1. No category

How to write a paper in 140
characters or less: Social media for
professional development
Naomi Doessel
Information Services, Griffith University
n.doessel@griffith.edu.au
Twitter: @naomidoessel
Kate Freedman
Faculty Librarian, La Trobe University
k.freedman@latrobe.edu.au
Twitter: @katejf
The two authors of this paper have never met in real life. However through the use of
technology they have ‗met‘, exchanged small talk, jokes, professional information and are
now co-authoring a paper.
Ten years ago this would have been an arduous process involving the postal system,
expensive telephone calls, and a long revision processes. Now by using Google docs,
Twitter and other social technologies, a paper abstract can be co-authored instantaneously,
from different locations, ideas analysed and explored and accepted or rejected in a matter of
minutes, and assistance from fellow professionals gained by putting out a call for help that is
answered almost to the second.
Social media and technology have morphed relatively seamlessly into the lives of
information professionals. Bringing their new graduate "next gen" eyes and skills to the table,
the authors create a "how to" guide to online interaction, exploring the benefits and pitfalls,
and put to the test whether social media can be used as an effective method of information
collecting and sharing, or whether it is just another time-waster.
With the explosion of social media advances in the last five years, the paper will look at how
collaboration has changed and what changes new technologies such as augmented reality
and the domination of mobile technology may have in a profession struggling to overcome
the effects of an aging workforce. The paper will also explore how these technologies can
help new graduates feel less isolated in their profession and enhance their professional
development.
1
INTRODUCTION
Michael Stephens said in a recent column in the Library Journal, ―If the online world is not for
you, then neither may be a career in librarianship‖. (Stephens, 2010) This paper echoes this
sentiment as the two authors of this paper (both librarians) have never met in real life.
However through the use of online technologies they have ‗met‘, exchanged small talk,
jokes, professional information and are now co-authoring a paper.
If this paper had been written 20 years ago, the authors would have communicated through
telephone and the Australian Postal Service, if they had even known of each other‘s
existence, which is unlikely. Whilst the document would still have been typed and printed, or
even saved onto a 3.5" floppy disk, communication was asynchronous, with days or weeks
between each instance of collaboration. Ten years ago collaboration instances took
advantage of email for more instantaneous asynchronous communication. Although email
narrows the time between communication instances, it still means that two documents are
being edited, collaboration requires the combination of those two versions, and changes
could be overlooked. Today, both asynchronous and synchronous collaboration tools can be
used to not only write papers, but enhance professional development and assist lifelong
learning.
The authors of this paper could both be considered ―new graduates‖, having completed their
library qualified courses within the last three years (Freedman) and five years (Doessel), and
are both active in the Australian Library and Information Association‘s new graduate
movement. This paper shows how new graduates can take advantage of emerging
technologies to help them feel less isolated in their profession and enhance their
professional development, the authors want to stress that the use of collaborative tools and
social networking sites is certainly not just for the ―new‖ or the ―young‖. Many members of
the authors‘ Personal Learning Network are managers and more senior members of the
library and information profession. This not only brings a depth to the network that is rarely
paralleled in real life networks, where traditional boundaries of experience can persist, but it
demonstrates that limits that may exist in the ―real‖ world are somewhat broken down in the
―online‖ world, which can provide opportunities for a new breadth of professional
development prospects for all involved.
This is very well summed up by a member of the authors‘ PLN and Manager, Library
Services at Edith Cowan University, Constance Wiebrands:
―All this reading, thinking, and discussion (online, with colleagues from all over the
world) meant that I started learning, not just about Web 2.0 technologies, but about
all aspects of librarianship. Being able to learn about what is happening in other
libraries, and about the issues that library professionals face has been both
challenging and inspiring at the same time, and has helped to broaden my
perspective.‖ (Bennett and Wiebrands, 2010)
2
PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK (PLN)
Ferguson (2010) defines a PLN as ―a community of individuals around the world who are
learning together. They can start out as strangers, people you couldn‘t pick out in a crowded
room. But Twitter helps these strangers come together and create a community built on
communication and collaboration dedicated to making learning and education the best it can
be‖.
