Tina's Library Related Stuff

Library Day in the Life Round 8 Part 4

2012-02-02T17:43:00.001Z

Got in a little early today and bought porridge from the canteen and took it to my desk. I spent a little bit of time going through emails (150ish this morning).

I then did a little bit of going through my chartership portfolio which took me to 9.30 and then finished dealing with the rest of my emails.
The rest of the morning was spent discussing the move of our DMS and the reorganisation that we are planning to coincide with this. This is particularly interesting as I am reorganising not just my team but another team too which might be a bit odd and is certainly interesting as I’m having to anticipate their needs.

Then, I had a meeting with a partner who is in the middle of organising an industry group to see how the Information Unit can help. The rest of the morning was spent on some supplementary research on some potential clients from earlier in the week.

Lunchtime was taken up trawling for chartership evidence and emailing my mentor.

Much of the afternoon was taken up with password and subscription enquiries and I spent the remainder working on current awareness for my sector groups. I also checked and paid a supplier invoice that I had negotiated a few weeks ago.

This is the only full working day I had this week so I was hoping it would be a bit more representative of my usual work than this one is but perhaps over the few rounds of this project you will still get an idea.

Library Day in the Life Round 8 Part 2

2012-01-31T16:29:00.000Z

It is a short one today:

This morning I went to CILIP HQ to a joint CILIP in London and LIRG session on writing for publication. I attended because I helped to organise it but the LIRG facilitators very kindly let me join in as a participant and I found it really valuable. I’m going to write about that separately.

I grabbed a sandwich on the way back into the office and got on with ploughing through my emails. I had a few quick queries to answer on access to electronic databases and then a query relating to finding a potential purchaser for a property under our control. The rest of the day will be spent on cataloguing. Tonight I’m going out for a curry to celebrate a friend coming home from working her way around the world. Tomorrow I have a full day course on assertiveness so I won’t blog about that as this although I may write up the course.

Library Day in the Life - Round 8, Part One

2012-01-30T17:03:00.002Z

This post is a Library Day in the Life post. I will be trying to blog all week but I would counsel you that this is not a typical week for me! I’m not sure that many people know much about property librarianship so I will try to talk a little about the typical stuff too.

Today has been a fairly administrative day so far – I have updated the enquiries sheet that the Information Unit uses to log all incoming enquiries and note how long they took etc. It used to be the case that we only did this for a month every year and we compared the statistics annually but we will have been doing it for a year in February so it will be a good opportunity to take stock. One of my roles is to oversee this spreadsheet and ensure that everyone is filling it in so I chased my boss to remind him that it needs doing. This spreadsheet is currently quite time consuming and I am trying to make it less so. This meant that part of my morning was spent looking at ways to do this. So far, automating parts of the sheet e.g. team code and office is all I have so might need a bit more.

Other things I did this morning include some current awareness emails, downloading some D&B reports and updating some intranet pages. I also attended the weekly team meeting which involves the Information Unit and the Research team sitting together and going through our planned workload. Actually, I find these meetings usually don’t add much because I tend to not have been contacted to do any of the work from the week when we go into the meeting. This means that I tend to have my recurring jobs that I want to do but am always too busy to manage on the list, rather than what I will end up doing. It is, however, useful to here what the researchers are up to as we can often help with their work.

During lunch I popped up to Hatton Garden and got my watch fixed (finally) and then picked up some food from the cafeteria downstairs to eat at my desk (while writing this).

During the afternoon, I mainly concentrated on doing some research into the employees at a mid-senior level of a firm for which we are working.

Tonight I am attending a session run by our Women’s Network on Being Confident. I feel like a real hypocrite for attending this network given that it is clearly sexist and I do disapprove but I’m going anyway as I think it will be useful. After that, I will be having cocktails with some librarians.

I am going to be helping out at a CILIP in London/LIRG course tomorrow morning so not sure if I will blog about that separately or as part of tomorrow.

The Big Declutter

2012-01-23T17:05:00.000Z

Last Wednesday I went to the WI on a session called "The Big Declutter" but it turned out to be much more about managing stress and tension than physical clutter.

I found it quite interesting so I thought I would tell you a little bit about it.

So...are you stressed? Yes, of course you are. We all are!

But what is stress?

It turns out (and this actually seems quite obvious now although it had never previously occurred to me) that very few situations are inherently stressful but it has more to do with us than what is actually happening. That is to say that if we believe that the demands on us a greater than our ability to cope then we will become stressed.

This was very interesting to me as I realise that this suggests that the less confident one is in their abilities, the more stressed the person will be by their work even if their actual ability is similar to someone who is more confident given the same work. Obviously, as stress has the ability to decrease the quality of work, this means that effectively being confident about what you can do could actually make you better at doing it.

The speaker then went through the cognitive behavioural model which basically seems to involve tricking yourself. So you control your thoughts and actions in order to help sort out your emotions and physiology. That is to say, one should smile and act as if one is happy in order to become happier. Obviously this has limits but does work at least on a small scale.

She also explained that when you are stressed the brain turns off the things it is unlikely to need such as memory and the speech centres of the brain. So, when you are so angry that you can’t think straight and can hardly speak, you may actually not be able to speak because in evolutionary terms it is not useful in survival. (Whether this explains my irritating habit of bursting into tears when angry is not something I brought up but seems unlikely – crying is surely unhelpful in the wild).

We did some nice relaxation exercises around breathing and tensing and relaxing various muscles and then moved on to *thought control*. Our attitude and belief will determine our stress so if we loathe our boss and are convinced he feels the same, then we will be more stressed when running late because we will assume he is looking for a way to shout at us.
She suggested really questioning whether what we think is actually a fact or not i.e. is there any objective evidence that the boss hates you? What I quite like doing is assuming that I’m right. As a fairly pessimistic person when my brain says “This is all going to go horribly wrong” if I say “No it won’t, don’t worry” I more or less ignore myself but what I can do without rolling my eyes is to agree. Say “Yes, it probably will. How bad can it get?” By the time I have ended up being summarily dismissed or similar I can step backwards and say (for example) I couldn’t be sacked without notice, it isn’t legal…which then pulls me back to possibilities then probabilities and eventually the likely outcome (i.e. nothing).

We didn’t really go through the time management section in any detail but she suggests looking at the proportion of time you spend doing things you have to (work, cleaning), doing things you want to so and so on. She suggests looking at what we want out of life and allocating life likewise. Of course, this is easier said than done because so many of our aims involve external factors or aren’t things to work towards.

I thought I’d write about this because time management in the context of a work-life balance and prioritisation skills is one of my chartership PPDP development areas so clearly something in which I have an interest. Take this as a warning, expect to see a lot more about soft skills on here over the next year or so.

ChrisMash

2012-01-11T13:44:00.000Z

Dear Reader,

The blogging backlog continues! In early December I broke my cardinal rule of no library stuff at the weekend for the second time and attended ChrisMash.

I have been meaning to attend one of these mash up thingybobs for a while as part of my ‘stretch yourself’ agenda (see also joining the Cambridge Library Group) but have been a) worried that I am insufficiently techy to understand the concept and b) put off by the farflung locations. My fears were assuaged by the event being in London and it being about Christmas.

Actually, I have to say how much I enjoyed the event. It never ceases to amaze me how much people can do with computers. Now, I’m no slouch at IT. I can even do a bit of HTML and CSS but this is a whole different story! There were definitely bits where it did get a bit techy and I wasn’t 100% sure what people were saying but that didn’t bother me too much.

I particularly enjoyed hearing about card catalogues and schema.org from Owen Stephens. I did get a bit lost here as I have never used MARC in anger. I did study it very briefly at university but without a PC and the LMS I use at work is not MARC based.

In deference to my chartership, I shall now reflect:

What happened?
I went to a pub with some very nice librarians and shambrarians, had a good time, some interesting debate on what techies can do for us and how to cope without them. I looked at some pretty things and some nice things (catalogue for example).
So what?
So, I realised that despite working in a very different institution to most people, and not having any real in house tech we might still be able to do something. If not, then at least we can find out why all the stuff that annoys us happens. I also realised that documentation is important and that perhaps we should have some.
What now?
I have been saying that I should learn to code for ages now and have done nothing about it except bookmark links. This is silly so I (like almost the whole library world) have signed up to the CodeAcademy code year. I started last night on my ipad but was hampered by the irritation of it automatically putting capital letters everywhere. I can’t do it in my lunch break either as it doesn’t like IE7 so I shall dig out my laptop. I intend to complete the year and thus at least get an idea of how this stuff all works.
I am also (again after much talking) going to do something with If This Then That.

Online Information

2011-12-06T10:58:00.000Z

I attended Online on Tuesday morning. I generally go on the Wednesday to tie in with the SLA Europe breakfast but as they moved so did I. Luckily enough for me the Tuesday programme of free seminars looked rather good.

Starting with the breakfast – I was dubious about having to get the AGM in during breakfast but actually it worked rather well and didn’t interfere too much. I had been to the CLSIG 40th birthday party the night before so having to get up early did not go down well but I duly turned up at 8am and drank many, many coffees!

I then went down to the exhibition hall and picked up the free magazines (having thrown out last years ones last week) and went on a tour of the stalls. Online genuinely doesn’t seem to be as good as it once was. I quickly established that I was rather light on actual suppliers who I wished to speak to because I am or want to be a customer and decided to move on to swag hunting. I got: a monkey stuffed toy who is meant to make noise but I was unable to work it so either I got a duff one or I don’t have the strength to pull his arms sufficiently, a hippo, a mug, a pile of beer mats, a coaster, assorted bits and bobs and cars (a blue car and a red car – I intend to get them to have a race).

My first seminar choice was a bit of a bust. It was on How to manage your online reputation but ended up being about your organisation, not you so I (taking inspiration from the US and noting that my feet hurt) ducked out and grabbed a coffee and chat instead, nipping round the few suppliers I did wish to see.

I then went to a seminar on the Legal Services Act which was a follow up to a session that I attended during the 2010 BIALL conference. I am a little surprised about how little has changed in the past eighteen or so months but a few thoughts did occur to me during the session. I was wondering about the potential for law firms to merge with other professional services firms in order to become a one stop shop. I can see this happening eventually although logistically it is probably too difficult with the various conflicts of interest this might pull up. There was some discussion around the problem of access to justice particularly if these changes lead to smaller high street firms going out of business.

I only get a half day at Online so I had to miss the session on New Trends in Corporate Information Centres which looks really interesting so if anyone did manage to attend that, please let me know! If it hadn’t been for the fact I’d been at a training session all day Monday, I might have pushed things and gone but instead I had to get back to my inbox!

All in all, not bad but I rather wonder if in future I might not bother going to the exhibition every year but instead every two unless something significant changes.

Making a difference: evaluating the impact of your library services

2011-11-30T14:08:00.002Z

On Monday, I attended a session run by David Streatfield called Making a difference: evaluating the impact of your library services I was fairly excited about this because he literally wrote the book on this topic!

It was a really interesting day and I feel like I got a lot out of it. I walked in wanting to prove that the Information Unit as a whole was making an impact on the entire of DJD. Part of the point of the day was to help us focus in on a more achievable focus so I decided that I would focus in on a couple of teams and a couple of sector groups.

I should be able to go through the steps David showed me and get a good idea of the impact we are having on these teams. I plan to meet with senior people, put out a short questionnaire and collect baseline data before starting to focus on these groups.

The first thing to do is arrange meetings, these should give me a good idea of focus and current knowledge levels. Once this is done, it should be possible to put together a plan showing what the Information Unit will do over the period of a year.

At this point, I can assess what has worked and has not worked and try to improve this for the following year.

I was surprised at how enjoyable the day was. I was the only corporate librarian so I had to sit on my own and do the group work solo but with a little bit of input from David. This made me feel slightly like a pariah but actually may have worked out best as I really do feel that I have a clear roadmap for what to do next.

Some potential improvements to the event would have included not constantly running out of coffee and a better room as the one in which we were situated was not very good for group work.

SLA – Future Ready

2011-11-03T14:41:00.001Z

On last Wednesday evening, I attended a session run by SLA Europe on Future Ready.

For anyone who hasn’t noticed (and if you haven’t then well done because I feel like I hear of nothing else) SLA has been running a campaign for the year around the topic of being “future ready”. The session was a panel discussion interspersed with table discussions. I found it really interesting but was a bit annoyed at having to speak into a mike to make a point (urgh).

The major things I took away from this session were either positive or negative depending on how you look at it:

- I took issue with someone saying that we should be speaking to decision makers within our organisations and making sure we have their priorities in mind. I thought that this was so blindingly obvious that it really ought to go without saying. This, to my mind, is not about preparing oneself for the future but rather about doing a good job now. How can you do your job properly if you don’t know what the priorities of the firm are?

- I also took issue with the idea that people come out of library school with blinkers on not looking at jobs that they could do with the skills and attributes that they have but instead insisting that they want to work in a library. Well, yes. If you attend library school and pay the excruciatingly large amount of money that costs it is probably because you want to be a librarian! I mean, clearly, if you’re not applying for jobs thare a librarian in all but name then you need to be spoken to sternly but why should people not be allowed to use their MA in order to work as a librarian? For my part, I love my job and unless I had tried to get a library job and had not been successful, I would not consider becoming a project manager or a proof-reader despite the fact that I would probably do an adequate job in both of those roles because I want to be a librarian!

These two points could definitely be taken in a negative way (I am a grumpy old librarian who is irritated at having to be called an information thingybob and wants people to stop using the hideous phrase “future ready”) or it could be a positive,

I could be really ahead of the curve in speaking to senior people from time to time. I think it is important to do so – my managing partner overheard me answering a fairly tricky enquiry the other day and joked that I should be a surveyor – I don’t think I’d be good at it and I’m sure he doesn’t either but it still made me happy because it showed that I had dealt professionally and competently with the query and that he recognised the value the Information Unit gives to the business. I don’t think that having dialogue with management (particularly at a more senior level than I am) is unusual and I think where there is less communication the library is aware that it is a problem.

The second point makes me realise that actually I genuinely do love my job – obviously everyone has bits of the job they don’t love but being told I should think about doing something else brings it home that actually I would have to be pretty desperate to look outside of the library world for my next job.

Some other points which were made included someone querying which skills you should gain. As I thought to myself at the time – you don’t want to be the person who sinks all their time into some new skill that then immediately becomes obsolete (the betamax syndrome).

I guess the thing that really struck me was that we do need to make sure that we are prepared for change and keep an eye on what could happen but I wouldn’t say that we are behind the times necessarily nor do I think we need to worry overly about all this stuff too much.

House of Commons Information Day

2011-11-01T11:58:00.000Z

Back in February, I attended an open day at the House of Commons. It has taken me forever to write it up because it was such an action packed day that there really was too much to write about and as I didn't really take notes, I have now forgotten many of the details! So it will just a quick run through my impressions.

I got to Portcullis House quite early as the time I had been there before I got horribly lost so I left extra time. Fortunately, I bumped into a few people I knew and we managed to have a good natter before the formal sessions kicked off.

The main points that I took away are how beautiful the Houses of Parliament are, how complicated the hierarchy of library services is, and what interesting work they seem to do.

We got to see the databases underpinning their work, some of which I use myself but some I do not. I also became aware of the briefing notes and papers that they create which are really useful and have been accessed by my firm on a number of occasions since.

Thank you to all of the staff who made such an effort to welcome us and show us round.

Thing 14- Zotero, Mendeley & CiteULike

2011-11-01T11:54:00.000Z

I will start off by saying that I cannot imagine that I will ever use any of these tools.

I desperately hope that I will never again undertake any kind of advanced academic study and at very least that the bug won't bite for a number of years by which time this lot will be useless and outdated.

That said, I thought I would give them a go. Now, I did my dissertation recently enough that I was aware of the possibility of reference software. I chose not to use it. The main reason for this is that I had heard from any number of academic librarians that EndNote was complicated and hard to use. Additionally, the software was only available through DesktopAnywhere which is the Northumbria Citrix and as I was doing a lot of work on my work computer particularly for the initial literature searches which seemed to fit perfectly into lunches it seemed a bit pointless to use EndNote which I can't access at work (as we're already on Citrix). I'll be honest with you though, I didn't think it was that difficult and I am not sure that any of these tools would have helped me much. My first act was to find some references. I had deleted all of the stuff from my dissertation but it turns out that Dropbox lets you recover deleted items so I downloaded the pdfs of all the articles I read.

I found both Zotero and CiteULike really hard to use - I couldn't work out how to get the pdfs into the system, I couldn't work out how to do anything but clip webpages (which didn't seem that useful) and add books by ISBN and the first one of those didn't work. I spent about a quarter of an hour on each and then just gave up.

Mendeley is much more like it. I liked the way you can import pdfs and I like that it can rename them into a sensible usable format automatically. I did still have issues though - I couldn't work out how to do a bibliography rather than just take a single reference and they didn't have the exact type of reference we used and there didn't seem to be a way of telling the programme what to change.

So, all in all, I won't be using these. I imagine that any journal articles I write are likely to be for professional rather than academic journals so I won't need masses of references and I think it will be quicker and easier to just do it rather than learning another system.

Thing 23 - the end

2011-11-01T11:51:00.000Z

I am really pleased that I managed to complete the programme. I was hoping to get through it but I’ve been extremely busy and disorganised (to the extent that I have no lip gloss, lipstick or nail varnish at all – no idea where they have disappeared off to) so I’m somewhat surprised that I have.

I’ve found it a valuable experience – it has confirmed a lot of things. It has helped me to improve my use of some tools, reminded me why I don’t use some tools and introduced me to one or two things.

I am really unsure what to say about gaps as the programme has broadly confirmed what I already knew (I’m rubbish at visualisation – me with a mind map is a scary sight, I do not wish to speak in public, I’m pretty on the ball with this professional stuff).

