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...

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.

Making an impact: JISC LIDP

Impact: ‘any effect of the service on an individual or group’

(This can be positive or negative, intended or accidental, and affecting any stakeholder)

The professional area which currently most interests me most is the impact which libraries, and librarians have on their students, academic staff, employees and other users (hereafter collectively ‘stakeholders’). With this in mind, I jumped at the opportunity to attend the UC&R event East Midlands event ‘Making an Impact’, held on Tuesday at De Montford University (#UCREMimpact). I had wanted to write a report of the day along thematic lines, and first-drafted with this intention – unfortunately, the result just didn’t read right. The event is already receding in my mind, however, so instead I have decided to present one of the discussed projects in this post, and intend to re-hash the rest of my notes into something coherent over the weekend. Please bear in mind that this is not a verbatim report, so some elements of this may be conjecture.


Paul Stainthorp (University of Lincoln) spoke at length about his involvement in the JISC Library Impact Data Project (LIDP): a collaboration between 8 UK universities, this project was designed to improve the intelligence of library systems, collating useful data and applying it to ‘join the loop’ and corroborate what we anecdotally already believe - that use of the university library has a positive correlation with higher degree results. Whilst there is data in the professional body of knowledge regarding the impact libraries have on users and parent institutions, surprisingly there has been no UK-based, publicly-available study into this for HE libraries: therefore, such data would provide valuable ammunition to library services fighting for the budget to remain effective in the new HE landscape.


Whilst the data available to be collected and collated varied between partner university libraries, there was a core focus on three areas: circulation of stock, use of e-resource gateways and gate entry stats. The hope was to gather data to support statements like the following:

User A did B C times during D time. User A achieved E in their degree.

As an individual statement, there is only a weak correlative link between B (B*C?) and E; create the statement thousands of times, and the resultant correlation is much more reliable and statistically-relevant. Note that, even with large data-sets, this link cannot be considered causal - there are too many variables not captured to make definitive statements about the library as key contributing factor to degree success (apparently there’s some teaching goes on in the other buildings on campus; who knew...).

Stainthorp highlighted that this data can be difficult to collate, even where it was already being collected, and may require access to data-sets from other departments (such as Registry). However, each partner library managed to produce some data, on the following kind of lines:  

LIDP results are likely to be published in due course (with the anonymised data sets also possibly to be made available): however, initial results show a positive correlation between greater circulation numbers and higher degree results across all partner university libraries, with similar results for e-resource access. These results would potentially be rendered more significant and reliable through further study. This may take the form of longitudinal study, replicating methodology over several years to confirm initial results are accurate; it could take the form of comparing library use figures with results of other research, such as the Student Satisfaction Survey, to examine whether greater incidence of use of the library correlates to better scoring of University facilities in general (and the library in particular); it may focus in further, targeting specific groups within the user population. This last area bears further scrutiny.

‘Students’ are not a homogeneous group.

'Business students’ and ‘English students’ are not homogeneous groups either; indeed, in some ways the only reliable correlation which can be drawn is at the level of the individual. However, subject groupings provide a reasonable level of demographic stratification for a large-scale project given the unavoidable variables introduced by different partners’ facilities. UCAS codes were included in the data set for this project, and are currently being utilised to produce more stratified data for LIDP results. However, we must be prepared, once the data is broken down in this way, for some upsetting results - it is possible that there will emerge negative correlations between elements of library use and degree results for some subjects due to differences in the currency and breadth of resources for that subject area. As David Streatfield, a later speaker on the day, highlighted, data from impact studies must be presented ‘warts and all’, so that it is clear that we are presenting an honest picture of the library’s importance and influence over the institution’s academic success. Whilst Streatfield slightly contradicted and challenged the usefulness of large, wide-ranging studies such as LIDP, I remain convinced of their usefulness in providing a consistent, quantifiable argument for the value of libraries. I await the full results of this study with great interest.

Online branding and #marketingyourselfonline

And so to Thing 3 of CPD23; only a week in and already starting to come to tasks a few days after they were posted; a sign of things to come?! The topic of online branding is interesting for me, as I only (fairly) recently began to develop a professional online identity (the 'dogeared librarian' of the crudely-knocked-up-in-Paint banner at the top of this page). Prior to settling on this, I toyed with a few other approaches and pseudonyms, as well as using my own name. Among concepts I rejected were something around orangutans (influenced quite strongly by Discworld, but also because I am red-haired with long arms and a pot-belly) and something punning on 'page' (my surname).

I chose the 'dogeared' brand because I'm a dog person (which places me in diametric opposition to the stereotypical library spinster with an army of cats) and can sometimes feel somewhat battered and well-thumbed! That said, the 'brand' is still very much 'in development', with no particular colour scheme, the aforementioned placeholder header, little integration of seperate sites (save tweeting of blog updates, and the blog widget showing twitter updates), and poor consistency of approach/style even within a single site. The whole thing is a public work-in-progress; if I felt anyone was looking or cared I'd probably sort it out a lot more quickly!

