CILIP have been trying to widen the community section of their website for a while now and one of their newer innovations is the CILIP members blog landscape. It’s basically a collection of library related blogs written by members of CILIP. A short summary of the most recent posts can be viewed by anyone (you don’t need to sign in to the CILIP website) and they link to the original blog posts if you want to read more.I may be slightly biased (my blog has been added to the list!), but I really do think this is a great new resource for the community on CILIP. It’s certainly a good way to keep up-to-date with UK library developments as well as introducing you to new and interesting blogs you may have been unaware of.

I like these sort of things as they make it very easy for people to read many blogs without having to be aware of them all individually (particularly useful for those who don’t subscribe to RSS feeds and want to have a ready made one stop shop for library related blogging).

Hopefully it will become more popular and more blogs will be added too.

I’ve been looking for ways to make PowerPoint presentations more interesting for students and came across this tool to customise Dummies book images.

It’s very simple to use – definitely something to keep in mind next time I need an image for my introductory slide.

I’ve just returned from an interesting week at my second study school in Aberystwyth.

As usual, it gave me a lot to think about in terms of librarianship – through both lectures as well as chatting with others on the course.

Just a quick blog post for now as I have a lot to catch up both in study and work (I’ve been off work for over 2 weeks and need to get ready for the influx of new students on Monday!), but something which really interested (and surprised) me was the lack of Web 2.0 chat. As an example, in my cohort (there were around 35 of us at our second study school) I was the only person with a blog, and less than 10 people had Facebook profiles. I think others were encouraged to join Facebook by the end of the week (partly to keep in contact with fellow distance learners on a more informal level), but I had expected numbers to be far higher.

I’m not sure if the fact that some students were from countries outside UK and USA makes a difference, or if it varies in different sectors (quite a few of my cohort are from public libraries with a stronger emphasis on books and reading groups rather than using new technologies), or whether it’s just a case of different personalities and interests. Maybe my views are just skewed because I find it so interesting and read many other librarians blogs who share my interest!