Thing 13: Pandora's Dropbox...not getting on my Wiki!

I've been having a tinker about with Google Drive and although it is early days yet, I do wonder if this could be useful to me imminently. In my voluntary position I have been helping out with accessioning new material and my mentor has mentioned that he would like to streamline the process by creating a series of spreadsheets to input new accessions data and what not (moving away from some of the paper based records that are currently kept). Google Drive's spreadsheets could be helpful here to enable multiple staff members to contribute to this process and help to refine it... might be worth a go!

 Dropbox is also new to me, but have to say I find myself oddly fascinated by it (have caught myself cooing over 'the clever little thing'...I worry about myself sometimes!). Definitely something I will make more use of!

  What to say about Wikis beyond the obvious Wikipedia references? I do rather like the idea of collaborative work to help build up information and pool ideas and knowledge- i.e. enabling everyone to have their twopennys worth! I cannot at this stage claim to be ready to take this particular 'bull by the horns' and start my own Wiki, but in the future I think I jolly well might!

 

Thing 11: A Mentor is for life, not just for Christmas!

Admittedly I am at the very early stages of my career, but I have been very fortunate to have someone who I regard as a very good mentor. It isn’t a formal arrangement as such (I haven’t asked him specifically to be my mentor) but he definitely amply fulfils the role and for this he will have my enduring gratitude. Indeed, it was my ‘mentor’ who first suggested joining CPD23 (very sage advice indeed!). He definitely isn’t a ‘closed book’ he is always open to sharing and I do feel that I can ask him just about anything (from small and silly questions to far meatier subjects), which in my opinion makes him a fantastic mentor and one that everyone should aspire to. In fact he is the source of perhaps my favourite quote….’I can never walk past a book’ (very much a meeting of minds in this regard, have to have a good nose in a book when it comes my way)! Even when I move on in my career path, I certainly intend to stay in touch with him because he has become rather a font of all knowledge!