5 ways to make life easier with Evernote

I didn't use the bit.ly sidebar for ages - I thought, how much better can it be if I already use the bit.ly website whenever I need to? Then I installed it and found out the answer - it's actually much quicker to be able to shorten the URL of any page you're on, rather than copying and pasting that URL into bit.ly's homepage, plus you get useful statistics. With that in mind, I started to look for other 'how much better can it be?' scenarios to see if they too could make my life that bit simpler or more efficient.

I'd heard people raving about how good Evernote was, but I'd never used it. My rationale was similar to the bit.ly thing - I can make notes in Word on my PC, or my laptop, and I've got a note-pad app thing on my iPhone; how much more useful can a specialist note-thingy be? The answer is much, much more useful - go and download Evernote now. It's free.

The point of this blog post is to catch people like me who've never bothered to investigate Evernote and tempt them into taking the plunge - I'm not going to tell you much you won't know if you use it already.

1. Create ONE TO-DO LIST TO RULE THEM ALL For me the main reason Evernote is so instantly useful is that it syncs between all devices. So if you have it on your Work PC and make a note there, then press 'sync', the note will appear on anything else you have Evernote installed on - home PC, laptop, phone etc. This really appeals to me for various reasons - mainly the idea of always being able to access key information where-ever I am, and whatever I've forgotten to bring with me... Also, not having to faff about when I think of something important at home, remembering to then write it onto my paper to do list when I get to work etc. I have several to-do lists in Evernote now - work stuff, home stuff, blog stuff, LISNPN stuff, career stuff, plus a self-explanatory one called 'Today'. The fact that all these things are no longer fragmentary and I always know where they are, all in one place, and how to get to them, soothes me to my very soul.
2. Take notes at events Why take notes in Word or whatever, which involves later emailing them to other devices / accounts or saving them onto a stick, when you can just use Evernote? No more getting home from a conference and calibrating all your notes into the right place - if you use the basic word-processor-esque note-taking functionality in the Evernote on your laptop, then press 'sync', it'll appear on your Desktop, your work PC and your phone, instantly. If you don't have your laptop with you, use your phone to take notes and hit sync and it'll be on there anyway. And so on. (As an aside, I also take notes of things I see which I think may suitable for future birthday / Christmas / anniverary gifts for my wife - I use the notepad functionality on my phone, but I'll start using Evernote now because I can discreetly photograph stuff she says she likes without it being obvious I'm filing it away for future giftage... the point being, you can take notes about LIFE, not just work.)
3. Photograph cool stuff You can use the camera on your smart-phone to take a picture in Evernote - this then appears as a note. Similarly, once you have Evernote installed, your Print Screen button works in the same way (and you can choose which parts of the screen to 'print' too). Examples Evernote use are of taking pictures of wine-bottles, or business cards, when you're out and about. You could also take pictures of slides if the presenter you're watching hasn't provided paper copies, or a printed schedule at a conference, or building or room plans, and a whole host of other stuff which may violate intellectual property rights and should therefore not be attempted by anyone. The great thing is turns any writing in your photos into searchable text, so you can easily locate what you're looking for later. (This also means you could do really ace stuff like, someone leaves a post-it note stuck to your monitor with "Phone John Smith, British Library, 01482378" written on it, and you don't have time to phone them right away, so you take a picture of the post-it note, then when you get a chance later on you type 'British Library' into the search box and it finds John and his number.)
4. Combine it with Twitter If you allow Evernote to access your Twitter account, you can then create notes in Evernote by putting @MyEn in a tweet, or DM'ing @MyEn. So if you want to check a link when you get home or read an article later, or simultaneously tweet about an event and make notes on it, or just write yourself a to-do list on the move, you can do so using Twitter and the relevant info will appear as a note. (A note on your desktop PC, your work PC - etc etc, you get the idea...)
5. Put everything on it for conferences In 2008 I wrote all my travel info down on a piece of paper (stuff like reservation numbers for train tickets, departure times, hotel references etc); in 2009 I began writing them down in Word and printing them out; in 2010 I've added them to my Outlook Diary which I can then check on my phone, at the station/hotel/etc. From now on I'll put them into Evernote - they will be on all my devices, they're accessible on the move, and I can get at them even with no reception and my phone in airplane mode. If I'm speaking I'll put a copy of my notes on it, a link to the Prezi / Slideshare etc - even if my USB stick with all that stuff on is stolen I can still access the necessary info from my phone, and even if THAT is also stolen I can just download Evernote onto a PC at the venue and get what I need that way. I may also put a CV on it, with a list of all the trainings I've attended etc, because I have to have that stuff somewhere so why not have it easily findable and auto-synced across all the IT stations in my world? And who knows who you might meet on the move, who might be interested in your work history... - thewikiman

NB: See the comments section for a sixth thing to do with it - tracking online reputation.

