Wednesday 16 November 2011

23 and out!


My 6-word story of the CPD experience: 'I came, I thought, I blogged'. I've generally enjoyed working through the programme, I've not given as many glib answers as I'd expected and think I got a fair amount of value out of the experience. I'm not sure it really represents an advance in my immersion within the LIS community (though I am trying to improve at this: come meet me at the Ginformation Professional event!), and I don't think my opinions of any of the topics/areas covered have fundamentally changed. I've reflected at reasonable length on the course recently, so won't repeat myself here.

I've updated my PPDP to reflect some of the weaknesses uncovered by CPD23, and feel I'm working forwards at a decent pace towards filling identified gaps in my experiences. As this was an update, rather than a new document, I can't accurately reflect on the process of compiling the document; I'll admit that evaluation of personal strengths and weaknesses does not come easily to me, but I got it done (which I sometimes don't!). 

And so, just over 15,000 words later, that's CPD23 done! Time to start thinking of my own blog topics!

Career advancement: identifying strengths, applying, interviewing and vulunteering


Part 1: strengths and interests

As suggested by Maria, I have found conducting a SWOT analysis of my strengths and interests to be quite helpful. I did this in preparation for writing out my Chartership PPDP a few months ago, but I think it's still pretty much up-to-date. Generally, it suggests that I like the customer-facing side of library work more than the information-structuring elements, and that I am strong at supporting use of our services both at the desk and 'in the field'. I also, perversely, enjoy statistics and working with spreadsheets to measure service performance. I think I throw myself into all elements of my job, and seem to be seen as a font of knowledge by colleagues (particularly with the technical side of things - in the kingdom of the blind, the man who once spent half an hour on a mac is king...), but definitely favour working on desks and with customers over back-office pursuits; this is unfortunate in some ways, as progression generally means managerial responsibility, and consequently less time (if any) directly customer-facing.

What was my last dose of great satisfaction working in the library? Without doubt an Information Skills session I assisted a professional colleague with. We supported a cohort of Education students who were researching material for their dissertations; it was an unpressurised, constructive academic environment which yielded useful results for the participants, and it felt like my presence made a tangible difference. I'd like that feeling more often. Unfortunately, this was a one-off engagement, and sessions like this do not form part of my standard work.

I'm not sure I love my current job - I definitely like it very much, and think I probably did love it at one point, but... let's just say I'm ready for a change. So I have been applying for jobs...

Part 2: Applying for jobs

I keep a log of skills and experiences for various reasons, but it's definitely helpful when working on job applications. I confess that I don't tend to start from a 'blank page' in terms of applying for jobs - I have a reasonably-expansive pro forma personal statement which I then expand and contract to meet the desired areas in the job specification. I'm not sure this leads to the best possible application, but you can make applying for jobs a full-time occupation in itself if shortcuts like this are not taken...

I always try to address every desirable, as well as essential, criteria given in a job spec; where I don't meet the desired level I try to demonstrate how I am working towards this point and how I would plan to develop this area if appointed. I'm less good at thoroughly reading the job description and ensuring that my description of my current work echoes the language and thematic content of the brief; whilst I try to address the major areas in my personal statement, it makes more sense to cover these in relation to my current employment where possible. I have applied for jobs where I don't meet every essential criteria (and have occasionally got an interview!); the areas where I regularly don't meet job briefs informed to a great extent my goals for Chartership PPDP, which has definitely already aided me in filling some of my previous gaps in experience. Despite recognising it as being necessary, I still feel uncomfortable 'bigging myself up' - I think I present my skills and aptitudes in a measured way, with examples where relevant, but I have definitely read more confident applications. I should probably try to write a more arrogant account of what I can, and do, do - maybe I'll try it out on a job I'm unsure about first though!

My references are relatively current: I generally use my line manager (a given, as most applications stipulate this) and my former dissertation tutor, also using my MCLIP mentor if a third referee is asked for (generally only if the job uses an academic-post application form rather than a support-staff one). I should perhaps switch this up; although my tutor has always given me great references, she hasn't seen me for over a year and perhaps doesn't realise just how great I have become!! My major problems with making this change are that my two references would have the same [work] address, and that using one's mentor seems a little like nepotism. I'd like to know any readers' opinion on this matter (joking! I know no-one reads this rubbish!!! :( )

I've never really found where to use a CV, as every job I apply for asks for its own exhaustive application form to be filled in - what's the CV adding to this? My CV is 2 sides of A4, and I think it's okay, but it's pretty dense with information. I think I could maybe cut back on my employment history (which is patchy due to the whole 20-years-of-full-time-education thing, and quasi-relevant at best) and add in a bit more about transferable skills, abilities and aptitudes - but who's got the time?

Part 3 - Interviews

Silence: the reason I go
to pot in interviews...
This is where it all goes wrong for me. Whilst I try to prepare, getting my ducks in a row by organising travel and logistics well in advance, reading job specs again and trying to formulate answers to likely questions, on the day I feel like I babble incoherently. The problem is the silence in room and the expectant faces of the panel - I desperately want to keep talking until they look satisfied, which generally results in me tailing off with something along the lines of "so, um... yeah". Who'd hire that?! I think the 'context, actions, result' framework which Maria mentions provides a useful framework, and would prevent me from doing this so much (it's impossible to stop me waffling entirely!).

No matter how much preparation you do, you can never accurately predict what an interview will consist of. I've found that stressing over this, and over-analysing what may come up, is counter-productive. I now try to check into a nearby hotel the night before an interview (a Travelodge, not the Hilton, but still not a particularly cheap practice): this not only cuts down on travel stress on the day, but also means I'm away from other people who want to know how I'm feeling, if I've prepared etc. - I can shut out the world, do the preparation I feel I need to do and then relax. I think this has yielded broadly better results, but if check-out leads to an awkward gap before the interview it can lead to nervous stewing. Nonetheless, this works pretty well for me.


Part 4 - Volunteering

I'm adding Thing 22 on as an adjunct here as it does not form a full blog post in it's own right. I've not undertaken voluntary work within a library to advance my career; however, I did volunteer in a charity bookshop for about a year, which gave me breadth of experience transferable to library work which I suspect was instrumental in securing me my current role (or at least in getting me an interview). I accept Jo's argument that she was better to refuse full-time library assistant work and get experience elsewhere; however, I took the other route and don't really regret it. I've found that having boots on the ground means you can bully your way into things which are outside your job description and above your pay grade; if I'd stayed in my part-time position I don't think I'd have had half the opportunities I've had at work in the past year.

I've not considered volunteering time to CILIP committees/groups; look through previous posts for reasons why, as I feel that negativity towards one's professional body is not the best thing to continually reiterate! I recognise all the points about widened professional networks and gaining different experience and transferable skills, but at the end of the day I prefer to get paid - I'd rather be a whore than a slag. And on that unfortunate metaphor, I'm done.


Tuesday 8 November 2011

Routes, roots and routing 'dead man's shoes'


My journey into librarianship seems, to me, pretty unremarkable; I've previously blogged about it under the title 'A Happy Accident', which should give some clue towards the level of pre-determination which was evident in my first steps on this career path. I'll link this previous post to the Library Routes wiki [done!!] which pretty much covers this Thing; hooray!

