

2. The community loses access to free resources such as computers, internet, wifi, and opportunities for training and further education which these resources facilitate

3. Senior citizens and people with special needs lose an important space for social interaction and recreation, and access to special resources such as free newspapers, large print books, and audio books

Exercise 2: Find a Library Strategic Plan in Ireland or beyond for a library of any size.  Identify three ways in which the strategic plan also advocates for the Library Service.

I have taken a look at the 2016-2012 strategic plan for the National Library.  The plan acknowledges the financial constraints which affect libraries throughout Europe and seeks to develop innovative solutions to enable them to continue delivering public services.  Advocacy plays an essential role in the strategic plan and is woven seamlessly through every aspect of it.  Here are three strategic aims listed in the plan which demonstrate this:

1. Provide equal and safe access for everyone
2. Build on the research and educational strengths of collections
3. Trial innovative forms of engagement with online and physical collections

Exercise 3: Name three ways in which you can demonstrate the impact and value of the library service that you work in or use.

1. Collecting statistics through surveys and footfall counts, and distributing this information or making sure that it gets into annual reports
2. Circulating positive feedback received from patrons
3. For archives and academic libraries in particular, keeping track of theses, books and articles which cite material held in your repository and sharing this information with management

Exercise 4: Identify three key people (name their role) outside of the library in the wider organisation/community that you need to network with in order to advance the development of the Library Service.

1. Local politician, ideally one who has shown demonstrable interest in or support for libraries and archives; and/ or the local county or city manager
2. Prominent writer or journalist who hails from the area
3. Heads of other libraries in the area/ region - there is strength in numbers!

Exercise 5: Write down in 200 words or less an idea for Library Ireland Week for a library you work in or use.

Archives have a similar week called Explore your Archive which takes place at the end of November each year.  For a couple of years now we have run a very successful event during this week called Attics to Archives.  It's a hands-on workshop for people who have photographs and family documents at home and are looking for advice on how to organize and preserve these.  In addition to low-cost archival preservation tricks, the workshop teaches participants how to digitize and share records.  We have held workshops in our reading room and in the city, and find it a wonderful advocacy tool: people get to see what we do, and gain personal benefit from our knowledge.

Exercise 6: In your opinion what are the three best features of the My Library, By Right Campaign and why?

1. It raises public awareness of the importance of a quality library service and gives people an opportunity to lend their support; mass pressure from the grassroots level is the one thing politicians are apt to listen to and act upon
2. It brings together national and local government, library users, and professional bodies; this encourages open dialogue, creates momentum, and opens the way for working together towards a common goal
3.  It highlights the role libraries play in society, and the false economy of library cuts, which may in turn invigorate libraries by encouraging people who don't normally use them to become patrons

'What do libraries mean to you?'

Exercise 7: In 200 words or less, describe a new area of librarianship that you are passionate about. How would you go about promoting it within the library that you work in and/or the wider library profession?

Speaking as an archivist, I have become passionate about engaging with people who don't normally use archives and encouraging them to participate.  Considering the increasing popularity of social media and other forms of online activity, making collections available on the internet is one way of approaching this challenge.  Finding new and imaginative ways of communicating with potential new patrons is one of the reasons I participated in this course.  Engaging with existing users and inviting them to comment on the existing service is also important in order to find out what the service is doing well and what it could be doing better.  I try to promote this idea by highlighting that making holdings easier to discover and access is the best way to increase physical and digital footfall in the Library.  I also point to the fact that in the age where e-books are becoming the norm and the role of books as physical objects is diminishing, a library with unique archival holdings has a distinct advantage in attracting users and keeping up visitor numbers.

Exercise 8: Choose an area of library practice that you feels requires debate.

