As someone who over the last few years has come to rely heavily on Twitter.com as a networking tool, I was happily surprised to discover last night that IRL can actually be even more fun sometimes!
IRL - or In Real Life - networking is scary, much more difficult that online networking, because we actually have to put ourselves out there. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I went to the cpd23 Thing 7 tweet-up last night. Walking towards the pub, I'll admit I was nervous.
It is only once you've arrived and started talking to people that you remember how much fun real-life networking can be. Catching up with people, sharing current news, makes all the online networking that we do more real somehow. Face to face networking reminds us about how every other part of our networking life fits together.
I was also at the event last night as a representative of a spcial interest group, namely CDG. I was pleased that I managed to chat to a few people, including new professionals, about the group and the benefits of joining CILIP. The main criticism was that if people can go to events as non-members at only slightly more cost then members, what incentive is there to join? And I'm not sure about that really. Limiting events to members would remove a revenue source and make the group more elitist, but perhaps it would encourage membership. It is a risky strategy. I took the line that if you are a passive CILIP member then it is true that you do not get the most out of your subscription. You need to be actively engaged in order to fully be a part of a professional body. Everything that you experience as a committee member, the positive and the negative times, develop you both personally and professionally. And I think I even convinced one person to consider joining a committee, so my work there was certainly done!
Many thanks to the East of England CILIP branch for organising such a worthwhile event.
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Online Networks, Networking and Netting an Opportunity
Thinking about online networks for Thing 6 got me thinking about the online networks in which I participate and why I take an active part in these communities. I tweet, I blog, I read and comment on other blogs. I am also an active member of Librarians as Teachers (LAT) and the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN) I am on LinkedIn and maintain a current profile. I do this because I enjoy being professionally linked in to the sector, to other professionals, to keep up to date with activity across sectors and to maintain an online profile.
Today I attended the LIS DREaM conference launch at the British Library. In our breakout session, a lively discussion took place on the topic of networking and sustaining collaboration. One of the questions raised concerned motivation: who is motivated to not only contribute to these online networks but also to lead the action in these networks? Any network needs motivated leaders who are able to rouse and inspire other members. Networks tend to come together due to a shared interest or area of expertise. For example, LAT concerns people across sectors involved in information skills teaching whereas LISNPN concerns people from all sectors but only if they happen to be a new professional. Are we able to communicate across sectors and stages of our careers? If we can do this, could we start to move to the next phase of cross-discipline networking?
There are formal and informal networks, online and in the real world. This got me thinking about the other networks that I am involved with, ones that don't happen in the online sphere but rather in the physical space.
I am a member of the Career Development Group committee. CDG is a network of professionals at all stages of their career from all sectors. I am a member of the German Studies Library Group, a group of library and information professionals working in some way with Germanic collections. I am an editor of CULIB, a newsletter for staff at the University of Cambridge . My conclusion is that networks are everywhere. We should not forget that, in this online digital age, not every network to which we belong will have an online space.
Which leads me on nicely to tomorrow night's CPD23 meet-up. We can network with each other in reality as well as online. True, online networking overcomes barriers of travel and cost. However, reality networking is crucial to development and must not be forgotten as an important tool.
Finally, today one delegate asked the conference how a network is expected to survive once there is no longer funding. Answers ranged from strong leadership to formalised sturctures. However, it is my honest opinion that networks do survive without funding, both formally and informally, online and offline. All we need is a group of committed individuals with vision and focus who support and inspire each other.
Today I attended the LIS DREaM conference launch at the British Library. In our breakout session, a lively discussion took place on the topic of networking and sustaining collaboration. One of the questions raised concerned motivation: who is motivated to not only contribute to these online networks but also to lead the action in these networks? Any network needs motivated leaders who are able to rouse and inspire other members. Networks tend to come together due to a shared interest or area of expertise. For example, LAT concerns people across sectors involved in information skills teaching whereas LISNPN concerns people from all sectors but only if they happen to be a new professional. Are we able to communicate across sectors and stages of our careers? If we can do this, could we start to move to the next phase of cross-discipline networking?
There are formal and informal networks, online and in the real world. This got me thinking about the other networks that I am involved with, ones that don't happen in the online sphere but rather in the physical space.
