Connecting Librarian

I am always amazed at how many people read my writing. Thank you again by the way, I appreciate it.

I also am amazed at learning things about my blog and other library blogs from an outside perspective. There is no-one better at doing this (or actually doing it all to any level), than Walt Crawford.

Uploaded to Flickr on 13th May 2006, by Alpha Six, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Walt has written books on library blogs and their metrics (amongst other things) and pulled some data out for a recent issue of Cites and Insights (which is always worth a read).  Here’s some highlights I found intriguing:

• Fewer new library blogs and fewer library blogs in general (is the age of the blog over, or is it just the hype that has died?)
• Fewer posts on those blogs
• Longer posts
• Fewer comments

My response to these?

• Fewer new library blogs – reached critical mass, maybe we have enough librarians talking about all the different areas of librarianship
• Fewer library blogs – they were taken up with fervour a few years back, but new things have happened (like Twitter) and some people may have said all they have to say, so have moved on
• Longer posts – maybe becoming more about information than about conversation?
• Fewer comments – I think this is because the conversation has moved away from blogs to Twitter and other social networking sites

Having said that, I still believe in the value of library blogs – you only need to look at my feed reader to see that is true.  What do you think?

And of course as usual, as I was pondering before writing this post, something else related appears. Walt is doing more research and is looking for library blogs he may have missed. Check out his post Liblogs: what am I missing? to ensure either yours or the ones you read are included.

This research is valuable and important, so please support it in any way you can.

Thanks!

Here’s the last part of my notes from the ProBlogger training day I attended Tuesday. I know its hard to get something out of someone else’s notes, so if you need to ask a question – please do!

Blog Workshop – Chris Garrett
Handed out a mind map to give some tips on how your blog could be improved. He then offered to critique some of the attendees blogs. The following is the feedback he gave.

goodlife zen.com – good start having a dot.com address. Fresh look, nice clean layout. Eyes are drawn to the photo – personalises it and connects with people. Layout is good to the content – content must be first. Subscribe options should be at the top and be as simple as possible – top right is usually best – above the fold. Make it work at 800 by 600 but make it look good at 1024 and above.
Subscribe could conjure payment ideals – try to work free/join into it. Tell them how and why to subscribe to your blog at the end of EVERY SINGLE POST. Chris added his email signup up box into his theme, so it appears automatically at the bottom of each post. Add related posts links to get people interested in more content.  RSS footer – type plugins available for Word Press (and others?), usually used for copyright but can put your email form in. Good also to put into the content, but gets tired if you do it all the time. Do it before the comments – regular readers will just scroll past it.

Have a call to action for your comments – edit your theme so it says, leave a comment now, no. of comments – add yours now. DISQUS – helps to organise comments into threads, can help make your comments viral – they then can be posted to social networking sites. Reply to  comments – not just the key ones – its a relationship builder. Have a public comment policy – gives you basis on which to edit or delete comments – my house, my rules.

blog.iqmatrix.com – having a blog separate to your main domain could be good if you are security conscious, but if you link to the main site, then www.domain.com/blog would be better as this is where both search engines and users would expect it to be. Need to be aware of floating footers – may link to ads or original coder – be wary. Floating bubbles can be annoying – but will work better if you use a short delay before it comes up. Can get popups when you scroll over heading, such as comments. Image was great but needed some context – never overestimate the intelligence of your readers. Be careful of how you use the term blog – Latest Blog Articles may be better as Latest Articles.

Open Panel with Darren, Chris, Yaro, Collis and Pip.
Darren has a subscribe page – RSS, email to RSS and newsletter(s) with a short explanation of each.

Introduced a forum when they had 1000 daily visitors. (Darren)
There are personality based niche blogs and then niche information blogs. (Yaro)

Multiple blogs – have an editor for each one – they keep track of direction and management etc, under broader guidelines. (Collis)

Personality, authenticity, sincerity can drive a non-profit blog – you can’t buy that. (Pip)

Persuasive selling techniques not incorporated deliberately into sales pages – more passive than subjective, more natural as it comes from him personally as he learns from other examples. You can utilise both, as long as you are not compromising your personal standards and still meets the demands of your brand. (Yaro)

So that’s the day’s labours but not the day’s results. I will be looking at incorporating many of the things I learnt here in any or all the blogs I am involved in, including this one, so stay tuned!