Again speaking as an archivist, the issue I would like to debate is whether the training currently offered to prospective archivists is fit for purpose.  When I graduated six years ago, my modules focused on collection development, description, management of archive services, and specialist skills such as paleography.  These are all valuable and worthwhile skills to possess yet my work revolves more and more around digitization, online exhibitions, and digital curation.  The only part of my course that in any way touched upon these subjects was a module on electronic records.  The situation has not changed.  Although modules on digital information and digital preservation have been added, they are not compulsory but can be selected as optional extras.  I often feel that anyone wishing to become an archivist in today's world would be better off acquiring a degree in IT than traditional archive administration.  The work archivists do and the way in which they do it has changed dramatically in the past ten to fifteen years yet archivists are still trained within the old framework.  A small example: my five-year course included about two hours's training on archival management software, yet it is a tool I have to use almost daily in my work.  I understand that the fundamental building blocks of archival principles have not changed - nor should they - and learning them is important, but I feel a bit hard done by the fact that virtually everything I know about digitization, content management systems, social media, and archival management software, I have learnt outside of college through my own initiative.  There is nothing wrong with that either but I do feel that archival training should not exclude these issues or make them optional.

Exercise 9: Open up the ALA Frontline Advocacy Plan. Complete the plan for a real/fictional advocacy campaign.

I am going to give this last exercise a miss as time is running short.  Apologies!!!

Image: 'What do Libraries Mean to You' by ijclark on Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 2.0

Thing 19: Podcasts

I am a big fan of podcasts!  They come in every size and topic, they can be informative or entertaining or both, they are portable and easy to use, and make great listening on long journeys or while doing boring stuff like housework.  I am always on the lookout for new podcasts to listen to and was thrilled with the long list of recommendations at the end of this Thing.  I can't wait to check them out!

That said, I am not sure about using podcasts as an engagement tool in a library or archives environment.  For one thing, people tend to listen to podcasts for entertainment rather than professional development.  If you want to direct your podcast at fellow information professionals, are you sure you have enough new or interesting content or can add a new twist to familiar topics?  If the podcast targets library or archives users, how can you promote your service in an entertaining and captivating way?  This leads to the second issue, and that is that it takes time and effort to create a good podcast, let alone a regular serial, and not many institutions would have the time or manpower to commit to such an undertaking with any regularity.  I had a look at the list of library-related podcasts on LisWiki and of the 30 links provided, eleven had become defunct or contained no podcasts, three had not posted a new podcast in the last six months, ten had not posted new content since at least 2015, and only six were active and had posted new content within the last 30 days.  It goes to show how much time and commitment podcasts take.

For those keen to experiment with podcasts but struggling with limited resources, there is one option that might be worth exploring.  Podcasts are effectively blogs with sound, and technology is available to do just that - to turn your blog into a podcast.  Terry Ballard experimented with this on his blog Librarian on the Edge and had nothing but good things to say about the experience.

I was struggling a bit with the two options given for this Thing.  As I already subscribe to several podcasts, Option 1 wasn't really for me.  I was tempted to go with Option 2, and make use of the detailed instructions we were given on how to put together and publish a podcast.  However, knowing me I don't think it is something that I could throw together in an hour, and as I am already a month behind schedule and struggling to complete the course on time I couldn't very well opt for this either.  As a compromise, I have decided to review the first ever podcast that I subscribed to, called Thinking Sideways.  It was created in 2013 by two American guys and a gal, Steve, Joe and Devan, to discuss and debate unsolved mysteries of all kinds - murders, disappearances, strange natural phenomena, ciphers, ancient myths, and so on.  Each episode lasts for about an hour to an hour and a half and follows the same formula: presentation of the case and various theories that have been put forward, followed by discussion.  The three participants take turns to host the episodes.  The first one was published on 1 August 2013 and the podcast is still going strong, with 243 episodes released to date.

