Tuesday
Yesterday, Tuesday I was #latenightlibrarian so came into work at about 1pm, well a touch after because I was waiting for the washer to finish! Anyway, yesterday afternoon was mainly filled with checking reading lists, ordering books, chasing up books (that are needed for semester 2, which starts next week), ordering DVDs for ‘Green Week‘  stuff and the like as well as few loan status changes. I also spent some time contributing to discussions on how our library team can be part of ‘I heart my education’ week which is an initiative being organised by the Students Union, which I mentioned yesterday.

We’re still getting comments through our request for feedback – what do you love, what needs improving that we’re doing as part of our National Libraries Day stand #NLD12 which is great. Hopefully we can follow that up with a you said, we did type thing and try and get some expectation management in there too, in terms of in real life how long things actually take and why we can’t just buy everything from Amazon and why we can’t be open 24/7 all the time at the moment. That kind of thing.

The Help Desk was pretty quiet last night so took that as an opportunity to catch up with some reading around my subject areas, in this case for module GY152 – contemporary human geographies and GY358 political ecology: geographies of environment and development. I like to try and get a bit more familiar with what they’re learning about so I can better advise/direct them to resources.
I ended up sending a bit of strongly worded email to a lectuere about a load of PDFs of articles posted on the VLE, no idea where they had come from, if we acutally subscribe to them, the usual copyright infringement stuff!! Blimey! Anyway, then felt really bad this morning when I got a reply, but I was cross about it, especailly because they know the deal with this sort of thing. We’re getting that sorted out and tidied up now though so we are no longer being naughty copyright infringers. Phew!

For the most part everyone was in with their heads down getting on with stuff, although we did have to ask two lots of people not to bring in stacks of pizza. My colleague was right, Tuesday night is eating night! I normally work a Wednesday evening and we never have this. It’s funny. It’d be interesting to do some sort of observation on behaviour and atmospehere in the library on the to see if patterns do come out, but that’s probably not going to happen really!
As well as pizza and noise patrol I also had a little look to plans for the Career Development Group conferences this year, more about that for Wednesday though which is coming up…… now!

Wednesday
This morning started off with a trip to the dentist where I was praised about my healthy gums and teeth, which is brillers because I’ve a load of fillings in my back teeth so to hear they’re doing ok is always good. I got in about 10 and did the usual email scan and sort out what needs answering, what needs some actual work and what can be binned. I tweeted some stuff  from our subject twitter account from an IWA publishing ebulletin I get which will be particularly useful for any of the environmental sciences crew that are intersted in water stuff. Ordered some more books from requests that had come through then went off for our first call to plan the Career Development Group conference stuff for this year. We used a service new to use which allows us to record and share the recording of the call, that was Yo Conference http://www.yoconferencecall.co.uk/ It worked so that’s ace and good to be able to go back to it. I wish I could say more about our discussions, but can’t really until we’ve firmed up our plans. I’ll be sure to post more information as and when I can and hopefully get a bit of a discussion going about things.

Moving on from that and I got an email reminding me about the next Brighton Libteachmeet which is happening on Tuesday 20th March. Any South Easters out there should come along and maybe even do a session that’d be fun and interesting.

This afternoon I was supposed to go to a workshop on Intellectual property and copyright, but unfortunately that got cancelled because of illnees which is a shame as I can’t make the rescheduled date but I’ll be keeping my eyes out for others. Instead I made progress with sorting out readings on the VLE for a module and helping with a couple of enquiries from the Help Desk before a visit from a new lecturer for human geography. It was lovely to have a chat with her, find out her area of teaching, tell her about all our services. She’s particularly keen to make key readings available via our VLE but also to get the students to find the ones that will supplement them, which sounds like a good balance of giving them the materials and them having to look for resources themselves. Ace. Semester 2 starts next week so I may well have a busy few days scanning and linking!