As so it continues. Here is Part Two of my notes from the ProBlogger training day I attended yesterday.  Just to save your eyes and my fingers, there will be a third post, for the last of my notes. In the meantime – enjoy!

Building Community on your blog – Darren Rowse

Building community is about good relationships, using skills which can be transferred from the real world.

Why build community on your blog? Blogs can be about providing information, but they can take on a life of their own and communities do form.  Community makes your site:

• more useful (comments add to the content and these can be used create their own content based on this, but located elsewhere);
• social proof makes it easier to promote your blog (comments, members, subscribers etc);
• increased page views (in community areas rather than blog areas); makes it more valuable to sell;
• more attractive to advertisers;
• your community becomes an advocate (for you);
• user generated content.

How to build community:

• be the community you want to have – readers will take your lead;
• invite interaction – they respond to invitations and questions – run polls, surveys etc – if no comments, answer yourself or get someone you know to answer;
• start with your comments section, build an off-blog community elsewhere (eg. Flickr, Facebook etc);
• add a community area (forum);
• use social media to reinforce and build community, write in a personal and engaging tone;
• use personal mediums (photos/video), use ‘you’ and we – write to people – direct language – we = our site;
• reader centred posts – start with the reader;
• offer additional ways to join or become a member;
• social proof – highlight interaction/community/numbers to your community;
• identify natural leaders – give jobs, train them, pay them;
• give people space to play (off topic interactions);
• teach the wisdom of the crowd to your community;
• invite reader generated content;
• set homework/projects – send them away to do something on their own and then report back;
• give readers a chance to show off;
• involve readers in decisions and change – can work for you or against you (survey, features they want etc);
• be accessible.

Dealing with trolls: think about policies and standards before you need them; model good community; reward good behaviour; outline roles of moderators carefully and talk about policies, values and procedures; marginalise trolls; allow community to help you police; be firm, polite and calm with trouble makers.

How to get more comments: use your own comments section, followup commenters, ask questions, be open ended, invite questions, discussion posts, controversy/debate, highlight hot conversations make space for self promotion, ask for advice/opinions/examples/stories. (use a more button to take them to full post and comments, rather than hoping they will go to comments)

Interview with Pip from Meet me at Mike’s (craft/lifestyle blog)

Blogs are a healthy tool to help you document your interests or just your life. It’s OK to write about the human aspect, your good stuff as well as when you muck it up. Run projects through the blog, which are to benefit your community or the wider community. Retain your core values throughout. Interact on lots of different platforms – so that you can reach people and make it easier for people to reach you – don’t talk about just your own stuff, also talk about what they are interested in. Its about them as well as about you.

What she would have done differently? Label your posts properly, categorise them clearly so they readers can find them; use comment moderation or comments systems like DISQUS to protect yourself from nasty comments.

Blog monetization – Yaro Starak
It is not just about making money directly from your blog, but also because of it. 20% effort can achieve 80% results.  Yaro told us how he turned his blog  – Entrepreneurs Journey, into bucks.

Aim to get a lot of results from the least effort – 80/20 rule in general, but to begin with, blogs take a lot of effort to establish.

Ways to make money directly from blogs: advertising income, affiliate income and selling products.

Yaro sold his own advertising, as AdSense didn’t work for him. He charged a monthly rate, used a Paypal account and had different options for advertising. Uses OpenX to manage his banners and they are rotated through. Its all automated.

Affiliate income – wrote a review on a book about Google AdWords. Didn’t work initially, but then managed a sale and now earns a large part of his income through reviews. His most important move was to add an email newsletter to his blog – this made the biggest difference to his income stream. Combine email with blog posts to make the most money.

Blog Mastermind – his first online course product.  Wrote a paper on the topic, which he gave away as a free sample as a lead in to the product and has increased his readership dramatically.

All this helps you to create solid, multiple income streams and establishes you as an authority in blogging and money making. Get a product out as soon as you can.

