But that is beside the point. What is ANZ 23 Mobile Things?
“ALIA NGAC (Australian Library and Information Association New Generation Advisory Committee) and New Professionals Network NZ have teamed up to offer an Australian/New Zealand course based on the 23 Mobile Things course by Jan Holmquist. We are running this course from May-November 2013 and it currently has over 500 participants signed up! Come and join us in our learning journey.”
Over 500 of your Australian and New Zealand colleagues have already signed up and there are opportunities to do more than just participate. Check out the ANZ 23 Mobile Things blog, the Facebook page and Twitter feed (@anz23mthings), but do so now, because we are in Week 0 – the learning begins next week!
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So what is the NZ/Australian Cohort for 23 Mobile Things all about? Read on.
What are the 23 Mobile Things?
- Taking a photo with a mobile device: Instagram / Flickr app / Snapchat
- eMail on the move
- Maps and checking in: Foursquare
- Photos + Maps + Apps: Historypin / What was there / Sepia Town
- Video: YouTube and screencasts
- Communicate: Skype / Google Hangout
- Calendar
- QR codes
- Social reading: RSS / Flipboard / Feedly / Goodreads / Pocket
- Augmented reality: Layar
- Games: Angry Birds / Wordfeud
- Online identity: FaceBook and LinkedIn
- Curating: Pinterest / Scoop.it / Tumblr
- Adobe ID
- eBooks and eBook apps: Project Gutenberg / Kindle / Overdrive / Bluefire / Kobo, etc.
- Evernote and Zotero
- Productivity tools: Doodle / Remember the Milk / Hackpad / any.do / 30/30
- File sharing: Dropbox
- Music: last.fm / Spotify
- Voice interaction and recording
- eResources vendor apps
- Digital storytelling
You can view the 23 Mobile Things on the official blog here – http://23mobilethings.net/wpress/the-things/
What is this NZ/Australian cohort all about?
simple; it is just establishing a group of librarians in NZ and Australia who are keen to do the 23 Mobile Things at the same time. This cohort will give us mutual support and contact with each other so that we can learn together and keep each other motivated. Hopefully it will help you grow your own personal learning network (PLN) and have fun and great collaborations throughout the course!
Who can take part?
Anyone! This is not limited to New Professionals, but is open to anyone who would like to take part – whether newer or older to the profession. I have just put the contact form on the New Professionals blog as that is a place where I know many people will find it. We are creating another blog specifically for this NZ/Australian cohort that will be the hub of our conversations and connections. So please sign up and let’s all learn from one another and have fun playing with mobile technologies! Over 60 people have signed up already; this is going to be such a fantastic group to be a part of 
(It’s mainly NZ’ers at the moment so come on Australian’s sign up!)
What do I need to take part?
- Access to a mobile device (e.g. iPad, tablet, smart-phone, etc…) – if you don’t have one yourself, you could borrow one or use the PC applications to understand the general principles.
- Time to dedicate to investigating the 23 things – it seems most people are keen to do 1 Thing a week so you can dedicate as much or as little time as you need to exploring that thing and engaging in chatting and collaborating with others on the course.
- Willingness to collaborate, experiment, and support each other – it’s going to be fun!
How do I sign up?
So you’re keen? Great! Here’s what you have to do to get involved:
- fill in the contact form on the blog
- vote in the poll for best time-frame for the course
- share the news with friends/colleagues
We will be in touch as we create a blog as a hub for the group, a Facebook group (if you are keen) and organize some online real-time events such as Twitter chats and Google+ hangouts so that we can chat and collaborate. It will also give us an opportunity to put into practice what we have been learning!
We are hoping to start with Thing 1 the first week of May. If the course runs for six months (approximately 1 Thing a week), it will finish at the end of November.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up today and we will be in touch again a bit closer to the date.
If you want more information please don’t hesitate to email me (Kate) at my gmail account (take off the no spam) or on twitter at @katejf.