Rooting around like a library-related piggy
I took part in round 7 of the 'library day in the life', which I think is really useful as it gives a snapshot of what librarians across the world are doing on a particular day, which leads to a stronger 'warts and all' sense of the job than edited highlights about the profession as a career path. My entry is here and is worth reading only if you have spontaneously lost every sense except sight and can no longer do anything except click on dull hyperlinks (unfortunately, it fell in the middle of summer and there was very little going on...).

These prior posts cover my path so far and my current situation respectively; but what of the future? I've made no particular secret of my seeking a professional post, but this is tough going - there's not that many jobs out there (though there have been more of late) and there's a new cohort of qualified applicants just out of library school, all full of vigour and bleeding-edge library-world knowledge. I've have a few interviews, with varying results - I've got a feeling this will form the greater part of the next Thing, however, so let's save up some self-loathing for then!

My shortest cpd23 post ever? Possibly, but that November 30th deadline is closer than I think!

Monday 31 October 2011

Reflecting on Reflection on Reflecting on Reflection on Role

(Yes, I hate me too - these blog titles are getting steadily worse)


I'm on the fence about whether to go for breadth or depth when considering this Thing (to reflect back on how CPD23 has integrated into working practice). Essentially, I'm going to re-read each post and make a few notes, then probably just post that!

Professional Networks

I suggested in Thing 1 that I might struggle on keeping up and consistently blogging to a schedule. I haven't done too badly at this; if I hadn't had a month off in August, I would have been pretty much of schedule... I also identified a few aims:
To be better (never was good at setting SMART targets)! To engage to show professional development; to be part of (and contribute towards) something larger; to refresh my ability to write long spiels of random thoughts and make it seem like there was some underlying plan (I'm award-winning in that last area, believe it or not...). One further personal aim: to write a few more straightforward sentences, without using colons and hyphens for awkward pauses or ending a thought on ellipses - that one may take some work...
I've made steps in the contribution and participation areas (though perhaps more through Chartership concerns than CPD), and have developed my writing muscles thorough blogging and, latterly, producing reports and articles for an internal newsletter; my sentence construction, however, is an unwieldy as ever, with whole paragraphs frequently structures as a single sentence with 6-8 sub-clauses, asides and parenthetical comments. You know what, though? F**k it, I like writing like this; it's my style and I'm keeping it! [Professional DL would like to highlight to potential employers that he is entirely malleable to institutional needs]

I have done less well at keeping up with the neighbours. I have read lots of CPD23 articles, but I've not consistently followed anyone's progress through the course (actually, of those I discussed in this Thing only 3 are continuing, and have similarly fallen behind). In some ways I think that's better though: I'm getting a larger variety of viewpoints by dipping in and out of the all-participant RSS feed, which also develops my network of vaguely-recognised infopros at IRL events! At the recent Library Camp I made a quick-and-dirty nameplate which utilised by Dogeared branding, but no-one particularly engaged with this, suggesting that my online branding has been less effective than I hoped; however, I was hardly a social-butterfly on that day (more a grumpy, slightly-misanthropic moth with tinnitus) so perhaps that had something to do with it! Staying with professional events, I still can't shake the feeling that CILIP is a body which lives in a distant castle and takes a tithe of my income in return for some ephemeral promise of protection, in a modern-day echo of the feudal system (this could also be portrayed using a mobster allegory; take your choice). There have been a few events which they have offered, either in 'that London' or locally, which might have been worthwhile, but the costs involved with them, and the lack of guarantee they'd be worthwhile, has meant I've stuck to events like Library Camp, outside the umbrella of CILIP and thus that bit freer.

In terms of social networks, I go through sporadic phases of tweeting still, but mostly I just lurk these days - I can't say hand on heart I feel part of the community. I keep meaning to get back to using LinkedIn more, as the groups have proven pretty good and provide interesting discussions on topics which interest me, but it's always just that bit too far down my list of priorities for me to properly engage. And whilst I had high hopes for Google+ being the ideal platform, combining the desirable features of the other networks, it's potential hasn't followed through as far as I'm concerned - I don't know of anyone who uses it as their primary online network, and it just doesn't seem to get to where I want it to be. In terms of professional networks, I'm still not engaged with LISNPN in any meaningful way (though I do occasionally click through to blogs as I follow their RSS), and haven't really felt the poorer for it; it feels like, as a profession, we do a lot of communicating but don't really achieve either consensus or tangible outcomes.

Finally, I pondered at the time of Thing 4 whether it was worth maintaining RSS feeds from US librarians - I still have these, but can't remember the last time I actually clicked through and read an article; maybe it's time to ditch and switch to more local bloggers (even if this will lead to duplicated coverage of events).

Personal Development

I haven't really focused on improving my reflective practice skills; it's still in the back of my mind, and I can think in this way a little longer than I could before I go sulky and give up, but its never going to come naturally to me. I've got better at reflecting on events, though never quickly enough to make blogging about them worthwhile; I missed the bus on Library Camp for example - though I wrote this up as a report for work, which fulfilled a reflective function... maybe I'm doing better at this than I thought!

I'm grinding along with Chartership activities, slowing gaining experience to tick boxes on my PPDP goals (which are still not in final-draft state, but are pretty close...). It's been a busy last month, but I've gained quite a lot of useful experience inside and outside of work, particularly as I supported a few timetabled information-skills sessions in the last fortnight. I've got another mentor meeting tentatively scheduled for the next few weeks (a date has yet to be locked down; possibly something to correct!) and feel positive about this relationship, as I did before.

Applications and tools

Pushnote and Evernote fulfil much the same function in my book; I've sporadically used Evernote to make notes since Thing x, but it hasn't really integrated my process in terms of professional practice. Pushnote, as I think was the case for pretty much everyone, just didn't do enough or add functionality I really wanted; I recently uninstalled the shortcut from Chrome and do not miss it. I identified in my initial post that Evernote's functionality was limited by constraints on what IS would allow at work; this is slightly circumvented now as Chrome is on pretty much every PC I use day-to-day and there are less restrictions in plug-ins etc (how Chrome got to be installed, against their wishes, we won't dwell on!). My main problem with Evernote is that it allows to to 'clip' and make notes but is sufficiently unobtrusive that I then forget about everything I've captured and go about my business without actually reading this content - this problem is more with me than the software, but as we've established, I externalise my faults!

Google Calendar is really useful for me; I now have four calendars, which allow me to track job applications, professional events, day-to-day engagements and the dog's pills and treatments(!) individually or together. This makes it easy to quickly find details about an event I went to in May or work out why I've booked off a long weekend in mid-November (Skyrim's coming out!). Again, I'd like to emphasise the additional functionality which the Labs plug-ins allow for (though I wish more of Google's API offerings would link up and make a cohesive whole; things in G-world do sometimes feel like a never-ending beta). I'm also not totally convinced about the new style of layouts which pull Google products together, particularly in Blogger and Docs.

