Up until now I have tried to do this through Twitter. I used TwitterFeed to post updates from my Google Reader Shared Items, Delicious and this blog. But that system wasn't quite working for me. TwitterFeed was too often unreliable, especially with updates from my blog and what was happening to all of those links I was sharing directly on Twitter? Well, they were getting caught by Tweet Backup which I use to archive my tweets but that's not a really useful tool for finding things quickly and easily. So something had to change.

  by  Old Sarge 

The first thing I changed was the way I send updates of new blog posts to Twitter. I've recently started using the WordPress plugin Twitoaster. It is exceptionally good. Not only does it post to Twitter instantaneously, it also records as comments on the post any discussion on Twitter that includes the link it has posted.

The second change I made was to stop posting updates from Delicious and Google Reader to Twitter. Instead, I am sending things the other way using a service called Packrati. This identifies any tweet I post that contains a link and bookmarks it in my Delicious account. At the moment I have it set up to bookmark every link I share on Twitter, but it is possible to restrict it to bookmark only those tweets that contain a specified hashtag.

And finally, I have set up a blog with Tumblr to aggregate all of these sharing sites, this I am calling ekcragg's notepad. At the moment it is pulling in the feeds from my Delicious account and Google Reader Shared Items. As a result of the second stage of this process I am also therefore collecting all the links I am sharing on Twitter. I have set this up primarily for my own devices, to make it easy for me to see everything I have shared online.

As I said at the beginning of this post it is an experiment, I'm going to give it a try for a few months and see how useful I find it. I'm not at all sure how it will work but I do know that at the moment I feel a great peace of mind knowing that I'm capturing everything in one place. This makes me happy.

First up was Rebecca Mogg from Cardiff University talking about the Information Literacy Resource Bank (ILRB). This is a central repository of learning objects which can be integrated into teaching materials for use at Cardiff University and beyond. The resources held in the ILRB are intended to be bite-sized, generic and interactive. Resources can be browsed by topic or type - the latter is a real bonus as many of the repositories we looked at yesterday seemed to rely on the metadata submitted by the resource creators and so it was quite hit and miss if you were trying to search for content in a specific format.

  by  Smilylibrarian 

Next was Katy Wrathall talking about her experience on the SMILE (Study Methods and Information Literacy Exemplars) project. The aim of the project was to create a study skills module to be delivered in face-to-face workshops and through a VLE. 60% of the material used in the final module was required to be re-purposed from existing information literacy resources.

Katy's presentation was very visual; she used her photo of two young blue tits fighting over a bird feeder as a visual description of the squabbles over ownership that take place in academia. Content ownership was one of the barriers the SMILE project faced in trying to find existing learning materials to re-purpose. Another was the extent to which existing materials are actually re-usable or relevant in a new context. This was an issue that was raised later in the day during the workshop feedback.

The module created for the SMILE project ran at the University of Worcester in the 2008-9 academic year. The feedback from students who participated was overwhelmingly positive. They found it particularly useful because it was available online at anytime for them to return to and review sections.

After a quick break Tom Boyle from RLO-CETL at London Metropolitan University gave us a demo of GLO Maker. He described it as "a tool to empower tutors" which removes the reliance on developers. The software is split into two sections; planner and designer. The planner is used to create the underlying pedagogical structure of the resource. This structure is then used in the designer to create the learning object. GLO Maker is free and open source. There is a gallery of materials created using this software on the GLO Maker community wiki.

Following this demo was Nicola Siminson from Mimas giving a presentation on JorumOpen. This repository of learning objects was launched in January 2010 on the back of JorumUK. Where JorumUK requires an institutional license to re-use the content deposited there, JorumOpen content is licensed under Creative Commons. Since JorumOpen launched there have been 6,342 learning materials deposited.

After lunch the group split into three for a series of workshops. One group looked at creating new resources, another at finding resources and the third on re-purposing resources. This was a really good opportunity for us to have a play around with some of the repositories and tools we had been introduced to during the morning. One thing that I really liked about this session was that each group gave feedback to the room. The issues that were raised here were largely the same from all groups:

• Finding resources is extremely time consuming, mainly because there are so many places to look
• There are very few resources that can be re-used exactly as they are
• Resources that have already been created are best used as inspiration for creating new material

The last presentation of the day was from Catherine Bruen, the National Digital Learning Resources (NDLR) Manager, talking about the community aspects of the NDLR. All 21 HE institutions in Ireland have involvement with the NDLR. Essentially the NDLR provides funding for teaching and learning projects at the institutions and then hosts the output. Originally an institutional license was required to re-use the materials hosted by the NDLR but increasingly, as with JorumOpen, Creative Commons licenses are being applied. The NDLR has a growing community through forums on the site and on Twitter and Facebook.