This definition is from an educational perspective but translates well into the LIS sector.
Librarians may argue that we have been building PLNs well before Twitter – and they‘d be
right, to a point. Professional associations such as ALIA have provided opportunities for
library professionals to find those with similar interests, librarians have been building
communities of practice, both online and within local communities for years, and
conferences have always been a great ways to meet colleagues. A good friend and
colleague of one of the author‘s remarked when hearing about the term PLN for the first time
that ―it‘s just the people that you know‖. The librarian in question has, over time, been
building a personal learning network herself through volunteering in the professional
community, mostly through ALIA new graduate activities, and from these has developed a
rich and varied network. Not everyone gets the opportunities to utilise 'on the ground'
networks, or is able to interact in this way. To this extent we asked our PLN what they used
to build professional networks pre-Twitter, and the answers received fell into both online and
offline categories:
Online: blogs, mailing lists, web forums, RSS feeds, instant messaging.
Offline: Conferences, ALIA groups, PD events, University, place of work (POW),
phones, Aurora Leadership Institute.
It‘s interesting that most of the online methods of communication were about receiving
information – not sharing it collaboratively. Those that did collaborate (e.g. instant
messaging) required the network to be set up already. The overwhelming response from our
PLN indicated that while librarians used these tools to network and collaborate, the
experience of having an integrated Professional Learning Network didn‘t really exist in the
same way that it does now.
The discussion showed some of the interesting quirks of Twitter, as simple answers to a
question took on a life of their own, as an entire conversation went off topic and turned into a
walk down memory lane, into discussions of early computer technology, and good-natured
jokes about where people read blogs before the Internet. Here are some of the highlights of
the 50+ responses we received in under thirty minutes.
Teresa Bennett: @redevilib @katejf don't remember having a PLN before twitter.
Just networking with colleagues and email/blog buddies. (Bennett, 2010a)
Kate Davis: @redevilib pre twitter. Read blogs etc, but not connected; not immersive
experience
ReDeviLib: @katiedavis Was your #PLN us? From uni?
Kate Davis:@redevilib I think so. Also heavily involved in alia and groups. Actually
the latter was probably it. Don't really consider I had a pln... (Doessel & Davis,
2010a)
Kim Tairi: @NaomiDoessel good old fashion f2f meetings; email; mailinglists (errgh)
#PLN #studybuddies (Tairi, 2010)
3
Mal Booth: @redevilib @katejf bugger all really: nuthin else worked as well or as
quickly as this (Booth, 2010)
Mylee Joseph: @NaomiDoessel @katejf before Twitter a lot of us didn't know what
we didn't know ... learn something new every day in this environment (Joseph,
2010a)
Mylee Joseph: So much is changing so fast in lib profession / info world - Twitter PLN
is often difference between surfing and being pounded by waves. (Joseph, 2010b)
An interesting omission from the answers was Facebook. While Facebook is still the number
one social network in the world (The Nielsen Company, 2010a), the authors and their PLN
generally use Twitter as a preference for a professional play sandpit, with Facebook
generally kept for the personal, in-real-life connections made over a lifetime. As McCorkle
said, "Facebook is for who you know, Twitter is for who you want to know." (2010) Therefore
it works best in the professional development context - and no constant updates about who
fed what animal on Farmville to contend with!
Where do blogs sit in all of this? Bercovici (2010) reports that Twitter and Facebook are
replacing hobbyist blogging, as people cut back ―in favor of less demanding hobbies that
offer some of the same satisfactions: microblogging and social networking‖. In order to get
back on the blogging bandwagon in mid 2010, the Libraries Interact community (a central
meeting place of the authors‘ PLN) decided to launch a challenge: to write 30 blog posts in
30 days, or #blogeverydayofjune (Greenhill, 2010b). This challenge, and others that have
followed, have certainly helped to build relationships and strengthen ties within the online
Australian library community. However Twitter is still the centrepiece of the authors‘ PLN,
echoing the Technorati research that shows that 53% of hobbyist bloggers are blogging
either ―somewhat less‖ or ―a lot less‖ than when they started blogging, in favour of devoting
more time to microblogging or social networking sites (Sobel, 2010).
