My first Prezi...

I've been busy with Prezi for my latest dabble into CPDs Things (gosh, is it Thing 17 already?). I've tried using it before and am yet to be 100% convinced of its advantages over PowerPoint. I find there is less you can do with Prezi compared with PowerPoint (I suspect some of PowerPoint's features are omitted from Prezi for fear of an Apple v. Samsung-style lawsuit). I can certainly see that improvements are being made, though and yes, the zoom and rotate features are pretty whizzy! When I tried to use more than one font and started to add hyperlinks to my presentation, things started to get a little trickier, though. 

Here I've used Prezi to create a photo tour of the trip I did to the US earlier in the year:

                                   US Staff Exchange in pictures on Prezi

I did find Prezi's embed function a little glitchy, so have uploaded a PowerPoint of this here on Slideshare too, in case the one above is not working. I found Slideshare extremely useful when it came to keeping up to date with conferences and other events I could not make it to during my library qualification. Ned Potter (a.k.a. the Wikiman) has done some excellent Slideshares which would be interesting to any other CPD23 Bloggers who are just starting out in the profession, for instance this one which offers "Ten things you need to know":

If you want to work in libraries from Ned Potter (Nov 2010, 

licensed under Creative Commons)

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, I hopped on a train and headed South of London to the historical city of Winchester - a city that earned its place in English folklore by providing inspiration for tales of the magical, mythical Camelot and boasts King Arthur's Round Table as the jewel in its crown!:

The Round Table (believed to date back to around 1290)
is mounted on the wall of the Great Hall.

I also visited the Winchester Discovery Centre - equally magical in its own way. It's another of those buildings which have tried to redefine what a library is for the 21st Century and one which I feel does so particularly well. Much like the new Clapham Library I blogged about last time, the Winchester Discovery Centre (or WDC, for short) uses a circular main reading room with spaces for learning in the middle and the library's collection towards the circumference. This puts the library at the very centre in a way which Clapham Library also did but which so many of the other so-called 'Super Libraries' in shared buildings fail to do. 

Winchester's Discovery Centre set new standards for shared library
 facilities, winning a prestigious RIBA award for Architecture in 2008

The centre includes a cafe, theatre, gallery and an exhibition space for local interest displays (they were celebrating Hampshire's very own Olympians like Ben Ainslee in the Sailing, cyclist Dani King and equestrian rider Peter Charles whilst I was there, for instance). The textile wall, formed of an artwork called "Looking forwards to the past" (pictured below) was a particular highlight, for me, along with more weird and wonderful artwork on the 1st floor wall:

This astonishingly large (16.5 x 3 metre) work of embroidery was
created by Alice Kettle and brightens up the WDC's café

Bright stencil-like cut-outs and quotations dominate 
walls on the top level of the Centre

The circular main reading room with shelves in spokes around the outside

Oh yes... and there's a very nice cathedral too which provides a fittingly cerebral final resting place for one Jane Austen who died in Winchester in 1817:  

The magnificent Winchester Cathedral at Evensong

A plaque marks Jane Austen's final resting place

Thanks, by the way, to Public Library News for mentioning my blog in one of their latest articles. I also enjoyed reading 'A beating heart that should not be allowed to stop' which includes links to pieces by influential library advocates like Zadie Smith with their views on the latest branch closures in the US and the UK.