CPD23 Thing 13 – A Tool Needs a (current) Use to be Useful

 Installation Fatigue and Use

Yep I’ve got this so I’d better just admit it. This Thing is all about online collaboration tools – Google Docs, Dropbox, wikis.

Google Docs (bless it) is already ‘there’ I now have so much Google stuff going on, Dropbox was the usual pain to downloading to one pc, downloading to phone,  sync’ing (should that be ‘that sinking feeling’ instead?)…  There’s the whole looking through how they all work, and then there’s the it’s a week later and I’ve found no actual need that they supply for me currently.  Which is making me feel a bit guilty.

A Tool Needs a  (current) Use to be Useful (and appreciated)

So, I understand that a lot of folk find Google Docs and Dropbox incredibly useful, I’ve read through various blogs, I see that.  Just saying that for me currently I don’t need it. Now next week that might cheerily change if there’s suddenly something I need to collaborate on with lots of folk outwith my own organisation. I can actually think of things in future I’m intending doing that they might be useful for for instance. And I can think of other people’s Google Docs documents they’ve shared that I’ve accessed in the last few months and found useful on various subjects. So I’m not saying never re me creating stuff on it. Someone mentioned uploading presentations to Dropbox as alternative / added insurance to memory stick carrying for instance, that I could see myself doing…

But Wikis are inordinately lovely

Wikis I shall cheerfully admit to liking a good deal.  We have a staff handbook one for work which I don’t populate or up-date nearly as often as I probably should and it took me a long time to really use it much.  But I up-date it a lot more this year than before, and more regularly, so we’re building a proper relationship finally. And any time my Asst Lbn goes on hol for a length of time I find myself in it and glad for it as I remind myself how something works that normally she does. I also use other people’s wikis for various work purposes and like those too.

CPD23 Thing 9 – From ‘ugh’ to ‘ah’ in an afternoon through Evernote

The Moral Of The Story part 1…(!)

This is a graphic tale of Evernote. Starting in unconvinced mode, going through very definite impatience and dislike, and ending up finding it incredibly useful in the space of about three hours.

‘Unconvinced’

I’m still running behind CPD23-wise despite heraculean catch-up mode last week, on the good side this means I can bring up lots of other folks’ blogs and see what they thought as part of exploring things.  Most of what I looked at I was less than convinced by. However, there was one by The Travelin’ Librarian about using it for recipes which seemed a useful application for that person, and I liked joeyanne’s tweet about using it to bring together possible things to do on holiday. These made me think the Web Clipper at least had possibilities if I could figure out what for.

Impatience and dislike

So this afternoon (Saturday) I somewhat dutifully set about creating yet more accounts, usernames, passwords, downloading things (took me ages to figure out Web Clipper downloaded automatically if you’re on IE, kept trying to get elephants appearing on the browser which still don’t for all it works!), watching vid’s and reading get started material, sync’ing Evernote on pc and Android phone… Still with no idea what on earth I could actually usefully use it for. By this point as ‘woman with the cold’ not feeling that great to start with I was feeling royally hacked off and sighing mightily.

Coughs – it’s incredibly useful actually…

I was thinking about the recipes use and the holidays one and trying to think of what a current equivalent for me would be and it suddenly struck me.  Which is why I have two busy NoteBooks now. I’m essentially using it as a database application but for edited and annotated notes of web page extracts mostly.  So one is lots of different courses I fancy (all ancient history, culture and languages) from four different institutions, all nicely tagged by institution, mode, term, subjects. It’s wonderful, I can bring up my precise options by tags for, say, Tuesday, or evenings, or Akaddian even, on a search I can see precisely what dates day courses are or search on lecturer... I can bring up all the booking details…  All my options and logistics in the one place and searchable. The second NoteBook is ancient history exhibitions and details of venues, travel options etc, I want to get to. All of these I can easily share very quickly with friends for jointly planned visits or course suggestions. It definitely beats lots of very general bookmarks to PDF prospectuses and long emails about see page x and the course is.... I can see a third NoteBook for holidays getting added very shortly…

What else could it be used for?

Okay, I haven’t used it for a work purpose yet. But gradually I’m starting to think of a few. I suspect it might be useful for keeping training courses and suggestions together for instance. Or for new acquisition possibilities by subject.