I am a member of the Career Development Group committee. CDG is a network of professionals at all stages of their career from all sectors. I am a member of the German Studies Library Group, a group of library and information professionals working in some way with Germanic collections. I am an editor of CULIB, a newsletter for staff at the University of Cambridge . My conclusion is that networks are everywhere. We should not forget that, in this online digital age, not every network to which we belong will have an online space.
Which leads me on nicely to tomorrow night's CPD23 meet-up. We can network with each other in reality as well as online. True, online networking overcomes barriers of travel and cost. However, reality networking is crucial to development and must not be forgotten as an important tool.
Finally, today one delegate asked the conference how a network is expected to survive once there is no longer funding. Answers ranged from strong leadership to formalised sturctures. However, it is my honest opinion that networks do survive without funding, both formally and informally, online and offline. All we need is a group of committed individuals with vision and focus who support and inspire each other.
Monday, 18 July 2011
RSS and All That Jazz
This week in the cpd23 programme, we are covering Thing 4: current awareness.
I really don't have much to say about this one. I actively use Twitter.com in order to keep up to date professionally and I also follow some celebrity-type people. The debate as to whether a Twitter presence should be purely professional or whether it should show our rounded personalities has been had many times and will probably continue to be a topic of hot debate. For me, I walk a middle line. I tend to keep things professional but I am not averse to having an exchange with a fellow professional about their cat's odd habits. Twitter is primarily a way to keep up with breaking news and events within our profession.
RSS feeds have been a staple part of my professional life for many years now, although I tend not to use them for websites of personal interest as I enjoy browsing in my leisure time. Professionally, the amount of sites, journals and blogs that I try to keep up to date with would only be possible through RSS feeds. It is a great invention. We can pull everything together into one reader. We can even categorise our reader to make it even more useful. And yet, I still have 400 unread items in my RSS reader. Whilst it is indispensable to have the technology to gather everything in one place, there is still the problem of having the time to sit down and read everything!
Pushnote is something to which I'll return at a later date.
I really don't have much to say about this one. I actively use Twitter.com in order to keep up to date professionally and I also follow some celebrity-type people. The debate as to whether a Twitter presence should be purely professional or whether it should show our rounded personalities has been had many times and will probably continue to be a topic of hot debate. For me, I walk a middle line. I tend to keep things professional but I am not averse to having an exchange with a fellow professional about their cat's odd habits. Twitter is primarily a way to keep up with breaking news and events within our profession.
RSS feeds have been a staple part of my professional life for many years now, although I tend not to use them for websites of personal interest as I enjoy browsing in my leisure time. Professionally, the amount of sites, journals and blogs that I try to keep up to date with would only be possible through RSS feeds. It is a great invention. We can pull everything together into one reader. We can even categorise our reader to make it even more useful. And yet, I still have 400 unread items in my RSS reader. Whilst it is indispensable to have the technology to gather everything in one place, there is still the problem of having the time to sit down and read everything!
Pushnote is something to which I'll return at a later date.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
I no haz Brand, I haz a presence
The concept of "brand" to me conjures up many things, none of which I would like to apply to me as a person. I have an online presence, an online space. Whilst I understand the concept of having a stable "brand identity" across all platforms used, I can't say that I feel it is necessary.
We are all people who have at least two sides to our personalities: our professional self and our personal self. Some of us are mothers or fathers, we are all someone's son or daughter, we could be a Brown Owl or a hockey coach. We all have different interests and different obsessions. We watch television programmes, we consider ourselves to have a political position, we read books, we travel to different places, we like different colours - I could go on. The point is that we are all different multi-faceted people who cannot be reduced down to a brand which attempts to encapsulate our entire personalities in two or three concepts. And I do not want to be. Of course we have to be careful and mindful when we post anything online. We can do this whilst retaining our complex individuality.
I have an online presence, yes. But a brand? I don't think I have got a brand. My blog's template represents my love of inky colours, however it also represents the fact that only these colours were available in this template on Blogger. My twitter name was chosen because I really like the name Lottie although no one calls me that in the "real" world despite my attempts to encourage people to use it a few years ago. It never caught on - it just sounded odd in reality. My various professional profiles all tend to say the same things about my professional interests. My Facebook is my only truly personal space online where I shed my professional skin and communicate solely with friends. My cat however is mentioned everywhere as it is impossible for me to separate any facet of myself from his presence (he would get grumpy and pull a LoL-cat pose...)
