Musings on 2014... Library Camp Glasgow

So, while I'm musing on standout things of 2014...

Library Camp Glasgow on Saturday 8 November.

Background

This was the second annual Library Camp Glasgow, hosted in the Mitchell Library. It’s format followed the previous year in fairly relaxed unconference fashion. It started with a version of bingo as the ice-breaker, and then proceeded into One Minute Rants, and pitches for parallel sessions and the sessions themselves. There was Mitchell Tour for those who wished, the normal badge competition...

I say ‘normal’ badge competition, and that in itself is quite telling, it has become a normal established part of the year (though whether it’ll happen next year, or on what fashion, who knows, it is, after all, an unconference).

I opted for sessions on Changes to professional registration and CPD, Advocacy, Are we practicing what we preach, and 23 Librarians live.

So, a couple of months later, what stands out for me from these sessions?

Changes to professional registration and CPD

This is a weird one for me. I was hugely involved in setting up the changes, but due to various workplace changes had then lost track of it all a bit implementation-wise until earlier this year when I started getting (very slightly in comparison) involved again. So my ability to wax lyrical on the past was excellent, but it was really interesting to hear about the present. All in all I got the idea that what we’d set up re changes wasn’t working badly and had gone quite well so far. And that made me smile quite a lot.

Advocacy

This was kind of depressing overall. Nothing to do with the session, but a lot of advocacy discussions tend to feel quite bleak. Everyone sits round and says the same things, means the same things, they’re not remotely wrong things, it’s just they’re very difficult to make happen or to get outside the library profession. It is useful however to share news, and look at new initiatives. Looking at The Library A-Z was particularly fun. Advocacy is simply a long hard slog, no short-cuts or easy solutions. It needs to continue to happen simply because things would be worse without it.

Are we practicing what we preach?

This was really interesting because it was all about reflective practice. We discussed things like do we just repeat ourselves or do we actually take time to rethink, are we comfortable sharing, non-defensive reactions, how we reflect individually (huge variety of ways between the group). I think I’m unusual in keeping a daily work diary of everything i’ve done, but it’s mostly factual, a prompt, though it has some comment in it also.  That ‘Opus’ as I call it is what I go through to then do my cpd log on the CILIP VLE every few months. Now technically I know I mean to do it every month.... in reality I don’t, it’s quite erratic. But there’s nothing erratic about the Opus that it’s drawn from. And at the end of the year there’s Revalidation submission through the CILIP VLE. Which kind of sounds fairly organised, but actually I find time for reflection is difficult to come by these days, and that's a real shame.

23 Librarians Live

This was kind of a face-to-face break-out version of the (now various!) 23 Librarians blogs. It kind of dealt with folk just discussing their career paths and jobs and aspirations and moving between jobs, and inside and outside the sector. I’ve got mixed feelings about this, it was a good session, I’ve just looked at far too many daily job alerts thudding into my home email in the last couple of years. Mostly in me a Saturday in-depth discussion of it all thus produces a wish to sigh and rub at my headache rather than a feeling of great enthusiasm. 

Conclusion

I do like Library Camp Glasgow, and I’ll miss it if there isn’t a Scottish one next year. I’d like my enthusiasm back, and in the Professional Registration session it was fun to hear myself sounding like my old self, I could hear the fire and passion, which I’d really like back, sort of lost it a bit. Things that help to rekindle that are welcome.

Musings on 2014... Carnegie time of year...

The New Year is bringing an urge to pontificate very slightly on the good and bad of last year.

The annual announcement of the Carnegie Medal shortlist is always the starting gun as I do a Shadowing Group with some old friends.  Oddly enough you could say it’s one thing that I still do annually from my CILIP Trustee days. And that amuses me greatly. Not that it was directly anything to do with Trustee duties at all evens then, but one of my fellow Trustees of the time came up with the notion it would be fun to have a Trustee shadowing group. Folk have come and gone, but the two of us are still going, and that's nice...

Some years have passed since we began. It’s now an ex-Trustees Shadowing Group, and we’re not that good at it to be fair (though we always mean to be better next year), it’s a bit of scramble. But I have completed the shortlist reading in time every year, including this year, and that’s an achievement in itself.

This year’s was won by Kevin Brooks for The Bunker Diary. I retain a memory of finishing that in a bus shelter in the pouring rain as I’d just got to the last few pages when I reached my bus stop and didn't want to have to stop.

I've been saying for years that the shortlist can be a bit harrowing to read through in concentrated form in terms of themes. I do very definitely now figure out what are likely to be lighter reads and ones that sit more firmly within my own preferred normal reading categories, and make sure they’re interspersed between the bleaker subjects.

But it’s also one reason I really like the Carnegie, it will take me outside of my own preferred choices and reading habits, it does broaden your reading.  I used to think that one year I really must read the Booker shortlist – and I've never done that, but I don’t regret it or feel the urge anymore, because I know I do the Carnegie. I rather like the fact that I can open the Edinburgh Book Festival programme at the Children’s section and see so many authors whose work I know now.

There was a virtual screencast of the Carnegie Ceremony this year, so I got to watch the ceremony from my desk in work during my lunch break, and that was also a really positive thing.  I enjoyed the discussion, and Kevin Brooks discussion of the unpleasant things in life, children, and getting such things published as childrens' literature.

Carnegie Shadowing is a good thing. I've never understood leaving 'childrens' things to children as thought adults can't enjoy just as much. It's good for anyone as a broadening and fresh air of usual reading habits.

Musings on 2014... Letting Go...

I spent a very restful part of Xmas Eve afternoon unsubscribing from lots of email alerts, email lists, going through and tightening social media settings on my home inbox... and I felt no guilt, only sheer relief.

In an ideal world there are lots of things I would keep up with from all kinds of current and past professional doing's.

As it is by the time I get home from work, something about dinner is done... my urge to retrospectively read a seething inbox daily of the last 23 hours of everyone elses' activity on professional and personal matters... is really fairly weak.

I gaze at the sheer acreage of it all and I wince as I try to pick out the things I actually want or need to know about from the monster pile. 

So it needed something done about it, I just hadn't found the energy or time to do it.

As I wasn't remotely getting through it anyway, what use was it actually serving (other than to glare balefully at me nightly)?

I now have hopes for 2015 to be able to actually see the relevant things in it and for a daily trickle I can cope with and do things about rather than the flood of creation.

And don’t get me wrong, letting go is sad in a way. But life changes, can’t keep everything and add on all the time ad infinitum. Eventually, it's what’s feasible that matters, and concentrate on what’s most important.

I have a decluttering urge. Streamlining is good.