I started following the podcast in 2015 and was initially completely hooked.  I like the length of the episodes, besides which the topics are really interesting and the interaction between the three hosts is entertaining.  The discussion is in-depth but lighthearted and not too intense so that even when the topic is quite macabre you don't run the risk of losing sleep!  On the downside, the show is poorly edited and the hosts either keep interrupting each other incessantly or wander off topic on all sorts of weird and irrelevant tangents and take ages to get back on track.  This can be funny at times, but in the long run it becomes irritating.  Some of their jokes can be quite offensive (like laughing at the way someone has died).  There are also often serious flaws in their logical reasoning, sometimes to the point of utter ignorance, they make sweeping judgments, and their analyses of the cases seem to lead nowhere.  My biggest beef is with Devan who is the most vocal and opinionated of the three hosts but unfortunately also the least informed.  Her tendency to hijack each episode and shout down the two guys with uninformed inanities has gotten on my nerves to such a degree that I have taken a break from listening for about a year now.  However if true crime and unsolved mysteries are your thing, this podcast is worth checking out.  Others in this genre that I have enjoyed include The Trail Went Cold, Unsolved Murders, The Generation Why, True Crime Garage, Trace Evidence, and In Sight.


Image from Flickr by Casey Fiesler under the Creative Commons Licence CC BY 2.0

Thing 18: Reflective Practice (Applying for Critical Thinker Badge)

The third segment of this course explored the concept of critical thinking from various angles.  Thing 14 introduced us to personal information management.  Although it contained interesting detail, it seemed an odd fit as its focus was on organizing rather than evaluating information.  I appreciate that an orderly arrangement of facts aids critical thinking, but on balance Thing 14 may perhaps have been better suited for the Online Communicator segment, particularly as there was a certain overlap between it and Thing 12 on collaborative tools.

I was really excited about Thing 15 on evaluating information. It took a close look at Wikipedia, an information resource that I like and use a lot, and explained how Wikipedia articles are created and edited, and how they can be used as a tool for teaching critical assessment skills to students.  I had always wanted to learn more about Wikipedia, and learning how to edit and contribute to it has been the highlight of this course for me so far.  At the time I couldn't find any articles to edit but I have worked on Wikipedia since and made a couple of small edits here and there.  Wikipedia is often disregarded as an information source but I have always found it a great starting point for learning activities, and working through Thing 15 has only increased my respect for it.  If my work role involved teaching critical thinking to students, this is definitely a tool I would use.

I was a bit sorry to see however that Thing 15 was the only one in this segment that dealt with critical thinking, or, to put it in another way, that Wikipedia was the only aspect that was explored.  In this era of fake news and misinformation, the ability to evaluate facts and discern accurate information from biased or downright false is crucial, not least for those of us who work in information professions.  The internet is an invaluable source of information, but it is also a sticky spider's web that can trap you.  Tracking cookies follow you online activities, resulting in targeted advertising; YouTube remembers the videos you watched and makes recommendations based on your choices - the examples are endless.  This sort of insidious manipulation can be dangerous.  If you hold strong views on certain topics, you will find that the Internet will feed that view, and in no time you will be solely focusing on articles that strengthen it and ignoring those that offer an alternative one.  One way of protecting against this is by not using the social media as your primary source of information, and, if you read online newspapers, making sure you understand the possible political or other affiliation or bias they represent.

Fake news a la 1894

I had just finished working on Thing 16 on digital footprints when the Cambridge Analytica scandal began to make headlines, revealing that personal data of some 50 million Facebook users had been captured and improperly used to influence the 2016 presidential election in the US.  It is one thing to get into trouble over an ill-considered tweet or Facebook post, it's quite another to come to terms with the fact that personal information you have supplied in good faith to a social media site can be collected and analysed without your knowledge or consent, and then used to manipulate you.  As a consequence, people in their thousands have been deleting their Facebook pages.  Those who do not wish to take such drastic measures should carefully scrutinize their security settings.

The worst thing is that the Cambridge Analytica scandal is probably not the only instance of this sort of abuse, it is simply the one that has come into public scrutiny.  Thing 16 made some very valuable timely points about internet security.  I have always been a cautious, even reluctant, user of social media, and rarely if ever provide personal information to websites.  The revelations of the past week, coupled with reminders of Mark Zuckerberg's references to Facebook users as "dumb f***s" back in 2009 have done nothing to relax my attitude.  I was really pleased with Thing 16 and can only hope that when the next Rudai course is rolled out the issue of personal data and internet security will be given even greater emphasis.

Thing 17 provided information on hosting sites that allow you to share your professional work with a wider community.  While I rather enjoyed exploring the sites to which it introduced us, this is another element which I feel would have been better suited to the Online Networker segment.