Did some private coaching recently, only because it gave him an opportunity to investigate his market and to get some case studies. It breaks his 80/20 rule, but it gave him insight he couldn’t otherwise get. He enjoys it, but it is not the best way to leverage his time.

Panel: Yaro, Darren and Chris (Chrisg.com)
Yaro gave a rough estimate of $1 income per unique individual page view per day. Can also vary your prices according to demand. Darren said that he has negotiated with advertisers, based on what they were wanting to spend. Can also be involved in a banner networks and start with getting what the market will pay, then when you have proven performance, you can negotiate a higher price.

90% of geeks will use AdBlock, but they aren’t a big issue outside the geeks.

Email subscriptions going down? Need to have your subscribers waiting in anticipation of what’s in the email, so that they will be waiting for it. Use a commercial product for newsletter creation and subscription means. Options are AWeber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and others. Can get content from RSS feed or encode the content yourself.

Affiliate products – different for every industry. Yaro focuses on the ones he needs to use in this day and time.  He uses it and then does his review and recommendations – need to have some negatives otherwise people don’t quite believe it.  Use Clip Bank to get help on finding programs.  If there is not an affiliate program, you can approach the producers to establish one or something similar. Amazon runs an affiliate program and there are many more out there. Do a search on cost per action or lead generation. Be honest about making money – people will appreciate that. Legally required in US, but not in Oz yet – should disclose, because you want to honour the trust that has been place in you by your readers. Reciprocity works here too.

AIDA – attraction, interest, desire, action. Provide proof, answer objections. Think about where your traffic is coming from and then target an offer towards them (specificity). Not just about conversion rates, you need to see the action all the way through. What is the refund rate etc.

Collis Ta-eed – Case Study

Blogging industry been around 6 or 7 years, but there are still a lot of opportunities. How do you identify them? Wrote a post about freelancing, which gave him more hits than the rest of his blog posts combined. Started http://freelanceswitch.com/ – within 2 weeks he had 3000 readers – 10 times what he had on his previous blog. Had written a series of tutorials on PhotoShop which he published on a blog, which also took off and has now spun off into a new series of blogs which also provide tutorials on different topics. Another blog came out of a post which ended up on top of the Google search results for Mac Apps.

Not all opportunities are the same. Not everything they did worked. Freelance Switch worked but Work which aimed at office workers is just trudging alone. PSD/Net great success but Audio has been growing Ok and not the runaway success that its inspiration was. Mac Apps spawned Web Apps which hasn’t really moved, iyet Phone Apps which came later has worked much better in a shorter time.

Some blogs rush straight off the ground. Others are a hard slog, traffic, revenue, audience etc. No difference in the inputs, so need to figure out how to get it right.

Techniques to get it right:

• Variations on popular – imitate but with a twist, can be successful if you get in early-ish, are good and have a sufficiently different angle;
• Using empirical results – search rankings, popularity of posts (not just on your own blog), Adsense testing, any method where you gauge the popularity of a niche in an analytical way;
• problems & passion – doing what you love Or solving your own problem, assumes that there are others out there like you (and there probably are);
• using trends – pick where the market is going and bet on it, great example – Twitip! Great for technology but applicable for other areas too.

Is it really an opportunity? Not always. To find out, try some competitive analysis, empirical analysis, test the waters.

Capitalising on opportunities: Move quickly – web moves first and it takes time to gain momentum so you need to start sooner rather than later. Don’t be afraid to change – you have to give something a good solid go and back yourself but if its  not working then sometimes you have to pull the plug and concentrate on a different opportunity.

Opportunity is only the beginning: you still need to execute well, you need to create good content, you need to be consistent, you have to be better than your competitors.

So that’s it until about mid afternoon on Monday. I will post the last of my notes in a third blog post tomorrow.

I was so fortunate to be able to attend the ProBlogger training day held in Melbourne today. If you don’t know ProBlogger (Darren Rowse) – check him out. He is one of the foremost authorities on blogging and an Aussie as well and he gathered together a great group of blogging colleagues to present a well-rounded day of information and insights. People came from as far as Brisbane to attend this one day event!

