April 15

INF506 – Professional Learning Networks and I

Roughly fifteen months ago, after six years of full-time study and a year of full-time office administration work, I embarked on my teaching journey. I taught casually for a month, before being offered a term-long contract to teach English at a nearby High School. In the final two weeks of Term 1, just as my contract was coming up for renewal, I saw a listing for a teacher librarian at another nearby school. I applied on the Friday, got a call up for an interview on the Monday, got offered the position on Tuesday, accepted it, taught my English classes for the final time on the Wednesday, and then had two days of job hand-over with the retiring teacher librarian on the Thursday and Friday.

In the space of five days, I went from being a transient English teacher to managing an entire high school library. To say it was – and sometimes still is – overwhelming is an understatement. I’ve only been a teacher librarian for just over a year now.

In the early days, I very quickly came to rely on Professional Learning Networks [PLN]. According to the stages of PLN adoption outlined by Utecht (2008), I have somewhat immersed myself in various networks, but progressed no further through the other five stages. I say “somewhat” immersed because I very rarely contribute to these networks myself. After all, what can I say to people who have worked in the profession for decades?

This unit, as well as my own professional reflection, has resulted in my questioning of my abstinence from these networks. I truly think that being withdrawn in these networks has negatively impacted my professional life, which has had a trickle-down effect on my personal life. I’m trying to do it alone, rather than utilising these networks to help me connect with others and develop as a librarian, which is visualised in this image (untitled image of knowledge transfer, n.d.). This is causing me undue stress, as I’m constantly wondering if I can do better.

In trying to rectify this, and really get the most out of the PLNs available to me, I find Lisa Nielsen’s (2008) post ‘5 things you can do to begin developing your personal learning network’ highly practical. And while I may not yet be ready to take the stage in the virtual PLNs I’m part of, I’ve started to create my own in my staffroom. The rest will come in time.

 

Reference List

Utecht, J. (2008, April 3). Stages of PLN adoption [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.thethinkingstick.com/stages-of-pln-adoption/

Nielson, L. (2008, October 12). 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network. Retrieved from https://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-things-you-can-do-to-begin-developing.html

[Untitled image of knowledge transfer]. (n.d.). Getting Smart. Retrieved from https://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/01/20-tips-for-creating-a-professional-learning-network/. 

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March 30

INF506 – ALIA versus ALA

Both @ALIANational and @ALALibrary are Twitter accounts run by and representative of Australia and America’s Library Association bodies, respectively. As such, they have a lot in common, from the content they produce to the audience they attempt to appeal to.

A brief perusal of the contents of their tweets reveals that the content they ‘tweet’ or ‘retweet’ is related, and can be generally organised into three broad categories:

    1. Content relating to the continued running and public actions of the Association, including announcements about upcoming conferences and professional development opportunities; official recommendations or statements to other national and/or state bodies; and business deals/agreements.

    2. Content for and relevant to the work of information professionals, particularly those employed in libraries. These are often retweets, rather than original content produced by the Association.

    3. Content for members of the public who are interested in the broad related ‘fields’ of the Association, i.e. libraries, books, authors, and increasingly — technology.

 

In tweeting (and retweeting) such content, ALIA and ALA  are first and foremost attempting to reach their primary target audience, who consist of individuals employed in the information industry and other related fields, i.e. public/academic librarians, archivists, museum curators, publishers, etc. These individuals may be paying members of the Association, or conversely, have a vested interest in the work of the respective Association. To a lesser extent, these tweets are meant to appeal to members of the general public. These individuals may be regular patrons of libraries or have a broad interest in the work of the Association.

The appeal of these accounts — and the clear discrepancy between the success of each Association — is evidenced in the amount of ‘followers’ for each account, as well the engagement expressed through ‘hearts’, retweets and discussion/comment on each tweet.

A brief analysis of the engagement on ALIA’s last 10 tweets reveals that they received, on average, only 0.5 comments, 3.8 retweets, and 6.6 likes, per tweet. In these 10 tweets, the most popular one was a retweet from Yarra Plenty Library, which offered to print and post essential documents free of charge (2020, March 30). The people who liked this tweet were mostly librarians employed in the Melbourne area, as evidenced by bios.

Meanwhile, data from ALA’s previous 10 tweets revealed that they received, on average, 0.9 comments, 19.2 retweets, and 43.5 likes, per tweet. Their most popular tweet was a link to a NY Times article about how artists were responding to school closures, which received more than 130 likes and 62 retweets (2020, March 28).

The discrepancy in this engagement could be explained by any number of things. It could be simply because ALA reaches a much wider audience (205.8K followers) compared to ALIA’s (10.9K). I also observed that ALA used #hashtags more frequently than ALIA, meaning that interested people following particular hashtags were more likely to find ALA’s tweets than ALIA’s. What is interesting to note is that ALIA has tweeted a lot more frequently than ALA, with 29.1K tweets compared to 24.2K respectively.

Overall though, ALA far outperforms ALIA, reaching a wider audience and demonstrating more user engagement. It also proves that sometimes it’s quality (i.e. hashtags) over quantity.

 

Reference List

American Library Association [@ALALibrary]. (2020, March 28). School closings are a drastic change for kids at this challenging time, so authors are stepping up on social media to keep them engaged [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ALALibrary/status/1243692027897880577.

Yarra Plenty Library [YarraPlentyLib]. (2020, March 30). Printing and posting services [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/YarraPlentyLib/status/1244451232283906048?s=20.

 

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