Thing 6: Reflective Practice

July 28, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ 1 Comment

I love reflection and I am a big fan reflective practice. It is something that is extremely popular with the cohort of library users that I deal with – nurses and midwives and I am always trying to push reflection as a form of professional development for them and myself.

I am having a reflective day today while playing catch up with the Things in Rudai23. I really liked the article by The Daring Librarian on reflective blogging – she makes some very valid points that i hope to remember.

Really liking this time to see how everyone else is doing. And wow, some people have fab blogs. I feel as if mine needs some TLC.

Thing 5: Online Networks

July 28, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ 2 Comments

I love Facebook. I only actually joined in the first place to keep track of my sister who was wandering around the globe and said she wouldn’t be able to send me individual emails. That then expanded to regular (daily!) use when I was a new Mammy and joined a secret group with other new Mammies with babies born in the same month. It is something I highly recommend by the way – the advice from people who are all in the same boat as you is unmeasurable plus you feel so normal that you are not alone especially at 3am.

I haven’t ventured too much into using Facebook in a professional capacity. I do like the idea of it so have requested to join the Rudai23 Facebook page. I have also found that great pin on the Rudai23 Pinterest board about the 6 facebook pages every librarian should follow and I have liked a few of the ones that I hadn’t come across before.

As for Twitter – I just can’t get to grips with it at all. I have an account and I follow quite a few librarians and news broadcasters but I have never sent a tweet and can’t see myself ever getting into this format at all.

Thing 4 : Google

July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ Leave a comment

Yeah another thing I have come across before. I am a huge Google fan and love the whole suite of products are offered through it from the home and office products like the calendar, drive, docs, forms, sheets, gmail! That said I do feel that they have huge access to me and my data so I try to limit my usage and I am not really a fan of the social products like Google + . I have also used Google photos which is great to have in case something happens with phone and also really useful to use when making photobooks.

I have used Hangouts for an online course I am doing on virtual instruction through Coursera. The interactive side wasn’t hugely successful on my part due to the time difference (based in California so I wasn’t getting up at 4am) but I was able to watch the recording of the discussion and like the functionality of it. I can see how this could be of great use for any group who are geographically dispersed around the country. It would be great to see a Hangout for this group at some stage.

Thing 3 continued

July 28, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ Leave a comment

Well I had a look at about.me and was about to start into putting a page together and then I stopped. I had asked a few colleagues if they had heard of it and they hadn’t so this coupled with my complete lack of time to keep anything up dated I decided to just stick with LinkedIn. At least I had made a start on that previously and I should be able to keep that updated easily enough.

I really don’t need another CV page at this stage but it was good to know what it was like and that it even existed.

Thing 3 – Brand Me

July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ 2 Comments

Well I thought this would be an easy Thing but thinking about it more it is more complicated than I thought. I guess as a brand I am reinventing myself as an old favourite in new packaging,. I will explain.

I have a LinkedIn page which is fairly up to date minus the photos as I don’t have anything decent. That will be rectified as we are getting new work photos taken soon. However, I forgot that I very recently changed my name to married name in work due to new email server and now I have to go and update all these professional things too. I have already had a few conversations with people explaining myself as a “formerly known as Rohan” – at least LinkedIn gives an option to put in a former name as all my professional work to date as been under one name and now I’m starting all over again with married name. If you Google Aileen Rohan, you get a few publications I was involved in. If you Google Aileen Garrihy, you get a relation in a completely different field of work. Maybe I should have thought about this abit more 🙂

I’ve never heard of about.me so off to have a look there now.

Thing 2: Write about how/why you became a librarian

July 13, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ 3 Comments

Right so 15 minutes starting now:

I always wanted to be a librarian. I started going with my Dad to Raheny Public Library when I was 2 years old. I loved all the shelves and containers full of books with different colours and pages. There was a separate Junior Library from the Adult Library and we used to spend ages pottering around the bookshelves looking at different books while my Dad was in the Adult library. It was a Saturday event and we used to have to stop off in the Supervalu in Raheny to get tomato puree (my Dad regularly forgot to get this in the Thursday shop) and a doughnut on the way back. Yummy!