Although parts of the day were focused on the money making side of blogging and I was surrounded by business focused bloggers, I still got a lot out of it, even from those monetizing sections. I ended up taking 7 pages of notes, so instead of inflicting them all on you in one go, I will break them up into parts.

Creating Killer Content – Chris Garrett

Worked on Problogger book with Darren Rowse. In from UK. What brings them together is content.

Its one of the pillars of blogging, but it is also the key pillar. If you don’t have content, you don’t have anything to blog with.

It’s not about making cash, it’s about long term value – to have this you have to have killer content.

First: common sense is seldom, common practice. Are you doing this? Are your peers? Could you do better at this? Keep your edge or catch up by doing this.

What is killer content?  Leads to attraction, retention, conversion and referral. Many stop at the attention grabbing. Attention is only the first step and its a cycle. Blog can plateau. Need to keep existing people happy, whilst also getting new people in.

You are only as good as your last article. Even if you have consistently done great content. If you have killer content it becomes viral. Word of mouth is the best advertisement you can get.

Why create it? It puts your blog on the map – a must-have resource. Must be something that they subscribe to. You establish yourself as the go to person in your niche.

Do you know your prospect? Do you know your niche? Do you know your positioning?  Have to stand out and for a good reason. What are you giving to people that nobody else does. You have to be different, but with value.

Success factors: be remarkable (people talk about it), more useful, in more depth, better researched, attractively presented, magnetic headlines, easy to grasp, friendly URL, WIIFM (whats in it for me – for your reader), minimum hype, prominent placement – being where people are going to be and no barriers – don’t make them jump through hoops, just give them the content and explain how they can share it (ie. Creative Commons badges etc). Never say you’re an expert, let others say that for you – if you say it, all the barriers go up.

Compelling content types: your biggest tips, big vision, guides/how to/tutorials, FAQs, Story with a message, research and results, jargon buster, product database, case studies, resource round-up.

Generating Ideas: Yahoo Answers etc – find out what questions people are asking and answer them. Once you get some followers, people will ask questions. Get their permission to answer the question on your blog.

Blog this! Write about what you know or your journey about learning what you want to know. But it also has to intersect with what people want to know (rather than what they need). If it doesn’t, you won’t find an audience. Add proof that you know people want to know it. Back up that you know what you are talking about with your proof – statistics and social verification.

Emotional motivators – towards or away from people – towards is goal oriented, away is worry etc – need to know your audience and blog accordingly. Past, present, future; they live on these clocks – understand where they are coming from.  What if, how to…..; information…. action – people need results from your information.

Headlines – need to get people to read your information. Need to look at the reason they are looking – risk or reward. Need to have keywords that people are seeking.
10 proven formulas for blog posts:

• DO you make these mistakes?
• The secrets of ………..?
• What …….. can teach us about ……….?
• Everything you know about is ………. wrong.
• How ………… made ……….. and you can too.
• If you …………. you can …………..
• Finally, no more ………….
• At last! …………….
• Learn how millions of…..
• How to get more/better/cheaper………….

Borrow Authority – if you don’t know the information yourself, ask an authority and get permission to re-use the content. It gives you more authority because you know people who are recognised authorities.

Jedi Mind tricks (marketing) – audience, relationships, authority, proof, story, conversation, reciprocity, polarity, commitment, consistency.

Multimedia is very persuasive and easy to get out – can make it easy to go viral. It makes you stand out (most bloggers go with text) and is easy to share.

Re-purpose your content – bundle it into a container, make videos around it, take the audio and make it into a podcast, create an e-book from the multimedia you create. Leverage it to get more traction from it. You can even outsource the re-purposing.

Case Study – Chrisg.com – 41 blog success tips —– includes benefit and proof. Has an image that catches the eye. Problogger – becoming a problogger – rags to riches story – underlying message is that you can too.  Copyblogger – on dying, mothers and fighting for your ideas – story with a message.

Mistakes in creating content: – writing purely for search – filler content (just to fill a space) – recycling ideas (update, not copy and paste or link) – Echo chamber (we all agree) – Poking the Hornets nest.