I like the idea of it being able to read images from photo’s and handwriting, so I’ll probably experiment with that. I’m wondering for example if I took images of completed training attendance sheets for different training events and changed the way I currently do them, could I bring up from that precisely who has attended what and when? There’s training sessions next week so I’m going to see if it would work.

I’m also thinking linking to Twitter is potentially useful, to be able to send tweets direct into Evernote, so I’ve set that up but not tried it with anything yet.

The Moral Of The Story part 2…

Is that it’s useful to look at both sides (blogs on all angles because it’s different perspectives) but it comes down to is it personally something useful to you, and sometimes you really have to dig into something a bit to know, things can occur with exploration that weren’t initially obvious.

CPD23 Thing 12 – I no longer have to be there, but I have the choice to choose to

The role of social media - Facilitating fluid interactions

Social media facilitates fluid interactions, it’s about giving more choice and convenience to interaction.  Some people migrate towards online communication, others perhaps to physical meet-ups governed by tyrannies of venue, location, time, cost.  But online has its own tyrannies of time and place. Social media is an interaction at best, but even if it’s just ‘monitoring’ it still takes time, it’s constant, and it’s reliant on the speed and type of internet access you have and the skills you have in using all the tools, keeping up to date with rapidly changing technology… And now a fair amount of people do both for different things perhaps or just shunt between very flexibly, social media and physical, but as per their choice and convenience.

The Use With Caution Bit - Online is loud (but silent)

The online chatter is loud, but a lot of it is repetitions, and created by the same small amount of people. That would be the same in a physical environment. But in a physical one you can see who’s there, how they’re reacting. Online we show the version of ourselves we want or are comfortable with and It’s impossible to know the eventual reach of a communication and who saw it. There’s a lot of volume, it can be very fast moving…

The Freedom Bit - I no longer have to be there’ (wherever ‘there’ is)

One of the prime advantages of online for me remains that it’s becoming more and more possible to attend things virtually instead of physically, or at least get a fair amount of information from events distilled to you. That might be Twitter in tweet ‘bites’ of information without much context, it might be a good blog if you’re lucky, or just maybe you can attend virtually the whole thing or it’s been recorded or streamed etc. Or perhaps there’s a webpage or tool that seeks to bring all the reporting sources together on it, link it to SlideShare presentations from, be a communal wiki for the event, etc (a lot of conferences seem to be facilitating this approach this summer using crowd sourcing through GoogleDocs for instance). There’s been a major increase in all these kinds of things in the last two years. It takes away the tyranny of place, of budget, of time to an extent, it makes the world of the event accessible afterwards.

You don’t have to choose one thing or the other - Half-way house interactions

Another interesting development is the recent burst of ‘half-way’ houses, the interface between the physical and the online and between official and unofficial.  So for example at Umbrella (physical traditional conference i.e, published curated formal programme and speakers known in advance) there was a poster session on LibTeachMeets, a workshop on mash-up’s…. LibTeachMeets and Mash-up’s are, like LibCampUK, basically calls for participators to offer up very fast content sessions under a topic (narrow or very broad) at a free event, the ‘programme’ being an evolving thing that may come out of e.g. wiki, or of offers.  Really eclectic, almost pop-up events, sustained by the enthusiasm for having one and attending, highly informal. Or at least that’s what I think they sound like from what I’ve read about, heard… Going to my first physical one in October in Brum for LibCampUK – because I’ve been curious about them for years, ‘unconferences’ as they get called. I suspect they’re all quite specific to themselves. But with the likes of libcampuk11 it was fascinating to note that a prime reason for people going was to ‘meet’ each other physically from the existing online community. The attendance list reads like ‘the online community’ / ‘existing long-term activists’ – there is crossover between the two, but they can often be quite distinct too. CPD23 is another example of this as has been noted, the new ‘online’ community it creates arranging physical meet-ups. Lots of them. Because folk in different localities just felt like it.

So many different ways to do CPD or form networks

There’s also the purely online events, things like #LibChatUK which takes place based on a topic with an agenda, is moderated, happens over Twitter, gets summarised, promoted online….  I followed the last one after the event and realised that a lot of rules don’t apply to this kind of thing. You could just join in half-way through in the way you wouldn’t enter a room physically for an event at that point for example. So, a plethora of options these days on how you do CPD, where and when and what suits you.  These supplement and add options onto existing more traditional vehicles for.

Has CPD23 changed my social media interactions / CPD / community?