Blogging is growing up: why be merely commentators when we can be activists?

I get really wound up when people dismiss blogging as a dead medium. I feel the same instinctive aggressive defensiveness that older professionals must feel when we New Professionals suggest their ideas and methods might be out-moded, because I like it and I've invested so much in it, and I'm ill equipped to move on from it. Recent events have given me cause for optimism that my faith in the medium is justified, because in the library world there appears to have been a subtle shift from those of us in the biblioblogosphere just being 'describers' to becoming 'doers' as well. There's just as much conversation, but a little more action too.

Even in the short-time since Laura and I did our Echo Chamber presentation (and if you missed it, we will hopefully be doing it twice in November both Up North and Down South, so stay tuned for that) a whole load of people seem to have gone out and broken free of the Chamber - particularly gratifying for us is that Lauren Smith (aka @WalkYouHome) was catalysed by the presentation into thinking she COULD actually make a difference herself, and SHOULD actually start trying to make things happen. Since then she's turned into a veritable one-woman media savvy library saving machine... Guardian articles, appearances on Radio 4 and 5Live, a Save Doncaster Libraries campaign getting wide recognition and generally actually making a difference - and, in fact, the use of 'one-woman library saving machine' in that description isn't accurate as she's clubbed together with several other library bloggers to launch Voices for the Library.

Voices for the Library involves no less than 8 librarians, many of whom have previously provided much comment and analysis of library problems (via various online platforms) but all of whom now felt moved to get out there and DO stuff. The result is an excellent website which is getting thousands upon thousands of hits, is being promoted in Library Campaigner Alan Gibbon's blog (great to see librarians and non librarians working together), and contains loads of stories and accounts highlighting the value of libraries and more particularly, librarians. More than that it has a page entitled 'What librarians do' - I love that, I've argued so many times I'm bored of hearing myself say it: if people knew what we do, they'd value our services and use them more. It's ignorance of our actual existence in 2010 that is at the route of a lot of the problems regarding library perception, and it is OUR job to right that perception.

Right before I started this blog, I presented at my first proper conference on the subject of how we're defined by our building, as librarians, and how unfair that was (and, indeed, is). I was quite happy to see my job as flagging up the problem. But actually it is my job to try and change that perception, at every opportunity, and by multiple means - not just talk about how that's what we should do. When the echolib thing first started, I was happy to just identify the problem. But now the presentations we're doing are offering up solutions, and because the Prezi is acting as a living archive of suggestions, more and more solutions will be added over time. And if just one person in the audience at each event (we're booked up for four so far over a 12 month period and we may end up doing more) is moved to try and change stuff in the way Lauren has been, then things really will start changing.

People are quite immunised to the argument that if we all did something little, something big would happen. People say, well I could take the train to this conference so as to save the planet, but if everyone else takes the plane anyway it won't make any difference. But what people seem to be proving recently is that actually you don't need EVERYONE to do something for it to be effective - even just a few people are able to be agents of real change. Me taking the time to explain to someone what librarians do next time I'm asked why I need a degree in it, rather than shirking the question, will make a tiny difference. But if the three or four hundred people who read this ALL take the time next time they're asked that question, and continue to do so as time goes on, that'll make a small difference and a worthwhile one. That's really the LEAST you can do - take serendipitous opportunities to enlighten people. And if you're feeling gutsy, go a little further and create opportunities for yourself. [preaching mode disengaged :) ]

Since I wrote all of the above, @reddite tweeted the following: "There is a difference between wanting libraries to be saved and wanting to save libraries". I'm really excited that people in the biblioblogosphere seem to be understanding of that difference, and moving from the former camp to the latter.

-thewikiman

The LIS Masters is a qualification of convenience

A few times recently I've read blog posts about the LIS (or Library & Information Management, or whatever version you want to call it) degree. Mostly this focuses on the Masters, because very few people I know actually have the full under-grad degree (although there are some). A recent post on the excellent Agnostic, Maybe blog has clarified my thinking.