I think that what I am trying to say is that my gaps primarily exist through choice. The things which I think I should work on are becoming a better writer - I write relatively well in a formal style but this blogging thing is still a bit of a chore and I really struggle with the tone of professional articles; doing some techy stuff – I have no massive urge to do this and I am certainly not required to by my role or any role I am likely to wish to apply for in the future but I do feel it is the sort of thing I should be doing, not sure what maybe a programming language or something…; people skills – always a good thing to work on especially if you are easily irritated by stupidity; Office – there is always more to learn as the tricks of these programmes are (it seems) unlimited.

I’m not planning on putting the PDP up as it is a piece of scribble on my desk and it is unlikely you can read my writing if I scan it in but the basic gist is;

Writing – get published (possibly dissertation write up)
Techy stuff – Discuss with someone techy (Meghan?) what might be useful. Think about actually doing it.
People skills – go on some of the e-learning work provides and download & read relevant books
Office – attend work training on this.

I am not certain that this is a great way of looking at CPD – I sort of think that CPD should be done because it is the right thing to do and is inherently good. If you have a specific goal then obviously work towards it but otherwise just do some CPD and see what happens. It seems a bit overly planned because what if you fill in the wrong gap for your next job?

I will try to keep blogging – I have a massive backlog of stuff upon which I need to reflect and I am going to attend a chartership event in November to help me decide whether I should charter or not. I have also started putting a few bits and bobs on the wiki I started for CPD23 which I think I will probably use for chartership if I do it. Jo Alcock and I are also planning on doing a little copycat of the Bethan and Jaffne manatee wiki (although probably separately) in order to keep the momentum going!

So – I need to subscribe to the blogs of the CPD23-ers I want to carry on following; I need to really try to integrate Evernote into my life better and I need to actually blog and comment!

Let’s see how it goes!

Six word story (hmm): “Enthused, confused, sorted, improved, flagged, ended”

Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience

2011-10-31T10:18:00.000Z

I only have the job I do now because I did work experience. I have mentioned it a lot so I don’t need to go on about it too much but I am 100% certain that I would not have my job if I had not emailed my current boss asking for work experience.

In addition to the six weeks of work experience and handful of days shadowing people, I have been volunteering on CILIP committees since before I applied to library school. I have really enjoyed this – it has enabled me to meet people and do some very interesting things. I am somewhat skeptical about the transferable nature of these skills at the moment though – if you have two applicants for a job which requires managerial experience one of whom has chaired a committee and the other has actually managed a team for five years, I’d say you would take the manager. I think at the moment the job market leaves employers with an embarrassment of riches and they can afford to not take experience which isn’t quite there.

I also ‘volunteer’ to be a LIKE host. This literally means that I pour the wine although some people do help out much more than that.

I guess volunteering has a place in some libraries with a lot of low level tasks but don’t see it working in the kind of library I’m used to. I think that the idea of replacing trained library staff with volunteers is completely insane to the extent that I don’t really know what else to say…

Not sure how much I have to say about this but if you feel as if you might want to join a committee then both Career Development Group (London and South East) and CILIP in London are always happy to have new members so please let me know.

Thing 17: Prezi and Slideshare

2011-10-28T14:00:00.000+01:00

Prezi
I have been struggling with this one for weeks and weeks (thus the placement of it). I cannot do it. I have a linear listy brain and not an artistic bone in my body. I can not get my head around how to use this – I do quite like the results however. I struggle to come up with visual ideas for PowerPoint let alone this. As I don’t speak, I guess this isn’t a huge problem.

Slideshare
I have a log in. I don’t ever use it for myself but I like to browse slides at my leisure and you can only download them if you log in so unless someone has put their slides elsewhere too, it is necessary to have an account. I don’t present so that is the extent of my use.

These CVs are laughable. I literally laughed at them. I mean, I guess they are a bit interesting but I just can’t imagine sending one of these off to a potential employer and expecting them to take me seriously. No. Not for me. Ever. No.

Thing 21

2011-10-27T14:19:00.001+01:00

Part 1: Identifying your strengths; capitalising on your interests

In order to identify my strengths I am probably going to sound a touch conceited but so be it. I think the main one – which is a bit of an iffy one to be honest – is that I am good at what I do. I guess I am naturally a bit of a librarian but I have managed to pick up most of the skills necessary with little or no training (MA came later). I am naturally pretty good with grammar, spelling and punctuation and often proofread things. I also pick languages up reasonably quickly and really enjoy the ability to speak in another language. I am (usually) fairly organised and pulled together as a person. I’m not convinced that these are particularly useful. Almost every librarian is organised, the vast majority can spell and punctuate and as my languages aren’t at the level to use in work I doubt that helps either.

I find this one quite difficult, actually. I struggle to answer the interview question on interests without sounding a bit iffy. The truth is that I don’t really have any interests or hobbies. I do lots of things, I enjoy many of those things but they aren’t really defined enough. An example of this would be looking at what I get up to in a general week. I go to the gym 3-5 times (not enjoyable, not an interest, a necessary evil), I go out for dinner with friends, I go out for drinks with friends, I attend library events, I read (a lot), I watch TV, and I catch up with my RSS feeds. Now I simply can’t say reading is an interest because that gets you chucked out of the library world these days and if you say “I read Update for fun” then you sound a) insane and b) not terribly well rounded. Now I really like my life and I think I am pretty well-rounded. I like hearing about politics and linguistics and all sorts of stuff but if you’re asked what you do for fun and you reply “Have a chat” or “Go to the pub” you sound either dull or an alcoholic. So this is something I struggle with at the best of times and to be honest I’m not sure how any of my ‘interests’ relate to my work at all except (I suppose) that I am reasonably well informed about the world which not everyone is (Some notable moments being “Is Belfast in Ireland?” “Um…it is Northern Ireland” “Is there a difference?” and also someone who thought Quebec was in the US). So I can’t help here!

Part 2: Applying for a job

I do have a bit of a CV database – when I first started working in libraries I religiously wrote down a list of the training and events I attended, the types of work I was doing, the articles and other literature I read and interesting things to talk about from my professional reading in case I got a library school interview. This rather slipped once I began the MA and my focus became getting to the events and reading the stuff rather than making a note of it but actually I think this is a real shame and I would like to restart this (although maybe at a slightly more relaxed pace). This is particularly so as it does look as though I will end up registering for chartership in January and if I do then I need to get used to keeping an eye on what I am doing.
I plan to keep the CV running – it needs a bit of work at the moment but I have at least a year so that’s fine!

I’m not sure that I am best placed to give tips as I don’t interview very well but I guess just be nice, be genuine and polish your shoes!

Thing 20 - Library Routes

2011-09-30T09:54:00.002+01:00

I have already blogged about my library routes and participated in the Library Day in the Life project (although only for one day whereas I plan to do all five days for the next round) so I thought I would say a little bit about how both my work and my route compare with other people's work and roots and also to have a good look at a few people's routes/roots as I'm nosy and that should be fun!

It seems to me as though I followed a fairly standard path into librarianship - degree, working, MA, working but I didn't do a formal traineeship. In some ways this was good as it meant I got to experience a broader range of tasks than a lot of trainees do and I also got to do the visits I wanted however it would have been nice for some of it to be organised on my behalf whereas it was entirely me and my wishes and effort that decided what I did. I never really had a proper job other than librarianship as I found out about it in university but I had never really known what to do either - I didn't abandon another career for librarianship.

I think that my job is probably quite a lot like most corporate library work although we don't have an enquiry desk which seems to be unusual.

Not really too sure what to say, so I'm off to look at other routes instead!

Thing 19 - integrating 'things'

2011-09-22T13:25:00.000+01:00

Blogging
I have been doing this blog for a while now and I think it is quite useful. I'm really behind on writing up events but I think it is valuable and I shall continue to do it.

Commenting
I know I ought to do this more and I frequently mark posts to comment on when I am online but by the time I actually get to it, the moment has passed. I am going to make much more of an effort with this because I know how happy I am when people comment so I should try to do it too!

Personal brand
I'm still dithery about this one. I don't like to feel like a brand, I like to feel like a person but I guess you do need to make some effort in order to ensure that you come across in an authentic way or one throwaway comment could easily be unlike you but people wouldn't realise.

RSS
I've been using these for some time and I really like them. I like that they are 'push' and that it is easy for me to read them anywhere (and offline) although this does somewhat contribute to the issue with not commenting. This thing really helped me by pushing me to organise my feeds into folders, subscribing to a few shared items and also setting up my own sharing system.

Twitter
Still unconvinced about this one. I use it. A lot. But I don't really enjoy it that much... I feel constantly like I should be listening! I think I was more sucessful at using it when I first started as I was more conscientious about sharing interesting stuff I had found. I have, however, got back into the habit of turning Twitter off as I go home on a Friday and putting it back on Monday morning.

Pushnote
Was unconvinced about this. Definitely my least favourite thing so far. Unlike some of the other things where I didn't want to use them but could still see a purpose, Pushnote completely baffled me - I have no idea what it is for or who would use it or anything. A definite no which will not be integrated into my life.

Reflective practice
I still struggle with this. It doesn't come naturally to follow the What>So What>What now thing. I tend to do, learn by osmosis, dwell relentlessly on anything I did wrong, try to forget it. Possibly both less helpful and more mentally draining than actually reflecting so I will attempt to be a bit more reflective in future. I can't promise anything but I will see what I can do.

LinkedIn
I like this. Still need to make more effort in contributing to discussions (starting today) but generally positive.

Facebook
I weeded this quite rigorously so now I only have actual close friends and then librarians. I do have one person I don't like (I went to school with her & haven't seen her since) but I kept her for comedy value. I still feel some reticence around librarians being 'friends' on Facebook but where the US goes we tend to follow and it seems to be really commonly used for professional purposes over there so I might as well keep pushing on. I don't go on Facebook that often. I tend to go on about once a week or when I get a notification. I don't see it being more frequent than that.

LISNPN
I feel like I ought to be contributing to this more often as I don't really do too much on there although I do go on regularly enough and stick my oar in!

LATNetwork
I am still on this but haven't looked at it in ages. Don't really need it much so it makes sense that it isn't part of my routine.

CILIP Communities
I have updated my profile (which was extemely out of date) and had a look at the posts. I find this quite hard to use with little reward so I probably won't use it much but want to keep an eye on it in case it improves so I shall set a calendar reminder to check in once every two months.

National/Regional groups
I have started to look in more detail at the member benefits of SLA and am disappointed to find that the file format they use won't play at work. I haven't made much more progress with this one but I would say that face to face events are something which are integrated into my life.

Google Calendar
I'm still not really using this...I have it on my Ipad but I only synchronise it with Outlook from time to time so I don't really rely upon it. I think that I am very unlikely to make more use of this. I subscribe to the CILIP in London google calendar but generally make more use of the RSS feed rather than the actual calendar.

Evernote
I have added the clipper to my ipad and laptop (not work computers as I wouldn't be signed in). I have been making use of the email to Evernote functionality but I still have a few piles of papers which I intend to scan into the system but have not. I haven't really integrated this yet although I am working towards it. I will attempt to scan those piles in soon and then tag, sort out folder and just generally sort the whole thing out. I think part of my problem is that I really dislike tags. I like folders and subfolders instead (which despite folder stacks isn't really possible).

Graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, Chartership, Accreditation
I'm thinking about chartering. Still thinking but have booked onto a course in November to learn a bit more first.

Mentoring
I'm looking into this as part of Chartership. Ideally, I would like a London-based corporate librarian who I do not know. I hear on the grapevine that one or two of these have just been trained so I'm waiting to see if I can grab one!

Google Docs
Still feel the same about these. I understand the concept but I need to log in at work to use them, I don't collaborate with anyone and if I did it would have to be out of work as obviously Google is not Microsoft which is what we do at work!

Wikis
I set a wiki up with the vague plan of popping my CPD up there. I started it but got no further. I'm not sure if I will do much more but I'm going to pencil a few hours into my diary to have a think about this.

Dropbox
Is a lifesaver. My laptop had a meltdown but it didn't matter because all my files are in Dropbox. Genius!

Zotero
Too difficult, don't need to reference

Mendeley
The one I would use if I needed to, which I don't!

Citeulike
Too difficult, don't need to reference

Attending events
Very much part of my life - all good!

Presenting at events
Not going to be integrated

Organising events
I plan to do a little bit more in this area for the committees I am on.

Advocacy
As I outlined in my post, I do a fair bit of this at work. At the moment, I am just pulling together a programme of things to help our new grads, sorting out one of our senior chaps on how to use RSS, and trying to work on a marketing strategy which will outline what we do, what we can help people to do themselves and that we don't mind being asked! So this one doesn't need to be integrated because it is already so much a part of my job but I guess worth thinking about it so that it doesn't get lost under the pile of work to do!

Speaking up for the profession
I don't plan to do any of this, I'm not really qualified to talk about other kinds of libraries only ever having been a user and even if I were, I don't have the time, energy or motivation!

Getting published
This is something I have done on a small scale (branch and group newsletters) but I think I probably should set my sights a little higher. I haven't done anything with my dissertation and I think I could get at least one solid professional and one reasonable academic peer-reviewed article out of that so I think that should be my aim. I certainly don't have this as an integral part of my work but I put a call out for tips and I'm trying to identify academic journals that might be interested (so far I'm thinking LIR and Performance Measurement and Metrics but suggestions welcome) and see if I can do what they suggest!

Jing
Is good. I would need to do this at home because I can't download it at work but I think it might be worthwhile to do a few screenshots and soundless films (no sound on work PCs) to show people the basic tasks we need to explain from time to time e.g. how to sign up to Factiva.

Podcasts
I intended to investigate the CILIP ones which clutter up my RSS but I didn't get to it yet. I will also try to listen to the backlog of SLA ones. I don't plan to create these but I think I do need to think of a time to listen to them. Not sure when that would be.

To Do:
- Blog more frequently and more quickly after events [possibly more realistic after CPD23 ends]
- Comment on other blogs
- Subscribe to the CPD 23 blogs that I wish to carry on following after it ends
- Find a few more people on Google Reader to see their shared items
- Tweet more links to interesting stuff
- Try to reflect upon events when writing them up afterwards for the blog
- Contribute to LinkedIn discussions rather than just thinking that I will!
- Have a look at these new Facebook lists and see if they need work
- See if I can do anything more on LISNPN
- Check CILIP Communities every two months
- Look at BIALL wiki
- Use Click University
- Check for useful SLA Divisions
- See about other events to attend
- Work on organising a CILIP in London event
- Scan all my paperwork into Evernote
- Tag work and put into the correct folder in Evernote
- Attend chartership event
- Read a few portfolios to see if look OK
- Keep a watchful eye on the mentor pages
- Think about whether the Tina Reynolds wiki is a good idea. If yes:
- Put some content into it!
- Reorganise Dropbox
- Find possible journals in which to publish
- Look at journal requirements
- Draft an article or two
- Try a Jing for a work task

Wow - big list - this may take some time!

New (Academic) Year Resolutions

2011-09-10T13:29:00.000+01:00

As it is the new year, or at least new school year (and I have not yet lost the feeling that September means new stationery) I have decided to make a few resolutions.

1. Make the most of my professional bodies.
I have been an SLA member for a few years now. Primarily due to SLA Europe which is a great group who I really do feel are useful to me. But SLA could provide far more than the SLA Europe blog and events and a few copies of Information Outlook!

I have joined a couple of mailing lists but that is about it. SLA is set up in a manner not dissimilar to CILIP although on a larger scale with a regional Chapter (Europe) and then divisions which are special interest groups. I need to really investigate the divisions because I have basically ignored them and I'm sure they could be very useful to me. The other main thing which I ought to make more of is the Click University stuff which is basically online training. The SLA website is a goldmine and I need to make more of it!

The same goes for my other professional associations. CILIP Communities, the C2 advice and other SIGs all need to be looked at. I need to have a look at the BIALL wiki etc. etc.

2. To properly prepare for my appraisal
This year we're moving from a paper to online appraisal system and the timings are also changing. Pressures of work usually see me putting together my form in a bit of a rush and perhaps without as much thought as I could spare. This year, I will really put the effort in.

3. To read more
I have become really lax about this. I have thousands of links saved in Read It Later and 100s of pdfs to read too. I need to actually read them!

4. To blog, tweet & generally engage more
I've felt a little overwhelmed by trying to keep up with everything over the last few months and I have stopped tweeting interesting links and commenting on blogs. This will change.

5. Research chartership
I have been putting off chartering. I don't really want to do it. All that reflection looks like hard work. I am now wondering if it might be worth just getting it over with. So I'm going to have a little look - no promises about actually doing it but I'm going to think about it without the dismissiveness.

Thing 18 - Jing and Podcasts

2011-09-09T13:10:00.000+01:00

I downloaded Jing and poodled about on the DJD intranet (from home using Citrix - no way I could download it at work) showing people how to access a bit of the site that no one ever knows how to use without one of the Information Unit talking them through it. I then realised that there was something confidential on the home page so you aren't allowed to see it & instead recorded a little tour of my Google Reader and then an annotated screen shot. I would want to re-do the screencast as it is really too large for comfort. I can really see this being useful.

Podcasts - I'm not a big fan. I can't listen to them at work and the commute is a bit too loud really. I do listen religiously to the Tuesday Club - but that is a personal podcast rather than a library one (Thanks to @JWo79 for the suggestion) and the SLA podcasts because they come through in my RSS feeds. I've never really gotten into them. If anyone has some really good suggestions I'll subscribe and see if I can get into them. I also downloaded Audacity and was going to try my hand at podcasting but the microphone wasn't recognised so I gave up! To be honest, I don't see me ever needing to create a podcast anyway and I was sort of dreading listening to myself back so I'm not going to push very hard to solve this issue!

Thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

2011-09-08T23:09:00.000+01:00

Advocacy
I don't really do advocacy on behalf of the profession except occasionally trying to explain that professional services firms do have librarians and no, I don't work in a public library, no, not the British Library either!