To me the NDLR appears to be a one-stop-shop for staff working on information literacy materials in Ireland's HE institutions. The lack of something like this in the UK was an issue raised in the Q&A session at the end of the day. This event was certainly a great opportunity to discuss what other people are doing at their institutions, share resources and sources of information. Surely the next step is to continue this online...

Additional links

Repositories/Projects

• BRUM (Birmingham)
• Merlot (California State)
• Information Literacy Toolkit (Newcastle)
• SMILE

Software

• Hot Potatoes
• XtraNormal

Morning soundtrack: This American Life

First thing this morning I had a meeting with the student from earlier in the week who is researching the relationship between optometrists and the NHS. We looked at search strategies, identified useful journals and databases and talked about applying for funding.

After this I spent a little time tidying the papers strewn across my desk. I always like to leave at the end of the week with a tidy desk, I find it makes Monday morning much more bearable.

Something I've been sitting on for a few weeks is writing a set of reading list guidelines for our procurement team. Previously the subject team had processed all reading lists and put in all book orders to procurement individually. This year this has been centralised through a newly created reading lists team. The idea is that they will process all the lists and follow guidelines set by the subject librarians for purchasing copies of core and additional readings. I submitted my guidelines today.

Straight after lunch I headed down to the basement with the library's iPad to work through the last two shelves of business donations. It feels good to have finally cleared the backlog.

Over coffee I settled down to read CILIP's Defining Our Professional Future Report.

I finished the day, and the week, with an interesting enquiry about oil companies and crisis management.

Evening soundtrack:Test Match Special, England vs Pakistan

Morning soundtrack: A selection of TED Talks including Hillel Cooperman's Legos for grownups (the video is at the end of this post)

Today I spent a lot of time writing and responding to emails and consequently I didn't get round to my donations again. Most of the emails were about setting up or feeding back from meetings. Added into the mix was finalising my induction timetable with the programme managers. I think I've just about managed to fit everyone into the slots they wanted, get the rooms booked and still build in a lunch break for myself. On top of this there were the usual daily enquiries about access to electronic resources and help with finding information on specific companies and/or industries.

I had two Datastream enquiries today. One was an ongoing enquiry for a student who is replicating a study done by a previous student at the business school. She is trying to build up the exact dataset that they used - after some tweaking I think we're finally done now. The other was a basic introduction; the student got the hang of things quickly and was off making her own requests in no time.

One thing that I will be carrying over to tomorrow is the comparison of Mintel's Global Market Navigator with Euromonitor's Global Market Information Database.

Evening soundtrack: A Genius Playlist - Singer/Songwriter Mix including Joni Mitchell, Regina Spektor and Damien Rice.

Morning soundtrack: This American Life

Today was all about suppliers and enquiries.

I spent the first hour on the phone chasing up subscription costs for the next financial year to put into my budget. Mid-morning I had a meeting with a supplier who stopped by to show me some developments to their products and talk about possibilities for expanding the content in our subscription. No sooner was I back at my desk than I was called to another meeting with a database rep to talk about how we could market their product, which up until now has mainly been used by manufacturing and engineering, to the business school.

As you will see an enquiry made it on to my to do list today. Yesterday I had an email from a distance learning student who is planning to write a dissertation on the relationship between ophthalmologists and the NHS. I have arranged to meet her on Friday morning to discuss the range of resources she can use for her research but first I needed to do some research of my own. The first thing I learnt was how to correctly spell ophthalomologist.

One thing from my to do list that didn't get done today was finishing the process of deciding which donations to add to stock. When I arrived in this job I inherited two bays (around 20 shelves) of donations in my subject area. Last week I started going through them to see which I want to add to stock and which can be passed on. I'm down to the last two shelves but just can't seem to fit them into my schedule.

I stayed on a little after work to attempt to write a pitch to publicise the Library Day in the Life project in the UK media. With the help of @Girlinthe we've put something together which we plan to send to the Guardian and Radio 4 later today.

Evening soundtrack: La Roux