I think it is a bit re the interactions though it’s an evolving process.  This blog is Mighty compared to any I’ve ever started before and got two posts into (2 of them). The schedule and having ‘Things’ really helps keep the focus and momentum. I am gradually becoming less cautious about it and adding more details to profiles, linking things up more. I think I’m tweeting less than ever (!) but then this is a time-consuming process, CPD23, and blogging, in its own way, and I have very little time. It’s not changed my CPD or use of social media for, been doing that a lot for a good while now.  But I think as the programme goes on it is influencing it and changes will appear more. Has it enlarged my community? Not really. I read a lot of the CPD23 blog posts and hugely enjoy them, and find them interesting and their owners. But again I have so little time not really made contact with many, already have a fairly huge demanding network (though a different one to the CPD23 one). Will try and do better on that and make some comments, say hello, issue the odd invitation etc. Good to do to show appreciation to people for their content. Because I do enjoy, appreciate, find it interesting.  Just don’t find the time to say so.

CPD23 Thing 8: Why I know I should like calendars but don’t quite

The good thing about being a bit behind…

This week I’ve read lots of CPD23 blog posts on Google Calendar (those for, against, those who quite like but have something else already that’s more suitable) trying to get up a bit of enthusiasm for it.  The posts overall were fairly variable in their thoughts as to how useful or not it would be for them and why.  However I read about a lot of functionality that I hadn’t realised it had (especially through woodsiegirl and bethanr) - and some of that sounded rather intriguing or fun. At least enough that I decided to create myself one for a look and have a play about with it for a week.

My Concerns

Disproportionate time spent / losing focus on what’s important to actually accomplish

 I have set myself up a Google Calendar (well, ahem, actually I’ve got 7 separate ones running, and then I found myself starting to fill things in, and colour code, and….). This is when a sharp memory hit me of my teenage self around school exam time when I had a wonderful ability to make up more and more elaborate – colour-coded – study schedules that – you’ve got it – never happened so I then had to make up (groan) the ‘next gen’ version…. It was cyclical.

Too Much Horror

Frankly if I look at everything I’m scheduled to do and what I need to do at the same time you’ll find me in a quivering heap under my chair. Yes I schedule things in. But other than that I deal with surviving the day at hand and the week it’s in. I rarely look further. It’s bad for me. Concentrate on now is fine as long as I know the link is there to overall goals in it. Similarly I rarely do major task lists, because it’s just going to totally depress me and I’d rather spend the time doing something about the most pressing things on it or, if I’m having a bad brain dead no time day, doing small things from it.  The back of my head is my To Do list and it tells me what needs done and shunts between mental lists for all kinds of different things.  I actually tend to use the notes section on my phone and just jot things down for the day on the bus and then wipe what’s done at the end of the day or carry over.

I already have other things

In work everyone is on an electronic calendar system that can be shared, used to check people’s availability schedule in all meetings, book rooms, alerts, updates… So that’s what I use in work, and I can log into my work desktop from any internet connection anywhere. I also have a paper diary which is convenient for when I’m not online.  So how many calendar systems do I need or want?

Fun v Practicality

Don’t get me wrong, as a system I like it. This week I’ve created it, added lots of calendars, sync’ed it to my Android phone so I can update it locally and then sync it at home… I know various folk have said they’ve managed to sync other calendar systems they use to Google Calendar so they’re not separate entities of repeating information, but I can’t think there’s a way to do that through our firewalls. I love the alerts my phone sends me, they’re cute, but they’re not useful really because my phone is in my bag on silent, and I’m not on Google Calendar in work, I’m on my work calendar which has already sent me a reminder that I’ve seen!

Conclusion

I think I’ll keep this going for a bit longer as an experiment, but as an out-of-office calendar only with very key work things added in (e.g. if I happen to be in another geographical office all day).  I do like having multiple calendars for all my complicated strands of life through it and being able to view each one separately in pretty colours as well as integrated into one and to set headline tasks against them. I like the link to maps against location information. I like the idea of being able to link tweets into it. Out of the office my phone’s on all the time so I’ll see all the reminders and it’s easy to sync it once I’m home for editing and creating on the bus!

But I need to be very clear with myself on it, basic necessary detail only. Help, not time hindrance to getting things actually done. And if it works the paper diary stops next year, definite limit to how many calendars I want and need, two is quite enough.