Also got permission to go to the Back to the future and into the cloud: JIBS User Group workshop and AGM so booked onto that which is 24th Feb. Anyone else going?
Final task for the day was a short meeting with colleagues to firm up our plans for ‘I heart my education’ week and I’ve got some actions out of that meeting too. We’ve a fairly short timescale for this so we need to get cracking really. No doubt it’ll all come together, it always does! Anyway, the focus on the 13th is ‘I heart quality resources’ so we’re going to focus on the many different ways the students have to contact us, highlight what we can help them with, what they have access to as well as promoting our wonderful finding journal articles and EndNote Web workshops. We’re also going to have a handout/poster about evaluating resources to make sure they are quality and we’re hoping there’ll be some quality street kicking around somewhere Another opportunity to pull together as a team, share the load to make things happen. So far, so good.

That brings me to the end of another day. Tomorrow I’m on first Help Desk session at 8.30 and I’ve got myself in for RFID tagging too, we still have some way to go with that, but we’re getting there. I also need to revisit some work I’ve done to help populate our Knowledge Base provided by RightAnswers and that is too make sure the answers are there as well as starting to create some sort of taxonomy as well.

Oh and big news that I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned, we’ve got a library ipad! Imagine that. It’ll come in useful for stuff like ‘I heart my education’ week and give those staff that haven’t got smartphones, iphones etc the chance to have a look and see how things work. Good stuff.

Right, that’s it until tomorrow now. How is it nearly Thursday?!

Ok bye.

Emma

Now we’re into 2012 and the next round of Library Day in the Life is a perfect opportunity to start blogging again. So, here we go. Yesterday felt like a bit of a non day if you know what I mean. I got things done, but didn’t feel like I’d really achieved anything. Anyway, the big thing yesterday was to get our stand up for National Libraries Day 2012 #NLD12 which we did after only a few weeks planning. A few weeks to organise an information stand I hear you say? Well, yes. It actually takes a fair bit of organising, liaising, getting people involved that sort of thing. I’m keen for us to be involved in this sort of awareness raising campaign as it gives us the opportunity to think what other resources we can highlight to our users. In this case we’ve gone for reminding them what they have access to through us and we’ve teamed up with Brighton and Hove Libraries to promote their services to our students and hopefully encourage them to join their public library.
So what are we actually doing? We’ve got an information stand in the library for this week leading up to National Libraries Day 2012 itself which is on 4th February. One part of the stand is for our staff, students etc to give us feedback about our services – I love my library because…. My library needs to improve…. that’s the idea. There’s a prize on offer for our favourite bit of feedback and in just a day our little feedback box has been emptied, so that’s a good start. Our users have many forums to contact us, speak to us, discuss concerns, suggest improvements, and this is just another way of doing those things.
On Friday we’ve a member of staff from Brighton and Hove Libraries coming to staff the stand so that any of our lot can ask any questions they have about the public library service and joining. I’m ever hopeful that she’ll get some people talking to her! We’ve advertised it through our usual channels and I’ll put a reminder out there later in the week.
So that was the setting up of the stand which in itself was a good opportunity for colleagues to do something together, show support and belief in an idea so that was good as well.
Doing this kind of thing also meets some of the values set out in the University corporate plan to meet our aims. Particularly I think we’re feeding into the following values:

• engagement • with the cultural, social and economic  life of our localities, region and nation; with international
  imperatives; and with the practical, intellectual and ethical  issues of our partner professions.
• collaboration • being a good partner, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally; being responsive as well as proactive; delivering what we say we will do.

By sharing these values we’re definitely adding to the following aim:

• student and staff experience • aim 4  to provide an experience of higher education that is challenging and enjoyable for its students and staff; that embodies equality  of treatment; and that equips its students to be socially purposeful professionals and citizens.

As well as this I did some book ordering, checked some reading lists and went to a planning meeting for our library. Some interesting project updates – particularly with RightAnswers which is a knowledge base that we’re in the process of populating for use on Help Desks and for users to use independently to find information, answers to their questions. There’s still work to be done, but we’re getting there. Another event to plan for is in conjunction with the Students Union the week of the 13th February which is I ‘heart’ my education week. We’re not sure how or what we will contribute to this yet, but I’m sure it’ll be great.