I've softened up on my attitude to reference-management software somewhat, but still don't use it myself; a colleague showed me what's probably the best way to handle Refworks, which was to introduce to whilst recognising that it would work for some people and not for others - no hard sell, just a 'this is it, this is what it does, use it or not - your choice'.

Conclusion

So, that covers the majority of the content of Things 1-14; it seems a little pointless to go beyond this point, as I'm unlikely to have changed my viewpoint much in the forthnight since I wrote Thing 15 onwards! I think CPD23 tasks have made a sizeable impact in the areas discussed above, and will continue to resonate in my practice; for example, I've found Jing to be quite useful when dealing with 'live chat' queries on our virtual reference desk, showing rather than explaining. This blog entry took far too long to write, and would probably edit down somewhat if I wasn't keen to get home; I finished work an hour ago, but have a CPD/wait-for-traffic-to-die-down hour most days; another development during this summer of personal growth! On the plus side, this probably can be cut-and-pasted for Thing 23!

Monday 24 October 2011

Sound and vision


This Thing covers screen-capture and podcasting; I've chosen to focus on their use as instructional tools for use by information professionals as this would be the purpose I would primarily use them as.

I quite like screen-capture as a method of instruction, and sometimes use it in lieu of slides when discussing processes and theories. I have used Jing (without the sound components it allows for) in a recent presentation, which went okay (aside from the .swf file format resulting in the PC I was using questioning whether I believed the file to be safe upon opening it), and quite liked it. The 'sun' interface was effective and relatively unobtrusive (though I chose to remove it from my start-up programs as I won't use it that often), and though I didn't feel the need to utilise the cloud storage system which comes bundled in with the Jing account I can see that it represents a useful feature. Jing is currently being used to create screen-caps at work, and my colleagues have have reactions ranging from the positive to 'meh' (when compared to functionality from paid-for rivals), so I imagine it is likely to be something I continue using in the future.

Podcasts, then. We currently have (well-promoted) podcast tours of our libraries which have had very poor take-up (and which were comically out of date when they were checked before the beginning of the academic year), which seems to suggest that this medium is not immediately desirable for users. I'm unconvinced that walk-throughs of databases etc. are well-served by the medium either; you may as well include video too and provide a fuller explanatory resource. Whilst they remain an interesting potential tool, I'm unsure exactly what niche they fill in terms of information skills development and library usage.

I'm quite keen on listening to podcasts (though the audio quality of some non-radio ones is frankly pretty shocking; 'Squeecast', a geek-oriented 'round-table' discussion, sounded like a badly-recorded phone conversation the last time I tried it - I lasted less then 5 minutes). I feel quite strongly that the smaller the number of concurrent voices included (with an ideal of 2-4) the better; this avoids confusion as to who is speaking, but also allows the podcast as a whole to 'gel' and seem less like an argument with participants forced to talk over each other to get their opinions heard. As may be suggested by this preference, I tend to opt for unscripted, 'as-live' podcasts over strongly-planned, point-by-point recitations of scripts - if you're going to do that, for my mind, you may as well just write it down and be done with it. From this, I would suggest that lecture-style content is more suited to delivery via podcast (and iTunes U) than seminars or larger symposia discussions.

Friday 21 October 2011

Slides and swings



My stance prior to Thing 17

This may sound heretical, but I don't much like Prezi. I accept that its non-linear, scaleable and animated nature allows for more flexible usage, but I've never actually seen it implemented in a situation which called for non-linear, scaleable presentation, rendering it more like a Powerpoint presentation with the added disadvantage of giving viewers a nauseous headache. Slideshare is something I have a little more time for, but still tend not to engage with. It allows for more comfortable embedding in a web page and can provide a quick and attractive way to deploy snippets of information on a topic; however, they can be a bit dull and difficult to read if more than a bullet-point's worth of data is included on each slide, which limits their usefulness for larger topics. 

So; I don't like large flexible canvases and I don't like smaller, focused slides. Not easy to please! I think that I have slide fatigue. I don't get on well with visual and written data being presented together, and prefer to make my own connections and construct my own mental models from written data when given the choice, so will always take a somewhat hostile approach to this type of presentation tool. Nonetheless, I should have a go, so with this in mind I've decided to make a Prezi about some of my Library Camp experiences.


After trying Prezi

Prezi is... fun. I really enjoyed making my presentation, and think that it looks so much better than a Powerpoint with the same data ever would. I'm not evangelically converted or anything; it seemed to take about 3 times as long to complete as it would've in Powerpoint (although admittedly I was learning as I went along, and would probably be able to pull things together more quickly next time around), it didn't quite do everything I wanted it to do, and a few times I struggled to lock onto text I wanted to change, particularly when it had been rotated. Those are pretty minor gripes though, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone based on this experience. Indeed, several people asked what I was doing as I made the presentation, and now plan to have a play with it themselves. So yeah, two legs good, four legs bad...

Monday 17 October 2011

The 3 A's: Advocacy, Activism, Articles


Advocacy
I like to think that I do my bit for library advocacy, correcting people when they inevitably go to the twinsetted, hair-in-a-bun, shushing archetype, gently explaining the additional services that a modern library offers (especially when it is staffed with dedicated, well-trained professionals who are confident that they will still have a job next week). I had a stand-up argument with a local councillor at a wedding recently; she was adamant that staffing local libraries with switched-on volunteers instead of 'lazy, bare-minimum' paid staff would, far from being detrimental, help the local community's access to information. I restrained myself from head butting the mother-in-law of the bride, but still regret that we had had this conversation toward the end of the evening, when the demon drink (gin ftw!) had curtailed by debating skillz. Sadly, I am never wholly eloquent in defending public libraries, even when sober; I feel something of a fraud when I do it, because [shock horror] I'm not actually a user of them. The simple fact is that I can get all the resources I require from the library I work in, as well as all the tertiary benefits which public libraries also offer. Others are not so fortunate, but I don't feel comfortable speaking for them. Ultimately, the facilities we are currently in danger of losing (or have already lost) may never be replaced - the time for action is now, but I feel inert.

Activism
It's not for me (I'm too reserved to proactively prosthelytise), but good on those who do it. I'm not sure how much of an effect standing around outside libraries with placards or staging a sit-in does, but it does grab some media attention and thus give the cause a little in the way of publicity oxygen. Johanna's article raises excellent points about the merits of advocating, the tangible difference it can make for people and that it does not have to adversely affect your 'day job', but ultimately I simply do not have the energy needed to effectively advocate for public libraries, particularly given my lapsed use of them.

I suppose that attending events outside of the profession and pitching for ways in which the library can contribute is a (weak) form of activism; in this vein, I recently attending a symposium on Student Writing in Transition, focused on school/FE to HE transitions, the academic skills which are required at HE level and the transitional support offered to incoming students. This was mainly attended by academics and learning development-focused support staff (though there were a few other librarians there, and induction falls within the remit of a Libraries and Learning Resources team here at NTU); hardly an escape from the echo chamber, but I did manage to talk to a few people about our front-line experiences with the level of student academic skills and transferable information literacies, and how library services can further support development in these areas.

