You may have thought that our 30 bloggers had run dry by Day 29. Not so! Opinions from an OPL made some observations about the penultimate day, but there were also many more fascinating facts coming forth.

The big meme mover was 30 things – those things you have done this month, on top of keeping up with this challenge. It was exhausting reading through the posts by Buntoting Librarian, Miss Sophie Mac, Bonito Club, Strawberries of Integrity and Rien d’Important, but so worth it to do so.

New Technologies Interest Group explored the benefits of social networking, SkinniBitch discussed Mentoring in Libraryland and a Public Librarian found support from surprising directions. Fascinating insights, each and every one.

Suelibrarian defined special libraries, whilst in a surprising parallel (which has happened a lot in these 30 days), Sally Sets Forth defined public service. Check them out and see if you agree.

One more day to summarise. With this level of quality coming out of the penultimate day, I am really looking forward to catching up with the last day posts – from everyone!

Day 22 of the challenge exhibited such a wide range of meme love. You can discover all sorts of interesting thing about our challenge bloggers, through the memes they post on.

Check out a Public Librarian, From Melbin, Just girl with shoes, Strawberries of Integrity , Miss Sophie Mac, Rien d’important and Opinions from an OPL and share a bit of the librarian love.

On learning more about our colleagues, we had the trip back in time with Suelibrarian, sardonicsmile and Librarian with different hats and who each told us their story of becoming a librarian. (cue the light piano music and sit back and enjoy their journeys)

Gadgets also were explored by Ruminations and Angels have the phone box II – with a definite leaning to iPhones (as is at least one meme doing the rounds) and snail making us all envious with his new Kindle.

And finally, the foci on personal security and personal privacy were well explored by New Technology Interest Group and Bun-toting librarian respectively.

Lots of great stuff there, so go and discover!

Looking over what happened yesterday, day 15 in the 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge, it looks like there were a few people like me, who were starting to get challenged on the next blog post. But look at what treasures we all came up with!

Apart from my blog news at Connecting Librarian, Bun-toting Librarian entertained us with streams of consciousness, moonflowerdragon got immersed in meanings behind tree graffiti and New Technologies Interest Group’s Blog posted a library joke.

On the meaningful experience spectrum, Miss Sophie Mac went searching for the perfect paragraph and Just girl with shoes looked at personality profiling.

On the sharing library related topic side of things, Sallysetsforth shared an ugly experience with a library user, Walking upside down shared space with the Shanachies, Librarians Matter shared her experience of using WordPress for a library website, virtuallyalibrarian shared her frustration with library ebook services (me too!),  sardonicsmile shared her experience of librarians dating patrons and Creative Circ shared on data and research in librarianship.

The memes also continue in strength, as do the personal discoveries, the crafts, the interesting moments, the achievements and so much more that have helped make the 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge such a success.

Well done to all involved.  Keep up the good work!

Wow, we are all still trying to catch our breath over how quickly this idea has taken off and how many people have jumped on board.  As Kathryn posted earlier, you can check out all the blogs and their feeds through Kate’s Net Vibes page.

So my highlights for Day 2?

I can already see patterns emerging, well at least knitting patterns, with a post from Bonito Club and more in the works for today.

Reading is also a popular topic – check out Batgirl’s Book Blog and Walking Upside Down.

And then there are the personal/professional development posts, including those from Suelibrarian, Opinions from an OPL, moonflowerdragon, Feral Librarian Tales, Strawberries of Integrity, Virtually a Librarian and of course, me at Connecting Librarian.

There’s some really cool stuff coming out of this challenge.  I really encourage you to check the posts regularly and if you aren’t participating in the actual blogging, please take some time to encourage those who are, by commenting on their posts.

2012 is the National Year of Reading and will be celebrated year round with events, competitions and much more, organised and sponsored by diverse partners, including libraries, educators, writers, publishers, booksellers, professional associations, politicians and other associated organisations.

ALIA is a sponsor and will be launching the National Year of Reading 2012 website – Love 2 Read, on Wednesday 14th July at the IMPACT 2010 public library conference in Albury.

In the meantime, you can join in the preparations by becoming a Fan of the Facebook page. Check out all the news at Facebook, or read how it came about at the Cities of Lit website.

Be inspired and start thinking about how you and your library can join in this significant event.

We are very fortunate to be able to welcome a whole team of new writers to the Libraries Interact team.  We look forward to the new and broader perspectives of the library and related worlds that they will offer.

But just so you know who they are and where they are coming from, here’s welcoming:

Jo Beazley is Youth Outreach Librarian working for Logan City Council Libraries in Queensland.  She is a new grad working her first full time job, though she did a 6 month contract last year as a young people’s librarian in Toowoomba.

Kate Davis is lecturing in Library and Information Science at QUT. She’s been at QUT full time since late January, moving from Gold Coast Libraries to take a 12 month contract in this position.

Andrew Finegan has recently taken up the position of library manager at Princes Hill Secondary College, which is a government school in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. Previous to that he worked public libraries in Melbourne and Darwin. He is also famously known as Librarian Idol.

Deborah Fitchett is an information librarian at the University of Canterbury Library, specialising by fiat in chemistry and chemical engineering.

Zaana Howard is Project Executive Knowledge Exchange at CPA Australia. Although she’s not in a library role now she actually sits next to all of the librarians! Her past jobs have been in a special library and TAFE library with humble beginnings in a public library only 6.5yrs ago.