Disclaimer: this is just my view, based on my own experiences of the degree I completed. As always this blog represents my views alone and, god knows, not those of my employer - in fact for this post, just to be on the safe side, this blog doesn't even represent my own views. :)

I think the reasons the LIS qualification is most often a Masters are just reasons of convenience. Reason 1: The vast majority of library staff do NOT know they want to join the Information sector at the age of 17, when people are deciding which degree to do. So, if we want people to have degrees, we need them to be able to complete them as something of an after thought, most usually whilst working. Which is to say - it can't take a full three years, who can wait that long? So it needs to be a Masters, that can be done via Distance Learning if necessary. Reason 2: is there three years of stuff you can teach about library work, really? Really, though? Perhaps if you cover all types of librarianship yes - school, health, academic, business, public, special. But when people realise they need the qualification, they are probably past the primer course stage. The reason which is conspicuous by its absence is: the subject matter and level of learning is at a very advanced level that couldn't realistically be achieved by an undergraduate.

I think my Masters course was, to all intents and purposes, a 1 year under-grad course. There was not much about it that you could conclusively say: this is POST-GRAD level stuff. It was just latter stages of BA type stuff, with the possible exception of the dissertation - but you don't NEED to do a super advanced dissertation to get a pass in the Masters. I've done another Masters, an MA, so I do know what post-grad study is like - that felt like another level on from my undergraduate learning; my BSc did not. I'm sure this isn't the case across the board: I've heard great things about the course at Sheffield, and obviously the UCL one is supposed to be fantastic as well - but these are both residential and, increasingly, the majority of LIS Masters are coming via Distance Learning courses, so I think my experience may be the norm rather than the exception. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I thought I was just doing the course to get the piece of paper to get a better job - and I was, but actually I learned some really interesting stuff too. But when it comes to an employer assessing me for a role, are they going to know, look into, or even care what I learned on the course? Almost certainly not (I'm in the academic sector; it may be different elsewhere) - for a start the library Masters very quickly becomes out-dated because this field moves so quickly. What the employer needs to know is that I'm the type of person who did the Masters course - which is to say committed to the profession, willing to learn, committed to professional development, ambitious and here for the long haul - not that I learned about Research Methods and wrote a God-awful essay about it.

As part of the big CILIP conversational survey, there was a question about the value of CILIP ratified qualifications. It hadn't really occurred to me that there could be any kind of library Masters that wasn't, but I do know that CILIP continued to allow Leeds MET to be a certified course long past the time when any students on it believed it should have been; I don't think CILIP can have assessed them very thoroughly if they continued to allow the course to run, by all accounts. So I'm not sure there's value in the Masters being given the CILIP seal of approval either.

The Masters is also extremely expensive - my Distance Learning MSc was twice as expensive as my part-time MA. And as Andy Woodworth (again) just pointed out on Twitter, the course is a one-size-fits-all librarians course which doesn't specialise in academic or public or any other type of librarianship. One year to study ALL types, even when some of them have almost nothing in common with each other?

So basically we have a system where we ALL, all of us who are working in libraries as a vocation rather than just as a job, have to fork out a fortune for a not-really-that-advanced degree which everyone else has anyway, that has to be a jack of so many sectors it can't really afford to be a master of any of them, a degree that means you can tick the boxes on the application form but doesn't actually help you in the interview, and which those outside the library profession are astonished to hear exists at all!

I'm not trying to undermine anyone who has the Masters, I'm not trying to besmirch the good people to teach the courses - I'm not even trying to devalue it, as I'd be very surprised if I apply for any job in the next 50 years which doesn't list it as a requirement on the person spec. I suppose what I'm trying to say with this post is, why are we all of us complicit in a system that is so obviously unsatisfactory? Employers, employees, CILIP, and library schools.

Is this really a good state of affairs to be happy with? Can we change it? If so, what do we do, what are the alternatives?

-thewikiman

This isn't just a library, it's an M&S library...

So they want to put libraries in supermarkets, eh? Well that could work - depends on the supermarket. Iceland - maybe not. Kerry Katona eating snack-sized party favourites whilst dead-eyededly telling Jason Donavon about how she saved 33% on her access to SWETS resources, equals bad. But Marks & Spencer, on the other hand...

With deliciously free Wifi access, and an achingly gooey selection of online resources wrapped up in gorgeous single sign-in, presented on a bed of modern, bright interior with brightly coloured children's areas, filled choc-full of tender, flavoursome books, CDs and DVDs and more...

Etc etc.

Anyway, I'm behind. I only get online for short periods of time at the moment. But today I've had an hour or so to catch up with the latest headline grabbing library statistics, which equate to a drop in public library use in this country. I've got a big old blog post on statistics planned when I get more of an opportunity - in the mean time though, Ian Clark's piece is essential reading for everyone - read it now! :) The part of it that is really interesting is statistics from CIPFA show that while library footfall is indeed down, the numbers of web visits is up (from 07/08 to 08/09) by a massive 49%. A hypothesis immediately presents itself - the way people use libraries is changing, they don't have to visit them so often due to the accessibility that comes with internet access (not least because they can renew book loans online - that alone accounts for a huge amount of library visits no longer necessary), so although visits to the building are down, the use of the library per se is not.