I am, however, an advocate for my service. I think in the corporate world you always need to be on the look out for ways to improve, how you can help the users and show the value of what the Information Unit does.

I have made pretty full use of the special library resources on the CILIP website which were useful and I'm now getting around to looking at the SLA alignment stuff which has been hovering in my scope of vision for a while but the name debacle (AskPRO blurgh) sort of put me off looking any deeper. Having done so, however, it seems like an eminently sensible idea - to work out what our users want/think/need and align ourselves with those goals.

I have to say that part of the reason I don't do advocacy for libraries generally is lack of time but the other reasons are less good. The first is that I feel exhausted just looking at what people like Voices for the Library do and think that I really don't have the energy, the second is that I don't think I should have to - that is why CILIP exists & I don't want to pick up the slack and finally that I don't want to accidently slip into activism. I don't like the banner waving, chanting, marching thing and I really wouldn't want people to associate me with that sort of thing. I can't imagine ever doing anything other than rolling my eyes at something - any more impassioned action really is beyond me! Maybe it is a fault but I don't have passions and I don't really want them. I have interests and likes and dislikes and hatreds (lots of those!) but I can think of nothing that would get me out of my chair or writing to the editor!

Getting published
I have been 'published' a couple of times although it hardly counts in comparison to the links from the CPD 23 post. I wrote up the BIALL conference in return for the CLIG bursary & that report is on their website, I have also been in the CILIP in London newsletter, the CLSIG newsletter and the CDG (L&SE) newsletter a few times too. I have been quoted in Update twice in Blogwatch which I'm very proud of but I feel that I could and should do more here whether it is just submitting one of those day in the life pieces to Update or writing a proper articles.

Having looked at the to do section of Lauren's post I feel a bit stumped. I don't want to engage in library advocacy, I have nothing to contribute to That's not online, I don't want to join VftL, I'm not passionate about anything, I'm not sure that my skills would particularly lead to helping this sort of thing.

I realise that I'm coming off as a wee bit negative here. In my firm, I make a real point of trying to meet up with partners and staff to discuss their needs and those of their team. I meet up over a coffee, discuss what they're up to and how the Information Unit might help. I find this really valuable as I get a better insight into their work so I can ping them a link which might help if I stumble across it and I can spot potential synergies and point them towards other people in the firm.

I do, however, think there is more to be done which is why I am looking at the CILIP & SLA stuff (any further special library suggestions gratefully received) because I don't think you can ever stop with this sort of thing but also because there is still an awful lot of work done that people are unaware of.

I guess my thing to do from this is basically to carry on as usual. Sorry.

Thing 15 - Events

2011-09-07T09:33:00.000+01:00

***Apologies for the delay in thing 14 but I need to find time to play with the tools!***

I come at this thing from the perspective of someone who loves events. I go to as many as I can and I really enjoy them. I think it is a good cheapish way to learn stuff and chat to nice librarians over a glass of wine. I enjoy going to events from different groups and mingling with different groups. It is a pity that events so often clash but this is an inevitable consequence of CILIP's policy on opening hours and people not using the very snazzy CILIP in London library calendar!

I have also attended a few conferences. I went to the 2009 New Professionals Conference using a CDG (L&SE) bursary, the 2010 BIALL Conference with a bursary from CLIG and the 2011 New Professionals Conference as well as Umbrella. I also won a bursary to the 2011 BIALL Conference from BIALL but couldn't take it as my boss was cycling the length of Britain!

I think the moral of the story is that there genuinely is money out there to help attendance at conferences!

I have always taken copious notes at these things until this year where I tried to just listen and tweet a little bit. It didn't really work for me. I need to make notes to think. That is not to say that this should be all you do or that you should try to do anything with them afterwards. I try very hard to go to all the exhibitors, not miss any sessions, chat to as many people as possible and attend every social event. I think maybe I should relax a bit more and skip off to go shopping during the AGM or something but I think it is good to push yourself a bit even if you then collapse in a heap afterwards!

I don't speak at events.

I have helped to organise a few events in my time although I haven't been solely responsible for one although I have come close! I have arranged speakers, taken bookings, sorted rooms and just generally helped out. I have to say that although organising an event is a bit stressful at times, it isn't actually very difficult or time consuming. The bit I find difficult is the initial inspiration of 'who can we ask'! We're always looking for new topics so please contact me if you want to speak or if you have topics you would like us to organise an event around.

I don't think I have any real insight about what to do at events...I guess I would just reiterate Jo's advice...

I try to get to things early so I can dump my handbag in a corner and relax, try to not have anything heavy in bag, dress in flats (for conferences) and always have pen and paper handy.

If you're going to a big conference I would also suggest that a spare battery and a spare fold up bag for swag might be useful.

I would like to go to the BIALL Conference next year and maybe to a foreign conference although that would need a lot of thought and would need funding from someone who is not me!

Thing 13: Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

2011-08-15T14:26:00.000+01:00

Thing I like first:

Dropbox.

What a good idea. Mobile access, online access, application, download to your computer.

I use this in a number of ways.

1. Storage – simple as that. Not stuff I will ever need to access offline or at another computer but that I want backed up (as I still haven’t worked out how to do that on my laptop).
2. Sending files – rather than emailing myself the thing I have been working on at work then going and finding it, I upload it into Dropbox (website – no downloading at work!) and then have it when I get home
3. Sorting out the ipad – sometimes it can be quite difficult to get stuff onto the ipad – itunes is one of the most horrific things I have ever encountered and it enables me to bypass it. I can open ebooks or pdfs from Dropbox and put them into iBooks.

Genius, simple, easy to use thing. Perfect. And one of the few things which doesn’t shout at me to upgrade my work browser. If I could, I would!

I don’t share documents or folders. I have done so for today: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17404383/CPD23Test.doc

And have shared the CPD23 Folder with my boyfriend (the only other person I know who uses Dropbox – because I made him!)

I can access my desktop remotely from home if I want to do work so I can imagine that other people probably make fuller use of Dropbox but I really like it.

Google Documents.

I have never used this before. I doubt that I will again but I obediently followed my instructions. I clicked on the link and was quite freaked out to find:

Now remember how I said I have never used this – these are all things that people have sent me a link to, I have made no amendments, not saved anything and carried on. Yet they are here. As ‘modified’. Google being creepy again.

Anyway, so this seemed easy enough to use. I created a Word document and shared it with myself at another email address. I downloaded it in Word format to go into Dropbox. All looked relatively easy to use.

So why will I not use it? Well, there isn’t a reason to. I have Word on my work computer and my laptop at home and my boyfriend’s computer. I never need to work in the cloud, I don’t work collaboratively and I’m not sure I want the evil G getting hold of my documents too.

I guess the one benefit that I could potentially see is to be able to edit documents on my ipad because that is not possible just using Dropbox but, to be honest, it is better to just type it offline – especially given how dire my typing is on the ipad thing!

Another consideration is that I need to log in to use Google stuff at work so I’m much less likely to use this than something which is easier to access.

If anyone can give me a convincing reason to use it I will try but I can’t think of one myself…

Wikis.

Lots of people rave about wikis but I have always found them to be unnecessarily clunky and difficult to use. I have added myself to the Library Day in the Life, Library Roots/Routes and UK Library Blogs wikis but it has always taken a while and been quite hard. That said, ‘Dumpling’ and Bethan have done a very cool wiki and I know it is something that I ought to be a bit more able to play with stuff like this so I have signed up and created a wiki:

http://tinamariereynolds.pbworks.com/

It is pretty bare at the moment but I have edited text and created a new page so I’m quite pleased. The other reason for doing this is that dearest Dumpling suggested that Jo Alcock and I might collaborate on a wiki in a similar vein to her and Bethan. Now I was initially sceptical because I don’t really want to charter straightaway and I don’t want to hold anyone back but now I’m thinking that Jo is fairly inspirational and maybe it would be good to have someone making me feel guilty about my lack of reflection! That said, I couldn’t do a collaborative wiki right now because I literally don’t have the skills. So I’ll have a play and see if I get myself sorted enough to maybe join in!

Thing 12 - Putting the social into social media

2011-08-14T14:31:00.000+01:00

I have to say that I'm not certain that I like social media. When I was younger, I would spend hours texting and chatting on the phone to my friends....Facebook has diluted this massively. Everyone assumes that you've seen what they're up to so they don't tell you again unless it is a really important development.

I don't think that the same issue is a problem for professional networking but there are definitely issues there too. For example some people clearly do not have what I consider to be appropriate filters in place for someone dealing with colleagues. I do not appreciate seeing the C word at 3pm, or, actually, ever, nor do I need to hear about your sex life. It clearly works both ways though - I realised today that someone blocked me on Twitter. I'm ow wondering what it was that I said or did that caused that.

These are clearly age old problems (see also misuse of mailing lists) but I think are exacerbated by the fact that you can't see the person becoming uncomfortable or rolling their eyes at the other end.

The other issues with social networking involve the sites. This week LinkedIn decided to use me in adverts and Facebook sucked all my email contacts without my permission. This lack of control is clearly an issue.

I would say, though, that although I might prefer a world without social networks, I don't want to be without them in this world. It is almost obligatory in order to not feel completely left out. For me, the main advantage of social networks (excluding Facebook where my reason for being there is so I do get invited to parties etc) is to amplify the connections I have - I go to events and meet people and then add them on LinkedIn, I follow them on Twitter and get t know them a little better. I also hear about things a little quicker than I would otherwise and I have come to sort of know some people I haven't physically met. Not sure how I feel about that bit though - feels a little odd to feel as if I know someone when I really don't!

CPD 23 has lead to me reading a law blog which I really enjoy and hadn't previously seen as well as making contact with someone who works in my sector which is nice! There are a few other blogs that I will probably add after the things end and some that I don't think I will.

I have been using LinkedIn for ages and think it is really good although I want to make more effort to engage with the groups. I lurk a lot but rarely comment so I think that is a good way of continuing. Lately I have been too busy to be very professional on Twitter but I intend to go back to how I was a few months ago - sharing more links and retweeting interesting stuff. I feel that weeding out my feeds really helped with the feeling of information overload so I intend to do that every so often. I'm definitely going to keep blogging. I will readily admit that I wasn't keen when I started this. I felt that it was a bit egotistical to assume that anyone cares what I think but I have now decided that is the wrong way to look at this. It is for record keeping - maybe even for reflection - I'm not trying to be particularly informative or to change the mind of my reader(s) so why worry!

The final question is whether social media fosters a sense of community. The short answer is that I don't know. Certainly, it makes it very obvious how nice most librarians are and how small a world it is but I already knew that before using social media. I think perhaps it is a little more present and obvious in social media but then equally it is, perhaps, easier to feel excluded. There are times when I look at a conversation on a social network and wonder if the participants are entirely sane and it is easy to seem like there is an in crowd to break into.

So, in conclusion: dunno! I think social media has benefits but I'm not a massive fan especially as it is hard to make sure it doesn't take over your life. Previously, I had a rule that as I left work on a Friday evening the networks were disconnected and they got turned back on when I left home Monday morning. This has slipped a lot and in some ways I am pleased to find people tweeting about rugby and F1 and stuff but equally it is a distraction from the real world. I think perhaps I just need to be more disciplined myself!

Thing 11 - Mentoring

2011-08-07T07:33:00.000+01:00

I don't have a mentor at the moment. I doubt I will gain an official one until I charter. That is not to say, however, that I do not have people who I look up to or wish to emulate.

My boss is the nicest person I have ever met. He really puts me to shame. He is basically the person that I wish I could be (except for the vegetarianism). He studied the subject I wish I'd taken at university, he always knows the answers, he has a sense of direction (something I lack), and he is universally liked. On my grumpier days, I think he is too nice but most ofthe time I want to be like that, to not get annoyed by the world. Although he isn't a mentor, he has supported my career by allowing me to take on new roles - giving up stuff that even I think maybe should have remained his! He's also been really good about supporting my professional involvement by giving me time off and writing references and things. It would be really weird to ask him to be a mentor but he does his job really well and sets a great example for me to follow so I guess he kind of is...ish. Although he isn't very involved - He is a chartered CILIP member but I don't think he goes to events etc.

There are a lot of librarians that I look up to, some who really are senior to me, some who are around the same place as me and others who are still in the early stages of their career. I don't really think about it too much but I guess I do try to learn from these people and others who are doing stuff I would never wish to but inspiring nevertheless.

I'm going to hold off finding a proper mentor until I am likely to put somethng into the relationship but in the mean time thanks to everyone who has nudged me in the right direction! This post originally listed a few of them but it was just too weird so I deleted that bit!

Thing Ten - Careers

2011-08-01T22:39:00.000+01:00

I'm sure that most of you already know the story (and if not then I've done a Library Routes/Roots post) but in brief I changed my mind at the last minute and applied to do Law at uni instead of French and German. I didn't think I wanted to do Law and investigation during the degree showedI was right as there was boring and well paid with way too many hours or extremely poorly paid and often disturbing as the two choices. An assignment in my secnd year made me take a career test where the two top choices were libarians and translator. As I had no urge to do another four years of degree study, I had a look into librarianship. It looked OK so I looked on the CILIP website and emailed all of the places in London who were taking graduate trainees that year asking for summer work experience.

I got two weeks each at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the Institute for Historical Research and Drivers Jonas plus a day at a law firm, a tour of a couple of libraries and lots of apologetic replies. I spent six weeks doing menial library stuff with constant apologies from the powers that be and I loved it. I thought that was a good sign and decided to apply for graduate traineeships in my final year. In the November, a two day a week librarian left Drivers Jonas and I was asked if I'd like to take her job. I was working about 15 hours per week waitressing at the time anyway so it worked out perfectly and I took it.

I was intending to take a graduate traineeship but I was working in a paraprofessional capacity almost straightaway and some of the trainee roles looked so incredibly basic that I did start to have reservations. DJ said they would see if they could increase me to full time but to keep applying just in case. In the end, I took the full time role with DJ partly because I liked the work and felt it had a lot of scope for professional development, partially because I had a few interviews lined up but no firm offer and. Thought it would be silly not to!

I took my MA by distance learning from Northmbria because Aber and RGU both said it should take three years & I didn't want to drag it out! It was OK, in some ways I wish I had taken it full time or at least in person so I would have made more of the social side of things but it worked out OK.

I am now a qualified librarian, still working at DJD (merger!). My role has evolved a lot since I first joined but I still love my work. Where next is a slightly more difficult question. I know what I don't want to do...I don't want to manage people, I don't want to be a solo, I don't want to deal with non-adults. I guess a law firm or a subject librarian (I'm aware that won't happen) would be a good choice of move if I chose to do so but I'm not sure I will.

My career aspirations are:
To be really really good at what I do
To be paid the going rate
To have the respect of my users
To have the respect of my peers
To remain involved in the profession
To not be bored
To be able to manage my own work

I don't have grand plans and I certainly don't think you need to move jobs every 5 minutes just for the sake of it. If I decide to move it will be because I need a new challenge not just because I think five years is the right time to do so!

As you can see from the above I didn't do a graduate traineeship athough I tried to make my year as much like it as possible - trying to engage with Chapter One, attending Graduate Day at CILIP and the BIALL version too, visiting lots of libraries, reading loads and attending events like they were going out of fashion. I did the MA. The next thing to discuss is Chartership.

I haven't chartered. I don't really want to. I feel certain that I will at some point because I want the letters after my name and the recognition but it seems too onerous for me to want to do it at the moment for a few reasons:

1. You need to prepare a personal development plan. I have no idea what I would put in this. Well that's slightly untrue. I have one thing but that isn't enough.
2. You need to be reflective. Which is dull.
3. You need to gather evidence and organise it and move it about. Sounds a bit too much like hard work!

So that's where I am. Trying not to charter!

Thing 9 - Evernote

2011-07-27T22:08:00.002+01:00

I'm not convinced that I have ever wanted or needed to take notes on a web page. I can't even think of a reason that I might!

When I got my ipad, I saw Evernote and downloaded it. I realised it has zero functionality so I got the desktop version. I used it a little bit but kind of couldn't find a reason to fit it into my life. I clipped a few webpages but about half of them went weird with text and pictures overlapping and so I stopped using it after a week.

It still seemed like a good idea so I didn't uninstall the app, the Firefox add on or the desktop thing but I just forgot about it. This thing made me think again about why I should use it, or more accurately what I should use it for. A lot of people on Twitter gave me ideas of what I could being doing with Evernote but between Firefox Sync and Dropbox, none of them seemed to be necessary. But I have decided on a purpose. I am going to reduce my pile of professional stuff. At the moment (and since I first started working in libraries) I print out the details and map of every event I attend, make some notes, staple them together and put them on the pile.This pile is now massive. I have decided to scan all of the pile, put it in Evernote, and through it away. Eventually, I might get around to going throw my back issues of journals and chucking them too!

The plan was to keep all this stuff in case I need it to charter although to be honest that intermediate Word course I did in 2007 is probably not going in the portfolio if such a thing ever materialises!

Anyway this is my plan. I will also try to add articles that I have read and want to keep (a rare thing) so have added a link from Read It Later to make sure I can do this. I've also rediscovered the email address to send stuff to Evernote.

If anyone wants to give me more ideas on what to do with it then please comment!

Thing Eight - Google Calendar

2011-07-27T22:00:00.000+01:00

I do currently have a Google calendar. In fact, I have two. I'm going to briefly outline my use (or lack thereof) and why I don't feel they serve my needs too well.

My current system for organising myself runs as follows:

Outlook calendar for all work and professional stuff plus a few personal thngs eg birthdays

Phone for alarm clock and general reminders

Tiny handbag sized diary which never leaves my sight in which I scribble meeting with friends etc if out and about.

I will frequently write stuff from Outlook into diary and vice versa.

So Google. I have a gmail account which is rarely used and not widely known. I also have linked my work email to Google in order to blog, use Reader etc etc.

