Lifelong Learning

The time crunch

Jan 29th

Posted by Hana in Identity

6 comments

Some of you may know that I am expecting my first child in the near future.  I will be taking some time out to devote myself fully to this important role of raising a small human being.

Over the past few years I have been heavily involved in my own personal professional development, and generally trying to contribute positively towards the profession in New Zealand and moving us forward.  I thoroughly enjoy where I am at the moment in my career, and the collaborations and relationships that I have established and continue to nurture.  I also revel in my day-to-day experiences and learnings from my volunteer roles with LIANZA, and my role at my place of employment.

However, I’m nearly at a cross-roads, and it’s crunch time.  Something, sooner or later will have to give.
(Mums, Dads – does it? Will it?)

Over the past 6 months or so, my musings here have definitely subsided with the occasional squirt of a thought making it to “publish”, along with tweets and other miscellaneous tools for social interaction, including the odd coffee or yumcha lunch date.

It’s getting to the crunch time and I’m a wee bit nervous.

Years later, I’m probably going to look back over this and think, aahhh those were the days, when I worried about retaining my professional identity while raising some kiddiewinkles.  Well yeah, I can’t wait for that day when I look back.  But right now I have to look forward into wholly unfamiliar territory.  People tell me your world changes.

Don’t get me wrong, I will make it clear now, that I am really looking forward to this new journey in my life.  I’m excited about that new world. :-)

I have read, talked, asked, enquired, read, chatted, laughed and mused about what it will be like post-children.  I am now getting to wonder what it is like specifically as a “new-generation” Librarian, who aspires to be LIANZA president one day and possibly even an LJ Mover and Shaker.

What spurred me to draft this post was reading Bobbi Newman’s (LibrarianbyDay) tweet for a request to an article about how Movers and Shakers were treated after getting the award.  Someone found it and Bobbi said she’d seriously like to see a follow-up article.

This is what I learned from reading that article:

Wordle: Explore

Time is the most valuable possession.  If you don’t have time, then you can’t do these things.

I am very much looking forward to this new phase in my life and I look forward to the journey and where it will take me.

I will find time to explore, experiment and think.

Journal Submission : Part Two : Small Task on Information Literacy

Jun 1st

Posted by Hana in Learning Journal

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What is meant by lifelong learning?

Maintaining a sense of curiosity towards the world and learning (reading, searching for information) for your own personal enjoyment and benefit, and to remain an active enquiring citizen of the world.

How important do you think information literacy is as opposed to literacy?

Quite important.  Just as important.

Does the digital environment affect the above concepts?

Yes.  You need to be ICT literacte or confident in addition to literate and information literate.

How large a role does information literacy in the form of user education play in your workplace (or local library/archive)?

Just in paper format, and not even that really.  In an in-person capacity, which is always subject to many things.  No formal, library led, tutorials available.

Ranting about costs

May 25th

Posted by Hana in Employment

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I am reposting this here after writing it for my fellow course participants.  It was turning into a rant, and I didn’t think that was the right place for it.

Information as a commodity:
Thought provoking indeed.

I haven’t even read this question where we respond by detailing all our information expenses onto the course forum.  But I’ll join in anyway, because it’s all very interesting to me.

I work part-time and I have an incredibly supportive partner who lets me off very lightly in terms of my contribution to bill paying and household costs.

As I am in this rather fortunate position, and I work part-time in the local public library system, I feel I don’t pay nearly as much as I could for my information needs.

I don’t need to watch the box every night, but I do because it’s there.  I don’t need to hire fiction/movie DVD’s from work.  I don’t need to go on the internet for 4 hours every day, but I do, because it’s there, and I’ve acquired this artificial need to “go online”, which I just cannot shake!

This is information I’m sure I could do with less of.

It’d be relatively easy to live without paying for information if you’re a diligent borrower with your library and never returned something late, so as not incurring overdue charges or heaven forbid, replacement charges, and have a penchant for documentary’s on DVD (free at my work) with no need to watch adult fiction DVD’s.