So essentially these are my feelings about brands. In theory, I can see why it is a helpful idea. Yet the reduction of the complex individual to a couple of specific traits troubles me. I'll stick with my online presence.
We are all people who have at least two sides to our personalities: our professional self and our personal self. Some of us are mothers or fathers, we are all someone's son or daughter, we could be a Brown Owl or a hockey coach. We all have different interests and different obsessions. We watch television programmes, we consider ourselves to have a political position, we read books, we travel to different places, we like different colours - I could go on. The point is that we are all different multi-faceted people who cannot be reduced down to a brand which attempts to encapsulate our entire personalities in two or three concepts. And I do not want to be. Of course we have to be careful and mindful when we post anything online. We can do this whilst retaining our complex individuality.
I have an online presence, yes. But a brand? I don't think I have got a brand. My blog's template represents my love of inky colours, however it also represents the fact that only these colours were available in this template on Blogger. My twitter name was chosen because I really like the name Lottie although no one calls me that in the "real" world despite my attempts to encourage people to use it a few years ago. It never caught on - it just sounded odd in reality. My various professional profiles all tend to say the same things about my professional interests. My Facebook is my only truly personal space online where I shed my professional skin and communicate solely with friends. My cat however is mentioned everywhere as it is impossible for me to separate any facet of myself from his presence (he would get grumpy and pull a LoL-cat pose...)
So essentially these are my feelings about brands. In theory, I can see why it is a helpful idea. Yet the reduction of the complex individual to a couple of specific traits troubles me. I'll stick with my online presence.
Monday, 20 June 2011
CPD23 - Things 1 and 2: why take part?
Why am I taking part in cpd23? Well, there are many answers to that question. After the success of cam23 last year, where we all learned about new tools and developed our links with some really interesting people, I am keen to see the same success again but with a specific focus on continuing professional development.
CPD is something that we should all do and that we should all make time for. It is our responsibility, no one else’s. If we engage with the profession, we get so much more out of our careers and we see how far we can develop if we push ourselves. The sense of community last summer was incredible, an entire online blogging presence comprised of Cambridge librarians who all know the issues we face. This summer, I hope we can retain the sense of community by having a CPD focus with people from all over the world! The one thing that unites us all is our genuine desire to develop ourselves professionally. I hope that this will shine through.
I myself am a New Professional (capital N, capital P!) I am also New Professionals Support Officer for the eastern region (via CILIP’s Career Development Group) – look out for our great events (shameless plug!) I am currently working towards Chartership and as such I am leaping on to CPD opportunities! I hope that we will get a real sense of community through diversity during cpd23 - by engaging with the profession through CPD, we enrich the profession itself and develop ourselves in the process.
Blogging is definitely more interesting and rewarding when we engage with the blogs of others. I sense that my blogroll is going to get a whole lot longer this summer!
CPD is something that we should all do and that we should all make time for. It is our responsibility, no one else’s. If we engage with the profession, we get so much more out of our careers and we see how far we can develop if we push ourselves. The sense of community last summer was incredible, an entire online blogging presence comprised of Cambridge librarians who all know the issues we face. This summer, I hope we can retain the sense of community by having a CPD focus with people from all over the world! The one thing that unites us all is our genuine desire to develop ourselves professionally. I hope that this will shine through.
I myself am a New Professional (capital N, capital P!) I am also New Professionals Support Officer for the eastern region (via CILIP’s Career Development Group) – look out for our great events (shameless plug!) I am currently working towards Chartership and as such I am leaping on to CPD opportunities! I hope that we will get a real sense of community through diversity during cpd23 - by engaging with the profession through CPD, we enrich the profession itself and develop ourselves in the process.
Blogging is definitely more interesting and rewarding when we engage with the blogs of others. I sense that my blogroll is going to get a whole lot longer this summer!
DREaMing of Research Methodologies
Finding out that I’d been selected to receive a sponsored place at the LIS DREaM launch conference on July 19th 2011 got me thinking about research methodologies within library and information science research. I have always been aware of the core methodologies used through interaction with research articles and yet it was only through my MSc dissertation that I came to understand the limitations of current research methodologies.
