See, the thing is, I don’t worry that my guests won’t socialise with each other. Of course they wouldn’t have a problem socialising with each other. They are accomplished, intelligent, well-adjusted, amazing people.

No, I worry that I would be a terrible host! Would I manage to be gracious, hospitable, serve a superb meal (prepared with my own two hands), AND manage to be an eloquent, literate and witty conversationalist? And of course, the worry of not being a good host would mean that I would bluster around and be generally stressed and probably less-than-pleasant to be around – thus causing the dinner party to be a dismal experience and a failure all round…

Angst aside, I found it extremely difficult to narrow the guest list down to six.

I asked one of my sisters who she’d invite – she had no difficulty picking her six guests: Daniel Craig, David Walliams, Francis Bacon (the artist), Amy Winehouse, Freddy Mercury and Kathy Lette. This sounded to me like an extremely interesting dinner party – but was no help in spurring me on to think about who I’d pick, myself.

I kept thinking of who I’d invite and then getting stymied over what I’d talk with them about. Also, there are SO. MANY. AMAZING. PEOPLE. How does one pick a mere six??

So anyway. After much deliberation, here’s who I’d invite:

1. Ursula Le Guin
2. Aung San Suu Kyi
3. Adrienne Rich
4. Thomas Cromwell
5. Peter Drucker
6. J.S. Bach

Ursula Le Guin because I love her work. (Especially the Earthsea novels, and The Left Hand of Darkness)

Aung San Suu Kyi, just because I think she would be an interesting guest. I’d love to have a conversation about how she maintains her belief in her work for Burma, despite all the obstacles thrown at her.

Adrienne Rich, because I love her work too.

Thomas Cromwell because I have been pondering Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and I would love to find out more about the man.

Peter Drucker, because I think his work continues to influence our organisations, and I’d love to ask him how he thinks organisations in the 21st century will develop. I’d also love to listen to him talk with Thomas Cromwell about bureaucracy. I wonder what Aung San Suu Kyi would have to say to Drucker and Cromwell about power, influence and corruption… And what would artists like Ursula Le Guin and Adrienne Rich think about Drucker’s views?

And J.S. Bach because he is my favourite composer. Hopefully he would not be too appalled by my atheism. I’d avoid playing any of his works during dinner, though. I’d be curious to see what he thought of the works of other later composers…

Who would you invite, Kathryn?

And for the next question: When you were 13, what did you want to be when you grew up? (I’ll note that I couldn’t for the life of me think of a question. Is this question too difficult?)

At the moment, I would like to be better at focusing my attention on whatever I am working on. In the course of a workday I can be interrupted many times, by phone calls, emails, and by other people.

When it comes to the interruptions of email or the phone, I can manage those – just turn them off for a while. People interruptions are a bit harder to manage, but generally speaking my colleagues don’t interrupt just because they can – there’s usually something that needs my input or attention. And I don’t find people interruptions as difficult to manage as the self-interruptions.

Even writing this post, I interrupted and disrupted myself numerous times, so that it took ages to write. I have to look things up while writing (fact checking is important, right??), alerts popped up on my screen, and oh, I’m thirsty…

I have been working on strategies to develop my ability to focus or concentrate.

Unfortunately there’s no simple, magic bullet answer. What am I doing to build on this skill?

I’m reading: 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Rights Things Done by Peter Bregman has been useful. Also been dipping into Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours by Robert C. Pozen, Paid to Think: A Leader’s Toolkit for Redefining Your Future by David Goldsmith, and that oldie (but a goodie) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.

I’m practicing some of the suggestions Peter Bregman makes:

• Being clear about what I want to focus on, and what I don’t (I can’t do it all)
• Having a clear plan and referring to it often (I have a tendency to write plans and then file them away neatly, never to be looked at again)
• Being specific about when and where I’m going to do what I’m going to do (otherwise it all slips into the never-never; this also helps with that other problem: procrastination)
• Building in time for the “day-to-day follow-through” (very important for me, as I am usually juggling way too many balls)

Alas, this is not something I can just learn and apply once to have everything perfect for ever after. It will be an ongoing journey, and one that I will have to commit to, and tweak as needed. So I’m also trying to keep track of what I’m doing, what works, and what doesn’t.

One of the most effective tools I use at work is LeechBlock, which stops me from “accidentally” browsing websites which I know are time-wasters for me. I’m also going to be setting regular alarms (one of Bregman’s tips) to help myself refocus during the day.

