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!)

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. )