Good Intentions

Yes well my plan of completing the SLQ Licence 2 Test Drive learning program didn't fair so well. In fact is was quite dismal. I think I only got up to Week 2. I had planned to do the program at home but the last few months have been quite a rollercoaster of emotions for me.
Firstly, at the beginning of May I suffered from another bout of depression. It is something I have struggled with over the last decade or so and I thought I had in under control. I guess I have to listen to my body and mind a bit more closely. I did get help early which was good and meant I was feeling better quite quickly.

Also, last month my grandmother, my mother's mother, my only remaining grandparent died, just 2 weeks shy of her 90th birthday. It was a bit of a shock as she wasn't specifically ill or anything but she had deteriorated over the last 7 months or so and had given up the will to live. She wasn't eating well and spent most of her time in her nursing home room. She was a wonderful woman who gave the most warm cuddles. She was also very stubborn and so when she set in her mind that she didn't want to live to 90 she achieved it.

But it hasn't all been doom and gloom for me over the last few months. I became an Aunt for the 3rd time when Aaron's sister Zoe had her 3rd son and the end of May. She now has 3 boys under 6. I do not know how she copes. 1 child will be all that I will have I think. It has been nice being an Aunty and getting to know babies and children. Before I met Aaron I had very little to do with babies and young children. I am the youngest child, the youngest grandchild on both sides of my family and even then I didn't grow up near my cousins anyway. All of my friends from school that have had children do not live in Brisbane, and none of my city friends had had children before then. Anyway, needless to say I was very nervous around the boys at first but now I have no trouble. It is still good to give them back at the end of the day though.

Well, I didn't expect all that to flow out when I started this post but that's okay. This blog is meant to be an outlet for my stream of consciousness anyway.
This photo is of me in Aunty mode.

Blog Updated

I have just imported the content from my old blog, Rachel's Ramblings into this blog so it is now all in the one place. Rachel's Ramblings was predominantly created for our overseas trip in 2007 so if you feel like reading about our travel adventures you can now do so in Library Junkie.

Technical Difficulties

The photos didn't load properly in my last post so here they are now.

The mosaic is of some of the libraries I visited on my overseas trip in 2007. As a library junkie I couldn't help myself.

Online Photo Sharing

I have just finished week 2 of the Licence 2 Test Drive program. I am already familiar with Flickr and have had a pro account for almost a year now. I started using Flickr about the New Librarians Sysmposium 3 in Sydney in 2006 to share my photos with the other participants. A friend of mine in Sydney introduced me to Flickr after she had a baby a couple of years ago. It has been a great way to see the way her son has grown up as we don't get to catch up in person that often. I am also in the process of adding photos from the overseas trip Aaron & I took in 2007. We took over 10,500 photos which I have culled down to about 630 which I am putting on Flickr. I am about 1/3 of the way there. I will finish it one day.

I love photos and photography so it was great to check out some of the other sites mentioned, Photobucket, Smugmug and Snapfish. I had been to Snapfish before when I was planning to create a calendar for someone as a christmas present. However time ran out and I never did create it. I will go back and do it sometime.

One of the things I love about photos online nowadays is all of the things you can do with them. I love Big Huge Labs and the fact that it is linked to Flickr is great. I created the following 2 images from their in a matter of minutes. I could spend some much time at that site if I had the time and creativeness to do so.

Why I am a library junkie?

I thought I would explain the meaning of my blog name. I am a library junkie. I have loved libraries all of my life. I can still remember the libraries I went to as a child at Blaxland, Aitkenvale, Richmond and Wondai. I love books and I love information. I always used to, and still do to some extent, give articles etc to my friends and family about things they were interested in. Now I suppose it is more just forwarding on URLs but it is the same principle of sharing information. That is the reason I became I librarian to share information.

I also love library paraphenalia, books, pens, other vendor stuff, movies about librarians, I love it all. I have old info science textbooks and even a copy of the 10th abridged edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification that I picked up from a Lifeline Bookfest. I have t-shirts, caps and even a golf umbrella from vendors. I have had the golf umbrella for a few years sitting in a box at work, (which I had moved with me from my previous library) and I had forgotten all about it until this week. It was very handy going home from work yesterday in the pouring rain.

In my first paid library job, the first time I answered a reference question on my own, I was so excited I went to the back of the library in the staff area and jumped up and down with joy. I was so excited and I knew that I was in the right profession.

New Beginnings

This is the first post of my new blog, Library Junkie. I have wanted to blog more for awhile but there has been a few things stopping me. When I saw I had the opportunity to take part in SLQ's Licence 2 Test Drive I thought it was the perfect opportunity to begin my new blogging adventure.

I am a huge advocate of the library profession learning about Web 2.0. A colleague and I even created our own Web 2.0 program (Web 2.0: what health libraries need to know) for our library staff last year which you can read all about in the paper we presented at last years New Librarians Symposium. So you may wonder why then I am doing SLQ's Licence 2 Test Drive if I have already created my own Learning 2.0 program. Firstly, as I mentioned above, I want to start blogging more and see this as a great way to get me going; secondly, the 2 programs are different, although both are based on the original Learning 2.0 program created by the wonderful Helene Blowers the program my colleague Amanda and I created was specifically health-focused and looked at different tools; and thirdly, creating a program and particpating in one are totally different things. Although we had to try most of our activities when we created our step-by-step instructions, time restrictions meant we didn't have too much to actually play with the tools, and that is what I am really looking forward to now. My favourite quote regarding learning about Web 2.0 and technology in general is by Meredith Farkas. She says ‘people need to learn how to learn about new technologies without having to ask other people for help all the time’. I think this is one of the main stumbling blocks when it comes to Web 2.0 in libraries. Some people just don't see playing as learning.

New Look Blog

Welcome to the new look of Rachel's Ramblings. I have amazed myself tonight with the little bit of HTML coding that I have done to the standard Wordpress template to make it look the way I want. It has been over 7 years since I first learnt HTML and I have not used it much since.

Anyway, I spent so much time changing the look of my blog that I do not have time to post anything meaningful. I will soon though as I have started to write down my blog post ideas and so hopefully I will be blogging regularly soon.