Thinking about my answer to this question, I looked back over my personal blog and the topics I have blogged about over the years. I can see what what I have wanted to learn has changed over the years. Beginning in 2005, and for quite a few years after that, I wanted to learn more about various technologies. I looked at blogging, RSS, wikis, Second Life, bibliographic management software, microblogging, ereaders…
Gradually it’s shifted, so I am no longer really particularly interested in learning about technology. Learning about technology is not so important for my job either, except where it helps me be more effective or productive in what I need to do.  Over the years I think I have developed good skills in the area, though, so it’s not particularly difficult to pick things up, nor is it hard to stay informed – I’ve got good systems for keeping informed and up-to-date.

It’s also interesting to consider that most of my learning at the moment focuses around “soft” skills that fall into the categories of management or leadership. A lot of these skills rely on my developing a high level of self awareness. They’re also not always easy things to learn or improve.

In previous years, I’ve learned things for fun, like tai chi and the Dutch language. I’ll be open to learning something for fun this year!

Photo by Horia Varlan.

Something that Con is very good at – languages – is appealing. Not so much to communicate with other people, nor to appreciate entire bodies of literature from other countries but to understand which parts of my thinking are due to me as an individual and what parts are limited by the single language that I have to express myself. I think it would be really interesting to be fluent enough in another language to dream in it also.

Realistically, however, I do not think proficiency in multiple languages is something that would be possible to learn or develop without much more time than I have… so, what skill would I like to develop that is realistically possible?

I actually remember as a kid enjoying practicing really silly skills like being able to say the alphabet backwards at a really fast pace or to write in mirror writing as quickly as possible… so I think that something like that would be quite achievable at the moment.

A skill I would like to work on – because it is portable, can be done almost anywhere, and can entertain other people is contact juggling. It also looks wonderful and can be very soothing and something rhythmic to do with your hands. I already have a contact juggling ball on the windowsill of my office. Think crystal-looking, hard acrylic ball. Think David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth . It looks like this – if done well, Multiball Contact Juggling .

So, Con, next week can you please answer me the same question, What skill would you like to learn or develop? .

The week after, we are going a little complex…. If you could invite 6 guests from any time to a dinner party, who would you ask and why? Let’s presume you can choose which age they are when they come, that they are not freaked out totally by all the new technology surrounding them and that they will actually talk and socialise with the other guests.

(Next week I get to go first with Question 22 posed by Con: What skill would you like to learn or develop? so may be less free-form.)

I definitely resolve to do more things I enjoy doing this year. I am at a stage where I need to make new goals, so unlike Con, I did write a large list of resolutions. Most of them really reflect changes I have made in my life in the last year or so – so may even be more “retro-resolutions”. I wasn’t quite as simple and sensible as my ten year old, who has resolved to “make something yummy every weekend” and to “brush my teeth twice a day”.

Being librarian-ly, I even worked under subheadings. I have just chosen one from each to give you a flavour of where I am at:

• WORK - Find primary supervisor for PhD
• HEALTH – Continue to do equivalent of 5km run 4-6 times each week
• RELATIONSHIPS – Develop a wider circle of social support where I can give as well as receive
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT – Blog at Librarians Matter or FQ at least weekly
• FINANCIAL – Continue to record all spending and to download and reconcile spending records with all accounts monthly

I think it is also important to appreciate life as it is, right now. With that in mind, on 1 January I began another lifestreaming kind of project like the “Daily Image” challenges I did in 2009 and 2011. Sixty or so of us are in the Happy365 Flickr group where each day we will post something that makes us happy.

I am loving images from other people that are reminders about things that make me happy that I had forgotten or have been overlooking. Most of mine seem to be about food, like the image at the start of this post. I was dealing with a glut of overripe bananas while watching Hercule Poirot on ABC iView – which for some reason interested lots of people.

The slideshow below shows all of the images from my Happy365 set so far:

Over the years I think I’ve gotten leery of setting myself up to fail. When I was younger I had lists of resolutions just like this one:

Via Maria Popova.

If I was lucky I would get to the end of January before I relapsed into my usual ways again.

Still, despite not making resolutions in the traditional sense, I still feel that sense of new beginnings at the start of every new year. It’s quite difficult not to, especially when my Twitter timeline is full of people talking about their resolutions, or links to articles about how to motivate oneself to change, how to make meaningful resolutions and stick to them, how to set goals, how to Change Your Life, basically. Tell everyone. Don’t tell everyone.

So, no resolutions.

However I do like challenges. I often start one or two at the beginning of every year, but because they’re challenges and not resolutions, I can start them at any time of the year. I fail some of them, too. But somehow it doesn’t matter as much, and I can always start again. Is this just silly semantics on my part?

Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions?

And question 22: What skill would you like to learn or develop?

P.S. I did not even notice the “Generate Traffic, Convert Leads, Make Money!!!” in that link – thanks for pointing it out Kathryn, I’ll try to be a bit more vigilant in future.