The Critical Thinker segment was interesting and thought-provoking, and touched in a timely manner on some very serious issues which affect us all.  Never did I think I would live to see the day when presidents use Twitter to hurl abuse, when lying is presented as "alternative facts", and when politicians blatantly insist that truth doesn't matter, only their voters' perception of truth.  It has been heartening to see a gradual emergence of common sense in the midst of this chaos, and I feel increasingly reassured that truth will continue to matter.  More importantly, we as information professionals have a key role in ensuring that information based on facts, not on opinions, wins the day.

Image by Frederick Burr Opper on Wikimedia Commons

Thing 17: Sharing Your Work

Whenever I finish cataloguing a particularly interesting collection I tend to create a PowerPoint slide show and use it to give a presentation of the collection highlights to interested staff members in the library.  These presentations consist solely of images which I use as cues to remind me of what to say and when.  Because of this, they wouldn't really work on a shared platform as they wouldn't make sense to anybody other than me!  I did however create one PowerPoint presentation with sound for an assignment when I was studying for my archive administration degree.  The presentation deals with the value of estate papers as primary source research material, and my colleagues liked it so much it ended up on our Special Collections LibGuide.  That's my only claim to fame in terms of sharing stuff with a wider audience.

Working on this Thing, I decided to take a closer look at the listed hosting sites.  Slideshare is well laid out and really user friendly as you can either browse slideshows alphabetically or by topic.  Because it's connected with LinkedIn, the slideshows it contains tend to be very business and management orientated, but there's also good content on food, health, sports, art, and personal development.

Authorstream can be searched by category or by keyword, or by clicking on various options such as 'most liked' or 'most viewed'.  The one thing that struck me however is that most of the presentations on this website seem to have been created to promote a service or a product.  So if you happen to be looking for cleaning services in Toronto, or the best bridal make-up services in Dubai, Authorstream is the site for you!  It's also worth noting that the presentations won't work on Internet Explorer.

While Slideshare and Authorstream allow you to view slide shows without having to log in, with ResearchGate you have to create an account or sign in with LinkedIn or Facebook before you can access any content.  If you choose the latter option, ResearchGate wants permission to use your name, photo, headline, current positions, and email, and if you say no - you've guessed it, you cannot access the service.  So long, ResearchGate.

Sandbox gives free access to content, which differs considerably from the previous three.  This hosting site acts as a repository for something called Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and contains lesson plans for that Framework, or ideas and examples to teachers for incorporating the Framework.  You cannot really browse the content, instead, you search it by selecting options from a fairly complex set of drop-down menus.  The resources are all in PDFs which you can download for free.

The Jisc Store website has a nice clean design.  It contains a mix of free and fee-based resources and these can be videos, photographs, PDF-files, word documents, slide shows, or a combination of all or any of these.  However, except for the presentations highlighted on the homepage, you can only explore content by a keyword search, which I found a bit difficult since I didn't quite know what type of material the website contained.  I tried a few random keywords, and 'archives' brought up among other things a PDF-guide to the National Archives in the UK, a video guide to sharing, archiving or re-using sensitive data, and photographs from the official archives of the United Nations.  You will need to download the files you want to your PC or mobile device before you can view them.  As an educational resource, this seems to be the best and the most useful of the sites listed in Thing 17.

I found this Thing quite interesting.  I had no idea there were so many hosting services available for presentations, and I enjoyed exploring their content.  However, my overall impression is that many of them are either very generic or very specialised, and before sharing your work it's worth ensuring that you pick the right hosting site for the purpose.  For example, if I wanted to share my presentation on estate collections with a wider audience, of the sites that I explored only Jisc Store seemed like a reasonably good fit.