Articles
This does not concern articles per se, but it does reflect professional writing so may merit inclusion here. A chance encounter with this blog by a third party led to my line manager's boss becoming aware of its existence and browsing its contents (looking for reasons to fire me, no doubt!). She noticed that I was soon to attend Library Camp and asked me to take some notes on what I learnt and engaged with on the day to inform an exercise which she was completing looking at what other information services were doing. I duly produced précis reports of the sessions I attended and broad-strokes comments about the themes and foci of the day (which will eventually become blog posts themselves, but there's a certain amount of re-editing to do there!), which were presented during the horizon-scanning reporting session and generally well-received. In short, what began as futile screaming into the void has yielded a tangible benefit and increased my professional visibility in the workplace. Was this a positive thing? We'll have to wait and see...

Friday 14 October 2011

All-day eventing


So... seminars, conferences and library events. These were something of a foreign concept to me until around this time last year, but the need to professional develop (and, latterly, fulfil Chartership objectives) has led me to clock up a fair few miles travelling the country to meet the gin-soaked, cat-hair-coated, knitting-obsessed, uniformly-lovely people which form our profession.

Lets begin by talking about networking. I've address this topic previously here, but as it forms a key part of attending events, it's worth briefly revisiting. To reprise my previously-stated position:
I've never been at my most comfortable in a room of strangers (who is?), and find it very difficult to 'cold' start a conversation. I'll confess, it is getting easier, partially through practice and partly because I have been to enough events that I'm starting to meet people for the second time, which can provide an 'in' to join a conversation and get to know more people. Face-to-face networking has also added considerably to my online networks, allowing me to add interesting attendees and speakers to Twitter for instance; in turn, I can now meet known tweeters in person and have several potential conversation starters [...]. I feel more comfortable networking with perceived peers, of a similar age or professional level to myself [...]. Overall, though, I definitely feel more comfortable 'working a room' than I did this time last year.
I decided to make it a Chartership objective to get out and about, to improve my confidence in group situations and form connections with other professionals (and, by extension, to widen my professional knowledge by learning about their experiences). Over the next year or so, I'm shooting to attend events on a wide range of topics and to get to different types of event than straight-up conferences. I'm hoping to get to events across a wider geographical spread,  although London events remain unlikely at this point due to travelling restrictions, the general expense of getting there and the arse-ache of getting up at 4am for a 10am start!


Where I've been for CPD over the last 12 months!
Speaking of money issues, I am limited in some ways in which events I can attend due to my current [non-professional] position, which does not really include access to a professional development budget. I can generally get paid professional-development leave for events with some relevance to my role (which I appreciate if any line managers are reading this!), though I've also used about 10 days of annual leave for various events and visits over the past 12 months. I've used the money which came with my MSc departmental prize to finance a few CPD events (such as the New Professionals Conference in June); however, this has all now been spent. Special Interest Group funding is something I'd like to explore in the next few months, but I guess the other option for getting to events for minimal cost is to be a speaker... I do want to present, but... I've got pretty wide but shallow professional interests and knowledge; furthermore, I feel a bit of an imposter when claiming to speak with authority. Does everyone feel like that (at least at first)? I guess so.

I tend to fall into the trap of taking quite a lot of notes at events, as well as trying to keep all my paperwork organised on the day. This somewhat removes me from the immediacy of what is being presented and going on around me, and impacts on the efficacy of my networking. I think I've got better at this, but still have a tendency to revert to passive 'student mode' when faced with someone pointing at a Powerpoint...



Lets close out by considering organising. When I started writing this post (nearly 6 weeks ago, when the task was new!) I would've said that this wasn't likely on the immediate horizon. However, following a discussion about the Chartership support groups which run in the West Midlands [under the auspices of their CDG branch] at an MCLIP workshop, it seemed a good idea to take the initiative and try to set one up for the East Midlands. @neko_nees and I discussed this yesterday, and agreed a November meetup might be best, so keep an eye on the usual LIS email lists! I also went along to the libcamp12 discussion session during Saturday's Library Camp, but don't feel I can realistically give the amount of time which large events require  (something that Jo McCausland was keen to stress) whilst working full-time.
(via)

Thursday 13 October 2011

Failing at blogging

Has it really been a month since I posted a blog? It's been a busy month, but not that bad... Somehow I've got out of the habit of doing CPD23 blogs (I recognise that non-CPD23 blogs have always been a rarity), and now have I vague feeling of dread when I think 'I've got five minutes, I should work on a post'.

I have started a new (non-library) blog (here, since you asked!) which has got me partially back into the habit of making notes for potential posts. I've also got 4-5 CPD23 posts drafted out, and (a lot) of notes from Library Camp to filter into coherent posts. The fundamental problem is that I don't have the internet at home, save via my phone, and so have fallen behind on reading other blogs and my news feed; everything I come to which seems new and exciting is getting on for old news. But... this is the turning point: I've got a lot of half-written posts, several events to blog about and need to pick up my blogging game to meet with my MCLIP targets - that's as close to motivated as I get!

Can I finish CPD23 by the end of the month? That's certainly my intention, although it may mean that some of the reflective elements come across as a little pat ('but when don't they?', pipes up the critical little voice in my head - I hate some of the people who hang out on my brain verandah; why can't they all be like Newt Gingrich? (This needs more explaining than I can be bothered to do right now. I assume I'm only talking to myself at this point anyway...)). Of course, based on my previous record, this will probably be my last post for weeks!

Wednesday 14 September 2011

CPD23 catch-up time!

Catch-up week is with us again, and boy do I need it! I'm 5 Things behind at this point [and that's considering the rant below as an acceptable response to Thing 14], and don't really have the spare time I'd like to devote to properly considering each topic (Chartership documents, writing a presentation, writing up an event before it drops out of recent memory, a workshop, getting ready for the oncoming storm as Freshers Week approaches, gym-going, sleeping and eating - choose your own excuse!). The length of posts is therefore likely to drop somewhat, but I do want to get caught up this week - I don't imagine having any more time at any point in the near future!

Friday 26 August 2011

Line of Cite

I meant what
I meant what I said, and I said what I
meant; RefWorks is shitty, 100%
"It was time consuming and error prone – who would chose that?" So asks Isla Kuhn in this week's brief, referring to manually referencing an assignment. However, from my own experiences with reference-management software, I feel it also applies to several of the products out there, RefWorks and Endnote in particular. After several different people told me that it saved time, handily collated sources and allowed for greater precision of referencing, I took the plunge and used RefWorks when working on the research skills/dissertation proposal assignment for my MSc last year. Everything went in (pretty much) okay, and storing PDF versions of articles alongside the reference was admittedly pretty useful for multi-PC essay-writing. But Write'n'Cite (at that point at least) rendered the essay-in-progress a mess of quasi-HTML tags which made quickly finding a section difficult, and RefGrabIt (or whatever it was called at the time) often didn't pull all the required information from web pages, meaning everything had to be double-checked.