Harry. (2007). South-Beach-_05.jpg. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/phinworld/1104372772/

I’m not going to link to the article as it is on a content farm site. (Honestly, with a tagline “Generate Traffic, Convert Leads, Make Money!!!” I just cannot bring myself to go there… you should be able to find it from the post title and that information if you really want to). The tips are nice, however:

1. Make it a habit
2. Make it enjoyable
3. Make it challenging
4. Make it public knowledge
5. Reward yourself

They are what FQ is all about. Con and I started this exercise as a space for an enjoyable challenge that would become a habit (…what the “fortnight” bit is all about).  We found, however, that posting just once a month each was not habit-forming enough. It was actually easier to blog daily when we were doing #blogjune than to get into the groove to post monthly.

One of my resolutions this year is to spend more of my time doing things I like to do, so we are trying a new schedule. One of us will post weekly, and rather than just one of us answer each question, both of us will. We will take it in turns to be the first to answer the question. The schedule gets so complicated that we are just slavishly following a Google doc and answering and asking a new question whenever it says to.

So, while the question I would like to ask Con after reading the blogging hacks is “Reward ourselves? What should we do to reward ourselves if we keep up with FQ regularly?” , my actual question to her (Question 21) that she needs to answer in the first week of January 2013 is “Do you have any New Years’ Resolutions?“

As book publishing evolves to encompass more non-linear, multimedia and interactive material, do we need to start calling them something else? Is book enough?

Despite the growing popularity of ebooks, I suspect that for most of us, when we use the word book, we are still thinking of something very specific: a paper-bound object that can be held in the hand, and that we read. (We still have a need to distinguish ebooks from paper books. Some people call paper books real books. Even in electronic format, the word “ebook” still recognisably retains the book element.)

This paper object has a particular form – a front and back cover, and pages of paper, with words, pictures, diagrams, maps, printed on the pages. Books can come in all sizes, but we generally understand books to have standard sizes, so that we know roughly how big a “standard” paperback is, as opposed to a trade paperback, as opposed to a hardback, and books outside these sizes are either small or large.

Of necessity books have been linear – even with books that you can dip in and out of, there is a first and a last page – and pretty much the only thing you can do with them is look at their pages, with no interaction beyond reading the words or looking at any images. They are a technology of their time. There’s no reason they have to stay like this, now that we have different technologies. But as to how they will evolve, I really couldn’t say.

The physical aspect is just one aspect of the book. I don’t think I can do justice to another aspect of the book: the fact that books in their paper form have been a part of our culture(s) for so long that they are ingrained, and we love them and they are so much a part of our consciousness. Think: literature, poetry. Think: Shakespeare, the books of the world religions, Proust, Tolstoy, Dickens, all the books of your childhood and that you enjoy now… Their impact on language and culture is immeasurable.

In her Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson says:

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space. (97.3)*

What else can I say about books?

We read them for pleasure, and to learn.

Jeanette Winterson again:

Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become. Emily Dickinson barely left her homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, but when we read, ‘My life stood – a loaded gun’ we know we have met an imagination that will detonate life, not decorate it. (176.6)

Books have always been powerful, and will continue to be powerful. Surely the word book is enough.

Kathryn, do you care to give me your take on this question? As book publishing evolves to encompass more non-linear, multimedia and interactive material, do we need to start calling them something else? Is book enough?

* My odd page notation is due to the fact that I have been reading an electronic version of Jeanette Winterson’s superb memoir.

Who is your favourite author for relaxing/recreational reading?

What’s your favourite childhood book (or who was your favourite author from childhood)?

What do you read for professional reading?

Of course the answer is “It depends”… Any more answers like this and I think I will add “It Depends” to the list of question types.

RECREATIONAL READING

If I am going on an aeroplane or staying away from home where I want my brain to disengage:

• Ben Elton – novels with little character development, often published too quickly (when a final edit may have made it all tighter and more interesting) BUT the subject matter and speculation gets me thinking and enjoying the twists and turns of the plot
• Jodi Picoult – legal-medico issues that are already not black and white, but with added shades of grey as personal circumstances and feelings meet with abstract ideas
• Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries aka Sookie Stackhouse – very soft porn vampire trash with attitude. Few redeeming features. Should be more of it.

If I need to hide from the world and divert my mind – the works of P. G. Wodehouse.

If I want to reread something with wit, clever structure, deft characterisation and poetic use of language that I know will delight me, and that I will get something new from with each rereading – works by Vikram Seth or Zadie Smith.

FAVOURITE CHILDHOOD AUTHOR

No competition – Enid Blyton.