My dissertation supervisor gave me a clear choice when it came to planning my research project: quantitative or qualitative. Do I want to find out how many people do something in order to have some hard data or conversely do I want to find out why people act in the ways that they do? Well, really, don’t we need to know both? In a time of financial austerity, it becomes increasingly important to the profession as a whole that LIS research is used to prove our worth and value to society. This is tricky with libraries though; their primary value is not financial. A librarian changes lives in many ways, from the schoolchild who can find a new world of books in the local public library to the student being shown a vitally important subject database for the first time. This value is hard to capture and pin down in hard financial data, but we need to do it in order to justify ourselves in our post-recession society.
We need to start to think about our services in different ways. We need to become marketers. If we can find different methodologies to use within our research, we can begin to pin down the qualitative aspects of the profession and quantify them. We need to look to the methodologies of other disciplines and be creative. If a librarian helps a child to read and gives her a space in which to do her homework quietly, a link must be made between that librarian’s help and that child’s educational record. An investigation into the level of library resource use (both physically and virtually) of a group of final year undergraduates and their respective final degree classifications could provide some highly useful information.
The DREaM project also aims to develop a formal network of UK-based LIS researchers. So many of us now are finding relevant and interesting papers through retweets on Twitter; research information is being disseminated amongst so many informal channels that it can be difficult to know where to look for accredited LIS researchers. Hopefully a network will give all LIS practitioners a starting place to begin looking at professional research.
Attending a conference launch event based around the development of research excellence and methods has made me more determined than ever to think more creatively about the methodologies that we could apply to LIS research. We need to make the link between social and financial value more and more explicit at this point in time. For me certainly, I’m not entirely comfortable with valuing what we do in financial terms, but to some it is vital as a measure of need. We must all of us step out of our comfort zone!
My dissertation supervisor gave me a clear choice when it came to planning my research project: quantitative or qualitative. Do I want to find out how many people do something in order to have some hard data or conversely do I want to find out why people act in the ways that they do? Well, really, don’t we need to know both? In a time of financial austerity, it becomes increasingly important to the profession as a whole that LIS research is used to prove our worth and value to society. This is tricky with libraries though; their primary value is not financial. A librarian changes lives in many ways, from the schoolchild who can find a new world of books in the local public library to the student being shown a vitally important subject database for the first time. This value is hard to capture and pin down in hard financial data, but we need to do it in order to justify ourselves in our post-recession society.
We need to start to think about our services in different ways. We need to become marketers. If we can find different methodologies to use within our research, we can begin to pin down the qualitative aspects of the profession and quantify them. We need to look to the methodologies of other disciplines and be creative. If a librarian helps a child to read and gives her a space in which to do her homework quietly, a link must be made between that librarian’s help and that child’s educational record. An investigation into the level of library resource use (both physically and virtually) of a group of final year undergraduates and their respective final degree classifications could provide some highly useful information.
The DREaM project also aims to develop a formal network of UK-based LIS researchers. So many of us now are finding relevant and interesting papers through retweets on Twitter; research information is being disseminated amongst so many informal channels that it can be difficult to know where to look for accredited LIS researchers. Hopefully a network will give all LIS practitioners a starting place to begin looking at professional research.
Attending a conference launch event based around the development of research excellence and methods has made me more determined than ever to think more creatively about the methodologies that we could apply to LIS research. We need to make the link between social and financial value more and more explicit at this point in time. For me certainly, I’m not entirely comfortable with valuing what we do in financial terms, but to some it is vital as a measure of need. We must all of us step out of our comfort zone!
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
NPID2011
The New Professionals Information Day held at Ridgmount Street on June 3rd 2011 was an interesting and useful day, at the very least because it gave me the chance to look around CILIP’s London office. I picked up hints and tips from Alex Wilson-Campbell’s useful CV and interviewing workshop. I found out about new ways to get involved professionally. I met a group of people who value CPD as highly as I do, I learnt about sponsorship places for conferences, and I had the opportunity to network with lots of new faces. I can even cross some people off my “know on Twitter but not met in person” list.
