Thursday 28 June 2012

Thing 7: Real Life Networking.

As previously stated, I recently moved out of public libraries to experience more avenues of the profession.  Throwing myself into real life networking will be one of the ways that I will build up my awareness of what other people (with similar job titles) are doing.

 Ironically, you really need to be good at virtual networking in order to discover many of the opportunities available for real life networking. In a few weeks I’m going to be going to CILIP HQ for a free session run by LIRG about Research Into Practice. I found out about this after it was advertised on LIS-LINK JISC email. Since registering with this email list I have been able to see a number of interesting opportunities and ideas. I was also able to ask (and receive) advice from other libraries about member privileges and communication for the RCN’s upcoming refurbishment.

I have joined LIKE through LinkedIn. Although I’m unable to attend either of their upcoming events, they both look promisingly interesting.

In real life I am now also the RCN representative for the CHILL (for independent health libraries in London) CPD group. At the moment I’ve only been to one meeting and their upcoming planned training has been postponed, but the potential is there!  

August is traditionally a quiet time for the RCN Library, Archives and Information Services. Nurses are either on placement, finishing their course or looking after their children (or just on tenterhooks waiting for the sunshine!) As a result, I’m going to be allowed to go on a number of library visits around London during this month. The main focus will obviously be healthcare and medical libraries but does anyone have any others they would recommend?

In honour of the tennis (not that I’m a fan but it’s always good to have a reason behind each photo!) Here I am outside Wimbledon Library (just the public one not the tennis library talked about here in the cpd blogpost by the Wandering Librarian. )

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Thing 6: Virtual Networking

Linked In.
I joined LinkedIn a few years ago but have never been very good at using it professionally. Most of my connections are friends and even former colleagues insisted on referring to themselves as friends (despite my best attempts at being nasty to them all the time to stop this happening!) However, thanks to my time recently spent playing around with the website I have discovered that these relationships can be re-edited to make my profile more professional.  I have now also edited the URL to my name and changed my headline so it is no longer just a repeat of my current job title.

I have always been unsure about how LinkedIn could help my career. I have yet to hear of a librarian being headhunted or any examples of high level nepotism (please let me know if you’ve heard differently!)  However, as librarians have to justify themselves more and more to an economically minded world, you never know when our industry will be become as cut throat as businesses in the City. It is not thinking optimistically, but in such a climate I can see LinkedIn being a positive statement about my career.  I therefore asked a former colleague for a recommendation in order to make my profile stand out and show some of my personality. She wrote lovely words so even if her recommendation is never needed professionally; it has been a great confidence boost!

LISPN
Sadly, in September it will be ten years since I became a librarian so the description of ‘new professional’ would have to be extremely loose to be applied to me!  I was interested in going undercover and looking at the downloadable resources on offer. However LISPN had obviously sussed me out as, despite two attempts, the confirmation code was miraculously never emailed to me!

LibrariansAsTeachers Network
My work in public libraries included a lot of teaching (from computer skills to pensioners to local history to children. I always felt that it would be really useful to have somewhere to share ‘best practice’ information and methods so that fifty librarians around the country weren’t all trying to come up with an idea to link Easter to the Dewey Decimal Code (for example!) At the moment there isn’t much in the ‘resources’ section of this site but hopefully promoting this network through schemes such as cpd23 will encourage more librarians to share their worksheets, lesson plans and crazy ideas with others. Sadly all my resources stayed with Wandsworth when I left.

CILIP communities.
I actually left CILIP a couple of years ago in frustration with their lack of action about the library closures. While I am still slightly wary of the vagueness of some of their recent activities (such as the ongoing debate about volunteers in libraries ) it is clear that librarians do need a formal organisation to maintain their profession. Plus, it made me feel clever when they posted me materials because they used all my academic qualifications on my address label!  I am, therefore, thinking of rejoining.

While browsing through the CILIP communities website, it seemed as though their forums are not overly popular (three posts so far for June.) Their member’s blogs landscapes is a useful, focussed version of Google Reader gathering together…erm…..the blogs of their members?! I’m not sure how often I would check back here once I am a member but it is good to see the potential of this area.


As someone who is attempting to complete a career development course online, I can obviously see the positive effects of virtual working.  For me the power of online networking became clear a couple of years ago as Councils started announcing huge swathes of public library cuts. CILIP seemed mired in bureaucracy and (to me) it seemed that without disparate people joining forces as Voices for the Library’  the campaign would not have been given the organised push needed to save some branches.

There is huge potential within these resources (not including LinkedIn) to really help those in the profession to spread ‘best practice’ but in order to achieve this more interaction in these networks is needed.

In honour of the ‘virtual’ theme of this week’s thing, today’s photo was taken outside Hiroshima Library- somewhere that had to be completely rebuilt and reorganised from scratch and where technology is incredibly advanced.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Thing 5: being reflective

Apologies for the late running of this blog post- I was rudely distracted by bank holidays and annual leave!

I have to admit that I’m really struggling with this thing. In my head I’ve decided that ‘reflective practice’ is a bit like when I was studying ‘knowledge management’ at university. Basically it’s common sense but written down. Or am I missing a major part?!

Reading the cpd blog and recommended reading, there seem to be a number of potential processes for doing reflective practice. The basic gist seems to be
1)      Think about something you’ve done
2)      Decide what you’ve learned/ experienced from this activity (positive and negative)
3)      Decide how this will impact on your future.

Isn’t this something that happens to people automatically as they are learning or experiencing life? Maybe everyone has been to more riveting training sessions but usually I’m thinking along these lines as I’m learning. I spend the time thinking “wow, I’ll be able to use that for....” “hmmm... interesting, in .........situation that could be useful” or even “what nonsense. Cretins.” Does anyone really not consider the impact on themselves until asked to do so as a reflective practice exercise?!

This blog is a form of reflective practice as it will explain what I’ve looked at/ learned, whether I think it could be useful to me or my work and if I’ve been able to apply it to myself/ my work. However, I don’t think a blog like this could really work if it didn’t automatically include this process- it would just be a list of links with no evaluation.

One of my (many) failings is that I’m quick to come to some sort of judgement about things – you might be able to spot this pattern in this blog. I find that thinking on a topic further doesn’t change my mind- the only thing that does is discovering more information. Hopefully now I’ve written this negative post about reflective practice, you’ll all be able to give me more information on the topic and show me the error of my ways!


The photo for this post was taken outside Cromer Library. It shows me holding a (library) copy of ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I am looking very excited because while reading the book on the train to Cromer, the characters within it had also gone on a day trip to Cromer, a fact more amazing to me because I’d not even heard of the town until the day before!