I made the decision to include my own name on 'dogeared librarian' sites, but still sometimes succumb to feeling like the label grants me anonymity. Do I say things online I wouldn't out loud? No. But I wouldn't necessarily share everything I say out loud with everyone I meet. I do compartmentalise my life; sometimes to an insane amount. However, I do allow aspects of the personal sphere to bleed into the professional and vice-versa, as the poor people at bars who've been bored into submission about the value of libraries can attest! I'm aware that there is a line, but generally not until I cross it. My facebook is personal, and pretty much unmoderated these days; twitter doesn't include any non-library friends (yet). Generally speaking, I take the view which @llordllama conveniently laid out earlier this week:

The whole 'pseudonymous identity' thing is reinforced by the use of photos of dogs (generally in glasses) for profile pictures. There's a few reasons I don't use a photograph: I dislike the way I look (another work-in-progress!) and think dogs are generally nicer to look at, in particular my own dog, Jabba. In the future. I may take the @niko_nees approach (using a photo of both of us with Jabba foregrounded) for Twitter and this blog in the future; for now, I should at least get around to replacing the header with a picture of my own hound! [Edit: replaced quick-and-dirty header with slower,still-dirty header following this post].

So to the 'google-thyself' task (I used Bing as well as Google via Chrome Incognito): oh. Several eminent Thomas Pages, pretty much all dead. There is one guy with a technical-support background who has a stub website on thomaspage.co.uk, an author of a 'bio-terror novel' and a guy who works for HP. But not me. Not me for 4 pages on Bing. Google is slightly better; a twitter result towards the tail of the second page. 'Thomas Page librarian' and 'Thomas Page library' bring up no results in the first page or so. I'm a nobody L

Searching pseudonyms (I have a couple of online identities; a symptom of growing up online I guess), my personal identity again doesn't link to me straightaway (but as I took it from a book I guess it wouldn't). 'Dogeared librarian', though... links right back here! First 3 links are all for this blog, then the Blogger account, then an RSS feed which another site has generated for some reason. Unfortunately, what doesn't appear is my twitter account. I shortened my handle to @dogearedlib because I read somewhere that long handles correlated to less re-tweets etc. Maybe I should add the full version of the name to the bio field? (EDIT: never added the blog URL to my twitter profile; corrected that now!)

On the plus side, there's little out there which is incriminating. Can't say for sure with Facebook (though I would need to check using a non-friend's account), but I think pretty much everything about me online is innocuous... (portentous rumble of thunder outside as I wrote that; pathetic fallacy in action).

So, there's some branding still to do, some tidying up of online profiles (and a linkedin profile to populate; signed up last week and haven't dealt with it since - though this article (mildly NSFW) causes me some concern...). But no damage limitation needed just at the moment... (no thunder this time!).

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On a related topic, I attended the New Professionals' Conference (#NPC2011) at the beginning of last week (but it already feels like an age ago; I've not even been that busy over the intervening period - growing old...), during which I attended a workshop called '#marketingyourselfonline'. I remember it being a lively, useful session and thought I would share some salient points from it. So I went back to my notes. Oh dear. I've gone back to not being able to read my own handwriting, something which was last a problem about 10 years ago. I clearly need to work on my IRL note-taking (or possibly use a computer at these things). Still, lets give it a go!

Consider the audience for your social media output; who are you writing for? Will what you are writing for one group alienate another? Current and future employers; peers and colleagues; friends; the rest of the world: all of these groups should be considered when spontaneously writing a tweet waiting for the bus. Pretty much everything you say online, whether considered or in the spur of the moment, is stored for posterity.

Use a good-quality photograph of yourself (good clarity, not too artful) for professional purposes, ideally a head-and-shoulders profile shot. Many people work better with faces than names (myself included), and a photograph will mean your professionally-presented profile will make a greater impact on readers.

Linkedin operates like an online business card, as well as providing a legitimate presence for your CV online; as such, it is a valuable, professional way to network online. It also features special interest groups and can provide useful contacts for your current role - so it's not just about finding new, better jobs! It is best to consider this a business tool, and omit friends from your contacts, as well as considering what you say, and how you say it, particularly carefully in order to make the best first impression. There were at least two recruitment-sector people in the workshop, and they attested to its usefulness in their line of work.

Twitter mixes professional and personal for many people; nonetheless, tweet with caution as potentially anyone can access this (unless you set your profile to private and no-one follows you; but in that case, why tweet anyway!). Interesting tweets can be retweeted far outside your original, core followers, possibly even reaching non-networked individuals. Facebook leaves you at the mercy of friends tagging moments of inebriated indecent exposure (No? Just me then...), and Myspace is... was going to laugh at Myspace being dead, but actually though I've not used it for 5 years, and deleted my profile once, there's still a lingering presence. So there's that.

Overall, just use your common sense and never slander people, even if you think the Matthew Davidson will never find out you called him a silly nincompoop on your blog.J

@dogearedlib