Tweet, tweet!

I had renewed interest in Web 2.0 (especially  blogs, and twitter) since our last class about Altmetrics. Initially, I signed up for a twitter account a few years ago out of pure curiosity and I seldom  paid any attention to twitter until last year when I followed the #feesmustfall campaign. However, during the last week I became an active tweeter and I am learning something new everyday. I have professionalized my twitter page and started following people and topics of interest, such as Altmetrics, digital curation, research and of course the subject areas for which I am responsible in our academic library.

I came across some very interesting articles such as Laura Czerniewicz's article on How do students access the resources they need? Survey finds only one in five obtain all resources legally, which I might have found useful for my essay on Generation Y students. Needless to say, my knowledge base has expanded significantly during this course, both academically and on a professional level. I have added my twitter page to my libguides which means I have to keep up to date with publications and news in my departments.

I found this interesting blog with information on how to professionalize your social media while trying to increase twitter engagement.

© 2014 Zakeena. Licensed under CC-BY. 

Looking forward to tonight's class. I might just tweet about it!

Altmetrics

Last night's class was on Altmetrics. We had a very enthusiastic guest speaker, Ms Natasha Langdown, who is the  Chief Information Officer at South African Medical Research Council. She is currently doing a PhD at University of Western Cape,  with altmetrics as her topic. 

Natasha had a wealth of information to share. I was very excited about the presentation because although it is a topic which I am familiar with, I felt I had limited knowledge about it. I always find it more interesting  listening to an expert about a topic than reading about it, and this was indeed the case. She knows her topic well and explained that her interest in Altmetrics grew from her love of social media. 

 
Powerpoint by: Natasha Langdown

Altmetrics  was proposed in 2010, as an alternative to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and the h-index. It is a new way of measuring research.  In the context of academic research, Altmetrics  measure the impact of an article by how many mentions appear in social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.). We were introduced to tools available to librarians and the exciting options that we have as professionals to play a role in  supporting research with altmetric tools.

 

Image:  https://www.altmetric.com/support/

So today I viewed my Twitter page and decided that it's definitely in need of some professional change. For the next few days I am going to think of ways to incorporate these tools into my job as a faculty librarian.

Digital Curation and other stuff

I have not been able to write on my blog for a while now. Assignments and presentations are due and juggling between work, family and studies is definitely a challenge. However, I feel more positive about my studies and I suppose it takes time to get into  the academic mode.

We had a break from class for one week and we started off the second term with a  guest speaker on Digital Curation. Much to our surprise it was our very own Mrs. Witbooi who came to share with us her knowledge on digital curation given that she participated in a course offered by UCT some time ago. I had a limited understanding of the topic and found the presentation to be very informative.

For me, the word curation brings to mind visions of archives and museums. I thought it was the digitization of older materials which are not electronically available. I was partly wrong. Digital curation involves the  active long-term management of digital material. It is a relatively new term which incorporates existing concepts such as data curation and  digital transformation and is still an evolving discipline.

The current definition of the Digital Curation Centre for its activity is:
“Digital curation, broadly interpreted, is about maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use.” The benefits of digital curation include: persistant access to reliable data, improved quality of data itself, preserving and protecting  data against loss or obsolescence, etc.

We were introduced to the digital curation life cycle which provides an overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation and ultimately use thereof.

Manjula Patel, 2008 Presentation

 

Follow @digitalcuration on Twitter

Because digital curation is a relatively new concept, it provides information professionals with an opportunity to learn new skills and competencies. I was once again amazed at how much the library profession has to offer and how many opportunities there are for the next generation of librarians.

Tonight's lecture is on Altmetrics by a guest speaker. Looking forward to learning something new. 

Despite the workload, due dates, work and family responsibilities I am really enjoying the course and I am learning so much about so many different topics.

 

First weeks

First weeks impressions

This blog is part of my MLIS and this module deals with ICT trends and applications in libraries and my own interaction with the course.

I am a faculty librarian at a university and therefore this course was particularly interesting to me from the start since we are continually striving to improve our services to our users. I offer a service to postgraduate students in four departments and  being a postgraduate student myself makes it possible for me to put myself in their shoes. I have already experienced the same anxiety that new postgraduate students are confronted with. Most of us have not studied for a few years and it was overwhelming at first. Tools like Turnitin, which I am familiar with, but have never used are becoming a reality. I have just completed a Mendeley certification course at work which means that I also train students in the use of reference managers. Having had to use Mendeley myself opened up a whole new world for me. We received our topics for our essays early in our course, mine being "Generation Y and how have libraries accommodated them". Working in an academic library allowed me to gather as much information as I could. What an information overload I had! At first it felt that as long as I do "research" by finding information I am making progress. Then I realized that it will be impossible to read all the books and articles and I had to start filtering. I realized that I have made some crucial mistakes since I started with my essay.:

• I should have read, read, read to get a clear background
• Plan and organise a framework
• Evaluate my information
• Do not procrastinate!

 

CoyotePrime , 2011

 http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.co.za/

Therefore writing the essay was the hardest thing I had to do in a very long time, but it was a very valuable experience and I have learnt from my mistakes. The more I am working on my essay the more I am learning about myself as well as my profession. Each time I read an article my knowledge and my understanding of ICT trends and applications widens. I have also realized that writing academically in a language other than your mother tongue can be a daunting task. Once again I have learnt that reading as much as you can from the literature not only gives you background information on a certain topic , it also improves your vocabulary. To sum up I can just say that this was indeed a much needed learning curve for me and I would like to thank Dr Zinn for her patience.

So back to the first weeks.

We started off with Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Mobile technologies in the library. I was quite amazed by the tools available to librarians and I realized how exciting and creative a library can be in offering and marketing its services. We are working in an environment where change is the name of the game and we are privileged to have access to these tools and to be a part of this changing environment. DIRT ( Digital Research Tools) was one of the tools our lecturer introduced us to and which I think can be very useful. It is a registry of digital research tools which researchers might find very useful..

My initial feeling of this module was one of information overload. I am learning so much in such a short time, and there is so much to draw from, that I am drowning in information, and not able to pick the relevant stuff from the not so relevant. I also don't take easily to creative writing, so starting to writing this blog is a real stretch, but I feel I am making progress.