However, for me the worst part of the experience was when I had finished the assignment and tried to export the bibliography. It. Was. Junk. My department used an admittedly-awkward version of Harvard referencing, so I knew I'd have to tweak a few things, but random elements (fine in the RefWorks record) were absent from citations, author attributions were muddled and the style of the output made the bibliography looks more like a random collection of cut'n'paste web links than an academic record of reading. In the end I had to export the bibliography as plain-text, clean off residual formatting through Notepad and manually re-write pretty much every reference. Time-saving my arse.

So, obviously I'm going into the exploration of reference-collation software with an open mind... I need to install and play with the software over the weekend. Really, this post doesn't answer Thing 14 at all, but it does conveniently allow me to avoid including all the above negativity in my response.


tl;dr - I hate RefWorks; I can write references more quickly than exporting and re-editing output.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Wikis, Docs and Dropbox


I dig Docs; I've mentioned it a fair few times over the last few weeks (although I'm still having intermittent problems opening spreadsheet Docs, which is beginning to irk me...). I've even decided to use Docs to store all my Chartership documents, including:

  • drafts of my PPDP and working notes towards portfolio commentary; 
  • PDF scans of notes and handouts from events I've attended; 
  • notes and ephermera resultant from meetings with my mentor. 
I've got most of these things in physical form also, but I tend to leave these at home and use digital copies when working on MCLIP stuff during spare moments at work. I've set the relevant Docs to be shared with my mentor, who can also edit if he wishes to, but mostly it's for my own organisational purposes. I've used labels to organise and sort away most of the documents, though my initial Docs does run more than a screen-length of recent(ish) documents which suggests I should probably organise some more away! I also use Docs for several other things, including a running shopping list which I can access from my phone when I blank on what I need, which is great but can't be relied upon as most Sainsbury's are 3G blackspots. Overall, Docs does [most] of what I want it to do, and that's good enough for me.

I suppose in several ways Dropbox fulfills the same functions I use Docs for, and possibly does so more elegantly as, with all the will in the world, Docs formats don't (yet) have all the rounded functionality of their Microsoft Office antecedents. It would be of even more use but for the need to install software; as I have said before (and as has been reiterated quite strongly by a colleague from IS), I cannot install software on work PCs without great palaver - so that's right out. Also, I feel that to get the most out of it, all parties would have to be signed up and invested enough in Dropbox to have downloaded the client, which becomes more of a gamble as project groups grow in number. I will have a play with it at home at some point, but don't feel it's likely to take the place of Docs in my heart.

Wikis are something I've never quite 'got'. I understand the principle behind crowd-sourced knowledge-collation, but in practice they always seem flawed in some way. The obvious headline star, Wikipedia, has a reputation for unreliability and malicious editing of records about public figures; this reflects what I suspect to be the wider truth - that wiki information tends towards the subjective viewpoint of its author/s. Wookieepedia, a relatively high-profile geek-variant wiki, clearly strives to be authoritative, and covers every aspect of the Expanded Universe in minute detail; however, often the information lacks sources and referencing, making it unclear whether the covered material is 'canon' (or as canonical as EU gets anyway) or speculation based on oblique references in some slash-fic about walking-carpet-loving sarlaccs [shudder of memory, hung head of shame].1 I should never have written 'it's probing tongue hungrily explored his matted anal region; he let out a roar of horror, tinged with intrigue - his uncle Lumpy had warned him of such things back on Kashyyk].

Wikis are clearly included here for their ability to host collaborative work via documents and dicsussions, however. We use a wiki at work to store information about every aspect of what we do, what other teams do and what procedures to follow in many imagined circumstances. It can work well: however, it is not without its drawbacks. It is password-protected, as it carries a lot of sensitive information etc; however, this alone is sufficiently disincentivising to massively impact its use by less computer-confident colleagues. It is laid out somewhat-obliquely, frequently requiring guesswork about which section or keyword the subject you want information about will be under. It is also authored by only a few designated individuals. This last factor probably serves to add authority to the contents: however, it also means that this content has not been written by the most competent person in the given area, and can frequently lead to bottle-necks in the wiki being updated with new information. Finally, the wiki is the primary source of information, but it is not the only source, which fundamentally undermines it as the first port-of-call when problem-solving.

So, in conclusion, I don't think any collaborative working tool is perfect. But then, I don't play well with others, so would rarely need to work collaboratively anyway! [Professional self would like to highlight that this is levity, and Tom is in fact a great team player who would be a perfect addition to any library team; employ him now!]

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1 'It's probing tongue hungrily explored his matted nether-regions; he let out a strangled roar of horror, tinged with intrigue. His uncle Lumpy had warned him of such things back on Kashyyk, but he had never said that the beast's horned protuberance would feel so... good'. I have intense regrets about ever writing this: the Wookiee homeworld has three y's in it...]

Monday 15 August 2011

Social(ist) Media


What a difference a week makes; were I to have written about this Thing on the day when it was posted, I would have mistakenly exhorted the virtues of social media, gambolling in joy through its verdant pastures of communication and collaboration, smelling the fragrant daisies of community-building; now, I have been put right, and can see that social media is a post-apocalyptic concrete wasteland which requires strict control lest the knotweed communities which grow therein start to spread and choke what life is left from the penuried serfs of Albion. Can we seriously risk allowing thousands of communities of professional practice to exist when these very same tools can be used by ruffians to orchestrate vandalism and civil unrest? Enlightened peers in China and Syria have shown us the way; throw up great walls and hunt down those dissidents who persist in playing amongst the wreckage of so-called 'freedom of expression'

I can't keep that tone up forever; many people have already done a much better job of pillorying the ridiculous statements which Cameron has made regarding new media technologies over the last week. I'm not the biggest evangelist for social media, but it is clear that the myriad good purposes to which Twitter and its ilk are utilised far outweigh any potential anarchist-organisation angle. Over the last week, my network of library folk has expanded on the several services thus far discussed within the 23 Things, making me feel plugged in to a wider community of like-minded individuals even whilst I toil away in this fluorescent tomb, the walls battened against the inchoate rage of a generation raised at the twin teats of MTV Cribs and Jeremy Kyle, to a score of gangsta-rap which has eaten away their reasoning ability like parasitic worms to the extent that they forget to cover their faces when attacking the local Dixons.

I'm done now.

Thursday 11 August 2011

Mentors: half-horse, half-human, all badass


For the last 3 months, I have been under the formal mentorship of a kind liaison librarian called Jon, who works in the same library as myself. I know that MCLIP candidates are frequently advised to get a mentor from outside their own niche of librarianship if possible; whilst there are obviously benefits from having that breadth of experience, I feel I benefit from having frequent contact with my mentor, not just in meetings with an agenda to discuss (which we have every 4-6 weeks). I have found the relationship to be positive and useful so far; he sends me things which he thinks might help or interest me, and I bounce ideas off him and talk about job applications etc. I'm still working on drafting my PPDP, so we're not that far into the process yet, but from his discussions of work with his other current mentee I'm confident that we'll rub along nicely.

As for informal mentorship, I've had several people who I have found supportive over the last few years who deserve recognition here (I'm excluding tutors, as it's their job to be supportive and motivating!).