Finding Readers – Darren Rowse
What was your biggest day of traffic and how did it happen? (go and check it out for your blog – can learn so much from this alone)

Which Readers? What type of people do you want to read your blog? Knowing who, informs your content strategy, your promotional strategy, community strategy and monetisation strategy.

Develop reader profiles: create a typical scenario of who would read your site – demographics, dreams, why they would read your blog, needs, challenges, how they use the web, financial situation – all completely made up – but it gives you a starting point. Profiles will evolve and need to be updated. They inform your content and how you promote your site. If you don’t know who reads your blog then how can you find them? If you have a profile in mind, it helps you to personalise the content to that particular profile.

Principles of finding readers:

• choose popular topics for your blog and posts (google trends, market samurai);
• build something worth being found;
• get off your blog – build a home base – then interact on outposts on the web – outposts depend on who your readers are – eg Twitter, Flickr
• build anticipation – give readers a reason to subscribe – a reason to stick around;
• start with the readers you have – you can potentially reach more through the ones you have;
• build a sticky blog – engross them so much that they don’t want to leave (sneeze pages – gets people deeper into your blog, into the things that interest them);
• content event (results of surveys or polls and more, seasonal stuff etc) – look at what your peers are doing, social bookmarking and networking are talking about in your niche and make the most of it;
• use familiar technologies for subscribing – email;
• persist – momentum does grow and it does get easier;
• promote…… but not too much. Survey your readers – find out what they want to know about and what other sites they use.

Lifehacker – suggest a link/topic. Get them to write about something you think their readers should know about.

Blog posts on themes or greatest hits……

Techniques for finding readers:

• guest posting, social media sites, you tube, seo, forums,
• pitch other bloggers,
• leverage other online and offline presences
• participate in other memes and projects of others,
• blogging/web communities, competitions and awards,
• speaking at events and workshops online/offline.
• Blogging alliances,
• present workshops,
• develop reports/whitepapers,
• incentivise subscriptions,
• interview someone/be interviewed,
• comment on others blogs (make an impression),
• comment on readers blogs,
• promote posts or landing pages – not just your blog,
• advertise,
• submit stories to media/press releases,
• anticipate big events,
• press releases.

Forums still have value, particularly in finding readers – you can help those there with your expertise, build your reputation and gain exposure for your blog.

Find a community that helps you to promote and improve your own blog.

Check your public library for training opportunities on things like public speaking, choosing cameras etc.

Getting readers to subscribers – depends on your readers – add a subscribe link to end of each post and if not used too much, in content links.  Sidebar links don’t work that well.

That took us to morning tea – will post the next stage in Part Two – coming soon!

I can’t believe its been3 weeks since VALA 2010 finished.  But it has been and in the wake of all my notes from the conference and inspired by some excellent summary blog and twitter posts from fellow conference attendees, here are my key reflections from VALA 2010.

1. Discovery layers

It doesn’t matter what vendor you use these days, a discovery layer will sit over pretty much every library system and open your content to your users in a new and exciting way. Academic and State Libraries have already implemented this software and public libraries are starting to. And it sits on top of your website to give the integration between the website and catalogue that our users expect and that librarians have been seeking.

I never realised the range of offerings available until I chaired the Vendor session which demonstrated a wide range of the offerings available from different companies. If you don’t already have a discovery layer in place or in process, you need to be looking at them now.

2. Metadata

I have heard talk about metadata for well over a decade.  Til now, I thought it was the domain of repositories, archives and the like. After VALA2010 I can finally see its relevance for my own library’s web content, which is neither archival nor relating to repositories in any form.

So add another thing to the list of things to do.

3. Semantic Web

Linked data and the whole concept of the semantic web is moving from a concept to a reality in small ways.  Its fascinating to watch this evolution, from concept to working tools. Its early days yet, but there will be a lot more interesting developments in these areas in coming years, which I will be watching for with continued interest.

4. Mashups and APIs

I always thought that APIs really belonged to the realm of programmers or those with some programming knowledge/skill, of which I have a minuscule amount.  After listening to Paul Hagon at the L-Plate Series at VALA, that misconception has been corrected. I have already been planning with APIs without realising it (its only Google Maps, but hey, its still an API) and Paul pointed out some great tools to help us get into some more serious stuff. It’s time to play!  Thanks Paul.

