Thing 2: Hello Blogging, Old Friend

I love Thing 1 & 2! Hello Blogging, old friend - it's nice to see you again!

The first thing I do when I start a 23 Things programme is to check all my settings on Blogger and see what needs updating. Once I've that done, that's when I register my blog.

I also find it handy to check the settings on the work blog I contribute to: The River-side, to see what's missing or what can be adjusted.

So a bit more about why I've been busy over the last few weeks and not blogging as I ought to have been. Firstly it's a new semester at work (I work as Special Collections Librarian in UCC Library) and we've been doing introductory workshops, launching a new website, transferring content from the previous website for Special Collections and Special Collections' Subject Support (check out the Wayback Machine to see what we looked like this time last year!), creating a new Special Collections' guide for Outreach & Engagement, groups coming to Special Collections to see what sources we have that are useful for their modules, presenting at TEL week in UCC, presenting at the Digital Humanities Colloquium and preparing presentations for HEAnet 2017 and CONUL Teaching & Learning in November. The upshot of this is at the end of the day the last thing I really want to do is stare at a computer and do more work even though I really enjoy doing CPD activities.

Now that we're heading into Halloween a reasonable number of the classes that come to Special Collections have come & gone, I'm halfway through the number of formal presentations I willingly signed up to do (!) and I can re-advertise the Harry Potter guide I created last year. Already the word is out - Martin's fabulous Harry Potter signs in the library always help.

Credit: Soto, Domingo de. Commentariorum fratris Dominici Soto Segoviensis, theologi, Ordinis Praedicatorum, Caesareae Maiestati à sacris confessionibus, publici apud Salmanticenses professoris, in Quartum Sententiarum. Salmanticae [Salamanca]: Apud Ioannem Mariam à Terranoua, expensis Benedicti Boyerii bibliopolae, 1566-1569.

 So like the phoenix rising from the ashes it's back to blogging!

Digital Knowledge: Thing 1

Hmm! I've just read Charlie Farley's blog and it says "I'm a joiner, a participant, a signer-up of 'things', and particularly online learning." It's good to know I'm not alone! Last year I did an online cert for teaching & learning in higher education. This year I've applied for two modules on rare books and manuscripts. I may yet apply for another module for January 2017 on learning Latin... I'm not 100% sure on that. While the applications for rare books & manuscripts are being processed I thought that it's been a while since I did a 23 Things (see the wonderful Rudai 23 completed in January 2016); maybe it's time to go again!

Thing 1: Introduction
I've checked out the Things and I'm really looking forward to Block 3. I did do Augmented Reality very quickly last January so I'd like to spend some more time on that. I also did OneNote last year wit the 12 Apps of Christmas but again some more time with it would be good. It's good to see two things on digital privacy: digital footprint and digital security. I attended Alison Macrina's keynote earlier this year at the A&SL conference and since then I've been more aware of some of the issues. In the wake of the keynote I tried San Jose's Public Library Virtual Privacy Toolkit so again it'll be interesting to see how these two things work.

I'm not part of the University of Edinburgh but I remember when we started up The River-side for Special Collections, Archives and the Institutional Repository in UCC Library and part of the permission process was reading the guidelines and ensuring that we were doing as we ought to be doing. Indeed the social media guidelines now cover:

• Apps
• Branding
• Governance
• iTunes
• Language
• Metadata
• Social Media Policy
• Social Media Official Accounts
• Social Media Other Accounts
• Social Media Notice & Takedown
• Website Style Guide
• Website Procedure

And are known as Digital Estate Guidelines which is pretty much all encompassing.  These I explained to a new staff member recently and it was refreshing to know that although I had read them some time ago I will still practicing what I needed to preach, well not so much with the preaching really!