Today, Tuesday I am #latenightlibrarian and one thing I definitely need to get back into today is tagging! We were supposed to have finished today, but we’ve still got some to do. I need to put some time in my calendar to make sure I do some. I’ll leave it there for now and will give you a round up of today later on.

Ok bye…
Emma

Fees, fees, fees
There is anxiety surrounding the increase in fees coming in for 2012/2013. I am anxious about it. I don’t think the incoming students will really know why the fees have been increased. I think they will see it that they are paying up to £9,000 a year and that they will want services, spaces and support that reflects what they are paying. I don’t think they will realise that we are having to cut services and jiggle staff to meet budget requirements and why would they?
This presents a challenge for us. This year we’ve taken more students onto courses in the school I look after and I imagine that’s the same across the university, but from a library perspective we haven’t had an extension to the library or installed more PCs or anything that might help us accommodate more students.  We are working within our parameters and trying to improve things where we can to create more study space, but will that be enough? Only time will tell I suppose.

Should we be working more collaboratively?
We had discussions about the pros and cons of collaborative working. For a lot of places there is an institutional objective to be more involved with the communities that they are based in, so there seems a lean towards collaborative working to meet those sorts of objective and there are advantages to service provision in some instances. However, the general feeling seemed to be that while we can learn a lot, share resources and provide services collaboratively with other information services or libraries from other sectors, we need to concentrate resources in our departments or across our sites (if we are multi site) as sometimes we don’t know which bits of our own department are doing what. Certainly at Brighton there’s a lot of collaborative work we could be doing across the central support departments and that seems to be taking shape more and more.

What about shared services from one place?
A couple of people from Worcester in the group Alison Taylor @allieblogging and Sarah Oxford @sarahbrarian spoke about what’s happening in Worcester with a library shared by the university and public. It will encompass all library services for all those different users. Logistical and operational nightmare? Who knows, but I’ve invited myself for a visit when it’s all up and running which is set for Summer 2012. I wonder if something like this could work in Brighton…

That sums up my final library camp session.

Next post will be a very behind #cpd23 things one hopefully!

1. Does a library service need a brand/identity or is it more important that our users identify with their librarian/link person?
I hadn’t thought about this before, yet it seems such an obvious thing! For me though when I am speaking to academics or students in my school, I am first and foremost representing the library and how we can support them, but also the department, Information Services, as a whole. I’ve blogged before about my concerns about our lack of a marketing strategy for the department and what message we’re trying to get across to our users. After all that, does it matter? Yes, I think it does matter, I do think we need a co-ordinated approach to marketing our services and a strong visual identity should go with that. However, after these discussions wonder if people in the school I look after think of me as the library. I’m going to ask them.

2. Should a subject/link librarian be based in the library or in the school/department/ that they work with/support/are responsible for?
Oooh an interesting one. From what I gathered from those working in corporate libraries – law, consultancy there’s a mix up of how the library/information service  is incorporated into the practice. In a time when services are being cut across sectors, it’s more important than ever that we embed ourselves in our organisations, providing a good service and supporting the aims and objectives of the organisation.
So, as  link librarian should I be based in the library or would it better if I was based in the school along with the lecturers? It’s something that I want to explore further as I think there are legs in this, not only for the students, but for the lecturers as well. I wonder if part of my time in the library and part of my time in the department could work. One to explore further. Are any other academic librarians doing this?

3. Do our job titles matter?
This came up briefly as Laura Woods @Woodsiegirl mentioned that the people she works with in the law firm have started calling her a business analyst. Does that matter? Does this mean that they don’t know what her role involves or is just how they interpret it?
I had a similar situation when I was doing a joint session with a lecturer the other day, it seemed like they didn’t really know what job title to give me. I think I was introduced to the students as their library person. That works, I am their library person, but I also consider myself to be their representative of the department Information Services.

For me that sort of sums things up about this session.

Final session looked at the Challenges face in HE at the moment facilitated by Liz Jolly @liz_jolly and is coming next…

Andy set out the agenda for the discussion – questions. Lots of questions, which got me thinking but only generating more questions rather than any solutions or suggestions. So, what I’ll start with a question – what did we discuss?

This is probably not in the right order, but you’ll get the idea.

