Blog - Jo Alcock Consulting
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Blog

05 Apr

Posted at 12:00h in Library, Study, Uncategorized by
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There have recently been some very interesting posts about the difference between librarians who hold a qualification (mainly the American MLS as discussions have been primarily from those across the pond) and those who don't have a qualification. There seems to be ambiguity about the term librarian and when it should be used, something which causes me no end of confusion as a not yet qualified "librarian". It all started with a post by someone who felt that the Library Journals Mover and Shakers should only include qualified librarians: ...

03 Apr

Posted at 22:06h in Technology, Uncategorized by
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I guess the title of the post is pretty self-explanatory really; Joeyanne.co.uk has recently had a redesign. A few days before Easter I trawled the web for inspiration and came up with a very random mix of ideas that I wanted to incorporate into my new design and came up with a very rough brief. I wanted round corners, clearer options for subscribing, a cleaner page with less columns and a greater concentration on the main content, lots of icons and a better font, as well as a huge long list of other requests. Working with the designer was very...

22 Mar

Posted at 15:23h in Technology by
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A common concern with regards to Facebook (certainly in my experience anyway) is the lack of privacy and the amount of information which is potentially available about you to anyone who wants it. I've always worked on the philosophy that if I volunteer to put information about myself on the web then I must accept that anyone may view this information, but I know there are a lot of people who want to share their information with some people but want to be able to control who can see such information. I was very pleased to see this on my Facebook homepage...

19 Mar

Posted at 23:37h in Library, Technology by
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I recently came across a couple of interesting posts about librarian bloggers (or lack of!) in the UK. I also found a similar discussion last year on Brian Kelly's blog and it doesn't seem like much has changed since then. At my last study school I was shocked to discover that I was the only one in my cohort of about 40 that kept a blog of any sort, let alone a library blog. I was very pleased to see my blog mentioned in Jennie's post, it's good to know it's findable at least! Her post is an excellent summary of...

19 Mar

Posted at 11:29h in Technology by
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I'd heard of FriendFeed before today, but a Lifehacker post I read this morning encouraged me to give it a go. If you haven't heard of it before, FriendFeed is basically an aggregator of all your online social networks. It pulls together your updates from blogs, video services like YouTube, social bookmarking services like del.icio.us, picture sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, wishlists like Amazon wishlist, etc etc! You can see in the screenshot the services is currently covers. It only took a matter of minutes to register and add my feeds so I now have a nice aggregated feed that will...

10 Mar

Posted at 18:56h in Technology by
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I recently prepared a presentation for our students to introduce them to some web tools to aid productivity. It's aimed at people with no or little knowledge about web tools and only covers a few key resources but I thought I'd share it on here in case there are some tools people hadn't heard about or others they wanted to share which I haven't mentioned. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any feedback. :) | View | Upload your own...

06 Mar

Posted at 22:37h in Technology by
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Yes really, I was shocked too! Knowing what a headache synchronising can sometimes be I wanted to give a big thumbs up to my synchronisation experience today. I've been moving more towards working online and trying to do things through the web thus giving me access no matter where I am or what device I'm using. This is all well and good but at work we have Microsoft Exchange and we use Outlook for our mail and our calendars. I use Outlook Web Access when I'm not at my work PC and also have my mail account set up in my...

27 Feb

Posted at 21:09h in Library, Technology by
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Amazon Kindles are all well and good but it's just not the same as a real book is it? (Plus I can't help but image a Kinder Egg whenever I hear mention of the Kindle - is that just me?!). So many people are against e-books and e-book readers due to the loss of the emotion attached with reading a real book and I can certainly sympathise with that view. So the discovery of the LIVRE (via Engadget) was an exciting moment (well, as exciting as you get with regards to e-book readers!). It's currently a concept produced by a student...

21 Feb

Posted at 17:14h in Library, Technology by
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I recently came across Google Calendar almost by accident, I was aware of it before but had never used it as we have Outlook Exchange at work and I have my trusty FiloFax as well as my iPod touch for my own scheduling. I was trying to publicise some drop-in information skills sessions we hold and spent ages constructing a suitable table in HTML, then inputting all the basic details which linked to a booking form for sessions where we have limited places. I then tried to find a way to give more details on the workshops and investigated using JavaScript...

05 Feb

Posted at 21:47h in Technology by
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I've already briefly discussed the iPod Touch in an earlier post but now that I've had one for over a month I thought it was about time for a blog post about my thoughts on it. I guess strictly speaking this is not directly related to libraries, but I imagine the implications of mobile technologies and particularly mobile web browsing will effect libraries and services of the future, it's certainly made me think more about interoperability of our web pages and catalogues for users accessing them on different devices. I've been using my iPod Touch on an almost daily basis since getting...