I pay quite a lot of money for my professional development, 90% of the time it’s out of my own pocket.  Likewise with study, I have never filled out a loan application form or asked my work to pay it for me.  A couple of years ago I supported myself traveling from Perth to Auckland to attend the LIANZA conference.  Had to get annual leave.  Wasn’t even speaking.  Just last week, I took part in a career management workshop, funded by myself.

In saying this, I have to say, I am known to apply for sponsorship to things, but always to an external organisation, not my work.  Possibly, the reason I prefer to pay for professional development things myself is so that I have the feeling of ownership of that information, to hold it myself and share the knowledge gained accordingly, not because I ‘have’ to.

I think whether or not you pay for information, having it in your hands is a feeling of ownership.  If you really use something to it’s full potential rather than unconsciously ‘consuming’ information, you put a higher value on it.

Information is made a commodity by the value you put on it.

Journal Submission : Part Two

May 24th

Posted by Hana in Digital divide

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The issues that are covered in the Learning Guide are set out as:

  1. User pays and the digital divide
  2. Information literacy
  3. Biculturalism
  4. Information overload (and information anxiety)
  5. Misinformation
  6. Freedom of information (Intellectual freedom and censorship)
  7. Freedom of information (Privacy and access)
  8. Intellectual property
These issues have arisen in my workplace, definitely.  In fact, I see the reality of the first two every day working in a lower socio economic community, which in turn relates to numbers 4 and 5 also.  I won’t go into details, but I do wonder, why some people don’t try and stop the cycles that seemingly run their lives.  It’s a very general saying, but I really don’t want to speak out on what I see at work every day in case someone’s listening… I don’t have the answers to some people’s predicaments, and I’m not God, so I won’t say that I can solve people’s problems, because I can’t.  I can only assist in guiding, really.
I try to help with information literacy, and literacy every day at work in assisting people, the public, in using freely available resources that we provide access to.  I take a preschool storytime session once a week, which I’m beginning to be really glad that I decided to take it on.  The joy you get from seeing children learn and interact with other children and adults is immense.  It makes my eyes water.  Some day I’ll have the responsibility of raising my own children and I sure as hell am going to try and use every free opportunity for learning by way of interacting with professionals and other kids, and just generally people that actually give a shit about how kids develop!  I’m beginning to see the need for me to provide the best preschool storytime service I can, in order to not waste anyone’s time or investment.
I can’t remember off the top of my head, what thoughts I had last on the discussions that were happening in my online communities, or what those online communities even were… hold on, I’ve found this handy link…
Here are my chosen online communities to follow and here’s my decision to leave one of them, PUB-SIG recently, though, funnily enough, I recently joined pub-sig again, but only for work purposes, and that was to advertise an event for the Wellington LIS community.
You would think that I might do my forthcoming (forth due…?) assignment on the digital divide and information literacy, but I really wanted to do something that is set away from the realities I face at work every day.  I would rather spend my time outside of work writing about something not to do with work.  So my chosen assignment topic on a makebelieve conference paper on “Issues facing the information management profession today” is on,
“Information overload and the Information Professional : how Librarian’s can help”.


Will keep you posted on how that’s going, however I just tweeted something today (now continuing writing this on Monday 24 May, 2010), which suggests that I haven’t got very far with this at all… 

*Sigh*

Going (changing) with the flow

Feb 9th

Posted by Hana in Authorship/publishing

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I used to be very interested in managing course reserves, though the work I was doing uhhh at work. I can see now, that loaning a physical item for a restricted period of time has a death notice written on it. It was just a couple of years ago though that I was quite interested in this. I can see the future in reserve collections, and it doesn’t involve physical items a lot. Funny how much my professional interests have changed in just a couple of years

Digital is where it’s at.

Just this morning I listened to Kim Clayton of Wellington City Libraries talk about the public not knowing that we at public libraries also can give you access to a myriad of databases, on top of that work of fiction and that Jamie Oliver cookbook.

Perceptions of public libraries and those that work in them are funny.

“Ohh so I can issue this book to myself? Wow. This must be putting you out of a job…”

No no. It just frees us up to do more intelligent things.

Heehee hee.

Oh, and, so long Library Life. It’s been nice knowing you.