- My former line manager, Martin, was very helpful in letting me implement what I learnt when working in the evenings, and allowed me the opportunity to do several things which would generally be considered beyond my grade; there was a degree of laziness in his willingness to delegate, but it was helpful all the same!

- My current line manager, John, is helpful in much the same way, letting me take on tasks like staff training which would generally be carried out by someone in a supervisor position or higher. He has also been instrumental in arranging for several days of professional development leave to attend events with razor-thin relevance to  my current position.

- Finally, the much-maligned Maureen, who showed me the ropes from the off, quickly getting me up to speed with how libraries worked and what needs the stock had from staff, and has recently let me seize control of several of her projects to add to my project-leading experience.


---


A slightly negative post-script. One of the longest delaying factors in my beginning Chartership (aside from apathy) was finding a mentor. My experience of the CILIP mentor list was not a positive one, with the information out-of-date (one mentor reported to work for my service had been retired for a year at that point) and a relatively small amount of mentors available considering the size of, and amount of libraries in, the East Midlands. Looking at the list now, it is much improved, so maybe my timing was unlucky. Nonetheless, I emailed several people and got no responses which soured me on the idea of the MCLIP for a few months. So, if anyone is just starting this process, don't give up as easily as I did!

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Pieces of expensive paper; being a librarian


I have written recently about how I became a librarian, so won't repeat too much in this post. The tl;dr version: it was kind of an accident. I started my MSc in Information & Library Management at Loughborough University after working as an Information Assistant for less than a year, and worked and studied to develop my skills in tandem. I felt this worked pretty well, putting theory learnt in the day into practice in the evening (as there was generally no-one around to stop my crazy schemes), and I feel it gave me a good, rounded idea of HE libraries in particular.

There was an entry requirement on the MSc of a year's experience in libraries; speaking to a tutor towards the end of the year, she said that this was less to do with giving enough grounding in the realities of libraries (though it undoubtedly helps in this regard) and more to do with making candidates employable after they graduated. I know that a few of my coursemates are still struggling to find library work (at any level); by and large they were the ones with less pre-course experience, which reinforces the importance of starting in library jobs as early as possible.

I'm now starting off with the process of Chartership, which I feel inspired about immediately after meetings with my mentor but then quickly lose enthusiasm and don't do much about it for a few weeks. I'm currently writing out my personal development plan, and trying to decide how strictly to embed the Professional Body of Knowledge (and indeed which definition of this to use, as there are several on the CILIP site alone). My inclination is to target the areas which I feel I need developing in in order to get the jobs I want, and tie it back to BPK later. This inclination changes every time I think about it. The process is ongoing, and will be for some months I think. There's a Chartership support event coming up in about a month, and I'm aiming to have a pretty-much final draft of the PPDP by then, to check against the advice and to have something to talk about! There's also a more informal group of Chartering infopros, who meet in Coventry - I'm considering going along to their next meeting, in a week or so, but Coventry is still quite a way away, and it would mean having a 17-hour day...

Stuff #1: August 2011

Moved here, due to repurposing of this blog for purely-professional concerns.

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Ever note? Or; what's up [with] Docs?


CPD23 catch-up week is upon us: it's spooky how they knew I would fall behind at this point... I'm not sure that it's wise to try to start up again on the part where I got stuck, but I'm going to plough ahead anyway and see what happens.

I had always planned to post the Evernote Thing a little later than usual, as I had never used Evernote and wanted to have some time to play with it before writing. Unfortunately, I never got around to registering and using the product; still haven't in fact! [goes off to correct this and read cpd23 briefing]. First thing: don't talk down to me, Evernote. If I want patronising, I'll use an Apple product. Don't pass off fairly common technology as 'magic'.


I may not get the full experience of Evernote, as I cannot install the client on my work PC (not without a great deal of hassle involving Information Systems colleagues, forms to evidence why I need said software and sacrificing a sentient mammal to Quetzalcoatl anyway). For this same reason, I cannot use the 'web clipper' either. I could install these on my home PC, and on my Android handset and maybe my iPod if I was really ambitious, but the web version would still be where I spent 90% of my time using Evernote, so I'll base my appraisal solely on this. I'm not sure how much I'd really use the 'on-the-go' versions of Evernote, as I'm largely sedentary and detest typing anything longer than txtspk on my phone; I see the value when out and about at events, but I don't attend that many, and my current strategy of frantic scribbling and later access to slides/resources covers 95% of sources/notes I want to capture.

I can see the usefulness of keeping notes from several sources (web, email, twitter, real life posters/whiteboards/business cards [via photo]) in one place. I've tried to do much the same thing in the past using Google Docs (scraps of data as text documents, often with little content in the doc aside from the title), but obviously this is a very different experience, with a more pleasant GUI and functionality more suited to notetaking. I doubt I would make much use of the photograph-manipulation features, as I'm rarely in that kind of context, but appreciate its existence.

Overall, I can see the merits of Evernote as a tool to answer lots of problems; they're just not problems which I particularly have. I can get by fine note-taking in Google Docs (as long as it doesn't keep seizing up as it has for the last week or so...) and, if I desperately have to make a note whilst I'm in the field, I can either jot it in my phone and sync it as a note later or just scribble it on my hand. It may be something of a snap judgement, but Evernote isn't for me.

Monday 8 August 2011

A Day in the Life: #libday7

I wrote this a while ago, and have posted it as a separate page as it was a long post even by my standards. It has now been enhanced by the addition of semi-relevant pictures, making it around 9% more exciting!




Monday 25 July 2011

[Some form of pun on calendars]


I've been using Google Calendar for quite a while; I think I first started using it properly when I got my Android phone and realised I could keep all my appointments in one place, reducing the amount of haircuts I had to schedule four times (happened more than once). I've now got to the point where I add everything to it, and have made my calendar available to friends; indeed, I get annoyed when they text me asking where I'll be at a certain time instead of just looking!

I don't particularly use Calendar for work purposes: my day doesn't generally contain meetings etc, so I just block off the times I'm working - for this reason I've never worried about importing calendars from Outlook etc. I do use it to plan CPD activities and record job applications closing dates, however. I also have a separate calendar to record events in my dog's life; on depressing weeks, he can have more non-routine events than me!

This week's calendar; what an exciting life I lead...

Speaking of non-routine events, I have turned on functionality which is currently provided via Google Labs (and which I'm hoping will be integrated into the core options rather than disappearing when Labs closes) which dims recurring events such as 'work' to emphasise other activities. Other Labs functions include the ability to append Google Docs to an event (which I use for events programs and booking forms) and my snazzy background image of a Cybus-man.*

What else? I use 'all day event' to note the form which any day off takes (Annual Leave, Toil, or Professional Development Leave if I can wrangle it), as well as if I'm unsure of when an event will take place; I have pencilled-in events happening in June of next year already! I colour events according to their type, which allows me to glance back and forth for specific events. I do have a few external calendars (such as the CPD23 one), but I tend to leave these turned off unless I'm looking for something on them.

Overall, I find Google Calendar to be a useful tool, but it's not exactly the most exciting thing to write about. Any questions, please ask!