This blog is going to be reflective; its purpose is to make me into a more reflective practitioner. Therefore this entry will not be a chronological description of events but rather an explanation of why I found the sessions as valuable as I did. The theme of the day was one of professional development and professional engagement. I think that these two processes definitely feed into each other; to develop ourselves professionally, we must be engaged with our profession. The more that we put into our professional body by volunteering and getting involved, the more we get from those membership subs. The central problem lies in trying to convince others of the value of such engagement.
Bethan’s session on getting involved allowed us to investigate in groups the type of engagement activity that we are involved in, why we do it, and what barriers we face. It was interesting for me to see that many people were not formally professionally engaged (quite a few delegates were not CILIP members), but they were engaging with the profession via social media and other grass-roots groups such as LIKE and LISNPN. I am a passionate advocate of Twitter but I am also passionate in my support of professional bodies such as CILIP. If we are not all CILIP members, advocacy becomes an even harder task. Trying to convince people of the benefits of CILIP membership transported me back to some of the barriers to development that I often encounter. If the profession is not valued by its practitioners, who will value what we do? Lack of value and lack of support are two huge barriers to development.
The other strand of Bethan’s session focussed on these barriers to engagement and development. Fear, financial pressures, location, employers: all these and more were named as barriers to professional engagement. Yet the overriding barrier was motivation: why should I put the time into this? This answer? Because it benefits us individually and as a profession. Through this event alone, I feel part of a new network of newly met professionals. We can build these networks together to develop ourselves, ultimately to improve our employability. Also, it is quite fun.
The other hugely inspirational part of the day centred on Maria Cotera’s session. She developed herself by just saying yes to things: yes I will join your committee! She works with librarians from all over the world. She travels in order to understand the ways in which libraries and library services in other parts of the world function. She helped to bring knowledge to African women to stop the spread of HIV. She works with IFLA to promote the rights of women throughout the world. She told us about her work with the African Prisons Project
The day was an experience that I would definitely recommend to any new professionals, whether you’re just starting your library course or going through the Chartership process. The networking opportunities allowed me to make new contacts and the motto of the day was truly inspirational: just say yes! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sponsored conference place application to write.
This blog is going to be reflective; its purpose is to make me into a more reflective practitioner. Therefore this entry will not be a chronological description of events but rather an explanation of why I found the sessions as valuable as I did. The theme of the day was one of professional development and professional engagement. I think that these two processes definitely feed into each other; to develop ourselves professionally, we must be engaged with our profession. The more that we put into our professional body by volunteering and getting involved, the more we get from those membership subs. The central problem lies in trying to convince others of the value of such engagement.
Bethan’s session on getting involved allowed us to investigate in groups the type of engagement activity that we are involved in, why we do it, and what barriers we face. It was interesting for me to see that many people were not formally professionally engaged (quite a few delegates were not CILIP members), but they were engaging with the profession via social media and other grass-roots groups such as LIKE and LISNPN. I am a passionate advocate of Twitter but I am also passionate in my support of professional bodies such as CILIP. If we are not all CILIP members, advocacy becomes an even harder task. Trying to convince people of the benefits of CILIP membership transported me back to some of the barriers to development that I often encounter. If the profession is not valued by its practitioners, who will value what we do? Lack of value and lack of support are two huge barriers to development.
The other strand of Bethan’s session focussed on these barriers to engagement and development. Fear, financial pressures, location, employers: all these and more were named as barriers to professional engagement. Yet the overriding barrier was motivation: why should I put the time into this? This answer? Because it benefits us individually and as a profession. Through this event alone, I feel part of a new network of newly met professionals. We can build these networks together to develop ourselves, ultimately to improve our employability. Also, it is quite fun.
The other hugely inspirational part of the day centred on Maria Cotera’s session. She developed herself by just saying yes to things: yes I will join your committee! She works with librarians from all over the world. She travels in order to understand the ways in which libraries and library services in other parts of the world function. She helped to bring knowledge to African women to stop the spread of HIV. She works with IFLA to promote the rights of women throughout the world. She told us about her work with the African Prisons Project
The day was an experience that I would definitely recommend to any new professionals, whether you’re just starting your library course or going through the Chartership process. The networking opportunities allowed me to make new contacts and the motto of the day was truly inspirational: just say yes! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sponsored conference place application to write.
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