Abigail Willemse (NZ) and Kate Freedman (NGAC) and Hiba Kanji (NGG)(AUS)
]]>“when it comes to encouraging people to embrace the written word, e-readers trump their physical counterparts.” – Are Books Doomed? The Rise of E-Reading [INFOGRAPHIC]
But from Dan Turner at UX Magazine…
“Reading on an iPad, or a tablet, just isn’t the same as reading a book. And for me, it’s not better. Even though I was, of course, excited about the prospect of an infinitely accessible library in a carry-on form, the fact is that when I try to read on the iPad, I’m doing so reluctantly, and I get through far fewer pages in a sitting than I’m used to.” – A Tablet Still is Not a Book … Not Yet.
And on Gruen Planet – The Pitch segment features ads promoting paper books.
What’s your take? I’m really only reading ebooks at present. It’s the size factor for me. A book is just too big to be bothered carrying around, especially when I’m carrying an ipad anywhere (for it’s other features). And my kobo vox is working out well for reading in bed as I don’t have to turn on the light to read it, it’s smaller than many hardbacks or longer paperbacks, and the night-time reading option means that it’s not generating much light to bother my partner.
]]>A presentation by our Co-Founder and Lead Researcher, Dr Paul Gardner Stephen talking about our project and goals is available on YouTube.
My main area of focus is on the Serval Maps application. The goal of the Serval Maps application is to provide a platform for collaborative mapping on Android powered mobile phones using the network powered by the Serval Mesh software.
You may be wondering what this has to do with Libraries Interact and that is a good question.
You see I’ve started looking at the metadata that I can add to a Point of Interest, POI, on the map. At its core a POI is a marker on the map with a title and description. For example in the context of a disaster the POI may be that a bridge is out, a building has fallen down. Alternatively in the context of a research project the POI may be the number of frogs in an area, or the size of a cactus infestation in a national park.
A requested feature for POIs is to implement categories. A list of categories would make it easier to find similar POIs. The main issue with a list of categories is that they are a form of taxonomy and a taxonomy is built on the assumption that centralised control and authority is available.
In contrast a folksonomy is built around the use of tags and is an example of users collaboratively working together to build a list of common agreed upon tags that can be used for categorisation of content. For this reason using tags as an additional piece of metadata associated with a POI makes sense.
Once I started thinking about taxonomies, folksonomies, tags and categories I immediately thought of librarians and which led me to think about Libraries Interact.
This post is to ask the collective group of librarians, who visit Libraries Interact, for some help in answering a question I have.
The question is this:
From a UX (user experience) perspective which is better, single word tags (a space delimited list) or multi word tags (a comma delimited list). To help answer this question I created a poll and post on my personal blog.
I’d appreciate it if the Libraries Interact collective could take a moment to respond to the poll and let me know any other thoughts they may have either in the comments here, or over on my personal blog. It would be a great help in furthering the development of our open source software.
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This report examines key drivers of change that will change the work landscape and offers up the 10 work skills that will be required to be able to successfully work in such a landscape.
The Six drivers of change are:
- Extreme longevity – people will work until later in their lives, multiple careers will be common and lifelong learning will be a necessity
- Rise of smart machines and systems – new tools will be available to use in every part of our lives, eliminating much rote type work
- Computational world – huge increase in sensors and processing power giving us our world in data which can then be extrapolated in an amazing range of ways
- New media ecology – a new way of communicating will become available, taking us way beyond text
- Super-structured organisations – new technologies will change the way organisations produce and how things are created
- Globally connected world – the world will be connected as never before and diversity and adaptability will play greater roles in design and production
Future Work Skills 2020 Summary Map
The skills that IFTF sees as being required in such a work landscape are each related to at least one of the key drivers of change (as represented using colour in the summary map above). The skills are:
- Sense-making – being able to discover deeper meaning in what is being expressed
- Social intelligence – being able to connect to other people more deeply and directly
- Novel & adaptive thinking – being able to come up with solutions that are outside the box
- Cross-cultural competency – being able to work in different cultural settings
- Computational thinking – being able to make meaning out of vast amounts of data
- New-media literacy – being fluent in new media forms
- Transdisciplinary – being able to work in multiple disciplines
- Design mindset – being able to plan our workplaces and workflows to achieve desired outcomes
- Cognitive load management – being able to filter information and focus only on what is required
- Virtual collaboration – being able to work effectively as part of a virtual team
These skills, at some level at least, are being taught in our schools now, but I can think of one profession at least (and we all know which), has developed these skills in its most of its current workforce, just through environment and necessity. Librarians, according to this report, even if you only have a fraction of these skills (which you will), your future is assured! 