In a fit of professional guilt I added the CILIP in London calendar plus a few others to my calendar. I then realised I couldn't see this on my ipad. So I added them to my gmail. I never looked at it. I then decided that I should sync this with my phone. But I sort of ignored it. I realised what I wanted was my paper diary but in my phone (i.e. anything marked as busy) so I exported my Outlook into my Google Calendar. But every single note or reminder went in too. This cluttered up my phone and my calendar. I went through and un-synced my phone and deleted the dross from my clndar this week but I am left at an impass. I feel I ought to use a proper online calendar but I have no one with whom I would share it and if it just irritates me then I shuold not bother. Does anyone have a solution? Because, if not, I doubt I'll be using Google Calendar!

Thing 7 - Real Life Networks!

2011-07-23T22:46:00.000+01:00

I'm a member of a number of professional bodies;

CILIP (I'm on two committees)
SLA (special not school libraries)
BIALL
CLIG (City Legal Information Group)
NGLIS (Network of Government Library & Information Specialists)
LIKE (I'm a 'host')
LISNPN (if that counts)
SPR (Society of Property Researchers)

This is all quite pricey as work only pays for CILIP and SPR. CLIG and NGLIS are both quite cheap and LIKE is free to join but SLA and BIALL are fairly painful cost-wise. I do, however, think it is important. I work in a small team in a subject area which probably never employs more than fifteen librarians. As such, I need to keep professionally involved with people outside of that sphere. This is both in order to develop and as a safeguard. I think that law firms are sufficiently similar to property consultancies that I can attend events and read articles and take a large amount to apply to my own work. SLA is for people working in special libraries so that slightly broader remit ensures that I have relevant stuff to see and do. NGLIS is not a group which has too much that can be applied directly but some of the same challenges remain for all librarians. As for safeguarding, if I ever lose my job, the chances of me getting a property job are fairly slim so I need to ensure I have networks in other areas. Without being a BIALL and CLIG member, for example, I don't know if I would realise the extent to which my work is like that of a law firm librarian. The most important reason I am a member of these organisations is that I can attend events. I believe I have mentioned before that I like learning to just float in, well attending events is how this happens. I attend events and sometimes it is really relevant, sometimes not, but usually something will be of interest and lurk in my brain until needed. This also means I have four or five journals and some newsletters and emails to read which help me keep involved and potentially give me a number of places to publish.

Within CILIP I am a CDG, CILIP in London and CLSIG member as these are the groups which are most relevant to me. Many people do not choosr their branch but I did. I live in the East of England catchment but work in London so I decided that it would be better to go to events in London which I could get to after work rather than in Cambridge which I could not get to before 6.45 at the earliest by which time most of the EoE events are finishing. I really do want to go to an EoE event at some point because they seem like a really nice bunch but I'll need to take leave to do so whereas London events start around 6pm which is a better time for someone who ceases working at 5.30pm.

I don't to go on about the greatness of CILIP in London or CDG because it would be too weird but just would say that if you want to get involved we'd be very pleased.

My other group is Commercial, Legal & Scientific Information and I really like what they do. The newsletter is good and the events are always interesting and generally with very good nibbles.

I have to say that networking in person was not fun when I first started but the more I made myself have conversations, the more people I knew and the easier it became to the extent that now I have started attending events that aren't really library ones e.g. Gurteen Knowledge Cafesn& despite assuming I'd know no one I walked in already knowing four people in the room. It is even more pointed when at library events where I quite often know half of the room.

I have to say that I don't spend as much time on committee work as I ought at the moment - I'm so busy that it is more or less just me chipping in over email! I have learnt many things at all of the events I have attended but also I think I have become a more patient person and a more forceful one through my committee work as I have felt the need to chip in and have had to sit there and listen to things with which I disagree.

I am considering (have been for a while but this has brought it back into mind) joining ALA, ALIA, LIANZA and AIIP. I'm not sure if I will as I probably do have a good number of bodies already who actually are in the same country as me but I'm going to check it out.

Just as a footnote I'd really like to thank Alan Fricker, Meghan Jones and Steve Cook for arranging a really interesting and fun meeting for CILIP in London to tie in with this 'thing'. I think we got about 55 attendees which is brilliant so thanks to any Londoners who turned up too! I hope that you will attend lots of branch and group events even if you don't join a committee!

Thing Six - Online Networks

2011-07-20T00:22:00.000+01:00

LinkedIn

I have been a member of LinkedIn for years now - since I first started working part-time in libraries. I have always been a big fan of LinkedIn which is interesting as I have heard so many people saying it feels too grown up or serious or dull or corporate for them. I like that it is place for me to write down the things I do, join interesting groups, read and sometimes join in interesting conversations and keep in touch with people that I meet.

I have found that my use of LinkedIn has decreased a little since joining Twitter but I still find it a valuable way to keep in touch with the profession. It is also how LIKE (the London Information and Knowledge Exchange) is administered.

I didn't think that I was really getting the most out of it and so I attended a session run by CLSIG (which is why I suggested James Mullan as an example) and it turns out that I wasn't doing too badly. The main thing which he suggested for me were changing my tag line which I had left because all of the changed ones I'd seen were very very tacky! So I came up with something although I'm still not sure. The other thing was to add some skills which is a new section & very cool!

I have not got my full quota of three recommendations but otherwise my profile is full. I'm a member of lots of groups to the extent that I hit the limit and had to delete a couple of the quieter ones. I would strongly suggest customising your url. Mine is: Linkedin.com/in/tinamariereynolds

My only annoyance with LinkedIn is random people I have never seen, heard of, tweeted with or met asking to connect but they aren't that common & I guess people are irritating everywhere!

Facebook

I am not, in honesty, all that keen on Facebook. I have no urge to play games or stalk people I hardly know. I am on it basically to keep in touch with my friends who share photos and events on there. I have always been very strict on my settings & people can pretty much see my friend list and photo and nothing else unless we are friends.

I have also always been quite sure that it is a personal site so not added much library stuff or people. I have met or seen online people (usually trainees or students) saying to add them on facebook and found it odd. I have also found it odd when library people who aren't friends have asked to be my friend. I have come to the conclusion that I may be missing a trick here and so have decided to give you my Facebook url if you wish to send a friend request: fcebook.com/tinamreynolds
Part of my problem with Facebook is the odd idea that you want people you didn't much like a decade ago to know what you are doing. Fortunately I have removed all of those people except one person who's life is hilarious. The rest of my problem is the vocabulary 'friend me' and disgustingly 'inbox me' make me irritable!

LISNPN

I feel that I have to be on this one because I am a new professional and because as New Professionals Support Officer [sic] I should be on there answering questions. I'm not sure I find it all that useful although had I had it when applying for library school it would have been a Godsend and it will come into its own when I charter. That said, without LISNPN, there would be no LISNPN meet ups (not just for members or new professionals - the more the merrier) which I find tremendous fun!

LAT

I joined this because it was being heavily trailed and I was interested. I don't teach or train really in my job but I wonder if I should, so I popped in. i checked back every month or so for a while but it was a bit quiet so I gave up. I will have another look now.

CILIP Communities

Is pretty awful. I have been a member for years and years and I go in aout every six months, look through the fora and check nothing interesting has been said. It is too clunky and irritating for me to engage with although I do have a profile and am a CILIP blogger which is linked to the Communities.

I have to say that I'm mostly keen on LinkedIn. I haven't joined Google + and have no immediate plans to do so. I am a bit worried about using Facebook professionally as there are some silly photos added by friends but have liked CPD23 and am taking the plunge but think networks really need a purpose which links to your aims...Which I suppose means that I shouldn't be on all of these!

Thing Five - Reflective Practice

2011-07-16T14:24:00.000+01:00

So first of all, I would like to confess that I am not a reflective person. I dislike the process of reflection, I don't want to think about my motivations or stress about how I can apply what I have learnt to what I do. I like to think that going to an event or reading an article or whatever and paying attention will ensure that by osmosis i learn something.

The issue with this is that, unlike many other professions, my professional body has a bee in its bonnet about being reflective practitioner. At some point in the future, I plan to charter, and for some time now, the noises coming out of CILIP have been around introducing compulsory reflective CPD. I will note here that I am unhappy about this. Complsory CPD is fine, most professions do that but most do you must do 30 hours or 50 hours of CPD per year of which it can be a conference, reading, events, training etc. This, to me, is clearly the route. But enough ranting, because me thinking a thing, unfortunately, does not make it so. The current manner in which one charters is to create a development plan, work out where you want to improve and find evidence to support it. Thus I ought to get used to reflection.

So, looking back at our first few 'things' along with some other experiences I've had, I have noticed a few things:

1. I've been saying for years that I'm a luddite in a slightly jokey way. I am though not keen on change for the sake of change, I do not (despite my age and - relative to my non-library related peers - expertise) like or feel particularly comfortable with techology. However...

2. I don't really need to. To do my current job, I do not need to code or understand Linux or tweet or even read Update.

3. I don't like feeling stupid. And in many cases I actually am a bit. I asked a question on twitter today and someone gave me a fairly useful answer that included s/w I thought about this for a bit & still couldn't work out what it meant. Yes, reader, you are correct - it meant software!

4. I think you genuinely do get out what you put in with a lot of these tools. I've been on Twitter for ages but I'm still not really a convert. It is OK but I'm still not sure that once my year is up I'll stick with it. That said, I got a lot more out of it than Pushnote which I came to certain that it was a waste of my time but additionally unwilling to put in the effort. I mean it probably is rubbish but I didn't have time to do much with it, was irritated that I had to download something and had already read critical blogs so I didn't spend as long trying it out as I might have.

5. You can always improve. Pretty obvious really but I have taken it to heart over the last few things. Could I comment more on blogs rather than either a) thinking that was interesting and doing no more or b) decidimg to tweet the link and saving it then never doing so? Of course. Could I do better with all the other things? Yes.

So, my plan is to improve. I have already weeded my Google Reader and divided everyone up into folders as a result of this programme but. Am yet to follow anyone else to see what they are sharing, learn how to delete the stuff I accidently shared, use that thing that Laura Woods does to shared links to Twitter or access the Trends to see what I read. I plan to do all of these things. Eventually. I have also signed up to Summify which tells you what you may have missed.

In Twitter, I have never really understood the purpose of lists so I don't have any but I am going to create one with the people who I really should read e.g. @CILIPinfo so that when I'm busy, I can still catch up. Additionally, I need to sort out my saved searches. When I first started using Twitter I used the actual website but when I started using Hootsuite the searches did ot move with me so I recreated some but ignored some. I also bought Gavity for my phone which is a brilliant app - the only app I have ever paid for and completely amazing. This did bring my searches over but as lists which as not as good as the searches Gravity provides. The result of this is that I have three different lots of searches none of which cover everything. I plan to delete the Twitter ones and Hootsuite ones and add a few extra to Gravity.

Commenting. Did really well on this for about a week but since then.... My major problem is that I hardly read at all online. I tend to quickly whizz through my feeds adding anything more than about a paragraph to Read it Later. I then skim or delete the short posts. So that's my RSS sorted but I have a whole bunch of extra stuff in Read It Later to read offline. I quite often leave stuff in there to tweet or comment upon later but for the last month or more have not done so. Not really sure what to do about it.

Had a bit of an issue on reflecting about thing 3. I didn't find it a fun thing to do but it was nice to get some people being nice to me! I discovered that Im' really out there on the net which surprised me. I have also discovered that there a lot of lovely librarians [oh wait I already knew that!]

So my major theme of this reflective exercise seems to be that the more organisd you can be with everything whether it be commenting, bloggng or current awareness the easier it is. I hope that by the end of CPD23 I will have looked at all of the stuff I do and worked out a way of doing it better.

I think that this was subconsciously always an aim but, on reflection, maybe I haven't given it enough priority. I'm not convinced that I will ever want to be reflective but at least I'm getting some practice!

CPD 23 Things - Thing Four Current Awareness

2011-07-06T23:11:00.005+01:00

Looking at things one and two and some of the related discussions made me realise that I need to get my act together when it comes to RSS feeds. I absolutely love RSS - I am very forgetful so push content is absolutely the way to go and I'm always striving to have an empty inbox which means I not too keen on floods of emails.

I spent a bit of time over the last week or two tidying up my RSS reader. Originally, I had no tags or folders but did have nearly 600 feeds. I decided that in order to optimise my time reading feeds I should organise them into folders. First up is favourites which seems to be the sort of thing I'd read even if I didn't really have time to. The rest of the feeds are divided up by content so I have recruitment agency blogs e.g. View from the Hill in a folder and then academic librarians together etc.

This process has made me realise a few things. 1. I had a lot of 'dead' feeds from the pre-paywall Times and blogs that haven't been updated in years. 2. That I actually have more non-library feeds than I had realised such as an entire folder of linguistics 3. That I had a few feeds that I literally never read like the Indie books feed and legal current awareness feed. These have now gone.

I have subscribed to the Yahoo Pipe of CPD 23 and plan to subscribe to a number of the blogs 'properly' at some point so they go into the right folders!

I've used RSS for a few years but my usage has changed quite significantly. At first, I used the Firefox extension RSS Ticker which scrolls the feeds along the bottom of the browser. I really liked this (still do actually) but it eventually dawned on me that it might be a good idea to check my feeds at work and on the move. I am only allowed to use IE7 at work so syncing up with Firefox was out of the question and my phone does not have a mobile Firefox either. Now I'm pretty sure that Google is evil - why the motto otherwise? - so I looked for other options but I didn't find any so I signed up to Google Reader. I don't like how it looks and the clunky manner in which I have to send links to Read It Later irritates me but it was the best I could find. I now use my ipad quite a lot using Byline which is better set up to send links to Read It Later but I also use Reader on my phone. It doesn't show the folders in mobile view which is irritating after all the work & is impossible to send links to RIL but is otherwise OK. I have now noticed how many academic librarians I follow & how few public! This is what it looks like:

I have been on Twitter for almost a year. I am still not sure about it… On the one hand, I really like the ability to ‘crowdsource’ information, it is nice to be able to speak on an informal basis with other librarians and I enjoy the sharing of interesting links but, on the other hand, it is really time consuming to keep up with, there is a pressure to share interesting content and I feel guilty for not looking at every tweet. Woodsiegirl has suggested thinking of it more as a conversation to dip in and out of but I haven’t managed that. I said I would blog and tweet for at least a year before reconsidering so useful to think about this.

With regard to Pushnote, I have been giving it a go but I really don’t like it and don’t get it. I’m going to keep playing around with it for a few days but no…

No one is on it and even if they were I wouldn't be interested.

CPD 23 Thing 3 - Personal Brand

2011-06-27T13:09:00.000+01:00

Having read Jo's blogpost this morning I am ready to consider my personal brand! I was already sort of thinking about this as at the New Professionals Conference (which I will write up eventually, I promise) Suzanne Wheatley ran a session on this topic which I attended. I think, that I'm not too far off what I want to portray but I don't think I'm quite there. Suzanne asked us to pull together our 'brand' in six words which was really difficult but I ended up with:

"Slightly acerbic, opinionated knowledgable librarian with Gin"

Now I don't know if this is how I come across or not. I certainly would say that I am extremely opinionated - more than is probably good for me - and these opinions have a tendency to not be in line with the rest of the librarians I know who do tend (yes I am generalising, get over it) to be a very liberal, Guardian reading, feminist, politically correct activisty bunch. I actually quite like this about them - it is interesting to hear different opinions - but that is not me at all. I have opinions which tend not to fall into the usual stratifications; one of the reasons I don't belong to a political party despite being fairly interested in politics.

I can be on the acerbic side but I rather think I come across as more venomous in the internet than in the real world - partially because it is harder to have nuanced debate on twitter than in life and partially because people tend to say things which irritate me online.

I certainly hope I'm knowledgable. It is a major part of my self image, to be completely honest - for as long as I can remember, I have been considered clever; being pulled out of lessons to do extra stuff in primary school, being nearly killed for suggesting I might go be a secretary rather than go to university, being the person who always has an answer. For years, I've been the place my friends turned to for an answer - I have a pretty good memory for unimportant details so I actually did generally know the answer and I guess my inherent librarian worked out the rest!

Librarian - this bit is pretty important to me. I am a librarian, I would love to be called that at work too. I identify really closely with other librarians and I absolutely love my profession. I go to events which don't sounds terribly useful or interesting sometimes just so I can stay involved and meet up with the librarians I like. And there are lots of them! I guess it is a difficult line to draw but there are a number of library people who I like very much and if I had ever seen them in a non-library context would call friends but it seems a bit presumptuous to do so if we've never seen eachother outside of libraries! There are exactly five people who I have met in my four years of involvement in libraries and this is perhaps where my actual and online personality start to diverge - I slightly feel that I give the impression that I loathe everyone and everything and it is only propriety that stops me from a massacre which obviously isn't the case.

Gin - another bit that worries me a little. I do like gin but I actually don't drink all that often. If I'm not at a library function, I can go months without drinking. I haven't had a drink since last Tuesday which was my last library drinks and I won't be having another until Wednesday or Thursday when I'm next out on library business. This aside, I get the feeling that I'm starting to sound like an alcoholic. I hope this isn't the case but....

Suzanne also got us to discuss what you really like about people online and who you appreciate. There are definitely things I like - chatting, good links but it is mostly about people avoiding things that make me roll my eyes e.g. extraordinary cheeriness over nothing, overly personal information etc etc.

Jo W. wrote a really interesting post discussing how she portays herself online (which I said I'd comment on and haven't yet - oops!) which also sparked my interest in this. She said that a friend told her she seems cross online. I disagree - she comes accross as a nice normal person who isn't hiding her occasional grumpiness. In fact, I think that is the sort of level that I want to come over at - clearly though if people think she's grumpy, and I am grumpier, I must come across quite RAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Name: I used my name. Because I want people to know that I am me. I have variations on my name including middle name on every platform I use. It isn't entirely consistent but it wasn't possible to be in all cases and I think it is probably close enough.