5. Trove

This new service from the National Library of Australia is very cool and I look forward to learning more about it and seeing how we can better utilise it and promote it to our users.  There was several papers on Trove, so check them out to find out more about how it was created and exactly what it can do.

6. Open source

Is more widespread than I had ever thought about. But when I did, realised that we are using so much open source software already – it runs our Internet servers and our browsers, as well as much of our communications.  Is it that big a step for us then to start using open source software for other purposes? It’s already proven its worth in those areas listed.

7. Twitter and Blogging

Twitter was the new kid on the block at the last VALA conference.  This year, it made its presence felt big time.  It was a great back channel to what was going on in other sessions, a guide to what was worth checking out and a great way to network with other librarians, both at the conference and following along from outside.

Much to our delight, the hash tag #vala2010 was in the top 5 twitter tags in Australia the week of the conference, hitting number 1 on the Thursday – the last day.  It was also a great delight to finally meet all those twitterers I had only known online before then and to meet and start following twitterers that I met there. I think that I have started following at least another 20 people since the start of the conference.

Keep up  the good work all – you make working on computers all day all the more interesting and what you share is  entertaining, informative and useful in turn.

Twitter probably outdid blogging in terms of content sharing this VALA, but it still had its place for the detail on content. Being a conference blogger myself, I really appreciate the depth that I can get from a blogger’s reports. They are also a great teaser for the papers that I may want to go and read in full. The papers BTW are freely available from the VALA website – well worth checking out.

8. Networking

It was the best conference ever, for just spending time with other like-minded library staff.  The social events were great for this, but it was even happening whilst waiting for sessions to start, or during the breaks. It was wonderful sharing thoughts, ideas, feedback and what you’re up to, with other enthusiastic librarians (and others), who speak the same language.

9. Presenting

I was fortunate enough to present two papers, and get away with it, lol.  Both my papers, presented with two different co-authors were well received much to my amazement and relief. I have had several people follow me up with questions on both papers since, much to my delight.

Writing a paper is a difficult enough process to begin with, but then trying to present that paper in a snapshot presentation is even more so. I learnt a lot from other presenters at VALA about how to engage the audience and even how to present so that you retain their interest.

10. VALA Conference Committee

I was a member of the conference program committee this year, but the role we played was so small, compared to all the work put in by the VALA committee in general. These guys all have regular jobs and real lives, yet put everything into getting this conference off the ground, running as well as it did and responding to issues quickly and efficiently as they arose.

Alyson Kosina, the backbone of VALA is an amazing lady, who you should take a moment to meet and chat with. You will walk away enriched. David Feighan and Bart Rutherford, the Conference Chair and VALA president respectively, were endlessly everywhere, managing, listening, participating, anticipating and in Bart’s case, presenting one paper when the speakers couldn’t get here in time. Dedication personified.

I really enjoyed working with them in the small role I played and learnt a lot. I very much look forward to more opportunities to be involved with VALA.

And amazingly, this blog posts has ended up with 10 reflections. That was not my intention, it just developed that way.

Thanks to all my co-conference attendees for helping to make it the best conference I have ever attended.  Bring on #VALA2012!

So what is Connecting Librarian all about?  My byline says it is about “Connecting new ideas and technologies with library service”.  Which it is, but it’s interesting to see whether three years of posts actually reflect this aim.

Enter Wordle.   “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.”  When it launched, it could only be used with text you input, but now it does blogs!  So below is the image generated by my blog.

Wordle.net

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, Conference is very big.  Its not that I go to a lot of conferences, its just that when I do, I blog intensively.  Books is also large, which is very interesting considering that this blog tends to focus on technology.

Anyway, feel free to have a play with Wordle.  You can change colours, shape and more.

Speaking of conferences, I have finally posted my ALIA Dreaming 08 conference photos (maily from the dinner) to my Flickr account.  Feel free to check them out.