Judy O’Connell is Head of Library and Information Services at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill.  She is the renowned Hey Jude and is also on editorial and advisory boards and is a much sought speaker and author.

Kim Tairi is manager of a small campus library at Swinburne University of Technology (whoops – sorry, originally had put Institute), with a arts and design focus. She has worked in academic libraries since the early 90s in various roles, first as a library technician, now as librarian.

So welcome to all our new bloggers, we look forward to the wonderful new things you will bring to Libraries Interact.

And just so you don’t forget the rest of us – the old is not out, we just got more new, the rest of the Libraries Interact team is:

• Fiona Bradley – IFLA
• Kathryn Greenhill – Special Services Librarian, Cottesloe-Peppermint Grove-Mosman Park Library
• Peta Hopkins – Senior Project Manager, Bond University
• Michelle McLean – Information Librarian, Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation
• snail – Librarian/Techie/Support for GALE
• Constance Wiebrands – Manager: Library Services, Edith Cowan University Library
• Morgan Wilson – Senior Librarian – Australian Government Organisation Library

We are still getting organised and getting our new bloggers set up, so we appreciate your patience as this happens. Thank you for your support and patronage of Libraries Interact over the years. We will continue to live up to our slogan of  “Blog central for Australian Libraries”  and hope you will continue the journey with us.

Facebook has released a new feature this past week – connections.

Facebook released this feature to enable its users to make more connections, without the hard work of having to search for them. Details of the new features and how they will work with your profile are available at the Facebook blog – if you are a Facebook user, you have to check it out.

The overwhelming response on the rest of the Internet, from what I have seen, seems to have been far less positive, with the eroding of privacy and losing control of your personal information being the biggest concerns. (maybe similar to the Google Buzz release – where its an opt out situation, rather than an opt in)

For those who are against this latest enhancement, a positive to come out of it has been the wealth of articles on how to customise your Facebook profile – particularly in regards to how much of your personal information you will allow to be shared.

If you want to protect your information more fully, (we can’t do it totally, we are after all talking about the Internet) then I recommend you check out these helpful posts:

• How to: clean up your Facebook Profile – Mashable

• Your Mum’s Guide to those Facebook changes and how to block them – GigaOm

• How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization – Electronic Frontiers Foundation

Like anything that can get cluttered in our lives, periodically we need to have a cleanout. Regardless of whether you want to fully engage with these new Facebook features, now is probably an opportune time to ‘spring-clean’ your profile and get it closer to what you would ideally like it to be.

Electronif

Mild panic has ensued on the web, with the announcement that Ning, the customisable social network, will cease its free service as of 4th May 2010.

The changes are being made to better serve the current 75% of traffic, which comes to Ning sites that have opted for the paid service. These users will now get the full focus of Ning, its development and improved services.

However, that leaves many people – or 25% of Ning’s traffic with nowhere to go (no paddle or canoe), with Ning at least. However, there are other options and Ning is offering to make any such transition as smooth as possible.

Fortunately, someone has already done their homework. The Free Technology for Teachers blog has a post on Alternatives to Ning, outlining the options for each network, illustrated with embedded introductory videos.

Libraries Interact’s Peta Hopkins also offers some suggestions at her blog InnOvate, of further alternatives – thinking a little outside the box.

She also raises the ever-present questions that hover over any free net service, of  risk versus value.

Which to me begs the question, with Ning opting to go the paid service route. Will other free service providers opt to go the same direction and shift their models to exclusively paid service only?

What do you think?

Been a busy week in Library Land this week and I have been wishing that I was elsewhere because of it.

Firstly, I wanted to be in Washington DC, where the 2010 Computers in Libraries conference was held this week. I was fortunate to be able to attend CIL in 2007, so I know from experience how good it is.

Fortunately, due to the wonders of Twitters, blogging and the Internet in general, you can get some idea of the experience and the content from this premier US library conference.  Check out the program, before getting into the details below.

The Computers in Libraries 201o conference blog gives you all the news and happenings from the conference. They also had a Ustream channel, a Twitter account and many of the presentations are already available on Slideshare.

To get a more personal perspective, amongst my regular RSS feeds, I have discovered good CIL reports from David Lee King, Information Wants to be Free, Librarian in Black and Swiss Army Librarian. You can also do your own twitter search on the hashtag #cil2010.

Then on Friday, I wanted to be in Canberra, for the National Library of Australia’s Innovative Ideas Forum. Fortunately, many colleagues were and Twitter was overflowing with tweets from the day – many of which were fed into the Forum’s Social Networks page.  This page covers not only Twitter, but also Google, Flickr and Slideshare.  You could also find tweets by searching the #iif2010 hashtag.

Presentations will be uploaded to Slideshare, so its worth watching that space and the audio of the presentations will also be available in the near future. I also look forward to reading some blog posts about it (hint, hint), so let us know of any that you come across.

Nice to be able to benefit from our library colleagues, who are ready and willing to help us with our professional development, regardless of our geolocation.

Submissions close this Friday, 16th April – for submissions into this Inquiry into “school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools”.

If you don’t already have a submission in or in process, there is another way to support the need for school libraries and librarians. This from ALIA:

“You and your colleagues and friends can register your name to be added to a short submission by completing a simple online form linked from  http://www.alia.org.au/schoollibraries

It only takes a moment, you don’t have to be an ALIA member and every little bit of support can only help.

Hopefully we will see some positives come out of this enquiry for our school libraries and our colleagues in the school sector.