Photograph: Frankly, I am not sufficiently imaginative to find a cartoon so photo it is!

Professional v. Personal: For me this is a fairly easy decision. Literally no one I know outside of libraries is on anything except facebook. Thus everything else is libraries. I am very strongly of the opinion, however, that everyone should be a little personal on other platforms because otherwise it is really dull.

Visual brand: Pass. I haven't really given this any thought at all. I use my work business cards which are rather corporate and don't have my twitter alias, blog or anything like that on them. I have been thinking about getting some non-work business cards but all the designs I have been considering have been on a text or red and black theme. Maybe I should try to link them (if I do get them) with the blog instead.

Activity:

I logged out of google and searched and I appear as the fourth, sixth and eighth link plus a photo of me pops up. I don't, however, know if this is because I haven't cleared my cache or if this is what most people would see.

I guess I have a fairly common name although I have only ever met one other Tina because if you add librarian to my name, it ends up with the whole first page being me of some description although one result is just an old comment I made on the realwikiman's blog!

"tina reynolds library" is less useful and ends up with the old comment and something of the wikiman's about library routes as well as some thing from last fm!

Interestingly, although I don't have anything suspect on it and it is fairly private anyway, my Facebook doesn't appear. This interests me.

Anyway, I would really like to hear what my one reader (and anyone else who stumbles over here) thinks about me, how I portray myself, whether I should have a different blog colour, anything. Feel free to comment, tweet or email. Thank you.

Thing Two

2011-06-25T21:20:00.002+01:00

I have really enjoyed Thing 2 and have gone to a whole bunch of blogs and commented on some of these. I found a few new ones which is always good but more importantly, I think, I have been more careful to click through and at least read the comments even if I didn’t leave one myself. This is something that I don’t do very often as I have got into the habit of reading blogs on my ipad either in read it later which doesn’t show comments or in the feed reader which also doesn’t show comments.

It has been really valuable posting comments although I think, particularly with people I don’t know, it will be easier to comment when they have something a bit more substantive to say as I can actually discuss their thoughts rather than just saying hello which felt a little presumptuous.

I mainly went for legal and corporate libraries with the addition of special collections and rare books. With the former two this is to do with that being my current focus and interest but also because they were smaller more manageable numbers – this was also the reason behind the second two!

I’ve subscribed to a number of new blogs and one of the discussions around blogging has made me realise that I need to sort out my reader. At the moment I have about 550 blogs and very few of them are not to do with libraries. I do have a few news or comment related feeds and a few about sport but that is more or less it! This doesn’t seem to be entirely normal so I might need to diversify a bit but I have certainly decided that I need to organise my feeds better. I need to create some folders with my favourite blogs separated from the ones I don’t like but need to keep an eye on. I also really really need to weed out the duplicates (I have Girl in the Moon thrice – a great blog but…!) and abandoned blogs.

If anyone is more organised than me and has nice structure or tips I could steal, please let me know!

CILIP in London talk

2011-06-22T21:51:00.001+01:00

On the 11th of April I attended a CILIP In London talk on the future of reference services from John Dove and Peter Ciuffetti of Credo Reference.

There are more CILIP in London events planned for the Sekforde Arms and I really would recommend attending. They were pretty much the first library-related events I attended (with the sole exception of the Graduate Day as was run by CILIP).

This particular talk was not of direct relevance to me as it was primarily concerned with the provision of online reference services within public libraries however it was extremely interesting and the lure of free sausages and sandwiches in a pub with lots of library types is always a strong one. Indeed, I was really really disappointed to have missed the most recent Sekforde Arms meeting about Voices for the Library.

The speakers discussed their idea of the company as an ecology - supporting particular elements is necessary as the whole only thrives if all parts are well-served. They also discussed the role of the management team, saying that they should not merely decide what to do and pass the message along to their underlings but rather to bring everyone together.

As part of their work, Credo looked at usage stats in libraries and discovered the utility of leverage techniques. They went into a public library branch as 'secret shoppers' and discovered poor knowledge of online resources from the library staff and this combined with the resources not being in the catalogue lead to poor usage. In order to ameliorate this, the library staff were trained and this increased usage vastly. Other things that make a difference include webinars, leaflets (although many local authorities do not allow these), MARC records in the catalogue, subject guides, single sign on and metasearch.

Something else that was mentioned was that where librarians rather than IT people had control of the website, there was a better user experience which seems to directly affect usage.

They also discussed the challenges of usage in a higher educatin setting including the number of iffy resurces out there. Information literacy training was flagged up which pleased me as I did not have any during my school or undergraduate days and it does sound useful. He noted that students seem to have a smaller vocabulary and see less of the 'big picture' than previous generations but also that they are less influenced by libarians and lecturers than by their peer group.

They also mentioned that they use open source database, search engine and platform both due to cost and enhanced capabilities which have lead to a better user experience.

It isn't massively relevant but we were told during this session that Oprah's viewing figures were in the region of 44 million. Seriously. That is basically the adult population of the UK watching some rubbish show (be silent about the vague figures here).

Why I want to do CPD 23

2011-06-22T21:45:00.002+01:00

Why I am doing CPD23.

The main reason that I'm doing CPD 23 is that I seem to be completely incapable of turning down professional opportunities. That is the reason I'm writing this on the train to CLSIG training the day after a LISNPN meet up, the day after the New Professionals Conference and related drinks. One of these days I guess I'll start being a bit more picky but it might take a catalyst!

An additional, no less important reason, is that I shall probably charter over the next few years and I loathe being reflective - I want to do the CPD not analyse why it is good! However, CILIP requires reflection so this might get me in the habit.

I also have become really slack about blogging with any kind of frequency, I started with an aim of a weekly post and the hope is that following CPD 23 might get me into the habit of that to the extent that I continue to do so even after the end of the programme.

I've followed a fair few 23 things programmes via lurking over the last few years and am really pleased to finally have one to join in with. This one is particularly good because all of the stuff looks so interesting. I'm not going to point out the things I assume I'll like most but some of them look very cool.

I have already been trawling through and have subscribed to an additional 50 blogs and have spent some time commenting too. I will, when one appears, subscribe to the full bundle of blogs too.

Fnally, my techy skills impress my friends but to be brutally honest compared to most librarians I'm a bit slack and this should give me an opportunity to solve that.

Please feel free to comment on any and all posts!

New Professionals Information Day 2011

2011-06-20T08:27:00.001+01:00

The New Professionals Information Day started well for me with no transport issues (a miracle) and many many cups of coffee. As new professionals support officer for London and the South East, I really try to get to these things as often as I can so people know where to go. Also I am a new professional myself so they are often personally beneficial too.

The day started off with Steve Clarke who works in sales and told us that we do too. I must confess immediately that I have no patience whatsoever for blue sky thinking type gibberish and the second I saw that Steve had a 'mantra' I was annoyed, by the time that I read it was "it's your attitude that determines your altitude" I knew that I was not his target audience and that I would not be able to sit through his talking without becoming very annoyed. I was right. I think someone so completely unrelated to the library world was an inappropriate person to have at an event specifically aimed at those new to the profession even if his tips might have been useful to more senior people however, about half of those I spoke to seemed to like his presence so I may be in the wrong here.

Steve used an extended flight metaphor which seemed to confuse a number of those with whom I later spoke but what it really boiled down to was that you need to aim right. He suggested finding our niche, setting specific goals, developing oneself, and expecting the unexpected.

The next session for me was 'Getting a job' with Alex Wilson-Campbell which swithered between being too basic and too advanced. An example of the latter was talking about budget experience. Now few new professionals will have this in a work context unless they are a solo so it was a pretty pointless thing to say. If, however, he had said become treasurer on a committee to gain budget experience that would have worked better for the audience. My back was also put up a little by the fact that he kept reading out exactly what was on his slides and in so doing completely putting his back to me. He did have some interesting ideas about keeping an eye on the hidden job market by using alerting services which might not work but sounded very promising. Most of the session was as you would expect so tailoring your skills to the employer's needs etc. Overall, a useful session but perhaps more tailored preparation next time.

My next session was about International stuff with Maria Cotera. Maria was on the CDG L&SE committee with me for a few years so I knew part of her story but not all. I'm not particularly interested in international stuff and unlike almost everyone else I spoke to I did not come out inspired but it was fairly interesting. I didn't have much to say about this session except that transferable skills are important, you need to show how attending professional events benefits your organisation and you must persevere. Maria mentioned during this session that there is womens interest group in IFLA which I don't approve of as I think it is divisive having groups split down sex or race lines but who knows, maybe again I'm not up with current thought on this one.

After lunch, I went into Bethan Ruddock's session which, for me, was easily the best of the day. She ran through her own fairly impressive career and then asked us to consider ours.

She asked what professional involvement we've tried, what worked and didn't and any positive or negative experiences:

So I am on two CILIP committees, CILIP in London (my branch) and Career Development Group London and South East Divisions. CDG is national but split regionally and I am on the regional committee. I am also a London Information & Knowledge Exchange host which basically involves going to the events (which I was doing anyway) and pouring wine. I really like LIKE and particularly pouring wine gives me a reason to talk to people and something to say which I sometimes struggle with. I made the decision that when I joined the profession I was going to attend as many events as I could and read as much as I could. The first few events I attended were quite hard as I knew no one and I'm pretty shy so I found it a real struggle. Perseverence paid off, however, and after a few events I started to get to know people and I could find somebody to talk to. It has now got to the point that at almost every event I go to, I know at least one person and generally quite a few people. I'm on twitter which I'm still unsure about and I blog (as you can see) which is a real struggle for me as I find it quite hard to write eloquently without takng forever over it! I subscribe to numerous blogs and am a member of SLA, BIALL, CLIG, CILIP, LIKE, NGLIS and TFPL Connect whose events I attend and literature I read. I also go to other events such as Gurteen Knowledge cafes. I've been to a few conferences, mostly on bursaries and have had a few bits and bobs published - conference and event write ups mostly but I've been quoted in Update twice which I was very excited about. What works for me is pretty much just forcing me to go to events even when tired or busy. I try to spend my commute and lunch times on professional reading so it doesn't cut into my life too much! Negative experiences are mainly just being too shy to talk to people or having nothing to say and the rare person who irritates me (not being sarcastic - I'm easily irritated but librarians are usually nice, just a handful of annoying ones so far!) Positive; almost everything really. I like librarians, it is all interesting stuff and I feel like part of something!

The next part of the session was around barriers to professional engagement. Unsurprisingly these were time, money, confidence and laziness. Time and money are obviously difficult ones but you can get bursaries and go to free or cheap things especially in London. I do spend a lot of money though and even if I could go to everything, stuff clashes. Confidence is also a very difficult one. I try to fake it but it is hard to do and in forcing myself to speak, I sometimes speak over people or come across as brash which is just the kind of person I don't like. I'm trying to get a balance between my natural self who would be sitting at the back making notes and not contributing and butting in too much. It may take a few more years!

The part our group discussed was about the future of the profession and whether it is possible to prepare for the future. We agreed it probably wasn't but thought that just being open to new ideas, learning little bits of new stuff on an ad hoc basis and being involved were probably the best chance we had. We thought that online and offline support was available through professional bodies and sites like LISNPN and twitter. Bethan then made us write down a professional development resolution and put it on the wall. I was struggling to think of anything because I think I have enough on my plate but I decided to put down the CPD 23 things (along with a lot of other people).

The final session of the day was with Lyndsay Rees-Jones talking about her career which was really interesting. We got into groups to discuss how to gain and use experience which was less fun but fairly useful.

I'm sorry this has been a little patchy and rambling I made my notes on the basis that I'd have all the slides but the pack still hasn't been sent out so I haven't got them yet.

LIKE 25

2011-06-01T13:54:00.000+01:00

LIKE 25 has Caroline Brazier from the British Library in to discuss how they prove their value.

We first started by throwing around some ideas of what we think the British Library does e.g. ILLs, exhibitions, IP centre, national heritage. I suppose the obvious thing they provide is silent space in which to work with lots of books - an increasingly rare thing in libraries at the moment.

The British Library employees nearly two thousand people split between London and Boston Spa. This is where most of the money goes!

They currently spend about £17million on acquisitions, a figure which surprised me somewhat but this is spent on online and foreign materials. Online materials will soon be included in their compulsory collection. Interestingly some of their cost relates to purchasing duplicates as they are not able to lend commercially (and profit from) copies given to them.

The Library is funded by DCMS but it works closely with BIS. The budget has been cut significantly. This lead to us discussing how we might spend the £100million budget. Having heard that this is the library of 4 pharmaceutical companies I was surprised that the cost is not significantly higher.

Our table may have gotten a little carried away as amongst our potential plans were the provision of high speed connectivity to the whole of England; abolishing the other deposit libraries to gain the budget; training everyone in information literacy and acting on a consultancy basis to facilitate and implement information management in companies.

I know a few people were unsure as to whether it is necessary to purchase foreign materials. I think it is to some degree. Many seminal texts are published in other countries but it would nevertheless be problematic if those were not available.

We enjoyed the evening and spent much of it involved in random conversation which is always enjoyable...

CPD 23 Things

2011-05-28T09:21:00.001+01:00

Hello Reader,

Sorry I've been so lax about talking to you lately - I have three posts which are sort of written and I hope to get those up here as soon as I can make them less rambly!

The purpose of this post is to remind everyone (I'm certain you already have heard!) about the CPD 23 Things project which kicks off soon. I'm not involved in it at all but it looks brilliant and I will be partipicating so please sign up too.

You can follow them @cpd23 and view the blog at http://cpd23.blogspot.com

I'll try to get at least one post up over the bank holiday weekend & the others before the New Professionals Information Day and New Professionals Conference. I don't know what stage of you career you're currently enjoying, reader, but if you left library school in the last five years (or haven't got there yet) then join me!

SLA Europe / Perfect Information Breakfast

2011-04-18T16:53:00.000+01:00

I have blogged on the SLA Europe blog about my experience of the SLA / PI Breakfast but I wanted to just quickly note a few thoughts about it:

I was particularly pleased that I attended this breakfast because it prompted me to think about how I portray myself online and what impression I might be giving people. I found it really reassuring that Sara’s idea of Twitter use was the same as mine although her strategy differed somewhat when blogging came into the conversation. For my part, I want to be seen as a well-rounded human individual. I pitch the tempo of my blog and tweets at the same level as drinks after a library related event or a chat with colleagues; I don’t talk about information of a really personal nature, I talk about librarianship, but not just about librarianship.

I will mention the fact that I have a boyfriend (six years and counting), mention my friends, chat about Rugby, MMA or Formula 1, the disappointment of being an Arsenal fan or my limited understanding of the theory underpinning KM. I share links about IM and similar disciplines but I don’t want to just do that. I feel that I would be missing out on all the interesting conversations which make you feel like librarianship is a family. I do understand if people want to keep areas of their life separate but for me, the fact that I am a librarian defines me, I love my work and I really enjoy speaking to other library types. My decision is perhaps made somewhat easier by the fact that I literally know no one who is not libraryish on Twitter and only one on LinkedIn but I don’t think that would change much.

I looked at my Facebook page before writing this blog post and although it is actually well-locked down and (I think) no one who is not a friend can see anything much, I would be perfectly happy for my boss or a potential employer to see my profile without limits. I have no opinions or pictures that I would not show to my boss. I’m not a teacher – I can be pictured holding a G&T – I have been for drinks with my colleagues so why not? And although I would hate for him to see pictures of me completely blotto lying in the gutter, there aren’t any. Because I don’t act like that. I think that, really, you only need to worry if you’re doing stuff that isn’t quite you, in which case, why do it?

P.S. Sara has blogged & posted the slides here.

CILIP in London / Career Development Group (London and South East Divisions) AGM

2011-04-07T19:37:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday 9th March I attended the CILIP in London & CDG L&SE Joint AGM. I am a committee member for both the branch and the group so it was quite interesting to see the contrasts!

I'm not going to write too much about the event which was the two AGMs & Annie Mauger speaking but instead sprinkle a few thoughts about. These were primarily due to a really interesting conversation over Twitter with people not at the event but following along.

Annie suggested a more collaborative approach citing the AGMs as a prime example and also went on to mention the work of CILIP in promoting libraries with people such as the WI. She alsoted that function and sector don't really matter because all librarians have the same core values. She also said that CILIP needs to do more than give you letters after your name - advocacy, thought leadership, networking, CPD and a sense of community are all important and as a member-driven organisation CILIP need to use our subs properly. I confess I felt a bit sarcy that evening and tweeted about how sacking the entire Membership Support Unit doesn't scream of caring about members but Annie did say that CILIP has a plan.

The rest of this post will be a few rough thoughts about what all this might mean and where I want CILIP in London (and to a lesser degree CDG) to go. I haven't spoken to either committee about any of this so none of it might happen!

I am really keen to see CILIP in London as a hub providing a forum for special interest groups active in London to come together and discuss ideas, collaborate on events and share expertise. We did do this to an extent with a day the committee arranged a while ago but we canvassed opinion on a second day and no one seemed terribly interested - I think this may have changed now with the current climate! I grabbed a few committee members at the end of the AGM & asked if we could try again and they seemed keen so I think that we should be able to do something!

We previously had a LIS in London google calendar which we maintained and I would love to see that being resurrected so that CILIP in London can become the place to find out about all library, information, knowledge, records etc. events in the area. It is quite time consuming but it would be great if we could do this. The addition of an RSS and/ore twitter feed would also be useful.

I think the brilliance of CILIP branches lies in our complete lack of ulterior motive. SIGs have to do something which relates to their objective so CDG arranges CPD-esque events, CSLIG arranges events relevant for corporate librarians but only at a branch event can it be pure networking or just an interesting topic which is one of the main reasons which I do think that groups should stay.