CPD23 Thing 6 – Integral to Life (or sometimes to the technical problem!)

The Good and The Bad

I started typing this on train while consulting my smartphone on precisely what I’m supposed to be typing on (well I’m a bit behind, yes, I know!) because it was connecting better than my dongle was.  While simultaneously arranging cinema with my brother and checking Twitter up-dates.  This more or less tells me that yes I like my online networks even if I’m not great at the technicalities (which tend to harass me totally trying to sort out before I get there finally in a nerveless exhausted heap gibbering gently) or quite as addicted to it as some. Well, I SAY not addicted, but you haven’t seen me when I lose internet connection or my ICT goes pear-shaped at home.  Major trauma is not in it until everything’s calm again, because it’s become integral to life for lots of different things.

We’re given six networks to consider.  I think I pretty much covered my use of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter in Thing 3 on personal online branding, but quick summaries on all…

LinkedIn -

I need to pay more serious attention to,  I’m there, I’m a member of several groups, I accept people nicely who invite me to connect to them… but my profile’s out of date and mostly I use it to follow the odd discussion (and sometimes to post), and my professional Twitter is (ho hum) ‘linked in’ to it but I don’t tweet from that account much.  My LinkedIn people tend to be lawyers, CILIP folk or law librarians. That kind of sums it up. I do need to do a serious up-date on it (see Thing 3). I’ve started this week just up-dating the odd section and adding things.

Facebook -

I use socially (though am a member of various professional groups on it), or used to a good deal, I find it incredibly slow these days and I’m very busy. The fact it’s always been evenings I’ve principally been able to get at it when I’m just too tired for it doesn’t help either. So I’m getting nudged a lot by Facebook this last year or so which frankly I find annoying. Even uploading photos to it takes forever these days, I haven’t got forever available.  I get incredibly frustrated by that.

Twitter -

I have the professional / CILIP identity I feel rather careful about so don’t tweet nearly as much from as I do from my personal one which goes to very few people and has nothing professional or work per se on it. I use my professional one a lot, but more reactively, reading other people’s posts, following interesting links…, tweet a lot less from it.

CILIP Communities -

I do use and always have, currently various CILIP blogs I have an interest in are brought together through it which is useful, documents I need to access on it, or there might be an interesting conversation someone has told me about. But I tend to go to it for very specific purposes. I really need to up-date my profile on it.

LAT Network -

The LAT Network is a totally new one on me and it’s fascinating, enjoyed having a good rummage about on it, especially as I’ve been thinking about TeachMeets recently after chatting to the person responsible for the Poster Session on at Umbrella, but it’s too teaching orientated for me although I really enjoyed my look through it.

LISPN -

The description of on the Thing blog surprised me, ‘new professional’ is indeed a broad term, but I didn’t realise quite how broad it was being interpreted. On the basis that you’re as young as you think you are I still think I’m more likely to answer to Methusalah than I am to ‘new’. But I went and I had a look through and found the current discussion thread on how far would you travel for a job really interesting.

Solutions implemented –

This week

• I got wifi installed finally at home (after moving the box about the living-room since July)
• Got my smartphone (a summer addition to life) connected to my home network.
• My Twitter accounts and Facebook properly set up on phone.

These are major achievements. I’m now emotionally exhausted for the week!

But being able to check things and up-date from anywhere at home will make it a lot likelier I’ll find the energy to post as well as read. I’m no longer chained to the kitchen table at home.

Solutions to come -

Just contemplating this list makes me glum truth to tell. I have so many lists for so many things as it is. But I've definitely made progress this week already (see list above). The things below would also constitute progress for all they'll take a bit of time and application some of them.

• Have a good look at whether I finally go data plan for external use re smartphone. My Pay As You Go costs are just too prohibitive for regular external internet connection and I never know if I’ll find someone else’s available network or not to connect to when I’m away, and I’m away a lot.
• Finish up-dating LinkedIn profile.
• Up-date Communities profile.
• Re photos time to (shriek horror) start a Flickr account.  See if that’s quicker for uploading.
• That invite gathering dust to Google+ - go have a play with it (something else I’ve been hearing about a lot in the last couple of months). But I currently doubt I have inclination or time for ‘yet another’ largescale network to keep up with.
• Look back at my Thing 3 list and check there’s nothing else outstanding on that.