Whilst social media research has shown that most people continue to connect online with
people that are still within the confines of their physical environment (Levin, 2010), the
advent of technologies that allow people with similar interests (professional or otherwise) to
connect over distances that prior to the Internet would have been much more difficult to
surpass, has led to the creation of real-life connections that would not have been as possible
prior to these technologies.
Teresa Bennett: @redevilib @katejf mostly remember forums and email being the
major tools and also PLN was closer to home, that is within district and MPOW.
(Bennett, 2010b)
It should be noted that while Twitter allows for a network to spread across the globe, the
members of the authors‘ PLN are primarily found in Australia and New Zealand. Australian
Library ‗tweeps‘ can choose to follow, and some more high-profile of our profession may also
be followed by the movers and shakers in the LIS industry overseas. However Twitter, as a
primarily synchronous technology which facilitates ―conversation‖ can be difficult to use
across multiple time zones.
More and more people who ―meet‖ online are focusing on ways to then meet in real life
(IRL). Mark Drapeau uses his blog to define three classes of social media relationships, the
third of which are those which Personal Learning Networks fit best. That is:
―(R)elationships reinforced by real-life interactions (however infrequent). This third
class is where most of the value is generated - One can generate "leads" through
social media, take some relationships to the next level, create meaningful real life
interaction in some form, and then strengthen the real-life relationship through interim
4
social media use. This positive feedback loop is critical; IRL reinforces social media,
and vice versa.‖ (Drapeau, 2010)
Twitter users often arrange to meet ―in real life‖: in the library context you can see this
happening regularly around conferences, with TweetUps at VALA, ALIA Access, ARK‘s
Library 2.0 forum, and even meetings for those left behind.
snailx: Table in bar booked for 10 folk for library tweetup on tues night at 6pm at
Redoak, 201 Clarence St http://redoak.com.au (snail, 2010a)
‖ALIA Access #leftbehind Western Australian tweetup – a bunch of us who are
enjoying the Perth rain instead of the Brisbane sunshine are getting together
tomorrow night to discuss how we aren‘t at ALIA Access and don‘t need to be when
we have each other‘s wonderful company. All librarianly types are welcome. It‘s at
7pm tomorrow (Wednesday) night at Chocolateria San Churro, Leederville.‖
(Greenhill, 2010a)
Outside of the library network, you can see Twitter users in many cities creating their own in
real life social networks – BTUB, originally coming from the acronym for Brisbane Twitter
User/Underground Brigade is an extremely active group of Brisbane local Twitter users who
have (at least) monthly Friday night drinks, and regular morning coffee meetings, one in the
CBD and one in an inner suburb, and their Facebook page advertises board games nights
too. However you won‘t find up-to-date information about them on Web 1.0 – that is, the
www.nameofgroup.com kind. A couple of old websites (http://btub.wordpress.com/ and
http://btub.org/) haven‘t been updated since 2008 and 2009 respectively. However their
Twitter account http://Twitter.com/#!/btub is up to date, as is their new website http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26270637875.
Greystone Bar: Loved listening to @peterjblack and @evanontheGC talk about
#BTUB on @612Brisbane ! Makes us extra happy to be the #BTUB Pub Night hosts!