Image credits:

Image 1: Pixabay under Creative Commons Licence CC0
Image 2: Wikimedia Commons

Thing 16: Your Digital Footprint

This Thing raised an important issue which frankly I think deserves more attention.  In fact, the curious dichotomy of this entire course is that on the one hand we are taken through all sorts of online tools and taught how tweet and bleat and whatnot, and then on the other hand we are warned how dangerous all of that is!  I think integrating the two rather than treating them as separate issues would drive the point home more effectively. For example, when doing a Thing on Facebook and Twitter, it would be helpful to get pointers not only on how they can be harnessed to work for you professionally, but on the potential pitfalls and not so smart ways of engaging with them.  That would give participants a more informed idea of the tools at their disposal.

Now to the list of diagnostic points.  I never, ever give personal information to unfamiliar websites.  I rarely shop online and when I do, I only use tried and trusted websites such as Amazon.  I have on occasion purchased stuff from less-known website but only on recommendation of friends who have used the same service, or after having googled around and satisfied myself of its safety and reliability.

I never respond to any phishing emails or click on links attached to dodgy looking emails.  Having said that, phishing emails can sometimes be tricky to identify but a good rule of thumb is if it's from someone you don't know, don't touch it.

I don't download software unless I am a hundred per cent satisfied that it comes from a reliable source and is fully above board.  I have invested in good antivirus software which among other things scans all downloads and prevents me from downloading anything stupid, should I experience a moment of madness.

Wi-fi is not an issue for me as I don't possess a smartphone, and the antique mobile that I have can only be used for making and receiving phone calls and sending and receiving texts.  I have a laptop which I occasionally take with me but only as a note-making tool, I have never connected to the internet with it outside of my home.

Terms and Conditions - ah, there's the rub.  The trouble with these is that if you want something that comes with Terms and Conditions, unless you click that you agree with them you won't be able to get what you want!  It has always bugged me that people using services are at the mercy of those offering them and have no say in anything.  And do I diligently read through Terms and Conditions every time they are slapped in front of me?  Heck no!!

I avoid using Facebook and Twitter and never post any text or images about myself unless it is something completely neutral or work-related, nor would I dream of making comment about anybody or anything else on social media.  Years ago, my best friend became the object of a vicious smear campaign by a colleague who took a dislike to her, and she went through eighteen months of hell in a struggle to get all the offensive material removed from the internet.  It made both of us very, very social media shy and for a good reason.  Thankfully it also made us aware of how the internet works and how to go about tackling a problem of this nature should it ever happen again.

I am reasonably good about passwords, using random alphanumeric combinations and completely different ones for each website.  The massive downside of this is of course that I cannot remember a single one of them so have to keep a file on my computer on which they are listed.  I know there are various software packages available for storing and using passwords but I don't trust them sufficiently to use them.  I do try and change my passwords once every couple of years, at least for sites like Amazon and PayPal, but I admit I could be a lot more diligent in this regard.

Image: 'We ALL Leave a Digital Footprint' on Flickr by OllieBray, Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0

Thing 15: Evaluating Information

I have never understood the negative press surrounding Wikipedia as an information source, or the sniffy attitude of educational establishments towards it.  I do a lot of work of academic nature and use Wikipedia incessantly.  As Rebecca O'Neill mentions, it is best used as an encyclopedia - not for citing in a publication but as a useful first port of call when you want to get your head round a new topic or to refresh your memory of an old one.  Wikipedia's greatest strengths are the bibliography and external links at the end of each article which open the doors to exploring the subject in greater detail.  For example, if you are interested in Charles Dickens, the relevant Wikipedia page gives you a whopping list of 90 books and articles cited or recommended for further reading, and 22 links to works by Charles Dickens and to museums, organizations and portals dedicated to him.  Even if you don't trust the article itself, what better place to start your own exploration of Dickens than this?

While Wikipedia may not appeal to the learned academics, it is an ideal resource for young scholars to get started on.  Wikipedia also serves as ideal teaching material.  Rebecca O'Neill mentions how students can be asked to evaluate the contents and references of individual articles.  Another way would be to get them to compare a well researched and well cited Wikipedia article with a poorly compiled one and note the difference.  I can't think of a better way to enhance critical thinking.