From the “Fairies” series as a seven year old through to the “Cherry Tree Farm” series and then on to the “Naughtiest Girl” series. The English countryside that seemed to be full of jonquils and daffodils and springy heather (it was always “springy”) was just as exotic to me as the school structure in the “Naughtiest Girl”. Both seemed as plausible and likely as each other. This is unfortunate because although Spring in England does bear some resemblance to the eternal nature ramble through the woods of Blyton’s child characters, I am yet to come across a school where everyone pools their pocket money and any food sent from home and where rules, punishments and rewards are decided by the children themselves at a weekly Meeting (with a capital “M”). I was quite old before I realised just how far from regular this model was … well, tuck boxes and lacrosse and French Mistresses called “Madame” turned out to be more or less true,   so why not the anarcho-commune of Whyteleafe school??

PROFESSIONAL READING

Must try harder.

I get a lot of my reading from Twitter, which often leads me to an interesting report or journal article where I will follow up the works cited if the matter interests me. I am more or less at a stage where I know the right places to research and the right terms to use if I want to get up to speed with topics about which I need to write, so rather than read “just in case”, I tend to read at the point of need. I also use Zotero to collect references that I may need later – again saving until point of need.

I have alerts from our university library resources for a couple of regular publications – ALA Library Technology Reports via Proquest and the Tables of Content for a few publications about public libraries. The last professional reading that I did for the sake of “keeping up” rather than at point of need was a month ago,  Karen Coyle’s  Library Technology Report Understanding the Semantic Web and RDA vocabularies  from 2010.

So, that’s me and my reading. Now Con while we are talking about reading, can you have a crack at this question from a couple of months ago from Kim -

 Future of the Book – As book publishing evolves to encompass more non-linear, multimedia and interactive material.   Do we need to start calling them something else? Is book enough? (Something that came up at a recent workshop I went to) http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2011/12/06/volumiques/

How can there be any question?

Zombies, of course!

It’s always been zombies for me.

I’m partial to a zombie movie. One of my favourite games of the last five years is Plants vs. Zombies. And I love the symbolism that’s possible, using zombies – zombies as a symbol of the decay of human society, as a metaphor for what can happen when social controls disappear. Are we all mindless, unthinking drones? Zombies

Vampires? Meh. They’ve been hijacked by Twilight. Since when did they become It as a literary device in books for teens? Have you noticed how much vampires have come to dominate the Young Adult section in bookshops?

Werewolves? Men (are they ever women) turned into mindless beasts? Hmm.

The illustration? My inane attempt at providing some colour to the post. All the great images of zombies I could find online are copyright. My scratchy drawing was done on the iPad using the app Bamboo Paper and a $2 stylus. Thanks to @thelibrarykim for the recommendation of Bamboo Paper (great app!) and the stylus. The tie the zombie is wearing is for @malbooth.

Next question is a three-parter:

A “what are you reading” question:

Who is your favourite author for relaxing/recreational reading?

What’s your favourite childhood book (or who was your favourite author from childhood)?

What do you read for professional reading?

For those who do not know me very well, I qualified as a librarian in 1989 but now teach technology and public librarianship in the Information Studies Department at a university. The other part of my job involves research (currently into creativity and public libraries) and service to the profession and the community.

I guess this question riffs on the conversation I had with one of my colleagues who told me that they do not consider themselves a librarian, but an academic. My friend, Kate, who is also a library school lecturer identifies herself in her twitter profile as an “(ex?) librarian”.

Greenhill, Kathryn. That’s Not My Mug …, December 11, 2007. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirexkat/2110264087/.

I no longer select, acquire, organise, store, retrieve or circulate information for other people. Well, except for creating material for my students. And in the way that almost everyone who touches on social media professionally curates and shares information.

It all depends on how one defines “librarian”.

If a librarian is someone who works in a library, then clearly I am not a librarian.

If a librarian is someone with formal qualifications recognized by an accrediting body, then my Masters of Information Management makes me a librarian… and I will never, ever not be a librarian.

If a librarian is someone who formally qualified AND works in a library, then again – I am not a librarian. Seems obvious, but the blurring of positions, where formally-qualified librarians work as researchers, records managers or policy officers, suggests that maybe teaching people about libraries and how to work in them MAY make me just as librarian-ly as those who do not work in a library building but still consider themselves to be librarians.

If it is about a natural aptitude and love for organisation, a curiousity about knowledge, an inbuilt desire to share what I know, a love of technology, systems thinking to streamline operational processes and a sense of fairness for all people – then get me to sign the register, make me wear the t-shirt,  teach me the special handshake and call me “librarian”. I can go with that.

So, right back to you Con, my question for you to answer in your next post is “Zombies, werewolves or vampires?”.