Mashable recently listed its 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2012. They are:
- Augmented reality
- Micro-payment economy
- Rise of the ultra-book
- Social/digital inclusion
- Mobile chip wars
Although not all of these will directly relate to libraries and their service, it is still useful to know what is happening on the technological landscape.
The trends that I see for already see for our library this year are:
- Mobile technologies – both expanding our options for users of them and using them more in our libraries for services – this includes doing more with QR Codes
- Discovery layers – we are launching ours in February
- Social technologies – embedding the library even more out in the online social sphere
- Technology diversity – possibly getting more diverse hardware for borrowers to use, already loaded with more specialist software than the usual standard offerings of Office and Internet
What do you see as the tech trends for your library in 2012? Will any of Mashable’s suggested tech trends be something that your library will be pursuing?
Interestingly, one of the commenter’s on the Mashable post listed the one thing that will affect everyone in some way or another this year. The biggest trend will likely be something that no-one has even heard of yet. How true!
Happy New Year to all!
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The winners of the 2011 Edublog Awards have been announced.
Some of Libraries Interact’s friends were nominated and we congratulate them on this amazing honour.
Check out the winners and runner ups – I am sure you’ll find something to add to your feed reader.
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Much as we would like to be there, we can still get the latest on what’s coming out of the conference through the Conference Blog. Alternatively, the conference is also being well covered by the likes of David Lee King and Librarian in Black, or one of the officially listed conference bloggers.
If you want to see the presentations, you can download them, but have to login. (User name/Password: il2011/il2011)
Don’t forget that Internet Librarian International in London is coming up, on 27th and 28th October, where more great content will be shared.
And once you have been suitably inspired, ALIA Biennial is seeking abstracts for the conference in Sydney in 2012.
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To meme, or not to meme: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler on rice to suffer
the quirky things our borrowers do,
Or to take arms against a gratuitous pet blog,
And by travelling through the sense of home? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by gamestorming to say we end
The podcasts and collective innovation
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a book review
Devoutly to be wish’d.
To blah, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance sweater p()rn:
ay, there’s the rub;
For in that Pondering Pentecost what dreams may come
When you’re sick in 2011,
Must give us price: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of Too lazy to Post;
For Glenti would bear the overdrive(n) to despair,
The information architecture, and digital libraries,
The progress of despised love, the new blowtorch
The rock star life and the spurns
That patient merit of what are you selling,
When he himself might op shop holiday make
Libraryhack aims to encourage the creative and innovative re-use of library data and digital content from Australian and New Zealand libraries.
Have you got a great suggestion for a new and innovative way to use library data but maybe not the technical skills to bring that idea to life? Why not submit an idea for an application or data mashup for the chance to win in this pre-Libraryhack competition. Your idea might then be developed by someone else as an application or mashup as part of Libraryhack. For inspiration have a look at the list of datasets to be made available by the participating libraries and submit an idea on the Libraryhack website. Victorian public library staff are eligible to enter and you can enter as many times as you like.
Entries opened on the 8 February and close on 30 April.
Check out some of the ideas that have been submitted at
http://libraryhack.org/ideas/idea-entries/
Submit your entries at
http://libraryhack.org/ideas/ideas-form/
The State Library of Victoria is running a 2-day event around Libraryhack on Friday 20 May and Saturday 21 May. Booking are free and can be made at:
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/event/libraryhack
The first day will be a day of sharing inspiration and wisdom around informing people how they can improve and refine their apps, mashup, artwork, or digital stories for the Libraryhack competition, which closes on 31 May. The second day is a hands on event for developers and technology experts to share ideas and develop their projects.
What a challenge!
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