One of the fears that people have is that because of the open nature of Wikipedia, individuals can edit and manipulate text at will and by doing so mislead readers.  Well, my colleagues and I learnt the hard way that that's not the way it works, when we wanted to add our Long Way to Tipperary online exhibition as a reference source to one or two articles.  Within hours of inserting the information, it was edited out.  We tried it several times and every time we were caught out and removed.  I can't remember what the final outcome was but we actually had to make direct contact with Wikipedia to plead our case.  This experience further strengthened my respect for the reliability of Wikipedia as an information source.

I have also learnt that information published in prominent academic sources is no guarantee of its accuracy.  I recently had occasion to consult an academic paper in a peer reviewed journal and was shocked by the quantity of errors it contained.  Sources were quoted out of context, or referenced to articles from which they clearly did not come, and bibliographical entries were riddled with errors, from misspelled titles to wrong volume or issue numbers.  It really drives home the need for critical thinking and for keeping your eyes wide open when searching for factual information, particularly in the  jungle of "alternative facts" in which we currently exist.

I was keen to try out the Wikipedia editing exercise but to my disappointment couldn't find anything that I felt competent enough to fix, or anything that could be fixed quickly.  In spite of that, I really enjoyed this Thing.  Critical evaluation is a topic close to my heart and I really appreciated the opportunity to dwell in it in greater detail.

A Point of View Bias

Image from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0

Thing 14: Personal Information Management

I like task lists and workflows and organizing my work, and have spent years looking for the perfect personal information management system.  I have experimented with dozens of different ones but without success.  The ones I tried out didn't fit the type of work that I was doing, or the way I preferred to organize my stuff, or the kind of stuff I was trying to organize.  Then there were those that were so complicated to use that I would waste hours trying to get a handle on what I was supposed to do - hardly a recipe for saving time.  I also found that many of these tools are quite addictive.  You spend ages organizing, filing, planning and making notes, and come back from it thinking you have made huge progress when in fact all you've managed to do is procrastinate.  When I looked at Evernote, I felt that - for me at least - this was one of those tools.   It's actually quite similar in its general concept to OneNote which comes with Microsoft Office and which (needless to say!) I have tried and failed to feel comfortable with.  There is in fact only one tool that has worked for me without fail, and that is the good old one-day-to-a-page appointment diary coupled with a pen.  It's portable, reliable, simple to use, easy to navigate and doesn't require a battery.

I am also an awful hoarder of information.  I save press cuttings and recipes, and copy things from books for reading later on.  I have umpteen folders in my filing cabinet for all these different items and the only time I open any of them is when I shove in more stuff.  Not once have I opened them to take out something to read.  Once it goes into the filing cabinet, I forget all about it and never, ever look at it again.  Nowadays, if something interests me I read it there and then, and then discard it, unless I find it so useful that it merits keeping.  If it's an online thing, I save it under Favourites or bookmark it, depending on the browser I'm using.  I had a look at Feedly but I'm afraid I would have no use for this tool.  The same thing would happen as with the folders in my filing cabinet.  I would keep storing things for later reading and never read a thing.  And anyway, I don't obsessively follow news feeds - in fact the only RSS feed I have on my PC is for BBC World News.  We live in an age of information overload and I have enough going on in my life without taxing my brain with a million other things happening around me.  If it is sufficiently important, it will eventually find me, whether I go looking for it or not.

Remember the Milk is like a digital task list and seems like a fun application, but unless you actually act on the reminder it won't get you far.  And there's the rub.  Having read through this Thing and experimented with various tools it dawned on me why they don't work for me.  My life isn't all that complicated.  I don't need half a dozen tools to set tasks and store information and remind me of what I need to do when and where and why.  I can handle all that.  My problem is with getting up and actually doing it.  Instead of taking action on all my notes and task lists and reminders I waste time waiting for inspiration, motivation, the right moment, or the right frame of mind.  Now, if someone invented a tool for generating that, I'd be the first in the queue to use it!  In the  meantime, I think I'll just stick with my appointment diary.

Ah, the good old days of simple technology...

Image sources:

Image 1: Pixabay, Creative Commons License CC0.
Image 2: GTDrawings Blog, 25 January 2006.
Image 3: Busyman's Magazine, July-December 1906, p. i.