Thing 13: Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

Google Drive

I love Google Docs, now Google Drive! I heavily used Google Docs over the past 2 years for school and it is wonderful for group projects. The ease of sharing and working on the documents at the same time as project teammates is such a time saver. It also allows for chatting while working on the documents which enables for easy group creativity. The transformation to Google Drive has only made it better for easy transference of documents.

Dropbox

Dropbox is very similar to Google Drive except it has less free space (only 2 compared to 5 GB). However, Dropbox does offer many other options through great apps and inventive ways of using cloud storage. Overall, I plan on continuing to use both :)

Wikis

I have made use of two great wikis so far. The first being MediaWiki which I used during Library School. The students had a wiki full of information about concerning topics and ourselves. I not only utilized this great resource I also maintained my own profile page and the McGill's Multilingual Children's Association's webpage where we kept the students up to date with information and events concerning the association. I quite enjoyed the flexibility of MediaWiki, as it was so customizable.

I also make use of Google Sites as a wiki for a project at one of my volunteering jobs. It allows us to keep all of the projects documents in an easy to access place so that we can access it from work or at home. There is much flexibility with Google Sites as you can choose whether to have a private website for yourself, share with a selected group, or make it public. It also provides several templates for pages and design for those who don't know how to make it themselves. The ability to easily imbed apps allows for complex webpages without the hassle of creating them from scratch. It also provides a free server so that there is no cost in hosting the site, a definite plus!

Thing 12: Putting the social into social media

I have been using FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn quite a lot since i began this program. I do follow several people and groups, mostly in LinkedIn. I tend to be more of a "lurker" or listener on LinkedIn as I like to see the various posts and conversations out there. I have posted a few replies as well, when I have some helpful information to add. Mostly I am using LinkedIn as a source of information at the moment about hot topics and trends, as well as, meeting new people. However, I do make regular posts and comments on Twitter and FB. Due to the increasing familiarity with the tools and online communities I am becoming less of a  "lurker" more interactive. :)

Thing 11: Mentoring

Mentoring is a great thing that everyone should participate in. I was lucky enough to get into the mentoring program at McGill University through one of the associations and got to meet a wonderful mentor. She talked to me all about her career path and work. She brought me along to get hands on experience selecting books from a bookstore showroom and set up a day where I got to meet with her fellow library managers to ask them about their work and insights about career development. It was a great experience that I really appreciated! I also have a few unofficial mentors that I have asked for advice from about career development. I really appreciate all their time and thoughtfulness!

In turn I have given advice to peers in school when I could. I have also passed along useful information to those who would benefit from it, like a great job opportunity that was perfect for the person. Overall, I think mentors are a great thing. In the future, I plan on not only benefiting from my mentors, but also being a great mentor to others.

Thing 10: Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation

In Canada to become a librarian, one must have a bachelors degree in any subject. Many students also have a majors degree and are returning to school to become librarians. While previous library experience is not necessary, it is taken into account and makes you more of a favorable candidate for the program. Each school is different, some like McGill University teach all streams under the same degree to allow for students to diversify, while others teach different programs for different streams. The programs are usually 2 year programs. Students can continue to study and do a PHD. In addition, there are some 2-3 year programs for library technicians, and other various certificates for semi-professionals. In Canada you do not have to be part of an association to work, but in Quebec in order to work librarians must be part of the Corporation of Professional Librarians of Quebec.

My path so far is that I have done a Bachelors at Concordia University with a Major in Anthropology and an Honors in Classical Civilization. I then went straight to McGill University to do my Masters of Library and Information Studies. I did not have an prior experience in working in a library, but I did have lots of experience using it! While I was in library school, I volunteered to gain practical experience working in a library. I volunteered at a public and special library to get diverse experiences and became part of a school association (Multilingual Children's Library). At the end of the program I did a practicum, or stage/internship, in a special medical library where I got hands on experience doing various projects as well. I really enjoyed my practicum and believe it is very important to do one as it gives direct hands on experiences with many aspects of libraries, the work done, and the thinking about the current issues and possible futures of library services.I still volunteer at my practicum site and at the public and special libraries. I have just recently graduated and am looking forward to getting out there!

I have noticed that in order to professionally develop in Canada, librarians mostly depend upon associations for courses, work environment, and alternate school programs (ex. web design). I like the idea of Cahrtership and Certification done in the UK as it gets librarians, not only continuing to professionally develop, but also to make themselves and others us aware of our work through portfolios. I have seen that some universities in the United States require students to create ePortfolios as part of their course work. I think that librarians need to learn how to promote themselves, their services, and their work more effectively and portfolios are certainly a great step in that direction.

Thing 9: Evernote

This is the first time I have used Evernote even though I knew about it before. While it seemed like a handy enough tool I did not think it would be as useful as it is. I love it! It's so easy to use to store and share all sorts of data. I think this is a great tool to keep track of all sorts of personal interest information. it's also great as it enables users to save the webpages and articles so that if a website goes down or a page is moved or deleted, users can still have access to the information. The search function of Evernote is easy as users can add tags to each note which makes retrieval a breeze. I will definitely be using this tool form now on. However, for use as a research tool, I am not sure it would be comprehensive enough as it lacks the organizational capability of reference management tools, such as Zotero (a free reference management tool that can save webpage information and a copy of the page), for easy citation organization and management. For research I recommend Zotero instead or a combination of the two tools.