Monday 19 September 2011

Thing 14 - Citation Tools

I did not use a citation tool for either of the two research projects I have worked on, so am familiar with the laborious task of creating references manually then cutting and pasting them into documents and finally creating a bibliography. I had to use different referencing styles for each of the projects, which created another learning opportunity. If nothing else, this process provided me with a familiarisation with those style guides that I believe is essential before using citation tools.

I now have yet another citation style that I have had to become familiar with - the New Zealand Law Style Guide (NZLSG) - through marking footnotes and bibliographies for Year 3 and post-graduate law students. As part of my professional development, I have had to use EndNote to reference two assessments for my legal studies. The NZLSG  is a relatively new style (January 2010). It is hoped this will be adopted throughout the legal profession at all levels in New Zealand. I found when using it, that my knowledge of the style guide was invaluable. There are a couple of types of resources that are not covered within EndNote, so it is important to know the style well. I would not recommend EndNote for law undergraduates, as the number of references required at this level does not justify the work required of inputing the data - it is just as easy to create them manually and cut and paste as required. Manually creating references also gives students an opportunity to practice using the NZLSG. However, I would strongly recommend it to honours and post-graduate students. The NZLSG committee has called for submissions, and the Davis Team has made a submission seeking clarification in places and making suggestions for inclusions in the next edition.

I have not looked at the citation tools highlighted in Thing 14, as it is unlikely that they will have the NZLSG as a style. In addition to this, the University of Auckland currently supports EndNote and is piloting RefWorks. I need to brush up on my RefWorks skills. I know that Victoria University of Wellington are doing some work with Zotero, but until there is some headway there and unless the University of Auckland decide to support Zotero, I will stay with EndNote and RefWorks.

Thing 13 - Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

I am feeling rather chuffed with myself for managing to combine two different professional development experiences. While at the NZLLA Symposium in Wellington, my attention was caught by the PricewaterhouseCoopers librarians, who have developed a rather elaborate database for capturing requests. We don't need anything as clever as that in the Davis for a number of reasons (we don't have to work out time spent on requests for billing students, for starters), but I felt we needed to find a way of storing request outcomes for later use. This would have been paricularly useful when I was new at the Davis. When I saw Thing 13, I was hopeful that I had found a solution. I accessed Google Docs through my Google account and loaded the first couple of requests in there. The rest of the team have shared access. We will review this in a little while to consider whether we should open a Google account using the Davis generic e-mail address. But even if the team decides not to continue with it, I will save requests and other usesful information there as a way of preventing duplication of time and effort.

Since coming back from the Symposium, I have also requested access to the NZLLA wiki. I haven't had time as yet, to thoroughly investigate this, but members of the NZLLA committee gave a comprehensive demonstration at the Symposium, along with some excellent training notes. I am hopeful that later this week I will get time to have a look through this.

The concerns I have with tools such as these, where information is loaded online somewhere (the cloud?), are regarding security and ownership. How secure is the information? Who owns it? When something is deleted, is it gone forever? What happens if the system crashes? What happens if some evil dictator with plans to rule the world buys the company? There are many questions that need to be answered before important and confidentail information is kept online.

But right now, I'm happy that our requests have found a place to live.

Monday 5 September 2011

Thing 12 - Social Media

In my personal life, I have found social media - mainly Facebook - to be of some benefit of keeping in touch with people I already know. For example, I have a cousin in Whitianga, and the main way we keep in touch is through Facebook. I have also reconnected with people I have lost touch with over the years. However, it has not enhanced my circle of friends. I see the same sort of pattern recurring with the different mediums I have tried through cpd23. I am following the blogs of fellow NZ librarians, and some overseas law and academic librarians. However, I can't say that I feel a sense of community through that at this stage. That may be due to my own fault in not keeping up with the play and only working on Thing 12 now, while everyone else is on Thing 18. I'm not sure whether this blog will exist beyond cpd23. My intention is to continue to use it to blog about my pd experiences, but time will tell how that pans out. Writing my own log still feels a little awkward and ego-centric at this point, and I 'm not sure why anyone would want to read about my pd experiences - although I am happy enough reading what everyone else is up to. I think it's that old kiwi trait coming to the fore.

I thought the NZLLA Symposium would provide some opportunity for increasing my social media circles, but so far have only made one new connection through LinkedIn as a direct result of the symposium. I did exchange business cards with some people, so will look for them on the various networks I am signed up to. I will continue to use LinkedIn after the programme has finished.

I still don't really get Twitter. Maybe if/when I get a smart phone or other such device, I will discover why people are so enthusiastic about it.

It seems that the good, old list serve is the dominant force with many librarians in NZ. E-mail seems to be how most NZ librarians stay connected.

I am looking forward to the upcoming SLIS/NZLLA quiz night. It will be a great opportunity to meet up with some of the Law Librarians from Auckland who didn't make it to the symposium. It will be good to meet people in a purely social context as well, and not be worrying about getting back to the office.