---
* Cybermen come from Mondas, Earth's twin planet; Cybus-men are clunky buggers from a parallel dimension. I will not accept they are the same!

Friday 22 July 2011

On-Off Networking


This week brings two Things, which I'm combining into an unwieldy 'twofer' post, partially because the subject matters entwine and partly because it's Friday and I don't want to go off for a long weekend with blogging still on my 'to-do' list.

Following the #marketingyourselfonline session delivered by Suzanne Wheatley at NPC2011, I have a pretty-much populated LinkedIn profile; however, I have next-to-no connections; people I do know aren't on there, and people on there who I recognise don't easily fit with LinkedIn's prescribed categories - neither colleagues nor classmates, and to call them friends feels somehow presumptive. Whilst I can kind of see how it's a useful tool, and the groups have been a little more interesting that I'd expected, the USP of LinkedIn remains to be found for myself.

Whilst I keep Facebook for friends and old schoolchums (yes, I am from the 1930s), several of those friends are themselves library folk, so library-related networking does pop up from time to time. I don't tend to follow organisation or group pages, as they resulted in so much spam when I used Facebook regularly that I 'un-liked' them. Nowadays, I tend to interact with Facebook almost exclusively via the Android app, mostly reading friends' statuses, occasionally chipping in but mostly lurking - my last status update was 12th June ("the lesson of Jonah Hex: everything in the Old West was 1000% more combustible", posted via Xbox). As the people I found interesting increasingly migrate away, I find myself less drawn to Facebook, and may even close my account if it's nascent competitor takes off...

Even when I'm an early-adopter, I still lag a little behind - I joined G+ at around the 8-million person mark, and have populated circles mainly with library folk and institutions/organisations (who will be vaporised by the Google Death Star for their disobeyal of the 'individuals only' beta edict). So far, it has shown promise largely by being an endearing social-media hodge-podge, with many of the desirable features of other networks (notably Facebook and Twitter) - however, it does also have some of the drawbacks. I'm enjoying G+, but feel there are still features to be added: plug in calendars and docs and I'll be a happy bunny (as long as there's the option to keep them private; I don't want everyone knowing that my big Friday-night plans are to worm the dog). I like the social-professional mix of streams, and suspect that it will remain just as manageable when I have a lot more people added - something which Twitter and Facebook have on occasion proved problematic for. As it is, however, I have very few IRL people in my G+ streams as yet.

Slightly to my shame, I haven't used the LIS networks. I joined LISNPN a while back, but never really did anything with it; having had a scan through the forum and resources just now, I'm unsure why as it seems pretty useful. LAT is... very green. As I don't do much teaching in my current role, this is a network I'm planning to put on a back-burner until I am in a position to up-skill in pedagogical practice. CILIP Communities was something I was aware of, and had glanced through on occasion, but had never really grabbed me as current or thriving; again, it is on a list of things to check into when I have more time, particularly as I ramp up Chartership thinking.

Has online networking via these media made me better known, connected, and equipped? Yes, probably all three, but I would say that currently it is Twitter that has been most influential (though, as I have suggested, G+ may supplant this in the future): Facebook is something I'm almost thinking about in the past tense already (like Myspace before it), and LinkedIn feels a little too much like a business tool to fit with my personal preferences for professional networking, placing order and organisations over serendipitous discovery and individuals.

Serendipity plays a part in my face-to-face networking skills too - however, some may term this haphazard blundering from faux pas to faux pas. I've never been at my most comfortable in a room of strangers (who is?), and find it very difficult to 'cold' start a conversation. I'll confess, it is getting easier, partially through practice and partly because I have been to enough events that I'm starting to meet people for the second time, which can provide an 'in' to join a conversation and get to know more people. Face-to-face networking has also added considerably to my online networks, allowing me to add interesting attendees and speakers to Twitter for instance; in turn, I can now meet known tweeters in person and have several potential conversation starters (although this can be a bit weird if it is not a reciprocal-following arrangement; otherwise, you can easily verge on '@s27wighorn345, silent, invisible lurker' territory). I feel more comfortable networking with perceived peers, of a similar age or professional level to myself, as I feel it leads to easier conversation due to shared points of reference - being the most junior person in a conversation about stock review policies across multiple site libraries was slightly intimidating! I didn't get along to any of the CPD23 networking events this week as my dog has acute abandonment issues if I leave him alone for too long (and I missed the online alternative networking due to setting fire to a calzone - but that's another story). Overall, though, I definitely feel more comfortable 'working a room' than I did this time last year.

[the following paragraph goes a bit rant-y]

I am a member of CILIP, and special-interest groups CDG and UC&R as part of this membership; however, whilst I have attended events organised by my local branch (EMBoC) and the SIGs I still can't, hand-on-heart, say that I feel particularly involved with the organisation. I'm not exactly sure what CILIP achieves. Yes, of course, there's accreditation of library-schools, and Chartership, and being a (sometimes-timid) voice for libraries on the national stage, and the aqueduct, and facilitating the organisation of large-scale (expensive) events which bring librarians together - but apart from that, what has CILIP ever done for us? In all honesty, it feels costly to be a member of CILIP - I ummed and ahed about renewing my membership when  the cost jumped from the student rate to nearly £200 - and to be charged again to attend the majority of events which it organises (and which are held almost exclusively in London on weekdays, which adds at least £50-£60 to the cost of attendance) feels a little frustrating. I had hoped that the recent re-organisation would lead to greater clarity of mission, and would make clearer exactly what I was investing in - however, I remain unconvinced and suspect that if I wasn't going for Chartership I may have decided to save my money and invest it in CPD opportunities elsewhere. Overall, I like lots of small parts of CILIP, but cannot transmogrify this into appreciating the whole.

[/rant]

Despite all of this, I think professional organisations are important for all of the reasons Bethan discusses in the Thing briefing. Perhaps organisations focused around particular areas of librarianship, such as SLA (UK) and BIALL, offer a more focused level of professional support for your buy-in. However, I can't help but feel [turns out that /rant was premature!] that the amount of professional organisations for LIS exacerbates the 'echo chamber' effect; that's how it feels with my nose pressed up against the glass, too cheap to buy a ticket to enter, anyway. Feel free to correct me, readers!

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Social network images from iniwoo.

Friday 15 July 2011

Reflecting on Reflection on Role


Wigglesweets doesn’t really set a task for this Thing as such, instead asking for a consideration of one’s personal approach to reflective practice. So, my first thought on reading the blog post: “urgh - reflective practice!”. Let’s start with a confession; I pretty much hate reflecting on myself, assessing my achievements and setting targets. I was forced to do it in school from about the age of seven, and I’ve never been able to shake going into an immediate juvenile ‘no, I hate this, it’s rubbish’ paddy every time someone suggests reviewing performance and progress. My first instinct when asked to reflect to write a pat response which has little or no value or meaning to me; this, obviously, limits the resultant document’s helpfulness.

