Rod McGuinness' presentation from #risg2012

 You can catch up with Rod McGuinness' presentation from Reference at the Metcalfe, here.ABC and social media

View more presentations from PublicLibraryServices.
You can see more presentations, or links to presentations from the day here.

Wikipedia in the library

 If you missed seeing Liam Wyatt's presentation at Reference at the Metcalfe, make sure you catch up with it here. Wikipedia in the library : Liam Wyatt's presentation for #risg2012

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Imagine there's no desk

Shaun O'Dwyer and Kylie Bailin from the University of New South Wales reprised their presentation from VALA, as it was very relevent for public libraries. The links for this presentation are from the VALA website, you can watch their presention.

Presentation on Open library data by Martin Boyce, given at #risg2012

You can see Martin's presention here, and you can read more about his ideas in this link.

Open Library Data

View more PowerPoint from Martin Boyce

You can find more presentations from the seminar on the Reference and Information Service Group wiki. Don't forget to join the wiki.

Pam Langridge's presentation from risg2012

This is the presentation which Pam Langridge gave at #risg2012

Are we there yet? Reference at The Metcalfe 08-05-2012

View more PowerPoint from Pam Langridge

How do you keep aware of trends in reference and information services?

The May theme for the twitter reading group is escape.


This is a great way to view professional reading (watching or listening) as it can be through what you are reading you can work out ideas to escape bad work practices, or ways to escape to even more impressive work practices than you work place is currently undertaking.  You could go from good, to great.  A recent OCLC survey showed that, on average only 13% of library staff used blogs as way of keeping up to date with library information.


You can see the brief presentation I made about this today at #risg2012 here.  The links below are not an exhaustive list of all the possibilities, but I did not want to overwhelm with choice.


The following are links to the tools, sites I talked about:
Google alerts - you define your alert by setting up your key words, topics
Pulse - app alerts reading
Flip - ios only format, app alerts reading
Google currents - magazine/news source style content
Google reader - web based
Reeder, uses your Google reader feeds, app


NSW RISG tools
NSW RISG on twitter
NSW RISG twitter lists
RISG new technology blog
RISG wiki join this, and ask to be a writer to contribute content.
and on Flickr

What will you do after the seminar? Why, Slam the Boards of course!

On the same day each month Librarians around the globe stretch their reference skills by going online and searching out questions to answer from the various answer boards which are out there - they Slam the Boards.

Not only do they display amazing research skills but they continually point the people asking the question back to their local library and the array of resources they will find there - for free. As a professional development exercise, it's fun and rewarding to stretch your skills in answering questions in a completely online environment.

The next slam will be held May 10th, two days after the annual reference seminar at the State Library of NSW.

Go ahead, challenge yourself and Slam the Boards! You know you want to!
(and don't forget to comment below with how you went)