Sadly, the Government - or, to be more specific, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport - have NOT chosen to take into account internet access in the report which forms the basis for the recent headlines. Take a look at the report for yourself - you can download the spreadsheets detailing the figures, as well as the actual Word document with all the analysis, here. It's 2010, yet the report only looks at library use from the point of view of whether its subject, to quote it directly, 'Has visited a public library in the last year'.

[snarky aside] Guess how I accessed this report? Online. So does that mean that, according to this report's way of analysing 'use', I haven't read it at all because I didn't go to Westminster in person and pick up a paper copy?

Buffoons. [/snarky aside]

Anyway, the figures are quite interesting - mainly fairly miserable reading, but the clouds part to let some light through on occasion:

• Black and ethnic minority use of libraries is up since last year (it's only by less than half a percent, but hey, no one reads the details of these things anyway, right?)
• People who are religious but who don't classify themselves as Christian's use of libraries is up since last year (same again with it being by only a tiny amount, but still)
• 11-15 year old girls use the library quite a bit more than they did in 2006/07 when the figures were first collected
• The number of 5 to 10 year olds (of both sexes) who have visited the library 'in the last we'ek has gone up by more than 20% over last year...

HA! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, doom-mongers! On a serious note, I think that's encouraging - good to see that even during a down-turn in overall visitation, some minority groups are finding more reasons to visit than before. Incidentally, the report says, more than once, "The decrease in library visits is consistent across all socio-demographic groups." Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems quite a sweeping statement in light of the stats above. If the report itself glosses over any positives, what hope is there of the headlines picking up on anything other than the negatives? In the same Ian Clark blog post I linked to above, he makes another point I think is interesting, true, and very important: "...the narrative is not being controlled by the profession but by those who either do not understand the service or are trying to undermine it for their own ends." In this case, the Government itself is undermining the service with a report whose own headline conclusions are apparently determined to see only the negative even where the figures can be seen positively - it doesn't take much of a cynic to interpret this as a classic Tory 'softening up' before they unleash massive cuts. Happy days. How can we take back control of the narrative?

Interestingly, the sample size used to generate the recent, poor figures, are much, much lower than the sample size of the earlier ones. Does that mean the figures are wrong? Probably not, but they are certainly slightly less valid than the original ones - asking 6,000 people about their library use does not represent England nearly as well as asking nearer 30,000. Some of the regions surveyed are only represented by a couple of hundred respondents. Anyway.

Libraries in pubs and supermarkets? Yeah, why not.

Among the proposals the Government are considering is sticking libraries into pubs and supermarkets apparently. This has perhaps understandably met with some derision from the library community. But actually, I think this idea is considering.

Providing the pub and shop branches didn't replace actual purpose-built libraries, why not take our resources to where the people are already? After all, that's why social media works so well - that's why we all love Twitter. Because we're on Twitter anyway, so the news, views, links etc come to us. So why not follow a similar principle with libraries? Clearly the part of libraries that would easily transport to other venues is mainly going to be the traditional 'borrow a book' part - but that's okay, it will get people interested, and maybe, just maybe, they'll be tempted to visit the library proper and see what else we have to offer.

Maybe there'll even be a Halo Effect! (See the comments section of this previous blog post.) So to use the example in that link, the National Archive digitise collections, and then withdraw them from circulation in order to preserve them. They do this on an epic scale; more and more gets digitised every day. The statistical upshot of this is fascinating - physical consultation of the actual collections they digitise goes down (in most cases to near zero), but physical consultation overall goes up. People are finding what they want online, and they get so hooked and interested that they end up requesting other stuff which hasn't been digitised, so they have to go to TNA to see it in the paper. Digital use and paper use are both way up, together.

Perhaps it is worth, then, trying to embrace the idea of libraries in different places and ensure it's done well so we can reap any benefits, rather than just assuming it's a completely hopeless idea...

- thewikiman

LIS New Professionals Network

I've been saying for a while that I was going to write a post about LISNPN, the New Professionals Network launched in July. Various other topics kept coming up, and then this rather through things out of kilter:

...but I'm getting back on track now - Emily is sat next to me as I type this, gurgling (which is to say she's gurgling - I'm more or less silent) - so here goes.

Overview

LISNPN is a network for people working in the library sector, who have joined the profession in the last decade or so. You don't need to be qualified, you don't need to be young. Even if you joined the profession ages ago you may still get something out of providing advice for the rest of us, and certainly we'd love to have you - Phil Bradley  and Biddy Fisher (CILIP President) have joined, for example, and we're thrilled. So it's a very inclusive network.