(Greystone Bar, 2010)
Social media therefore can be seen as becoming a way that people connect online, but then
facilitates their meeting in real life. Online technology and networking tools have made it a lot
easier for us to find those people with which we want to meet – it makes the ―synchronous‖
meeting of those with which we want to interact, even if they are at a distance to us, much
more immediate, and collaboration much easier.
snailx: @redevilib I've gone the other way - did everything online in the old days these days I try and meet people face to face (snail, 2010b)
In educational research it is noted that the use of synchronous communication via the
Internet ―offers participants a feeling of immediate contact, motivation, and even some fun‖
(Ng, 2007). And in a world where we are much more mobile and have the ability to visit or
even move cities, having a network already established can be invaluable. However, it is
important not to discount the significance of meeting in real life as well. The authors of this
paper are itching for February 2011 when they finally get to meet face to face and indulge in
some responsible celebratory beverages.
―The point is, face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our
globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less
desirable. Thanks to the tools y'all are building, we now have more far-flung friends-including people we've never met f2f--than ever before. We now have more people
we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only
contact.‖ (Sierra, 2007)
5
THE TECHNOLOGIES
In this section we take a look at the technologies we have used to write this paper, in
particular Twitter and its use as a tool for information gathering, dissemination and to share
the minutiae of our daily lives! We also investigate other synchronous cloud technologies
such as Google Docs, Dropbox, Zotero and Prezi, and gaze into the crystal ball to see what
the future may hold in terms of mobile computing and augmented reality.
Twitter
This paper started off as a throwaway comment on a shared Twitter stream. Every member
of our PLN seemed to be submitting abstracts to Information Online on the day of deadline,
and we both felt left out. A joke comment about writing an abstract on-the-spot turned into a
semi-serious discussion about what we could write about, which turned into an hour or so of
intense back-and-forth on Twitter and Google Docs which led to the submission and the
following comment from one of our PLN members:
@Suelibrarian :@katejf @nomesd that was wonderful to watch. The profession is in
good hands :) I hope they accept it. (Cook, 2010)
To avoid confusion, please note that one of the author‘s private Twitter handle (name) has
changed during the course of writing the paper, from @nomesd to @redevilib, and she also
has a public profile, @naomidoessel.
Part of the new wave of microblogging tools, Twitter has been helping shape the social web
since 2006 asking What are you Doing?, and more recently What‘s Happening? (―Twitter /
Home,‖ n.d.). Over 175 million people have accounts, with 70 million users added between
April and October 2010.(Rao, 2010) Where Twitter differs from other recognisable social
networks is its ability to create personal learning networks through one-way and two way
traffic variations. To see what someone is 'doing' you can follow them, but they do not have
to follow you back. In this way you can follow influential people in your field, and see what
they are tweeting, but not interact with them.
If they follow you back (and library people are great at that) then conversation can be more
interactive, as you both can see each other's tweets, ask questions, follow links and send
private messages (DM's). When enough followers overlap, you can follow whole
conversations without needing to take part.
JoBeaz: @redevilib @katejf am loving watching your conversations
(Beazley, 2010)
Zaana: @katejf @redevilib just hv to say I <3 you two. Loving your convo this
afternoon :) (Howard, 2010)
In writing this paper, the authors used Twitter to communicate in real time, with quick
messages to supplement thoughts, processes or edits. We also used our followers (or PLN)
to crowdsource (Howe, 2006) questions, as a source of information and encouragement:
Katejf :@redevilib sync test: have just deleted adopting an informal learning strategy,
can u pls resync zotero and see if it dissapears
ReDeviLib :@katejf I CANNOT DO THIS
6
Katejf: @redevilib YES YOU CAN #virtualchocolateforsupport
(Freedman & Doessel, 2010)
Twitter has been the main channel of communication between the authors because of its
synchronous nature, but it does rely on both parties being connected to the internet, or using
data-connected phones (―smartphones‖) to access Twitter, generally through applications
(apps). Spoken conversation, whilst the ultimate in synchronous communication, is gaining
competition from sms texting and microblogging as the internet invades the world, with over
2 billion people having an Internet connection by the end of 2010. (Schroeder, 2010) The
advantage of using text-based communication methods for collaborating on a paper such as
this, however, is that there is a record of the conversation – that is, if you are able to save
the messages.
