Hors d'ouvre: Things number 4 and 5

Ko ia kāhore nei i rapu, tē kitea
"He who does not seek will not find"

I may have botched my blog up as I thought I would try and incorporate my love of food and eating by giving the blog posts course names, however there are only so many courses that are possible. A colleague suggested that you need something to differentiate your blog from the thousands of other blogs, to do this I thought I would like to start each post or group of "Things" with a whakatauki or māori proverb.

I chose the proverb above because I have searched this week for a blog to follow and for "Thing 4" I have to convince the rest of the "23 Things" crew why they should choose to follow it as well. 

Being relatively new to blogging I have to admit that at this point in time I am not a regular reader of any blog however I have found one thanks to the power of Google. 

The Association of College and Research Libraries blog is of interest to myself obviously because I am a Subject Librarian for an academic institute, actually I have worked in a tertiary library for almost 10 years I honestly think that it will be of interest to some of you as well. 

With a brief 20 minute look I have found the following things which may make this blog attractive to you also.

• Ease of navigation using the normal search functionality by clicking on the magnifying glass and typing in keywords as well as Categories and Tags

• Content: the posts cover a wide range of topics from Academia through to Wikipedia. I have found posts on Publishing and other subjects and themes of interest to any researcher.

• Offers examples of academic posts such as this one for conference blogging for those of us who attend and present at conferences.

• There are multiple authors which means different writing styles, which means there is a variety of voice to the posts and also expertise.

Thing 5 to come

Looking back at "Thing 2"

Thing 2: Online Security

Security hmmm I was so shocked by how terrible one of my passwords was that I had to tweet about it, and I keep finding my self drawn to checking how secure my passwords are  its quite fun but disturbing at the same time. 

I watched the video and it was interesting and discouraging. I am sure you have all felt the pain of selecting a password and then being told it must have an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number, or a punctuation symbol, you  finally incorporate the needed elements press enter and the final straw Your password must be between 4 and 8 characters long frustration took over and I actually used number 2 of the 25 Worst Passwords and yes I did eventually change it to one that is not on the list.

My first Blog: The amuse bouche

He mihi

Ko Hikurangi te maunga

Ko Waiapu te awa

No Ngati Porou tōku Papa

No Te Aitanga ā Hauiti tōku Māma

no reira no Te Tairawhiti ahau.

Ko Troy Tuhou tōku ingoa.

He mihi nunui engari he mihi popoto ki a koutou katoa.

Connections are important to Māori, when being introduced or introducing ourselves we look for links with each other. This is why we use local geographic features (of our home area), our iwi affiliations and whanau (family) names in our pepeha or mihi.

Kia ora my name is Troy Tuhou and my family are from the east coast of New Zealand. I am one of the Subject Librarians at Sylvia Ashton Warner Library at the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland.

This blog marks my first attempt at writing my own blog and is "Thing 3" of a programme that I am taking part in called "23 Things for research" it is a Faculty of Education version of the Oxford University course 23 Things for Research and the 23 Research Things course from the University of Melbourne.

I registered for this course as I have played with social media but have yet to fully engage with it. Usually I start with a hiss and a roar posting and logging in daily however eventually my enthusiasm wanes and I forget to post, or don't log in for long periods of time. I think one possible reason for this is that often I don't fully comprehend the particular use of the different social media platforms another is that I often am lost for things to say (hard to believe if you are reading this, I am sure) or don't believe that what I have to say is of interest to anyone.

I have Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and Linked in accounts now I am using my Blogger account.

Even though the title of this post is "First Blog" I once wrote a blog for an assignment during my study in Information Science and as it was for a school that doesn't exist and an invented scenario I have decided not to count it.

I have to admit that I use Twitter badly and now only use Facebook as a tool to help me remember birthdays and to play games.

My hope is that with a better understanding of the practical uses for social media I can start to truly engage with the different formats using each type more effectively and that this in turn will result in more productive and effective communication to my colleagues and our students.