Allsorts

This is a mish mash post…

1. Shout out to Kris (a co-author of this blog) who won the Nielsen BookData Research Award at LIANZA 2009 – you can see a picture of her here.  Congratulations!!

2. There was a brief flurry of nz-lib emails about APA and their poor production of the latest style manual.  Those of us who have to deal with this finicky stuff will appreciate this post from ARCL blog.  This quote in particular struck a note with me:

what exactly are the learning outcomes of creating an error-free list of references? You learn that research is a pain in the butt. You learn that it’s really, really important to follow pointless rules with utter scrupulousness. You learn that, at the end of the day, you’ll get points off because you didn’t follow the … rules.

While I’m all for a reference list that gives correct information so others can find the original resource I do think the focus needs to be on the actual research itself.  Not the one page list of references at the end of the assignment.  Correct reference = yes, absolutely.  Anal retentive referencing rules = give us a break.

3. My famous colleague Adrian is organising a presentation on the Cephalonia Method of Library Induction here in Auckland.  This session was presented by Simon Hart and Charlotte Brown from the University of Otago Library’s Information Services team at LIANZA 2009.  You can read about the presentation on this .pdf from LIANZA.

Unitec Waitakere Library is delighted to invite interested librarians to a training session where Simon Hart from the University of Otago will demonstrate the Cephalonia Method of Library Induction/Information Literacy and will show how successful it has been at the University of Otago.

TIME:  Tuesday 17 November 2009 – 2.00pm

PLACE:  Unitec Waitakere Campus – Lecture Theatre 510-B007, 5 Ratanui St, Henderson (best entrance off Trading Place)

If you are interested in coming, please email Adrian for confirmation of the times and to RSVP.  We will be offering tours of the joint library with Waitakere Public library after the presentation and there will more than likely be food.  So if you want a slice of cake, please RSVP!

4. One of the librarians who will be presenting at VALA 2010 is wanting  participants in a survey about the relationships, responsibilities and interesting connections that arise between libraries and IT.  More information on Kate’s blog, but this is a brief summary of her request.

If you work with IT in libraries, if you adminstrate a library management system, if you’ve ever implemented a blog or wiki or Facebook page for your library, then we need your input to get a clear understanding of why libraries are looking for alternative models for system and software hosting, and what that means for skill requirements.

If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare, we’d really appreciate you taking the time to complete our survey.

This should be an interesting paper.

5.  We want to redesign our website.  Got any recommendations for web designers?  Let me know – thanks.

About these ads