Conclusion

All in all I don’t think I’ll change what I use as a result of this Thing.

But it has made me have a look through things I hadn’t known about or hadn’t explored before.

It has certainly helped giving me the  momentum to find time and nervous energy to just get various things done to improve the ‘how’ I use them best for my own convenience. 

It’s going to take longer than a week though.

CPD23 Thing 11 – Listening to the world around you for things that mean something to you

Mentoring can be official around a goal…

I probably have an incredibly wide definition of mentoring

There is structured official mentoring to do with a specific programme of work e.g. a CILIP Chartership Mentor.

But it can also be more unconventional

Mentoring doesn’t need to be intentional or even focused is what I’m arguing.

There’s things like –

Advice given kindly from strangers (a long time ago a Branch Librarian said ‘horses  for courses’ to me when not giving me a library assistant post, it was incredibly wise and it took me years to realise it)

Snatches of conversation overhead by accident (e.g. I was on a train last year and overheard a really good example of coaching re exam and job interview from one stranger to another, the technique was superb, I asked the lady about it afterwards, turned out she was a very senior business consultant)

Conversations I’m part of and the dialogue that arises in that (a good friend said I’m diffuse last year, do everything instead of focusing on one thing and pushing it forward, which is all true and I’m still thinking that through)

Things that stick in my mind from presentations or things that I read (e.g. one of the CPD23 blog entries is coming to mind as the latest I’m adding onto my list).

There’s the personal examples of people you meet… (I was listening to a non-LIS person take me through his career path last week, all really clearly mapped out what he intended to do at what point and why and where he was relative to it all – it was fascinating)

Thing is we don’t know what impacts we have on a lot of people, sometimes yes it’s on purpose, but a lot of the time we positively help each other without even knowing it.

Official  / Unofficial is maybe a context specific choice at its most flexible

I technically mentor ‘officially’, but to be honest I’m utterly avoiding it just now. Because I know I lack the time to do it the way I would normally choose and saying ‘yes’ just because I want to is unfair, a miracle doesn’t then happen to clear time in result, I wish it would. I think official mentoring is important, and it can be a lot of fun and it feels really good when folk get through. I probably do it in odd ways, very rare for it to be in the same sector or organisation as me, I like variety, I like hearing about different places and contexts.

But there’s a lot of unofficial mentoring out there too. It just works in a different way. It’s about listening to the world around you and picking up on the things that feel relevant to you and thinking them through. And perhaps that’ll have an obvious application or result at the end of it, perhaps not.

People are good for each other

If you’ve ever been influenced by anyone in a positive way or one that really made you think, then I’d argue that’s a very specific instance of mentoring whether you’d recognise them in the street or not and whether you ‘know’ them or not, or whether they ever say anything again that has that impact on you or whether they realise that they did at all.

CPD23 Thing 7 – The Frog Chorus sings All Together Now

Yes we’re onto Paul McCartney referencing and a rather daft animated video that went along with it – of frogs – in chorus – naturally!

The Benefits

I’ve been intensely involved in professional associations for almost fifteen years now. For me they’re about the network, the knowledge, the opportunities, and amassing some very good friends. Generally speaking there has been three ones throughout my career that I’ve stayed with, and different levels of involvement between them.  I’m fond of them.

The SLLG (Scottish Law Librarians Group)

From a purely sectoral viewpoint I’m a long-time member of The Scottish Law Librarians Group – which has always been a convivial local group, a source of support, networking, training, bursaries, newsletter, but above all a lot of my very good friends are in it who keep each other sane, give encouragement, exchange information about useful sectoral developments… I don’t get as often as I once did physically but I always enjoy it when I do.  It’s by far the cheapest professional annual subscription around at fifteen quid a year. It’s been good to me down the years so I try and be good to it back, whether it’s giving other people’s time(!!), writing, course compiling suggesting contacts… Scottish law librarians tend to be solo or very small teams for lots of offices, before email especially it could be incredibly isolating, so the Group has always been important. Especially for new entrants into the sector or geographical area.  It’s also a good source for jobs in better years and climates, and for support and advice in lousier financial ones. People in much the same situation who get together, look after each other. It’s therapeutic!

BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians)

Again on the sectoral front, but wider geographically based, there’s BIALL, The British & Irish Association of Law Librarians, which again I’ve been a member of for a long time. I’m fond of BIALL, again, it benefits me, so I’ll try and give back in wee bits, and they are wee bits, but it’d usually be doing the odd presentation for them etc, one-off things that I can fit in.  BIALL is a very good source of wider knowledge for the UK and abroad, a larger network of expertise to call on.  That network last helped me last week, the BIALL email list as an entry point into the Commonwealth Association of Law Libraries email list and a lovely helpful person. BIALL is fairly international and it has a lot of subject specialists, it can be a lifesaver. It also has a very good journal, a very useful wiki, and a large annual conference I’d love to be able to get to, I try various devious ploys but they rarely come off. It’s also getting more involved in advocacy just now through being one of the participants in the On Firmer Ground blog.

CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals)

This has been my main professional involvement for around fourteen years now.  I love that it’s cross –sector, that it’s about the whole information profession with all the differences and commonalities, that it’s primarily UK but also international, that it does a huge variety of activities on all subjects under the information sun for all interests (e.g. through the Special Interest Groups), that it supports the profession and the sector and fights for it. I love that it supports individual careers and development and interests, whether through qualifications, or through reading the journal or one of the books. Through CILIP involvement I’ve done so many interesting things that my job wouldn’t have given me, I’ve developed courses, conferences, journal edited, a lot of writing, presentations, mentored, lots of qualifications, done committees or working groups on every subject it sometimes feels. I have done a whole lot of things at higher and higher level in a fairly short space of time that I often had no conception I could even do. Take a deep breath and leap has always been a fairly good mantra. These days I’m Leader of CILIP Council, so mostly I discuss overall organisational governance, risk, finance, strategy, policy, advocacy, and every other subject going in its season as Chair of Council and head of governance.  Some of the things I loved and used to do in CILIP there simply isn’t much space for time-wise anymore and I do miss them, but I still believe in them, and what I do helps enable them to happen in other places within CILIP.  CILIP is a good place to be.

Finding bodies that complement each other in the mix I want

It’s back to The Frog Chorus, I believe in All Together Now. So I do CILIP as overall cross-sector organisation and professional body, because there’s more that binds us than separates us and lots to be learned from each other. But I also do SLLG and BIALL because I find them valuable for me too as a career law librarian.  The two things complement each other and cross over in some aspects (lots of law firm bod’s in CILIP too), but also have their distinct differences. I like all three for some of the same, and lots of different, reasons.

Find the core and vary it slightly occasionally

I don’t have time for other organisations much, which is a shame. For many years I had a policy CILIP-wise of being a member of seven Special Interest Groups a year and always rotating one Special Interest Group just to experience new Groups and subjects.  I don’t have the time for that number currently these days but I think the principle holds at a wider level for professional bodies generally. Identify what means something to you and benefits you, that’s the core, be a member and give something back too, but  try and regularly ‘play’ with a temporary one just to give it a try and keep changing it, just so you don’t get too set in your ways and miss something you’d have liked.  One of these days I’ll do something about my curiosity about AALL (American Association of Law Librarians) for instance….

CPD23 Thing 10 – Of habitats and how to acquire them

Habitats

I didn’t think about librarianship as a career till I was faced with a very determined Guidance (i.e. careers) Teacher in school who was determined I should be a journalist. I cast about wildly for alternatives and the penny dropped that I spent a great deal of my life in the library, I’d just never consciously thought about it before.

On the nature of advice

I had a few false starts.  There was the school year avoiding the incredibly scary Secretary who was also in charge of the school library my Careers Teacher wanted to to go see. The Library itself was great, she was just very very scary (or at least seemed so to me then).  A really nice staff member in the branch public library who told me I needed O'Grade Maths to study librarianship as a degree (urk - sound of sinking - bubbles!!). There was also the utterly lovely man in Bishopbriggs Library who didn't give me a Library Assistant job and said 'horses for courses'. These days I'd say 'test it more before you drop an idea' on most of this, I could have gone up to the Secretary, I could have checked prospectuses re courses and made some choices around that. But I still think 'horses for courses' is actually about as profound a piece of professional advice as I've ever been given.

College and University

I’d hated most aspects of school. I went to college to do a one-year SCOTVEC National Certificate in Library and Information Science in Edinburgh (paraprofessional course) and was staggered to realise I really enjoyed it all, college and course. So I enrolled for Robert Gordon’s in Aberdeen, still teaching the full-time undergraduate degree in LIS back then, and did Honours degree.