The CILIP in London events at the Sekforde Arms in the City exemplify what I was saying about just being topics of interest - they are always an interesting night out and are generally not relevant in any direct fashion to my work but great for networking and finding a bit out about a new idea. We've been a bit quiet lately but seem to be getting back on track (Next event is on 11th April). I think that the best way forward with these is to make a small charge (£5-10) and run 10 events a year with the other two months consisting of the AGM and one other non-Sekforde Arms meeting.

Our emails to our members could become round-ups or write ups of interesting things going on in and around London, not just CILIP in London stuff.

It would be great if we could have CILIP HQ open more often - one evening a month is not that useful (especially as we get kicked out so early) and ends up with many branch and group events clashing because they are all on the same night - this puts us in competition rather than promoting collaboration as CILIP wish.

I heard someone ask if chartering made them automatically a CDG member at this event (it doesn't) but that suggests to me that we need to define our role more carefully. I have been thinking about us possibly doing half day courses or something although I don't know if that is necessarily feasible.

As a final point, both committees are always open to new members so please join if you would like!

TFPL Connect

2011-04-05T19:16:00.000+01:00

On the 7th of March I attended a TFPL Connect event. Although I have been a member for quite a while, they always seemed to clash with something else so this was my first attendance. The topic was “Staying one step ahead – What does it take to remain relevant in the KIM game?”

First up was Sue Wescott who stressed that you have to be constantly good at your job. Organisations want three dimensional employees so make the right choices and recognise your skills – you must know what you’re good at because if you don’t know then you aren’t actually any good.

You need to understand the strategic goals of the organisation and how they’re changing. The IM strategy should be aligned to those goals and you should demonstrate value.

Next was Julia Hordle from TFPL who asked us to make the most of what we know and think about where we can add the most value as well as networking within the organisation to lobby for the work you wish to do. Julia particularly stressed the need to have evidence at your fingertips for every point you make although I would have liked a bit more information on how to go about that.

She went on to discuss the need to look at outcomes rather than processes and keep a log of all of the interesting things we get up to particularly looking at the legacy they leave. Look at what the partners in your firm are worrying about & see what you can do about it.

Finally, Julia reminded us to not worry too much about the possibility of failing. We need to pull together a narrative from our users and see what they need and how well we’re doing.

The final presentation was on a KIM survey TFPL had run. Amongst the interesting points made were that people assume we will all have core KIM skills and on top of this collaboration, facilitation, web design, communication and digital asset management skills are expected, and that most training is now done in house.

I had a good time at the TFPL event and managed to speak to some new people who were really interesting. I would also like to say how much I enjoyed having the option of diet coke at an event which is pretty rare (although nibbles in excess of two bowls of peanuts would also have been welcomed!)

Professionalism

2011-04-04T13:55:00.000+01:00

On the 23rd of March. I attended a CLSIG seminar on professionalism. It was a really interesting event although I was disappointed at how rushed the networking aspect of the evening ended up being.

Susie Kay was the speaker and asked us to write down the answers to a few questions by grading how important certain things were e.g. how important the opinion of other people is to you. She asked us to decide what we would do if we were running late because of some home emergency and had the choice of doing our hair and looking well-presented or calling in late and taking the time to tidy yourself up. I confess I immediately thought that I would dash to the nearest bit of transport & tidy up on the way or nip into the loos at work and sort myself out before getting to my desk but obviously that is missing the point – we had to think about what is more important to us – being reliable or being presentable!

She also pointed out that we are always being watched and that respect needs to be earned. You want to be and be seen to be trustworthy. She also mentioned the possibility of potential employers seeing pictures on Facebook that they wouldn’t like. This sparked some discussion later as I felt that although I treat Facebook as personal it wouldn’t actually be a problem if my boss had a look. There are some pictures of me out on the town enjoying myself but none of me in compromising or embarrassing positions. To be honest, any employer than disapproved of the occasional gin and tonic is clearly not somewhere that I would want to work. This is particularly the case as I really enjoy the occasional night out with my colleagues and if an employer didn’t allow that then I suggest team morale and bonding would be significantly inhibited.

Susie spoke about implementing a framework with excellence as the baseline and ensuring compliance which sounded a little strong but I can see where she was coming from.

She finished up with asking us to check if we were dehydrated by pulling our skin (I’m not) and asking what we would change if we had 30 days left to live? What our legacy would be? I confess that I really struggled with this – I have a great boyfriend, wonderful friends and a job I love so really I would just want to see more of everyone which isn’t really creating a legacy. Obviously I do have regrets in my life but all of the changes I would like to make involve time travel so even a time limit on life wouldn’t change that! I guess it is a good thing – I’m more or less happy so if I was going to die I would just like more of the same but it really didn’t answer Susie’s question.

I guess if I was to leave a legacy it would be most people who know me feeling glad that they did.

LIKE 23

2011-04-03T16:35:00.000+01:00

On Thursday night I attended LIKE 23 on mobile technology. As usual, I was on wine pouring patrol which I really enjoy as it gives me something to do and an excuse to chat to people.

There were a few first timers which is always good to see and also a lot of familiar faces – one of the things which makes LIKE feel so homely.

We had two speakers, up first was Mark Needham who started off by saying the conception of pocket computers was actually in a sci-fi book as opposed to a laboratory. He also mooted the idea that computers now will still be recognisable as computers in a century in much the same way as old cars are still clearly cars but also clearly archaic. He also noted that the provenance of smart phones is possibly as long as thirty years ago.

Mark told a story about a chum announcing his marriage by putting his address into the smart phone as “Mr and Mrs”…

Next up was Andrew who works at ARM who made some really interesting points about power no longer being terribly important, but saying that in fact battery life is the key. He also noted than single threaded performance is now at the limit of possibility but that the development was focused on multi-tasking.

He also (although somewhat more politely) said that if users do something stupid it is no longer seen as them being an idiot but a failure with the user interface.

We then moved on to a table discussion about the potential uses an MP might have for information in mobile format. This was obviously a pertinent issue given the recent ruling that they may use blackberries and ipads in the chamber however we felt that the kind of information that they would need (pithy statements on complex issues) is better suited to be dealt with by people rather than machines.

I was interested to note than a significant number of people had Android and Iphones rather than blackberries. Additionally there were a large number of non-smart phone users. This interested me as in my non-librarian life it is usually a pretty even split between blackberries and iphones with the odd smart Nokia thrown in for good measure. The only people I know with Android devices are librarians or people who I have met in that environment and very few people have non-smart phones.

As a final point, Ben Summers at one point in the discussion mentioned a keyboard which could be projected onto the table which is so cool!

Once again a good night was had by all!

SLA Europe - Outsourcing

2011-03-31T13:52:00.002+01:00

First, I would like to apologise for the lack of posts. March has been a manic month for me and I have about 10 events that I want to write about but haven’t dealt with yet.

Last night I attended the SLA Europe event on outsourcing. It was an amazingly well-attended evening and had a significant number of non-members. I spotted quite a lot of law librarians there – I guess it is topic on their minds at the moment!

I found the evening really interesting although I did find the general tone fairly worrying. A number of things jumped out at me and I am going to try to just jot a few of them down:

The problem of relationship building when you are not based in the same place (or company) as the users. This can be decreased by only outsourcing menial tasks or by limiting it to ‘pure information work’ where the only relationships you need to build are with other librarians who will potentially talk to the users.

The changes in outsourcing over the last decade. When once outsourcing meant ‘send it to India’ now it is more of an even split between on- and off-shore. This is better as there was previously insufficient skill and market knowledge with huge training needs. There are now higher level information professionals and consequently the requirements have become less prescriptive.

Changes in librarianship over the same period. There has been a move from asking for a particular task to be completed to a more comprehensive involvement asking the librarian to help solve business problems. A shift from keeping costs down to adding value. A notable change has been the shift in requests to include things such as project management and client-facing work.

Relationships with clients. The description of something like PLC as outsourcing and the idea that law firms are the recipients of outsourced work (because corporates could have in house legal teams rather than sending work to law firms was a rather new slant on things for me and one which I found intriguing. It was particularly so in light of discussion around the decrease in billable hours and increasing importance of the trust and relationship-building between firm and client.

The right level of person for the job. The concept of having a variety of information workers at different levels in different locations in order to service different needs came up. This is interesting because evidently one conception of outsourcing is sending all your work to India where no one knows who your company is or why the work is important. From that point of view it is good to hear that there will be people who are from the UK legal field and understand the work. I do, however, have reservations. Particularly if firms hive off their less complicated work but keep senior professionals in house then where will we find the next generation of professionals? Graduate trainee posts already seem less common and if it ends up that there are no junior roles, then where will people learn how to do legal research?

Being a professional. As a law librarian, you are dealing with professionals of high standing. As such they expect you to also be a professional. Difficult to accomplish this in an outsourced library.

The plus side of outsourcing You may be viewed with renewed respect from the firm. There can be improvements and additions made to the service provided. There are opportunities to be more strategic than before.

Recruitment Will anyone want to work for an outsourcing company? You don’t have the same level of prestige and although there is a commitment to CPD it doesn’t seem to be as strong as in some major firms.

LeadershipWe were told to speak to the managing partner and to ensure that we lead and focus on change rather than allowing things to be done to us. The library must make the case for its existence or it will be overlooked.

I found this event quite disturbing as I really worry whether people do actually stick their heads in the sand or not. I also found that a lot of questions weren’t answered – How do you have a Chinese wall? How many staff jump ship? Is life as an outsourcee depressing? However, the drinks afterwards were good fun and I left quite late!

LIKE 22 - What is Knowledge Management?

2011-03-01T15:36:00.000Z

On Thursday I attended LIKE 22 which was four LIKE members doing a very quick speech on what they felt knowledge management was.

First up was Matt who set out the key principles for KM:

1. All users must be able to add and edit content intuitively.
2. Collective responsibility for the information added.
3. Information should be shared wherever possible.
4. Information must be current and active.
5. Information should be easily retrieved.

Linda was next up and she mentioned how difficult it is to ‘sell’ KM to consultants particularly if it isn’t pushed by senior staff. Her solution is to embed it into current practices.

She mentioned an “Ask the expert” system where the staff could submit questions and her team would pass them on to the right person. Someone expressed some consternation about acting as an intermediary but I think that is really just to ensure that someone answers! Her team have also implemented a taxonomy for users to help organise content.

Next up was James. I found this presentation the most interesting but also the most challenging. I realised how ignorant I am of any kind of KM theory. Admittedly this is partially due to the fact that I don’t work in the area but it certainly seems like an interesting subject!

James compared the two ways of approaching KM – process driven and people driven with the former being ordered, compliance driven and structured and the latter being unordered with loose networks and a more collaborative approach. He also said that there was a place for both of these things.

The final speaker was Katharine who discussed how she was initially sceptical about KM and thought it was just what librarians were already doing. This interested me as this is pretty much how I feel. She is now, however, an advocate of KM. She suggested that if information management is making sure that information is put somewhere logical, KM is doing the same with people’s brains!

She also said that theoretically a structured approach was best but that in practice informal unstructured KM works better.

I found this a really enjoyable evening in which I learnt more about an area with which I don’t really deal. I am really interested in some ideas that people mentioned about, for example, allowing people to categorise their thoughts without them knowing that is what they are doing.

The major theme which seemed to crop up constantly was “barriers”. People being too busy to participate or pretending to be too busy, the technology not being good enough, etc.

On a more personal note, I found out that I have at least one reader of this blog and someone who I really respect. So, yay!

Gurteen Knowledge Café with Richard McDermott

2011-02-21T13:50:00.001Z

On Tuesday night I attended my first Gurteen Knowledge Café. I have been meaning to attend one of these for absolutely ages but they kept clashing with other things.

This Café had Richard McDermott as a speaker and he was trying to turn the idea of KM on its head – less how do we get people to do KM and more what information or data do people need to be able to participate in Knowledge Management by means of thinking about what they actually *do* with the data.

He started by dispelling some myths the first of which was self-service.

The basic gist of that is that you should have librarians looking after your information so you can get to it quickly and efficiently and you can get on with the rest of your work. Seems completely obvious to me…but I guess not to everyone!

Myth two was that you can't learn by listening and reading. I actually disagree here. I learn that way. If you add some writing then that is the entirety of how I learn. Richard illustrated this by talking about how young people multi-task and flit about and learn differently. Frankly, I don’t believe it. I used to flit about when doing homework too but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t done faster and better when I was actually concentrating. (And I am young!)

The difference between distractions you need to deal with (e.g. a ringing phone or an email) and those which require no action (e.g. the babble of noise in a coffee shop) was mentioned and I think that this is very pertinent. It is really quite hard to do concentrated work when people you know are speaking and you can hear words but if it is general chatter or music it is much easier.

The third myth was the differentiation between tacit and explicit knowledge. I didn’t really have too much to say about this point except that the difference is sometimes overstated.

We then split up into our table groups and discussed his proposal which was “What would it be like to think about thinking not information in the field of KM?”

The idea was to look at how people think – process information – and use that to help in the way that we provide the information.

The nature of expertise was touched upon and the idea that they subconsciously are looking for the possible choices rather than running through their entire body of knowledge.

I’m really not sure how we got round to this thought process but we ended up discussing how knowledge should be very broadly classified so people can draw the themes which they find useful out. This put me in mind of grounded theory research where the art is in coding data until it establishes some meaning. That said, I still think (as a good librarian should) that you should classify to the most detailed level that is still sensible.

We also discussed learning habits and the need to mull over ideas and let the brain churn a bit – letting ideas bump into eachother and spark new thoughts. This made me think of the way that once you learn a new word you see and hear it everywhere although presumably no one is using it more often!

The fact that everything we see, hear and learn is coloured by our previous experience was also noted. I don’t know that this is necessarily a problem because surely you learn something from any reaction? Someone said something during the time we fed back to the group and I thought that it was ridiculous. Now that is an interesting thing – and I still think he was wrong, having considered the issue. I believe that a gut reaction is a good thing and that we should not always try to be objective. Although in my, rather judgemental, case perhaps I should – at least a little more!

All in all it was a very interesting evening (although I found it quite hard work having to explain to lots of people why a property consultancy might need a librarian!) and I wish I’d been able to pop into The Last for a drink or two.

Library Day in the Life

2011-01-24T17:32:00.000Z

I am off work for the rest of the week so this will be my only contribution to the Library Day in the Life project. I hope it is interesting and please feel free to ask questions:

Managed to check up on last night’s Twitter action and read my RSS feeds on the way to the gym. Not a great start to today as the gym have moved my locker to a more inconvenient place and seem to have lost all but one of my towels in the process. This meant that I had only one towel and couldn’t put one round my hair which was irritating.

Got into work about 8.45 (I actually start at 9.30) had a lovely summer fruits cereal bar for breakfast as well as six vitamin tablets – calcium/bone vitamins, echinacea, vitamin C and a multi-vitamin: I’m just paranoid about being fluey!- and got to work trying to cut down some of the 200 emails I had received and adding the relevant tasks on to my (already quite long) to do list.

Replied to a query from a member of the CILIP in London committee (which I belong to) about how LIKE (London Information and Knowledge Exchange) where I am a host organises events.

Quickly popped on to LinkedIn and LISNPN (the network for new professionals). I am New Professionals Support Officer for London and the South East so I try to get on LISNPN most days to see if there are any queries I can help with. I also added a couple of new blogs to my Google reader (I’ve just started using it and I’m not that impressed but trying to stick with it!) and pulled out the urls of a few linguistics blogs I think a colleague might be interested in.

The first job of day (and one which is ongoing) is to try to ensure that all of our intranet pages are up to date and any which are not sufficiently important have been deleted. The whole team is working on this but I’m aware that I haven’t given it too much time as yet thus having a quick blitz before I find something more urgent/important/fun to do.

A supplier of ours is due to visit the Glasgow office but hasn’t heard back from the contact there so I give him a call to chase up on what is currently planned. I then turned my attention to our sign up sheet. I have put a page up on the intranet where one ticks the boxes of the current awareness emails that can be received to be added to the mailing list. I needed to add someone’s details in manually.

The next thing I did was to go along to our team meeting. This is just a very quick catch up between the Research and Information teams to say what we all have planned for the week ahead.

After that I finalised a training session I had arranged with an external trainer coming in to speak to the attendees.

The next item on my list was to quickly browse the new books list from Wildy’s to see if there were any items I would like to purchase. I also skimmed through our daily DeHavilland round-up to see if there were any stories which it would be worth sending on to any of the sector groups.

The two projects I am currently working on are a business case for a GIS (geographic information system) and a guide on how to use some resources to which we have recently gained access. I spent from about 11.45 until 1pm finishing off the GIS report. I then quickly downloaded a few Treasury documents and nipped off to lunch.

I was meant to be having lunch with a friend but unfortunately she is ill so I instead spent lunch time at my desk with salad, vegetable pasta, grapes and diet coke from our staff canteen downstairs reading through Twitter and the last Legal Information Management (with the addition of tow copies of Update – just the long articles at the end which I never seem to get round to!). I also quickly noted down the important events and appointments I have planned in my personal diary and my desk calendar.

Lunch was over far too soon but armed with a coffee brought over by one of the Researchers (we do rounds) I got stuck in to a little bit of cataloguing. We use an in house classification scheme which was a bit complicated at first but now comes as second nature. I had a few books and some legislation to put onto the system but I didn’t get through the whole pile as I had to discuss with a member of the team who deals with subscriptions why we are missing an issue of the Journal of Planning and Environment Law. He is now on the case with our subscription agents. I really enjoy cataloguing as I find it very therapeutic but I hardly ever get to do it.

The next thing to do was to discuss the progress of some changes to the user interface of a product to which we subscribe with our account manager. Work is progressing well and the interface should be changed by the beginning of February.

Next on the list was to call a surveyor in the Manchester office about a Land Registry search we arranged for him last week. He just wanted clarification about the situation of unregistered land.

Next I dealt with an enquiry asking for a planning case. It was a bit of a tricky one as the case citation didn’t seem to exist at first but a bit of digging found the correct case. I then found an article for another planner.