Unlike other little girls who played school or nurse, when I was little I used to play library. I used get books from the book shelf and put them in a row and play library with my little brother and sister. I used to have homemade library cards – remember the cardboard ones with the space for inserts from the books! I used to make inserts for the books with the title and author and turn up the front page of the book so the little insert would sit in it. It used to make me feel as if I was defacing the books to do that so I then started to use a little bit of blu tack to stick the insert into the book so as not to cut/tear the first page of the book.

Once I went into secondary school I was involved in the school library. The students used to open the library up at lunch time for other students. I remember in sixth year we all had to write down where and what we saw ourselves doing when we were older. I wanted to be a librarian.

At the time the only method to get a qualification was through a postgraduate course, so my plan was to do an Arts degree and then immediately do the postgrad in UCD. So I did Italian and Classical Civilisation in Trinity. I then went onto do the Diploma in Library and Information Studies (DLIS) in UCD. I should have tried to do the Masters as once I had finished the Diploma, I immediately started the Masters through Robert Gordon University.

I have been really lucky with all my work experiences and I think they all related in some form to information dissemination and dealing with people. I worked in Eason Liffey Valley on part time and full time contracts where I was in charge of various subject areas – abit like a subject librarian. My areas were popular psychology, health & fitness, and religion. I had a brief time working in the the National College of Ireland when it was based in Ranelagh. I was only working there for a short time when I got offered a part time contract in the library in DIT Kevin Street. I worked there for the academic year and loved the busyness of the library and the whole student learning atmosphere. I worked there for a second academic year the following year. The summer after my Finals, I worked for Dublin Tourism which again involved information dissemination, helping people find accommodation, tours or just general information on Dublin. This was where my language skills came in – the only job where I have ever used Italian.

All of these positions were before I had even started the course in UCD. The year of the course I was working in DIT and Dublin Tourism simultaneously while studying. It was so busy but really great fun. After the DLIS the job hunt began and I was very lucky to get the graduate position in Bord Bia. I worked there as Assistant Information Officer for about ten months and had a wonderful mentor in the Information Officer. I really learned so much from her about customer service and dealing with all kinds of customer whether senior management, client groups or public. I was very distraught at the thoughts of leaving there but I was given huge help to find another position and actually had a choice of two in the end. I started in the Irish Nurses Organisation on a maternity leave cover over twelve years ago and I am still here now.

The work has changed so much from when I first qualified. There is so much more online work. We are not so much giving members the information as formating the tons of information produced into much easier bitesize chunks for them to digest. Our members are extremely busy nurses and midwives who work shift while trying to keep up to date so it is important to highlight the new research to them rather than have them get lost or sidetracked navigating around the relevant information sites. We are more knowledge managers than librarians and this is reflected in our physical library space which we are completely redesigning now.

I just love working with information regardless of subject matter and helping people find what they are looking for. The means and methods may have changed but the overall task is the same.

Oh dear, slightly over the 15 mins allowed but rather a comprehensive listing of why I became a librarian. Hope it isn’t too much like a CV.

Rudai 23 – the 23 Things

July 2, 2015July 2, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ Leave a comment

The 23Things

Thing 1 – Finally I did it I have a blog!

July 2, 2015July 10, 2015 ~ aileengarrihy ~ Leave a comment

I have a blog! Woo hoo! I have been meaning for ages to start a blog but never quite got around to doing it.

As part of Rudai 23, I aim to use this as a means of tracking my work through the course which is starting next week the 7th July. I am a bit apprehensive about how much time I will have to participate in the course but I’m sure I will manage as I have completed a few MOOCs recently around my work and home schedule.

To introduce myself, I’m Aileen and am working as assistant librarian in a specialist nursing and midwifery library of the INMO. We are very busy at the moment doing a major weeding project of the collection and update of the catalogue but there are many exciting new plans in the Library Development Plan and I’m sure a better knowledge of web 2.0 tools will work to my advantage.

Anyway as always i’m stuck for time so gotta go.

stuckfortime

musings from a newbie blogger librarian with too much to do