Whilst a fantastic service, Twitter does have its quirks and problems, primarily the difficulty in
retaining conversations (tweets are generally only maintained for 3 months) and the
ubiquitous failwhale (service failure) which has become so familiar to Twitter users.
Conversation‘s were ‗favourited‘ to try and avoid the 3 month embargo on tweets, however
this is an ad-hoc method which is not always effective, especially if you are using multiple
applications to access Twitter, or just forget to favourite a particular tweet. Saving Direct
Messages is also problematic on some applications.
Conferences, forums and workshops are beginning to effectively leverage the popularity of
Twitter with the use of event tags. The convention of tagging for providing folksomonic
metadata gained its popularity through the social bookmarking site delicious, and has been
appropriated into Twitter by the users of the service. Known as hashtags on Twitter, the tag
is proceeded by the hash (#) symbol. For example at the ALIA Information Online
Conference & Exhibition 2011 the hashtags #ALIAioc is being used. However ensuring
everyone uses the right hashtag is sometimes problematic, as while writing the paper the
authors have also used #ALIAioc2011 and #ioc2011.
As Twitter doesn‘t archive tweets, services such as TwapperKeeper and CoveritLive are
used to show and archive associated tweets. The capture of these depends on the usage of
the hashtag, so if the tag is misspelt, forgotten or missing the hash (#), it will not be archived.
Additionally, services such as TwapperKeeper have inefficiencies and service deficiencies to
overcome.
In the writing of this paper the authors went in search of tweet-stream data from the ALIA
Access conference held in September 2010. The purportedly archived tweets, numbering
3516 (Powell, 2010) have been (hopefully temporarily) lost from two of the three services
that ALIA used to archive the conference‘s Twitter output. TwapperKeeper
(http://wthashtag.com/Aliaaccess) and What the Trend http://wthashtag.com/Aliaaccess)
appear corrupted and only show recent tweets, and Summarizr (Powell, 2010) only provides
broad statistics, not a list of tweets. A summary of the use of Twitter at conferences, as seen
in Alcock‘s blog post after the New Professionals Conference in the UK (2010), is helpful in
that it analyses statistics, however the real value of a Twitter archive is the content of the
tweets. Without a stable archive, the rich metadata that was created at the conference by
the tweet-stream is no longer available. The entire Twitter archive has been donated to The
Library of Congress (Library of Congress, 2010) but it is not known when the archive will be
available for viewing or search.
So why use Twitter as a base for collaboration, professional development and PLNs?
―Social Networks have the ability to connect those who are passionate about sharing
what they know and helping library professionals remain relevant in both the physical
and digital worlds.‖ (Lenox & Coleman, 2010)
7
Social media is also becoming prevalent in the teaching of the new generation of library
professionals, with QUT leading the way with Associate Professor Helen Partridge gaining
an ALTC grant to investigate Web 2.0 and LIS education (Partridge, n.d.) and Associate
Lecturer Kate Davis focusing on the use of emerging technologies in the unit INN333
Information Programs (Davis, 2010c).
―We‘ll be playing, experimenting and experiencing emerging tech for the sake of
playing, experimenting and experiencing, but we‘ll also be using emerging tech as
our primary communication and collaboration channels for the unit.‖ (Davis, 2010a)
Many fantastic articles have been written about Twitter, and more are being produced all the
time. At the risk of becoming redundant between the time we publish this paper and present
it, our current top reads about Twitter are Ferguson (2010), Boyd et al (2010), Dunlap and
Lowenthal (2009), Pogue (2009) and as a how-to, Creese and Doessel (2010).
Google Docs
The initial writing of the abstract was completed in Google docs, as it allows multiple authors
to view and edit the document at the same time. Whilst this worked, it was difficult to use as
same time editing slowed down the screen refresh rate, and was confusing. What was
easier was one person typing, one ‗viewing‘ and then vice versa. For the final editing of the
paper, we also moved our paper from Dropbox (see below) back to Google docs, for its
ability to handle multiple editors. However, the formatting functionality of the program is not
on par with Microsoft, and it did require the document to be reformatted, back in Microsoft
Word in regards to quotations, citations and headings, and for the final submission.