The next portion of my day was spent fiddling about with spreadsheets. I then moved on to compiling a list of resources to show to our senior new starts that might be helpful to them.

Finally, I started to draft a search tips hand out – just basic Boolean operators. At 5.30pm I set my out of office, changed my voicemail and set off…

Today probably wasn’t a typical day – there were far fewer enquiries than usual and a lot more instances of me finishing tasks than is generally the case but I hope that it was at least interesting!

Ipad - Yay or Nay?

2011-01-21T10:54:00.000Z

These are my preliminary thoughts on the ipad:

My first and not terribly interesting thought is - its OK.
Not a mind boggling announcement, I know, but not bad coming from me!

As a quick bit of back story. I won the ipad. It got sent to me through the post & I was quite surprised. It seems that I won a competition although I don't remember entering one!

I have had it for a couple of weeks and in some ways I'm quite pleased with it although I find it irritating in others.

My default reaction when faced with anything made by Apple is to start muttering stuff like "Overpriced" and "Style over substance" and "I'm not a graphic designer"

Needless to say I have always (since the first Mac I used at about 8) found Apple products to be irritatng to use. More recently I have been shocked at the amount of people cooing over the looks of Macs desktop or laptop and being willing to pay significantly over the odds not because it is the best product for their needs but because it was pretty. I also have anger towards Apple because it as a company gives off this smug holier than thou vibe which niggles more than a little i.e. why can they not use capital letters? I'm also pretty suspicious of anything touch screen.

All of this negativity taken into account, it is probably a miracle that I don't loathe the ipad but I don't.

I have some irritation with the way it changes orientation with no real movement involved. I get quite angry typing on it because it doesn't seem to like when I use my nails instead of the pads of my fingers which means I end up with a word like 'laughing' being 'lahn'. I dislike having to rely on wifi (although I realise there are 3G versions, but the WiFi is the version which is the version I was sent). The lack of flash has cropped up a few times and is a niggle. If I am being honest though, it angers me more that they think them not supporting flash will kill it off than the lack of video! This is a flaw though - an instant on, big screen with not much to slow it down to me screams out for being a video watching device.

That all said, I am quite happy with the instant nature of using the ipad and the battery life is good although still nowhere near that of my netbook. I still think it is a completely pointless bit of kit which I would never have paid for but now that I have it, I can fit it into my life. Evernote, Read it Later and Dropbox are applications that I have found useful (especially Read it Later syncing with Firefox - extremely impressive) and the Safari browser does not irritate me as it did at the start - although I miss the functionality I have with Firefox. Thanks go to Ben Summers for telling me how to use the stupid thing - I found it really hard to figure out at first!

I've also been reading pdfs and free books on it which is nice - my local library has got Lord of the Rings as an e-book which'll save me lugging around my (very thick) paper copy. It is a bit too heavy to hold in one hand the way I do with most books and I keep worrying about smashing it on the commute but it has come in handy.

Another annoyance is that you cannot (it seems) delete some content from the ipad directly - you need to use Itunes. Which is a slow irritating awful system.

Verdict: I would not spend £420 on this, I would buy a Sony Reader and a new netbook for the same price! It seems really overpriced for what you get, in my opinion, and I have several hundred things that I could spend it on instead but it is a whizzy bit of kit and not close to being as awful as I would have assumed!

P.S. I had already written the above when I ended up discussing Apple with some librarians who informed me that MacBooks & Iphones etc can't be opened up (i.e. you can't take the battery out). Apple are officially insane!

CILIP in London Evening Meeting

2011-01-04T23:00:00.000Z

*Apologies for the delay in writing this - life intruded somewhat!*

On Wednesday 8th December, CILIP in London hosted an evening event for Biddy Fisher to speak to us about the Defining our Professional Future project.

I have to declare an interest here. I am a member of the CILIP in London committee and arranged this event. That said, I think it went pretty well. We made a concerted effort to ensure that people who wanted to tweet were made welcome and publicised a hashtag in advance. There was a pretty solid debate on twitter so I hope that worked...

The first thing that I have to mention is just how shocked I am at the amount of money that CILIP has to save. I do not know how they will do it…it seems like an impossible proportion to lop off an organisation.

Biddy told us that the choice was between survival and atrophy. She also said that we need to take ownership of our profession. I don’t disagree with this but equally I don’t wish to go down the “You get out what you put in” route as even if we don’t make the effort there are some things which must be done by CILIP!

The survey results were discussed. I had already read through the details but I agreed with Biddy that the skill set we will have in the future should be far less generic than the one suggested by the survey. I mean, marketing - really!

Funnily enough she said that New Professionals don’t have a sense of doom…as a New Professional (and particularly after listening to her speak) I have a fairly strong sense of impending doom!

Biddy suggested creating strategic partnerships with other professional bodies and relevant groups which raised a few questions regarding the BCS and a rumoured merger which I had not heard of but am pleased to know is unfounded. I’m definitely not techy enough to be a BCS member!

There was also wine and food and chitter chatter with other attendees which is always good! A more useful summary for those not present can be found on Laura Woods’ blog!

If you have any feedback at all on the event (excepting the room temperature which I’m afraid we can’t control!) then please feel free to contact any of the committee. Any further suggestions for events would also be gratefully received.

Online Information 2010

2011-01-04T12:36:00.000Z

I spent a long day on Wednesday 1st December at Online. I can’t believe how long it has taken me to write this up but life interrupted me a bit!

I started the day by getting up at a disgusting time of the morning and trekking through the frozen wilderness to reach the SLA Europe breakfast which was nice. It was good to have a few (honestly about 10) cups of hot coffee whilst catching up with some familiar faces. There were a few people I didn’t manage to chat to but I did catch up with most later so it wasn’t a huge worry!
A number of US SLA people were at the breakfast which I was surprised to see.

After the breakfast, we went on a little wander around the exhibits… it was smaller than last year but I still managed to keep busy by visiting all of our suppliers, the professional bodies and a few other stands in which I was interested. I picked up some good freebies, which is one of the most important reasons to go to Online (obviously)!

I then grabbed some (not very nice and extremely overpriced) lunch and headed into a Proquest seminar. It was interesting but definitely not what I was expecting. I probably should have guessed the topic from the fact that it was Proquest but I was expecting a session on measuring the value of libraries and I got one on the changes in how people use journal databases. Although it wasn’t actually what I planned to see, it was an interesting session.

Mary Sauer Games (from Proquest) started off by saying why understanding usage is so important. The main point was that if we don’t understand how a database s being used, in the current climate of budget cuts and more with less we could cut back on the wrong things.

This was clearly aimed at a more academic librarian than myself but I was interested to hear the increasing trend for searching using fewer terms and then filtering rather than repeating searches in a more focused manner.

She also made some interesting points about being more qualitative than quantitative in measurement – say whether a database would be recommended to another student rather than number of downloads.

The major point which struck me which perhaps is obvious to university librarians but was a new thought to me, was the huge differentiation between undergraduate and postgraduate study. I have always clumped undergraduates and taught postgraduates together and then all research-related students together.

It could be the degree I studied which made this less of a distinction (Law as an undergraduate and then Librarianship as a postgraduate) but I found (with the obvious exception of the dissertation which I didn’t do for my first degree) that I spent a considerable time reading research articles, practitioner works and books for both as well as case law for Law, and that there was not a big jump in the amount of reading from peer-reviewed sources between the two.

I then went into a session titled The Art of LinkedIn which was literally standing room only. I have never stepped foot into a seminar session so packed at Online.

Some of what Rob Wilmot said seemed fairly obvious to me (e.g. act in a professional way) but some I wasn’t too sure about. An example of this would be the extremely strong emphasis he put on changing the standard invitation to connect. I am a bit torn about this because although I see his point that it seems like creating a collection if you don’t change it but his changed version I found cringeworthy and anyone who has ever changed it and sent it to me with maybe one exception has made me wince. So what do you say?!

I then bumped into a former colleague which was a nice surprise and we went along to the SLA and CILIP sessions in the coldest room on the planet! Both Anne Caputo and Annie Mauger spoke well and on interesting topics.

Anne went through a number of key points including globalisation and disintermediation. The point about a ‘self-service generation’ where users think they know how to search for themselves is a particularly valid one and of increasing importance to all library and information people. The fact that you don’t know what you don’t know rang true. Being an SLA talk, of course the alignment project was mentioned.

Annie spoke really well, particularly with Biddy Fisher (who was due to co-present) being at home ill. She discussed the Defining our Professional Future project and went through some of the findings.

I then went to the drinks at the CSLIG stand & then instead of going home with my heavy bag of journals, brochures and freebies, I went to dinner instead!

I am now thinking about joining the AIIP…any thoughts? I am also considering ALA & ALIA so may need to keep the lid on joining stuff!

Management Styles

2010-12-29T18:16:00.000Z

I found these two articles about micro-managing and 'macro-managing' which I found extremely interesting.

I have been wondering where I fall on this scale. In my job, I don't manage anyone (we are a very small team) but there is an amount of delegation between the team, and pushing work out to various areas of the firm. I also have in the waitressing roles I took whilst at school and university acted in a supervisory capacity although in many ways it is harder to be a supervisor than a manager because you can't make a final decision on so many things.

I think I would be OK at delegating to people but I can understand where Jenica is coming from as I feel that I might stuggle to not interfere if I thought a job was interesting or I could do it better.

I also have sympathy with Bohyun because I would find it extremely irritating to have someone constantly checking up on me and fussing about whether I've done things and I would hope that I wouldn't do that to other people. I had never really thought about some people wanting to be managed quite closely before as every job description I've ever seen has asked for people who work independently.

Definitely a very interesting pair of articles which have brought new ideas into my mind!

Does Multitasking work?

2010-12-16T11:54:00.000Z

I read two articles recently, both focusing on how to get things done (see bottom of post). I find this really interesting as both of them suggest ignoring email - which is unlikely to happen as a librarian on the receiving end of enquiries - and generally concentrating.

One tip which I did enjoy (because I already do it) is the creation of to do lists...I think it really is vital to know what you need to do, in one place.

I also found this "The moment at which you don’t think you can afford to take a break is the point at which you probably need one." interesting (from the Strange Librarian). I think we have all been at that point where you don't have enough time in the day and skip lunch to get through the work and end up heading spinning at 3.30pm hardly able to think... I guess there will always be days when you can't take an hour off but maybe it is worth taking 10 or 15minutes and grabbing a sandwich in the fresh air or in a cafe away from your desk in order to be a useful person later!

Jack Vinson suggests really concentrating on one thing at a time in order to get them done quickly. This is almost certainly true and has the added benefit of not being nearly so overwhelming as trying to reply to an email, make a phone call, order a report and run a search all at once (as I found myself doing recently). I am going to try as much as possible to get things done and get them done quickly in the correct order. Let's see how long I manage it for!!!

http://strangelibrarian.org/2010/10/10-tips-for-finding-your-groove-and-getting-sht-done/

http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2010/09/29/lets_try_some_monotasking_instead.html

Handwriting

2010-12-08T13:26:00.001Z

I was reading this article about the value of handwriting and I thought I could definitely have a little rant on how irritating it is that no one writes anymore.

Now, I am not a luddite (well maybe I am a very little bit of one...) but I think it is really sad that handwriting is one of those skills which is being lost, particularly nice handwriting. I look at how my grandfather used to write compared to people of my generation (myself included) and his handwriting was absolutely beautiful whereas ours is scruffy at best. Many of the people I know of around my age, it isn't just scruffiness to worry about but genuine illegibility which is even more worrying.

I think really good handwriting is an important thing to have because it gives you a good impression of a person. I admit to being a judgemental person from time to time but I definitely feel that an organised desk and tidy writing are the sign of a tidy mind and a person of which I would approve.

More importantly though, I genuinely feel that writing aids comprehension. Throughout school and since I have heard people complaining of teachers who just wrote notes on the board to copy down. I am told that this doesn't engage the brain and that people don't learn this way. Well I disagree, one of my favourite teachers at school was a Physics teacher (Mr Vincent) who wrote notes, we compied them down, we answered questons and we learnt. Now I am not a sciency person (although I didn't do too badly) but this method really helped me to synthesise the knowledge. It worries me that children may end up solely copy and pasting their notes in future as I am certain that will make it harder for them to learn.

I know that progress is necessary but I do think that handwriting should be an integral part of the primary curriculum taking up a significant amount of time because if you can't read and write to a good standard then you can't do anything much!

LIKE 20 - Lesley Robinson

2010-11-30T15:09:00.000Z

Last Thursday night I went to the LIKE Christmas Party! It was a slight departure from the norm as instead of a sit down dinner, there was a buffet.

Our speaker was Lesley Robinson who spoke about the value of networking describing it as 'insurance' - you store up the value until it is needed!

She specifically cautioned against coming to an event, slinking into a corner, fiddling with your phone, then slipping away again!

She asked us why we were there and what we disliked about networking. I was there because it is good fun and you get a meal out of it! I presume that I should have a networking objective, but I don't, if I'm honest.
The thing that popped into my head about networking is that moment where conversation fails. It is horrible when you just run out of chat... not sure what to do about it though!

Lesley reminded us that networking is reciprocal and you genuinely do need to give in order to get. She also said to sit/stand straight, be open, smile and not find something to do. (A thing that I am slowly trying to train myself into - I have a habit of playing with my phone if no one is speaking to me!)

We had to do various exercises around matching up with and introducing yourself to people. This was more difficult than you would expect as I know the majority of people at LIKE by now so it is a bit odd to introduce yourself to be people who if you hadn't met via a work-related event would probably be slinking their way into the 'friends' category! Trying to avoid people that you know is also tricky!

That said it was a good evening with the usual interesting chat that LIKE events generally entail and a few hints and tips were picked up!

Marketing libraries outside the echo chamber

2010-11-29T09:33:00.000Z

Last week I went to an SLA Europe event featuring Ned Potter and Laura Woods talking about breaking out of the echo chamber and Bethan Ruddock and Johanna Anderson speaking about their work on Voices for the Library.

The plan was to have the Echo Chamber and then an example of people getting out of it but Ned was driving down and after *eleven hours* in the car with a tiny baby still hadn't arrived when we started so the two teams swapped round.

I had been vaguely aware of Voices for the Library - I follow them on Twitter and occasionally read the blog but I had no idea of the extent of the work they were doing.

They have done an amazing job of getting themselves out there with no time or money to spare and are being quoted in the press quite a lot.

They are also outreaching in other interesting areas such as going to the WI and science fiction conventions, and leafleting shops and GP surgeries.

They're trying to remain independent which, of course, has challenges but it seems to me that they're doing a remarkably good job. It makes me feel a little ashamed about how little I do to support my fellow professionals (although I did have a little rant about library closures and the need to voice disapproval to a non-library colleague the following day!)

Next up was Laura (solo) shortly joined by Ned. I think Laura really coped amazingly well with a section of the presentation which was not meant to be hers (to the extent that when Ned came in, I couldn't work out why he was just standing there - turns out she had done his section and was onto her own without me being able to tell the difference!)

The basic concept of the echo chamber in this context is that you have lots of librarians talking to other librarians about how great librarians are and the great work librarians do and everyone agreeing but no one who is not a librarian hearing any of it.

One phrase that stuck out from what Laura was saying is that things won't change overnight but that it is a long-term "hearts and minds" strategy, chipping away at the ignorance or indifference that you often find about librarians.

They went through some examples of the echo chamber in practise such as the vehement response to the Newsnight library stats debacle and the (frankly daft) KPMG report both of which were seen by many people almost none of whom would have seen the response.

They then showed some sucessful 'escapes' - such as an article in the Huffington Post and Phil Bradley getting on the radio. The moral of the story is be where your users (or potential users, or detractors) are. Do the stuff they want and align your language with theirs!

Finally a thought from Ned: you cannot abstain from library advocacy. Either you are giving out a good impression of yourself, your work and your profession or a poor one. Bear it in mind!

A really enjoyable night (followed by a shockingly long chat at the pub round the corner - thanks to all involved!

Perfect Information Breakfast Forum

2010-11-22T12:25:00.000Z

I went to the PI breakfast a little while ago (I have been too busy to do much in the way of thinking or writing!)

I found it really good - a really interesting way of sharing ideas and knowledge. I met some nice people and was able to get some new ideas for training.

The PI girls were as sweet as ever and plied me with coffee so I was kept very happy! I hope they do the same again soon.

Managing your career & widening your horizons

2010-11-17T14:53:00.000Z

Last night I went to a seminar arranged by CLSIG and hosted by Hammonds (lovely food!)

I found it a really interesting session which discussed how to fill the gap between the skills you have and those you may need (obviously CPD!!!), thinking about how you work and what makes you tick and what makes you stand out.

I now *really" want to do some testing to find out how I work in a team, what my style is under pressure etc.

Both Sues (Edgar and Wescott) were really engaging speakers and I found it a really good evening.

I then moved on to wine, cheese and delicious sandwiches. One of the topics which came up was social media & how I am slightly sceptical still. I just feel that going on about what I enjoyed and what I took from an evening is sllightly self-indulgent...but maybe I'll turn that into a post soon!

Anyway it was a good night and lovely to see some familiar faces!

And finally, I love this quote from Sue Edgar: "If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur"

City Legal Information Group - Researching Without Borders

2010-11-09T13:41:00.000Z

Last night I went to the CLIG seminar on international company information.

This is a topic which was of real interest to me as although I know my way round UK company information, I often wonder if I'm missing something when it comes to international companies.

Barry Vickery from 7side was speaking and it was a really useful presentation.

He discussed the various different regimes of filing in European countries and went through tax havens and the US.

The US portion was particularly interesting for me because it is not a large part of my work.

Afterwards, the wine began to flow. It was really nice to meet a few people and catch up with some others although I certainly stayed later than I intended!

A very enjoyable evening.

Phonetics - Are you big?

2010-11-06T16:20:00.000Z

I read this article which I found incredibly interesting.