For now it's purely an online thing, but it may evolve to a face-to-face event as early as this year.

The idea of it is basically to provide space for newish professional(ish)s to interact, get advice, give guidance, and download a bunch of useful resources that have been created for the network - these include guides on getting published, interview technique and public speaking, and anonymous reviews of LIS Masters courses, etc etc. We're particularly keen to bring people together who don't normally use social media much - if you're reading this and you don't have a website or a blog and don't use twitter, dip your toe in the online waters with LISNPN! We'll be very nice. :)

Meet the team

LISNPN is run by me and Chris Rhodes and Emma Illingworth, with support from a whole host of other people. Laura Woods, Bethan Ruddock, Jo Alcock, Rachel Bickley, JoBo Anderson and Debbie Morris, are all official signed up administrators who are helping out with the site. In addition to this we've got further support from some regional New Professional Support Officers, plus occasional guest spots from people like Lizzie Russell, of Sue Hill Recruitment, who kindly wrote us our interview guide. The idea is there are enough people, with enough areas of expertise, to keep the site running and to hook people up to answers for their questions (in true Info Pro style) whoever is around, and even if one of the admins, say, has a baby three weeks early which totally knocks his plans for six!

Facts & Figures

The network's membership increases every day - currently it stands at just over 460 people. The most we've ever had visit in one day was 208 people online, and we get around 700 page views a day at the moment (peaking at 2,408 on the same day as all those people were online).

What's interesting, for me, is monitoring what has the most impact on new people joining, as LISNPN has been promoted via print media, twitter, blogs, and JISCmail lists - with the latter proving far and away the biggest catalyst for membership surges. We've not yet promoted via LIS-LINK but we will do soon, and that will probably net another bunch of new people. We want to pursue as many avenues as possible not just because more people equals a more useful network, but also because we want to go beyond our own little echo chamber, and get more than just the people we already hang out online with involved. So, obviously I'd urge you to join if you've not already done so, but also tell your LIS friends and colleagues..

Getting the most out of it

I'm planning a more detailed guide to getting the most out of LISNPN that I'll put on the site itself, but for now here's the four main things:

• Subscribe to the blog. The blog is in part a New Professionals blog written by Chris Rhodes (CILIP's New Professionals Coordinator) and in part updates about the site. It's the easiest way to keep up with changes to the network, new features, documents going into the resources area, and so on. Here is the link to subscribe - if you add the LISNPN blog to your Google Reader you'll be glad you did...
• If you use Twitter, follow @LISNPN. The twitter arm of LISNPN is run by Rachel and Jo, and carries a mixture of previews of new forum posts, and links to LIS jobs. What more do you need!
• Put something in your profile. LISNPN is a Network at heart - its primary aim is to facilitate networking between like-minded Information Professionals. If you add a profile pic and put some basic info about yourself (such as the sector you work in and where you're based - no one is expecting star-sign, life story and names of pets) it'll help this aspect of things.
• Subscribe in the forum. This is harder to explain succinctly - basically there is a subscribe button that appears in the top right hand corner of every thread in the forum. If you click it, then you 'subscribe' to every thread you contribute to in the forum - it works exactly the same as subscribing to comments on a blog, in that you receive email notifications with a brief excerpt of the replies posted in the threads you've posted in thereafter. Subscribing once turns this service on for all threads in the forum that you are involved with; unsubscribing can happen at any time just by clicking the button, and stops the email notifications for all threads. It's a really good way to make sure you keep involved with the conversations that interest you. Here is screen grab with the subscribe button highlighted - go click it for yourself now!

  

Reasons to Join

In the 'inclusive' spirit of the Network, we've not locked it down. Most of it is available to members and non-members alike, the idea that a new professional browsing Google might stumble upon the answer to their query in a link to a LISNPN forum post or whatever. Some forums, however, such as the one for current LIS students, are only viewable for members (the idea being you can write what you like about your course without worrying that your tutor might happen upon it!) and the Resources area is likewise something you need to be signed in to see. So, if you don't want to create a profile, you don't have to - but to get the most out of the network it is most definitely worth joining.

Future plans

There's all sorts of ways in which this could develop, but the most important thing is that it serves the needs of the members  - so if you have ideas, suggestions or wish-lists, please let me know: email me, or suggest them in the dedicted LISNPN suggestions forum on the Network.

I'm also keen to explore how LISNPN can keep the current cohort of New Professionals together when they / we go over to that middle ground between 'new' and 'senior' pros.

URL for LISNPN: http://www.lisnpn.spruz.com/

- thewikiman