A handy feature of Google docs is the ability to chat in the sidebar, which whilst echoes the
real time synchronicity of Twitter, is private between the viewers, not cached and not limited
to 140 characters.
Dropbox
Dropbox enabled synchronisation of the document between different computers, hence the
document could be edited by one author at home, and it would automatically sync to the
central Dropbox server, which would then update the local files held on the authors‘ work
computers, smartphones and shared desktops. The downside to Dropbox was that it could
not be updated whilst in use, and therefore did not enable synchronous editing.
The main reason for using Dropbox, and other cloud based tools like Zotero, can be
summed up in the following tweet from @Redevilib:
Forgot my laptop today. Good news? I can install #dropbox and #Zotero on this
computer and still work on #ioc2011 conf paper! Hooray! (Doessel, 2010a)
8
Zotero
Zotero is one of the new bibliographic management tools that is taking advantage of the
boom in cloud computing and the shifting focus to collaboration outside the local postcode.
The authors had different experiences with Zotero, with one author having a harder time
getting comfortable with the software, especially when faced with a steep learning curve.
Ultimately it has proved useful, for its ability to be collaborative, portable, synchronisable and
non-proprietary. A new feature that is particularly useful is the ability of Zotero to search the
web for the metadata (author, publication details) of a PDF, but it does not always yield
results.
ReDeviLib: @katejf just figured out how to retrieve metadata from online PDFs in
Zotero! AWESOME function! (Doessel, 2010)
One of the biggest problems faced by the authors has been the way website shots are
taken, especially of journal articles found in library databases. This may be due to ezproxy
URLs being harvested from Zotero rather than persistent URLs, as the authors consistently
found that they could not access articles their universities both had database access rights
to. For example Freedman put a journal article into Zotero from ProQuest, then when
Doessel went to look at it from the link in Zotero she was directed to the login page for
ProQuest for Freedman‘s university, not her own. Doessel then had to search her own
library‘s collection for the article, finding it in ProQuest in the same database collection that
Freedman had originally sourced it from. It is hopeful that in time the database vendors will
work within the cloud so that collaboration on shared resources is possible within the
confines of copyright and vendor agreements. Zotero also takes a screenshot of every
webpage as if it is a standard webpage, collecting very little metadata. As a lot of the
resources for this paper were from blogs and other online media, quite a lot of manual
editing of references had to be undertaken. This is not necessarily a problem unique to
Zotero, but to online metadata collection in general.
The authors have also had to deal with the loss of metadata in records when synchronisation
between machines did not work properly. They hope that the soon to be released update to
Zotero which enables usage through a desktop app, and other browsers such as Google
Chrome and Internet Explorer will fix some of the issues they have had to overcome using
Zotero in FireFox.
A great benefit of our PLN is that sometimes they do our work for us. Kate Davis is
undertaking her PhD and in the process has been experimenting with different bibliographic
management tools. Her blog post (Davis, 2010b) was invaluable to the author who struggled
with the software, as were her helpful on-demand tweets when things got tough.
Redevilib: Halp! How do you edit references in #zotero?
Kate Davis: @redevilib if there's no info tab it's probably attachment - eg the pdf
attached to ref. does it look like this? http://yfrog.com/5hztfp
Redevilib: @katiedavis ended up removing the PDF and entering a book type
manually. I don't know how to add the PDF as @katejf has
Kate Davis: @redevilib if you google the article title you'll find the doi. then use the
magic wand to add article by doi. then click the ref, click...