Choices ‘To’ and Choices ‘Not To’

What we react against is just as important in forming what we do as what we try to go towards. I’d wanted to go down the ‘special’ (now often called ‘workplace’) libraries route. Because it appealed, and because my uncle was a public library authority Chief Librarian. Which was good in some ways but also seemed a reason to do something slightly different.

Casting Stones Upon The Water and Watching For Ripples

I’d written to all the special libraries in Glasgow looking for unpaid summer work experience at the end of my first year of university. I wanted lots of experience to go with the degree when it came to job-hunting time, I wanted to try a few things and see what I enjoyed. I’ve always said my career would have been radically different without that, it determined everything that came after. 

Foreign lands and back yards

I’ve equally always said that I got two positive replies back, one the day after the other. I’d already accepted the first one when the second one arrived and oh how I winced. I’d accepted a ‘foreign land’ – a professional legal society library and there in front of me was a nice letter from RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama), a library I’d been into, and loved, and appealed to my love of theatre. Again, if those letters had been reversed, a very different career potentially. Because I was drawn to that end, had had college placements in Special Collections in Glasgow University Library (home to the gorgeous Scottish Theatre Archive) and in Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery Library.  But I knew from a lot of consulting The Museums Journal appointments pages in Kelvingrove just how rare museum library jobs were in Scotland.

Careers

And so I ended up in The Royal Faculty of Procurators Library hugely and totally out of my knowledge zone as nothing I needed  for it seemed to be anything I’d yet learned.  Which is an over-simplification, but truth is law is incredibly specialist as with many ‘subject’ disciplines. Thing is I got to really really enjoy it (from a starting point of barely understanding a word anyone said to me!), so I worked most of my holidays there during university, but paid this time. I focused a lot of my university work so it had a law librarianship bent, it had become the intent. I went back there for a bit after university.  Twenty years later I’m still in and out of there most weeks of my life, have very good friends there, still a member, still use them a lot as a customer. But I’d come to an uneasy conclusion, I’d decided that really you ideally needed two degrees for law librarianship, I started hankering after a law degree and I was only one year into a librarianship one!

Moving About A Bit

I haven’t much actually for the length of career.  Early on I moved a bit, all to do with wanting to be my own boss in charge of my own library and to move into law firms. It took a couple of years and a couple of changes of job and some unusual patterns of working (e.g. taking an evening job in addition that was more senior than my day-time job, taking a mornings only job thinking it would soon expand to full-time, which it did), but I made the transition. And then I wanted to do Chartership.

Adding on qualifications – Chartership and Law Degree

I still felt very new when I did my Chartership and it was an incredibly useful process for being able to detach a bit and just look at what I was doing out of the tunnel vision that getting to grips with a new job and organisation tends to bring as you try and get up to speed. But gradually I got to grips with it and I still had that feeling that ideally I wanted that law degree, more to prove a point that anything, I’d picked up an awful lot, but I didn’t have the bit of paper, and I had gaps. So in the end I decided I could keep thinking about it or I could just do it and just doing it would take less time in the end. So I spent five years doing the part-time LLB at Strathclyde University in the evenings, I was also doing a lot of professional involvements by this time.  A pattern was set that I’m still in today – work, professional commitments, study. Always frenetic!

Ways and means

However it took me nine years to do two undergraduate degrees and a lot of pressure, if I’d done a full-time LLB and then a 1 year Masters in LIS without the day job I’d have got the same academic result in a fraction of the time.  The way I look at it is I did the best I could, and I got a great deal of experience while doing it the way I did that if I’d just done the sole academic route I wouldn’t have.

And more… - Fellowship

I like doing things, I like goal focus, I’m very determined, fairly insane, stubborn. So in 2005 I finished my LLB and also submitted my CILIP Fellowship application. I like punting at windmills too, and I had an urge to submit and just see what happened. I was very aware I was very non-typical, very young, not that long Chartered comparatively, not exactly a senior professional work-wise, but I was very professionally involved and I fancied a punt at just showing it was possible for me to fulfil the criteria nonetheless.  If I didn’t get it, well then, good experience, and I’d have another go a bit later.  As it was I got through. 