It says that the sound of the words you say can actually achange the value placed on them.

The exmple they use ifs that people thought a higher price was better value than a lower one but this evidently could have other applications too.

Maybe i need to change my name - it doesn't sound like Tina would be thought of as high value on this scale!

LIKE 19 - Open Source

2010-10-30T09:13:00.000+01:00

I attended the latest LIKE event on Thursday night. It was a talk about switching from a proprietary to an open source Library Management System (LMS).

This isn't a topic which I had ever really thought about. I am broadly pro-open source (e.g. I am a Firefox girl ) but I also know my limitations and unless it is an extremely well-supported and established system (like say Firefox) then I am not going to be able to use it and when it goes wrong as every does at some point I'll have no hope of making it work again!

Listening to the people from the King's Fund speaking about this helped me as I had not realised you could pay for specific support (externally). That said, in response to a question about the integration between Windows and the LMS, they pretty much said that you should be on an open source operating system too as it is a bit inconsistent to be half and half on this and that sometimes you can't like up that well with proprietary systems. That definitely disappointed me because working in a corporate environment, I can imagine how well me insisting on getting rid of Windows would be!

It was, nevertheless, an interesting talk and I have now started to think about how we could make more use of our LMS which I think is somewhat less well-used than it perhaps should be.

All in all a really good night including an extremely amusing speaker.

On a more personal note, this is the first time that I have consistenly tweeted during an event rather than a "I'm off to LIKE" one before and a "that was a good LIKE event" one afterwards.

There are two reasons for this - one I was sitting facing away from the speaker so it would have been quite hard to make notes with pen and paper as I usually do, and two, this was the first event where a hashtag had been agreed and publicised in advance so I thought should make use of it. Generally at events where I'm tweeting my write paper notes too, and I definitely prefer having something tangible like that to take away.

I was also interested in the interaction between people on twitter during the event. I have done this before but it has never really meant people replying to me (from the event and outside the event) and me spotting other pertinent or interesting tweets about it and passing them on. I think I quite like it but I'm not sure I'll be quite so tweet-happy in future. I think, as well, that having other people writing more incisive tweets made me raise my game a bit - so I started off saying how good the speaker was when eveyone else was picking up on actual points he had made.

This was the second LIKE event where I was a 'host' - I was joint wine monitor and I think it wnet pretty well overall. It was nice to be able to have a chat to people as they came in by pouring their first glass and the top-ups went well too.

I'm quite pleased with how the new venue is working out - it is still cosy although obviously accommodating mroe people (that is the point, after all of us moving!) and I enjoy that there is a solid mix of people I like and have spoken to at numerous other LIKE events and people who are new or infrequent attendees who I either don't know or haven't spoken to before.

I admit not being so happy with the new menu - due to my fussiness, I have to tweak every single thing on it in order to actually eat which is irritating for the kitchen and the organisers (and me) but they sent up my cheese and bacon-less burger with no fuss and I was pleased. Everyone else I spoke to is raving about the quality of the choice in the menu so I really can't complain!

All in all, pretty fun evening despite me battling with a cold (which has been nearly two weeks now and does not seem to be improving!) and thus dashing off relatively early...

New Professionals Information Day 2010

2010-10-06T15:24:00.001+01:00

On Friday I went to the New Professionals Open Day at CILIP HQ (I'm not missing out the ' by accident -it doesn't appear anywhere in CILIP or CDG materials - not sure why) and then on to the LISNPN meet up kindly arranged by Laura Woods.

I had a really good time and unlike many attendees I had been to another of these back when they were still branded as graduate open days.

Overall thoughts:

-Great speakers, really enjoyed the vast majority of people I listened to.
-A slightly wider set of people than before - it was previously mostly people thinking about getting into Librarianship, graduate trainees and the odd LIS student. This time it seemed that there were more students and more newly (first 5 years) qualified people as well as the trainees and potential librarians.
-I would have very much liked name badges even if they were just sticky labels and a delegate list - it breaks the ice and allows you to remind yourself of names (I'm horrific with names so a major concern for me!)

The day was arranged so that we saw two sessions in the morning then the keynotes from Phil Bradley and Maxine Miller followed by two sessions in the afternoon. The morning and afternoon were repeats but there were three 'streams' so you could see at most 4 of 6 and some did clash (i.e. I really wanted to see Irfan Master on "The no-holds barred profession: do what you love; love what you do" but it clashed with Katie Fraser's talk).

My first session was Lex Rigby - "The Ronseal Effect: online personal marketing for career growth"

This was a really interesting session, when I was speaking to Lex afterwards offering my congratulations hse said she was a bit worried about talking to people like me (who are blogging and on twitter etc.) because she might end up preaching to the converted but I completely didn't feel that way.

I really liked this session because Lex stressed the fact that social networking is not compulsory. I feel like more and more you get the message shoved down your throat that if you aren't on every network alive then you are a bad librarian so it was nice not to be guilt-tripped.

That said, she clearly set out the reasons to engage with this sort of thing:

∙Employers will search for you online - it should be you they find (and the 'good' you)
∙It is easier to enthuse about libraries with the online community than the people in the office, especially if they aren't very engaged
∙Creating a mutually beneficial network helps you to do your job better
∙It also offers opportunities such as writing and speaking at events
∙Keeps you in touch with the profession

She also said that at first she did think "what is the point?" and that cheered me up because I look at everyone on twitter and blogs and wonder how they find the time to do anything and whether it is worth me trying...a really inspiring presentation and one which really made me think.

Next I attended Ned Potter's "Techno-geek?: What you have to know about technology as a library and information professional"

I have to admit that this session depressed me very slightly. When Ned said that he learned to build his website from the MA he took, I felt very stupid indeed. I took that module and although I can now do some basic HTML and CSS, Ned's website is really whizzy and almost certainly not something I could manage.

That said, it was a really interesting session - I really like the idea of getting the job descriptions for all of the roles you want to move into and working towards them even if they are some way off. I was also really struck by the idea of the library profession as being a climbing wall where you can't really just plough straight up like a ladder but you'll have to go sideways and up or maybe even diagonally.

He mentioned a few things thst I had never heard of like Perl when discussing the kind of technology needed in various roles. It was quite a good insight into the background of an academic library and would be of use if trying to move into that sector.

I came away from this session thinking about how my technical skills could be improved and where I should concentrate...something to think about.

He also said that a good blog should be a piece of two way communication not a soliloquy. I guess I have some more work to do there too...

The next session was Phil Bradley's "Around the world twice on a library degree"

I have slightly mixed feelings about this presentation. I was both inspired and interested but also quite annoyed in places. I found it really interesting that Phil suggested librarians were powerful because everyone needs us and the idea of being self-employed without knowing it but equally he got my back up slightly by showing a slide with eleven social sites which we "must" be on.

I hadn't even heard of some of these and now having looked into them I still don't know why I should be on them. Why should I be on Youtube or Flikr? I have no videos or photos which are library-related. Why do people care where I am? Who wants to read my delicious bookmarks?

I also was a little grumpy about saying that books aren't important. Now I completely understand that the point he was trying to make was valid but we do need to remember that what most people remember and know about libraries is the books so we shouldn't alienate them too much!

I found this an good presentation and I took a lot away from it because I was made to really think about whether I am gaining more experience or just the same experience over and over. I also became aware of some tools I hadn't seen before and got the joy of two slides of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which pretty much made my day!

After lunch I went to Katie Fraser's "Feel the fear and do it anyway: working with people at all levels"

I liked this session - it was good to hear about the CILIP Conversation from a different angle. I liked the narrative of this - always good to hear other people talking about how they got here and I found the idea that we do need to be brave about things and just go for it quite inspiring.

I was flagging slightly by this point so my notes are not as full as from other sessions but I really came away thinking that everyone in the library world is nice and having extremely good 'vibes' about the world!

My last session of the day was Sibylla Parkhill's "The good, the bad and the ugly: managing the expectations of a variety of stakeholders" which I went along to not really knowing what to expect but thinking it might be something to do with a council as the main time in my life that I heard the word "stakeholder" was when I was at school working with the Children's Fund committee.

It turned out to be a really intriguing session on the perils an pleasures of life as a prison librarian. There is so much about this sector that I don't know and I was really enthralled e.g. prisoners are allowed to read true crime books and Martina Cole novels; many prison librarians can't access emails.

The thingas I will take away from this session are to remember that as a solo librarian (or part of a small team) you are the library, to feel grateful that I have access to internet and emails at work, and to engage as much as possible professionally.

There was then a short Q and A session and we went to the pub! The meet up went quite well although I will freely admit that I was pretty tired by the end of it.

It was lovely to meet so many fresh faces and catch up with people I already know both at the day and in the pub. I hope I manage to stay in touch with everyone because so many of the people I chatted to were really nice and seemed interesting.

Final thought (Because this is a stupidly long post): be professionally engaged, be inspired by your network and try to maintain and increae it, don't be discouraged - put the effort in and a mutually beneficial relationship will come!

[I will go scout out links to everything at some point]

LIKE 18

2010-10-04T14:33:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday I went to LIKE 18 at the new venue - The Crown Tavern in Clerkenwell.

It was a really nice evening with lots of new faces to meet but some people I recognised too. The theme was on the changing nature of the Information Professional with the speaking coming from Luisa Jefford of TFPL.

We looked at the shared skills that information / library / knowledge workers have and how easy it is to change who a job is aimed at by using the language of that area with the same core skills underpinning it.

Amongst the skills that we thought to be amongst the most useful were communication skills, specialist knowledge, influencing and negotiation skills, ICT and organisation of information.

All in all, a good time was had and the halloumi salad was scrummy!

SLA - Maximising your personal impact

2010-09-30T14:30:00.001+01:00

Tuesday night saw me going to Perfect Information’s offices for an SLA event. Suzanne Wheatley (of Sue Hill fame) enforced participation in a number of interesting activities including staring into each others eyes for a minute (I noticed that my partner had very pretty greenish eyes, she noticed I wore mascara!), reading books aloud (We got the Gruffalo), and voice and breathing exercises.

It was a really interesting evening and it was great to have an event of this sort that dealt with the full gamut of speaking from one-on-one to small groups to large presentations. I found it useful as well as fun. The food and drink (thanks PI!) were good and having a good chat over them was fun too.

I am now the envy of my office thanks to the Perfect Information goody bag and am feeling virtuous due to attending five CPD activities in five days…although I did spend nearly 48 hours trying to remember that a word I struggle to say is ‘inanimate’”

Points to take away –

∙ enunciate

∙ speak with rhythm

∙ project your voice

∙ be confident

∙ be interested and knowledgeable in your topic

Suzanne was extremely fun to listen to and I will be signing up to anything else she does in a flash (although that could be because she kept saying I was her new favourite person!)hehe!

My Library Roots / Route

2010-09-25T18:31:00.001+01:00

This is in response to the Library Routes wiki I have already posted something very similar to this on the now defunct New Professionals Blog but thought I should have it on my own too...

I really very much fell into the idea of Librarianship from nowhere (like many other people) but once I had thought of it, it seemed so obvious I could not (and still can’t) work out why I didn’t think of it much much earlier.

I studied French and German for ‘A’ level, I also got stuck with Law (rather than politics and the four other subjects I had as preferences!) The plan was to apply to study French and German with perhaps one more language at university. Then on a whim, after having a really interesting lesson in Law, and atrocious language lessons, I decided to apply for law degrees instead.

There was then no going back, so I studied Law, enjoying the theory but being very sure that it was not the career for me. In the second year of my law degree, we had to go to the careers service and do one of those online quizzes to see what jobs would suit me. The top three which came up were interpreter, translator and librarian.

As I had no intention of going back to university for four more years after the end of the degree, I decided to look into option three: libraries. I went onto the CILIP website and looked at the graduate training opportunities page. I took the contact details for everyone in London and Cambridge and started emailing looking for work experience. I had found that I would need a year of work and a masters if I wanted to do the job, so I thought I should make very sure it wasn’t awful before I made up my mind.

Of the people I contacted, a number responded – many apologising but giving links or advice, some offering tours of their service or chats, and three offering work experience. I took everyone up on their offers, so I met a lot of people, spent a day shadowing staff, looked around a lot and most importantly arranged the actual work experience.

I spent two weeks at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, two weeks at Drivers Jonas and two weeks at the Institute for Historical Research during the summer between my second and third year.

All three of the stints of work experience were really interesting, everybody was lovely to me and kept apologising for giving me boring menial work. But I really enjoyed myself. That really was what made my mind up for me, if I enjoyed doing the bad parts of the job, I obviously would enjoy the job if I had an even spread of good and bad.

I went back to university researching libraries and beginning to sort out applications for graduate traineeships. In November, the Information Unit Manager at Drivers Jonas called, and told me that one of the part-time members of staff (two days per week) was leaving and asked if I would be interested in filling the role. I was waitressing at the time, working about 14 or 15 hours a week so to do the same hours for more pay and gaining experience for my career seemed an absolutely obvious decision.

I started work almost straight away but continued to apply for graduate posts, as I could not get my experience on two days per week. The first interviews I got from this (and actually my first ever interviews), were for ICS, IHR and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies all on the same day, back-to-back. I was an absolute mess by the end of that day and unsurprisingly didn’t get the jobs. But then DJ offered to increase my hours to full-time. I admit that I wasn’t sure about whether I should go for a traditional graduate trainee post or stay where I was. I was worried about whether a non-traditional route would harm my chances of getting into Library School, and also of becoming stuck in a rut; I thought it would be better to work in a few different sectors before I qualified.

I looked at all of the jobs I had applied for, or could apply for and compared them with the work I was doing. I realised that I was by then doing work at a professional level and that in many of the graduate trainee roles (although by no means all) I would be doing less interesting, less challenging work. I decided that this, coupled with how nice everyone at DJ was, meant I should stay put.

I started working full-time in July 2008 and started applying for MAs. I subsequently decided that I should limit my search to courses which meant I could remain in post. I then compared all of the courses, and the distance learning course at Northumbria stood out as the obvious favourite given the content of the course.

I was not keen at all on the idea of the Hypermedia for Information Professionals module (I am not a web developer!!!) but all of the other modules were better than comparable modules elsewhere and nowhere else had option modules I particularly wanted to do. I got in to the MA and it turns out that I really didn't mind Hypermedia after all!

I have now been with the firm for almost three years altogether and still really enjoy my job. I get a chance to do a bit of everything from cataloguing to enquiries to organising training sessions to writing reports and trialling software. It is a really interesting job and the fact that I really like all of the people I work with and the level of autonomy I get in my work means I would struggle to leave!

Can English people speak English?

2010-09-13T21:15:00.000+01:00

I just found this article and I am shocked that "a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences"

The piece notes that this might disprove Chomsky's theory that grammar is innate which is of course interesting but I think the more important point is that the adults studied at least to the age of 16 and cannot understand "The soldier was hit by the sailor"

This is extremely scary - you have to assume that most of these people have an English GCSE but even if they don't surely most people have that basc grasp of grammar by the time they start secondary school. If they don't then (remembering this is solely concerning native speakers of English) what on earth are the schools teaching people?!

Answers on a postcard!

LISNPN

2010-09-08T22:58:00.001+01:00

This is a guest post on the IFLA NPSIG blog

http://npsig.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/library-and-information-services-new-professionals-network-lisnpn/

Library School

2010-09-07T11:38:00.000+01:00

Everyone (Girl in the Moon; the Wikiman; Libreaction; Agnostic, Maybe; Niamh Page) seems to have been discussing the pros and cons of the current system of library MAs.

I thought I would throw my hat into the ring on this one.

I don't think the current system really works properly. I think that there is a real contradiction between the various aims of the MA; prospective librarians and their employers want people to be introduced to the basic skills and ideas of librarianship and get practical proven experience in these things.

Universities, in order to offer a masters course, want to do theoretical work which is academically rigorous. This seems to cause some problems.

In my MA, I feel that they were trying to merge these objectives and it ended up slightly strange...so you would be constantly referring everything back to your workplace and using it as a case study but instead of just referring to theory where it applued, it seemed to be pushed into abnormal prominence.

An example I can give is the creation of a short resource guide for my firm - they said set it out in a way which would make sense to the users but then it had to be properly referenced which if I was doing it for real. Stuff like that popped up everywhere.

I definitely don't advocate a BA instead because it is just dragging a year of work out over three including unnecessary modules like IT systems (as far as I can tell, not having done it!) but I think a return to the sort of courses being offered fifty years ago where it was proof of professional skills. I think it would be difficult to change now but maybe something could be done...

I definitely have different views to a lot of people with regard to the MA - I cannot imagine anything worse than being forced into a marketing or teaching module but I wouldn't mind having them offered as an option so long as I could do Cat & Class or business or something...

We'll see if anything changes over the next few years with regard to the content and manner of teaching within MA courses!

LIKE Picnic

2010-08-27T08:49:00.000+01:00

I went to the London Information & Knowledge Exchange picnic last night. Given the torrential rain this was an indoor picnic but the food was lovely!

I didn't have the indepth conversations that I usually end up having at LIKE events but I'm sure that's because I dashed off home early (about 8pm). No real excuse to leaving but I had a headache, felt a bit grotty and was just sick of wearing wet clothes!

We did play a game of 'bingo' where you had to find a person for each topic on your 'card' e.g. has not seen Avatar, doesn't have a TV etc. This was pretty good fun and I ended up finding out the names of the two or three new people.

I am also encouraged to hear that we have a new venue for LIKE events so there won't be the mad scramble to get your name up on the list! LIKE events are always good and I look forward to the one planned for the end of September. I hope the weather is nicer then!

Hello

2010-08-06T10:37:00.002+01:00

Hi!

I have decided to start blogging. I'm fairly short on time at the moment so I think it will be an infrequently updated blog for the next year or so...

I will, I hope, be able to engage a bit more once my MA is over and I start to think about chartering.

Let's hope it goes well.