Kate Davis: @redevilib paperclip, add pdf. voila. (Doessel & Davis, 2010b)
9
Prezi
Prezi is an online collaboration tool already being used by many librarians as an alternative
to MS PowerPoint. But apart from its whirling words and slick flash interface, the real
strength in this tool comes from its collaborative power, and brain-storming non-linear
design. The authors of this paper have yet to work together using Prezi, however in the
presentation of this paper it will be explored further. Fauscette (2010) gives a summary of
the tool which mirrors the authors‘ experiences. MacDonald (2010) provides an excellent
Prezi on how to use Prezi for professional development (for librarians) on her blog.
THE FUTURE…AND BEYOND?
Without a crystal ball it‘s hard to know exactly what the future will look like, but one thing
that‘s relatively easy to predict is that technology will continue to evolve and grow, and with it
LIS professionals will need to continue to adapt, and learn new skills. Collaboration, cloud
computing, and continuous connection are more and more part of our professional and
personal lives, with advances in mobile computing and augmented reality expected within
the next year and two to three years respectively (Johnson et al, 2010).
Here‘s a brief glimpse into our very near future.
Mobile computing is in many ways already upon us, with Nielsen (2010b) reporting that 43%
of online Australians own a smartphone, and 25% of social networkers use their phones to
participate in a form of online collaborative activity . While all ages participate, it's clearly the
way of the next generation with 66% of mobile social networkers under 35. Twitter sees the
most traffic from mobiles with 50% of mobile users checking in daily (Nielsen, 2010b). Self
proclaimed ―Librarian Extraordinaire‖ Joe Murphy notes that mobile technology is impacting
many aspects of library operations, especially what our users expect and want:
―Bright futures are possible for libraries in a world of mobile technology. But they are
not guaranteed. It is up to us librarians to ensure that we are critical in embracing the
changes needed for adapting to these evolutions in expectations. This may require
that we carefully decide, as individual libraries and as a profession, if we want to
embrace change and stay relevant as the information sphere enters the world of
mobile or if we want to maintain our previous roles and sustain our former success in
a niche more heavily reflective of the past.‖ (Murphy, 2010.)
Augmented reality may be adopted into our lives within two to three years, combining the
virtual and the real to enable learning experiences that are embedded in context and
situations (Pressley, 2010). What this may mean for libraries has already started to be
explored, with Hagan (2009) demonstrating through the ―Then and now mash up‖ of pictures
from the NLA archive overlaid into Google Maps. For further reading on the subject see
Tenkely and Houghton-Jan (2010). What it may mean for librarian‘s professional
development only time will tell.
For more information on these and other emerging technologies that are likely to affect our
lives in the next five years, see the Horizon Report (New Media Consortium, 2010).
10
CONCLUSION
Through the use of synchronous technologies on the cloud the two authors of this paper
have met, brainstormed, researched, troubleshooted, and finally written a paper together with little idea of what the other looks like, apart from blurry online avatars. They have
experienced the great support that comes from having a network of professionals around the
country (and potentially the world) to provide help, advice, enthusiasm, and serendipitous
links to information. Collaboration has been an organic process, with the authors rarely
working in isolation, using social media and online collaboration tools to work side by side
throughout the process. They have both gained skills in using new technology, but the real
development gains for the new graduate authors has been the experience of being
connected to their profession, their peers, and their passions.
Social media tools may change and new technologies may come and go, but the gains that
librarians can make in working with these media are here for the long term. It‘s certain that
Stephens‘ quote that we opened with will remain true with the adoption of these new
technologies. To paraphrase: if you‘re not ―online‖, you‘re not ―in line‖ for a career in
librarianship.
11
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Libraryanne: Librarianship in the modern age. Retrieved from
http://www.joeyanne.co.uk/2010/07/12/tweeting-at-npc2010/
Beazley, J. (2010, November 5). @redevilib @katejf am loving watching your conversations.
Twitter, . Retrieved from http://twitter.com/#!/jobeaz/status/449293102092288
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Special thanks must be given to the authors‘ PLN network on Twitter who took time to
answer crowdsourcing, technical and simple yet confusing questions.
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