I’ve got to become better at reflective practice, because it forms a key part of writing a successful Chartership portfolio. I’m currently working on developing my PPDP for the next 12-18 months, which I suspect would be more effective/useful if I first identify which areas I could do with development in. I can’t usefully use my work PDR to inform this, as it refers to local targets and (as a non-professional position) focuses on moulding me to their needs rather than facilitating personal growth. I think that my problem is that I... am self-obsessed? Far too many personal pronouns there! I don’t like thinking about my positive qualities, because it feels self-congratulatory, and when considering my failings I tend to begin equivocating and justifying why this is the case. I externalise blame and internalise success, but cannot sufficiently get outside myself to consider myself - what a horrible sentence. This is like pulling teeth.

Bottom line: I need to get better at reflective practice. To the books!

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Returning to Current Awareness...

A Thing 4 addendum, as I’m burying my head in the sand regarding Thing 5. My 'current awareness' has gone to pot somewhat this week, as I've not been on Twitter at all prior to about an hour ago (some may claim that I envy those who are at #ub11 and excitedly tweeting about it; those people are silly poo-poo heads if they think I'm that immature).


A week on, I’m still using Pushnote to make note of interesting half-read sites which I may want to return to. However, it’s not grabbed me that well, and I probably will stop using it once I’ve caught up on the linked sites I currently have.


In similar thematic area to Thing 4, I have Google/Scholar alerts on my particular areas of interest (‘academic* liais*’ and ‘subject librarian*’), which I’ll periodically go through. These were set up to support the lit review for my dissertation in this area. Whilst they generally result in junk, occasionally something valuable turns up. I currently have over 100 alerts emails to read - they remain firmly stuck to the bottom of my to-do-list.



Finally, flicking through a Google Doc of half-baked thoughts which might one day become blogs, I came across a rambling rhetorical question. My RSS feeds featured several US librarians, as well as aggregated blog-feeds from some US academic librarians (email updates such as LJ Academic Newswire could also be lumped into a wider ‘US library landscape awareness’ blob), leading me to wonder thus:

Do [US librarians] have it better or worse than us; they are equally vocal, if not more so, but whilst they share common themes (budget cuts, risk of closure for public libraries, identity crises) they also have very different concerns (faculty/teacher status, state politics, guns on campus) which resonate less. Is it worthwhile to continue to maintain an international focus, or is this taking time which could be spent drilling down into local issues? Is it merely a pretence that LIS is the same beast worldwide, with fundamentally the same concerns and aims?

I remain undecided about this issue; I have found some blogs from US librarians to offer useful concepts which translate well, but others never really speak to my personal experiences. In practice, I now have less RSS feeds from US-library-centric sources. Have I narrowed my world-view, or made a conscious decision to focus on my own back yard?

Friday 8 July 2011

A happy accident: becoming a librarian

According to James G. Neal (2006), librarianship is often a 'second career’ for its adherents: “Many move to the field from jobs in other professions or after stints in academic assignments. […] [Does this] reflect limited opportunities in [their] chosen field, a recognition of a problematic fit between previous job and personal aspirations, or a profound interest in and commitment to the service goals of librarianship[?] The issue is whether the decision to become a librarian and to proceed through an extended educational program is a reflection of personal disappointment and compromise or a positive orientation to a new professional adventure.”

This line of questioning reminded me of an interesting point raised at the recent New Professionals’ Conference, where a straw poll of speakers and attendees revealed that many had fallen into librarianship ‘by accident’, following a period of career uncertainty or undertaking a non-professional role which brought them into the area of librarianship. Elements of what Neal suggests also apply to myself. Whilst I first applied for a job in a library at around nine years old (some may argue that my application style hasn’t changed much since), it took a series of accidents and snap decisions to get me where I am today. 

As with many in my Library School cohort, my undergraduate degree was in English Literature; like many on that course, I was then planning on doing a PGCE (to teach Secondary English/Media). I duly applied for a PGCE programme, and was accepted (with the caveat of gaining additional classroom experience prior to the beginning of the course); however, I found the acceptance letter physically sickening - I suspect that, deep down, I had known for a while that I didn’t want to teach, but hadn’t wanted to let go of the security of knowing what I was going to do next. Concerned about leaving the warm cocoon of higher education, I opted to do an MA in Modern Literature, with the vague idea of maybe following an academic career.

I knew within a few weeks of starting my MA that I was never going to be an English lecturer; whilst I gained some useful insights into twentieth-century literature from that year, the formative experience it gave me was extra-curricular. The first semester was accompanied by a librarian-embedded information-skills module*  which I rather enjoyed; however, other people on the course found it difficult to keep up with. One course-mate in particular, David, had problems keeping up with the electronic reference sessions. A mature student returning to HE after several decades, David was capable of following the course content; however, he was unable to do so at the pace at which sessions were delivered. As a result, he asked me if I could sit with him and go through the processes covered again. This became a regular thing, with other course-mates also occasionally asking referencing and database questions. It occurred to me that I seemed to be quite good at this sort of thing, and thus my mind turned back towards a career in aiding access to information.

The previous spring, after I had accepted my place on the Modern Lit course, I had spotted a flyer  advertising a graduate library traineeship. I had toyed with applying for this, but had ruled it out as I had already been through several application interviews in that period and wasn’t sure it was what I was looking for. Following my experiences with David, I returned to the idea of working in libraries, and did some research into professional options. I briefly spoke to a librarian where I was studying, who gave some useful advice, and following a summer spent camping in various areas of the library completing my (pretty useless) dissertation I began applying for any and all library jobs, to gain the experience needed to begin another Masters.** Luckily, I somehow convinced my current employer that I was a viable candidate, and became an Information Assistant, working evenings. I recall getting home after my first day, smiling and saying ‘I’m a librarian’ - it felt like I had finally discovered who I was.

I was able to keep this post throughout my MSc studies, which added useful real-life grist to the largely-theoretical assignments I wrote (as well as providing a partially-captive audience for dissertation research), and have since transitioned to a full-time (still non-professional) post. In many ways, I’m pretty happy where I am (which is making applying for jobs that much harder): I get to do varied jobs which sometimes verge on the professional remit, my contributions are appreciated and I’m pretty well paid.*** Whilst I don't leap out of bed every morning, I usually am looking forward to the day before I get to work.

So, is being a librarian the result of several happy accidents or my fate? Helping people learn and discover new things (the thing which most appealed to me about teaching) still forms a core part of my day. I get to interact with a variety of people, doing interesting and diverse things, and who use the library in ways which would never occur to me. Librarianship certainly isn't a "personal disappointment" or a "compromise", and whilst I sometimes lack that "positive orientation to a new professional adventure" I love it, and can’t imagine doing anything else.

This post ended up being a bit personal and stream-of-consciousness. I was shooting for a more considered, wider-ranging consideration of why people become librarians. I may adapt parts of this for the ‘bio’ page. In the mean time, I’d love to hear how any readers got sucked into the profession.

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* This Information Literacy intervention (holiest of grails) contributed towards final degree score - that hadn’t occurred to me until I wrote it down...
** I also applied for two or three graduate traineeships, but was unsuccessful.
***Indeed, I applied for one professional role which paid less than I’m currently earning.