I am typing this blog post on my Asus EEE PC as practice for a forthcoming week. On Monday 1st September, I am flying to Alice Springs for the ALIA Dreaming conference. I will be presenting with Glenn Harper from Frankston Library Service on Wednesday, the first day of the conference. We are presenting on what Casey-Cardinia, Frankston and Eastern Regional Libraries are doing with Web 2.0 tools. We will miss Maryanne Gosling, our partner from ERL, who is unable to attend.

I am excited about the conference, for a few reasons. Its my first ALIA conference, so that will be an experience in itself. Ill be doing all the first-time stuff too, like going to all the social functions including the first-timers breakfast. I also plan to do lots of networking and aim to meet up with many people that I only know online. If youre one of those people and youll be there, please drop me a line – I would love to catch up.

I am also looking forward to presenting. I have presented a session with Glenn before, but not on a joint presentation and not for a few years. Im excited about showcasing what our libraries are doing, I think we have reason to be proud of our achievements. On the otherhand, Im also happy that we are presenting on day 1 so that I can relax and enjoy the rest of the conference with the presentation done.

After the conference is done, I will be looking forward to the winding down. My family is flying up to join me on the Saturday and we will be spending the week in Alice Springs, at Kings Canyon and Uluru. Hubby and I have been before, but its the kids first trip, so we are all very excited.

Once home, I have 3 weeks to really wind down. Im not going back to work until the start of October with 2 of those weeks being school holidays. So I will have plenty of time to chill out and have fun with the kids.

So, I will be blogging plenty during the conference, but expect me to be very quiet afterwards for a few weeks. Although, if inspired at the conference, I might find that I am blogging more than usual.

I have learnt a lot about writing in the nearly 3 years that I have been blogging, much of which I haven’t realised until I started writing for other avenues.

I am in the process of finishing up one conference paper, reviewing a journal article on the basis of peer review and researching for another conference paper. Both conference papers have to be submitted for publication in the proceedings, so a full paper is required.

Lesson number 1 – writing is not as easy as it may seem. Or rather, good writing isn’t. I have come to the conclusion that I need to be inspired, or at least greatly motivated to be able to write half-way decently. Which probably explains why my blogging tends to be sporadic, rather than regular posts, as I am not always motivated to write.

Lesson number 2 – I can write when the pressure is on, but generally its not very good. Point in case, the paper I am polishing now I had trouble starting, but I got it down. When I went back to review it, I was amazed to see how bad it was – of course, I went back to in a time of motivation, so I was seeing it through more creative and critical eyes.

Lesson number 3 – good writing will take you over. When I feel like writing, I will write everywhere. So not only am I working on those three things, but I’m blogging here and I will be going off to post on some other blogs as well, with items that have been sitting in my to-do pile for a while.

© 2008 Digital Inspiration

Lesson number 4 – I can be as temperamental as any artist. Writer’s block seems to happen for me on a regular basis and in those times (with arm across forehead and dramatic flair) I just can’t work!

Lesson number 5 – Distractions are a problem only if my writing motivation is lacking. If I’m having trouble writing, then anything will distract me, but television and a book – any book, are key distractors. When I’m motivated, nothing will distract me, in fact it will be hard to keep me away from the computer.

Lesson number 6 – I create best on computer. I learnt to touch type in high school, one of the best skills I ever learned. Now, all those decades later and still with a healthy typing speed, I find I write better with the keyboard than with pen and paper. My fingers type well with the thoughts flowing through my head and they don’t get as tired as they do if I am writing the same amount with pen and paper.

Lesson number 7 – I review better on paper. Again back to the paper I am polishing. It was created on computer, but when I went back to re-read it, I was better able to do so on paper. Then out came the red pen and I went to town on it. Don’t know why that is, but that’s the way it is.

Lesson number 8 – I have to believe that what I am writing will be good. I can put out some good content, not from the very word go obviously, but I can get down what I want to say in a way that people call relate to. Not that I am anywhere in the same league as great authors, in either the wider publishing world or even the library publishing sphere, but unless I believe that I can communicate in a way that people will be engaged by, then its not going to happen at all.