And more… - Fellowship Revalidation

I’ve never been very fond of date-stamped qualifications, it’s all continuous no matter what a bit of paper may suggest, has to be.  So recently it’s been Fellowship Revalidation, first in 2008, and my second is due soon which is why I’m typing away (yet again you could perhaps say!) compiling the next Fellowship Revalidation portfolio (though mass CPD23 catch-up has slightly taken over for a few days!).

Sidenote - Why Revalidate Fellowship

Very few Fellows do Revalidation, you could say after all that effort to get through once why on earth would you want to submit yourself to it again every three years thereafter.  It’s not remotely compulsory or required after all. So many reasons, because I don’t believe in ‘dated’ qualifications, because it’s still an incredibly valuable experience every three years to sit down and really look at what you’ve done, what it means to you, the patterns in it, it helps you weigh up what you do and what next, and think about why and how it fits in with what you want.  It enables you to stand back a bit, take the surface emotion out of it, and just have a look at where you are. I’m talking about such very different things these days to what I talked about in my first portfolio for Chartership, and it wasn’t that much more than a decade ago - but the rate of change we’ve all gone through has been huge.  I’m a lot more experienced that I was back then, but the process is equally valuable still.

The Future – possibilities to play with

I’ve been in the same job for a very long time on the face of it, but the job is different, I am different, and I have done so many things in my career that I think I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d chopped and changed job a lot. A very long time ago in primary school a young me I remember was heard to say she wanted to do three degrees. These days I have the hankering back again, I fancy that third degree, but postgrad, and just for fun. Possibly try the odd book… That kind of thing.

CPD23 Thing 2 - Johnny Ball said Think Of A Number - of sampling CPD23 blogs mid-programme

Think of a number, any number...

I notice it's Reflection Week, so I'm not going to reflect on everything I haven't posted on yet (I could ironically say 'think of a number again', but I won't!) because that's what I'll use this week for.

What I am going to reflect on just now is general trends (perhaps) in how people are finding it all as a sideways approach to Thing 2 done a bit later than most!  I thought of a fairly low number, and I went through the CPD23 alphabetic list of blogs applying that number and reading every 'x' blog accordingly. Some I read everything on, others just the more recent parts.  I wanted a 'feel' for how people were finding it all (as well as being interested in what they were saying) that was systematic but wasn't about sector or geography.

So how does my sample break down?

The Waste Land or Waiting For The Return

This category is kind of shells of blogs created for the process but without content or blogs which only have a couple of posts in general relating to very early Things (circa 1-4).  Mostly what I get from these is hope (posting about Thing 1 and why they were doing it and what they wanted from it) and enthusiasm (Things involving exploring various social tools / online profile and discussing what they used and how). And then there's emptiness / drought.

I don't think this is at all unusual, I would suspect there's far more 'Waste Land' blogs than 'Green And Verdant Valley' blogs around on the internet generally. Because people fail to find the time, or get stuck, or feel too much time has passed to go back, or have unrealistic expecations about how much or often they should blog, or get discouraged or priorities change, or encounter all kinds of other problems. It's a general thing, not unique to any individual.

But what I see mostly is the hope and enthusiasm. So if those folk think that somehow everyone else is marching relentlessly and immaculately on, then maybe this post is for you.  They're not necessarily, and you really can go back to it if you want to.

Perhaps Slightly Erratic But Holding On In There

This is a large category of which I claim Esteemed Membership, and I think it's generally reassuring too! People are doing it in all kinds of different ways to slightly different patterns in order to fit it in.  Whether that's 'good' weeks and a few 'bad' weeks and catch-up, or whether it's doing one post to cover various 'Things' or skipping some that seem less relevant or just in order to 'keep even' with the schedule... or changing the order around a wee bit, or doing it in order but not quite to the overall timetable.  A category that speaks to my heart indeed!

The Green and Verdant Valley

This is a fairly smallish category of my sample of folk who are managing to do every Thing to time, in order, and if they're frothing at the mouth at all in doing so are hiding it very well(!!)

Why did I do the sample?

Simply put because I'm 'erratic' contingent and was wincing at how many Things behind I was and I noticed I hadn't even posted on Thing 2! I was fairly sure there'd be a lot like me nonetheless (always reassuring!). 

Conclusion
For anyone who sees a 'Reflection' week as 'Catch-up Opportunity', I'd give it a go....! If you want reassured, try just Thinking Of A Number and applying it. If nothing else you'll read lots of interesting blogs in the process.