Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

In my years as a librarian, I have had the opportunity to attend a number of professional events. The most recent one was for #RiLIES which I wrote about here. As with so much these days, attendance is linked to the financial situation and I was really lucky that this half day at CILIP was offered for free. JISCmail listings seem to be the best place for advertising conferences and I found out about #RiLIES from a posting at LIS-LINK@JISCMAIL.AC.UK.

As part of the CHILL CPD group, I am currently helping to organise a conference about social media which will be held at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. A major objective of this is to be able to offer it for minimal pricing, so people have been asking friends and colleagues to speak for free. Once we have organised the speakers, I will be involved in advertising the training and organising the attendees. So keep your eyes peeled for more details of that!

So far I have never spoken at an event. However, there is nothing scarier than speaking at school assemblies (how do they get their eyes so big?!) and since I have done so many of these I feel I would be able to stand up and speak professionally, Although I’m not sure how many librarians would want to listen to my witterings!

As a very tenuous link, here I am outside San Diego library. San Diego hosts Comic Con every year which looks amazing- and is surely one of the few conferences that could outgeek a library event (and I mean that in the best way possible!)

Things 6 and 7 revisited: #RiLIES

On Tuesday morning I attended Research into Practice: LIS Research Resources Briefing. This was a free course held at CILIP HQ. I chose to attend this training to give me a broader understanding of issues facing nursing researchers while at the same time increasing my knowledge of research in the LIS field. It also gave me an opportunity to practice real life networking (thing 7) and I even tweeted to include online networking (thing 6.)

I thought the morning was a fascinating opportunity to discover more about the resources that are already out there for librarians as well as offering a tantalizing look at the opportunities for building an online community that can have a real impact on the profession (and other researchers.)

Here are some notes I made about the day..........

LIS RiLIES aims to facilitate a co-ordinated and strategic approach to LIS research across the UK by:

a)    Creating a network of LIS researchers

b)    1)  exploring the extent LIS research influences LIS practitioners

b)   2) creating outputs to support the use and execution of research.

Investment in research should deliver a socio-economic impact. Those applying for funding need to be able to provide an evidence base. The new system for assessing the quality of research will be the Research Excellence Framework (2014.) RiLIES have printed a handout with advice for writing applications for funding, including free examples of sentences that could be used. These sentences also cunningly commit the research into making an impact with their results!  One of LIS research’s web pages also lists possible places that researchers can apply for funding. 

Practitioners need to move from ‘heard of it’ to ‘tried it.’ Research should aim to lead to organisational change and progress.

Once you have completed the research you should disseminate it to all audiences- academic peer reviewed journals but also the literature read by practitioners. (If the people on the ground do not know what you have learned they will be unable to put it into practice.)

The best way of disseminating information is face to face because what you’re saying is tailored to your audience and you can explain further if there is confusion.

If publishing the information, this should be in an accessible language. Teaching and community support materials are the most effective [e.g. the RCN’s The Learning Zone]  Put a ‘creative commons’ mark on your materials to make it copyright free so others can also use the research in their work.

Social media is a key tool for informing people about the results of your research. People are also more likely to exploit research if they have been involved in its creation e.g The DREaM project has a large profile because people have attended its events and then blogged/ talked about them.

Prof. Hall said at this juncture that their research had shown that social media works best if people have already met in real life. However, I think that this is already starting to change and so tweeted....

 ‏@hipporebecca 10 Jul

Didn't voices4the library show that now lib profs don't have to meet before building social media networks. ‪#rilies ‪#changingtimes

Medical/ healthcare librarians are “ahead of the game” when it comes to successfully disseminating research information which is lovely information to learn when you work in a healthcare library!

There are a number of different platforms that can be used for sharing information. It should always be remembered that, if the platform belongs to another organisation, the company could make changes in the future e.g. start charging.  The platforms include:

·         wikis

·         RSS tagging e.g. Delicious, DeGo

·         Google Drive (formerly Google Docs)

·         ALISS (it looks like this platform for Scottish people with long term conditions will also be effectively used by RiLIES)

Information is often needed in two ways: Facts – need quality assurance

                                                                       Support- information is that is personal/ local

The most appreciated resources for LIS professionals are:

·         JISC mailing lists

·         LIRG

·         Evidence Based Library and Information Journal

·         Blogs (Jo Alcock’s list of UK library blogs and bloggers)  and twitter

·         DReAM resources.

There are other online resources that are available but people don’t know about  them(e.g. Knowledge Hub for the UK public sector.) These are all listed at www.lisresearch.org/links/

For no linked reason- today’s sad librarian photo was taken on the island of Aegina, Greece.