Lesson 9 – I am enjoying writing more than I thought I would. Despite the anxiety caused by writer’s block and fast approaching deadlines, when the mood takes me I really enjoy putting my hands to the keyboard and creating content. Not that I think I would ever make a career out of it, but rather it gives me the ability to express my passion for what I am doing and to share that with an audience who hopefully relates to it.

Lesson number 10 – there will be many more lessons as I continue to learn about writing. I am very fortunate to have a range of opportunities to hone my craft. As I continue to look for and take up these opportunities and learn from my experiences and those of others, my writing will continue.

So these are my learnt on the fly lessons. Would love to hear of your writing experiences and other lessons you have learnt. By doing so, you help me with lesson 10! Thanks!

Been a bit quiet on this blog, because there has been way too much happening at home. However, I have had a couple of emails recently that caught my interest.

The first was from someone asking me to allow them to guest post on my website. I know other bloggers do, but I hadn’t even considered the idea until someone asked. My immediate response was almost childish – along the lines of “its mine, you can’t have it”.  I got over that and thought about it with more consideration and still ended up deciding against it, for a number of reasons.  These included, not knowing the person making the request, either professionally or personally and having a feeling of responsibility to people who read this blog and not wanting to damage the trust which you have entrusted to me.  So I politely declined, however I referred them to another blog I post to, which does take guest posts, leaving it to them as to whether they would take up the offer.

This was followed a day or so later by a request to write a post, about a post written on another blog.  Again, this was the first time I had ever received such a request.  As I had already gone through the thought process with the first request, this was more straightforward.  I checked out the blog post to see what it was about and then again decided against it and emailed them back to let them know.

I have come out of this with a few thoughts. Have I made the right decision?  I still think I have, for the reasons I outlined above and because there are other avenues for these people to pursue.  The next thought was wow, my blog is important enough that people think they will get attention by having their content published through it, or alternatively they are trying with everybody they can and I was just one on a long list.  Either way, I am still going to happily blog whenever I get the inspiration to do so, whether that is several times a week, or once a month.

Hope you’re OK with that too.

It was my birthday the other day. Unfortunately I had a staff meeting and an appointment on that day which was my day off, as well as the regular school drop off, pickup and swimming lessons. So it wasn’t a day to relax. However, it was a day I learnt a bit about myself that I guess I have known, but never really realised and it was a day filled with many moments of happiness, many of which had some sort of electronic origin.

I’m a Gen Xer, a control freak (but not a perfectionist), task oriented and I love music. My work involves virtual services for my public library, which I just love. This is just some background to give context to the rest of this story.

My staff meeting was our Information Services team. The meeting is only quarterly, so I didn’t want to miss it and I do enjoy what we cover and the people I work with on this team. However, my biggest moment of joy in this meeting was sharing an achievement involving solving the issue of being able to search our catalogue from outside of our OPAC. Its been something that I have been working towards, on and off, since we got our new ILMS over 12 months ago and which came together in a very short time due to some timely and very helpful assistance from a colleague at another of our consortia libraries. (Thanks again Maryanne).

Another moment of joy during the day was when I was driving home from my appointment and one of my favourite songs came on the CD player. The volume went up on the music and whilst driving, I was bopping away in my car and singing my heart out (I’m not a bad singer…). I didn’t care what other drivers saw or thought, I was just enjoying the moment, which combined my joy of driving with my love of music. (don’t worry, I didn’t break any road rules or run anyone off the road)

After getting home, I chilled out for a short time, firstly online. I ended up with a small smile on my face for the rest of the day, because of all the lovely birthday wishes I received, both through email and through Facebook. Thanks to both my email and Facebook friends. It was a small thing, but I really did appreciate the few moments that you took to send me a quick greeting. After that I spent the last little time I had spare before getting going with kids and birthday dinner, to watch some of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite TV shows.

I spend lots of time in the electronic environment. Driving my car, working on virtual services, listening to music, spending time online whether in games, social networks, watching TV and more. And I really enjoy it. I always knew I spent a lot of time on computer, in my car and on TV, but didn’t really realise until that day how many moments of joy they provide me. It makes me think that I may be more digital native than I realised.