What information do people want via their mobile?

We discussed what people actually use mobiles for in terms of finding information. For example, database providers like Science Direct and Ebsco have released apps for their databases as well as professional organisations like the Royal Society of Chemistry. At the University of Brighton, as well as other HEIs, we’ve released an app for our VLE, Studentcentral which is a Blackboard product. I tell my students about these tools, but wonder if they are keen to and will ever use them. Do people want to access and search databases from their mobile or is that a task better suited to the desktop?

We also have a mobile friendly version of our library catalogue, which I can see being used more on a mobile than a database like Science Direct for example. If students have a specific title they want then this sort of short search task to find a piece of information, in this instance, the shelfmark, which they can have on the screen in front of them to go and locate the book. Job done.

Our Online Library website and the Information Services website look ok mobile too so finding opening hours, locations information on a mobile is another example of the sort of information we think people would tend to use their mobile for.

In relation to that, reminders, calendars and all that sort of information can be accessed on a mobile which means we don’t have to remember dates, times, phone numbers, email addresses etc as our mobile will do all that for us. Andy asked if we don’t need to use our headspace for that sort of information, then what are we doing with it? Who knows!

24/7 access

We did discuss the nature of 24/7 access and the constant connectivity and expectations related to that. Sarah Nicholas @SarahNicholas mentioned a service at Cardiff they have a Library Chat Service
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/index.html which students could use from their mobile and although it clearly states the times that Library Chat is available and it’s obvious when someone is online, is this the sort of service that people will come to expect out of normal working hours?

In addition to this there is the issue of our own balance with being connected and work and all that. Paul Stainthorp @pstainthorp made a point that he could get into work on a Monday morning and people ask him if he’s read their email. As I’ve got all my inboxes set up on my iphone I have got into the habit of checking my work inbox either last thing at night or first thing in the morning before I even get to work. Added to that Twitter, which I check pretty regularly and the RSS feeds I’m pretty much connected all the time. Both Sarah and Paul made a good point about having your own boundaries/limits about this, for me and this sounds silly, but it’s knowing that is ok to do and people aren’t going to think I’m lazy or not interested or not committed or whatever.

Perception and attitude

There was also discussion around how others perceive use of mobiles. There was all that hoo ha a while ago about tweeting at events and people around not getting what was happening and thinking tweeters were being a bit rude, playing with their phones. How widespread is ?

What do people want?

Can we have a mobile technology strategy and still move quickly enough to respond to wants/needs for apps, mobile friendly sites  or do we take so long to produce an app for example that by the time it gets out there things have moved on? Do people actually want these things? How do we find out what people want? I wonder how may places do have a strategy for this sort of thing. At Brighton I don’t think we do, but one might be in the making. We do have ace people developing tools for mobiles, which is great, but, me being a bit impatient sometimes feels like it’s taking too long! It’d be good to be more involved with this sort of thing, but I don’t know how I could contribute, I defo can’t develop an app, I wouldn’t know where to start, but user testing, seeing if our students/staff would make use of apps like the Studentcentral one that we have library staff could do.

Teaching mobile information literacy – tools, cloud stuff

So we teach people how to search for information with the tools available to them, do we need to do the same with mobile stuff or should there be a seamless move from desktop to mobile and vice versa. Like we discussed in session 1 about the transition from school to college to uni to work are young people growing up around technology really digital natives? Do they really know how to make the most of the tools available to them? In my limited experience probably not, so maybe there is room for getting people to learn by doing and using stuff for specific tasks. Lots of things to think about there.

A mix up of discussion and no real, concrete way forward it seems. People should just carry on being creative and forward thinking and develop mobile friendly sites or apps and throw caution to the wind if a mobile technology and learning strategy exists!

Next up, session 4 – the embedded librarian – a cross sector discussion facilitated by Laura Woods @Woodsiegirl, Samantha Halford @samanthahalf and  with Sian Blake @funktious as chief note taker.

Maria encouraged us to think about our own roles and that of the profession as a whole as facilitators of social change. There was discussion around what sort of information we provide now that makes a difference and empowers people. We also discussed how we communicate what we do to different groups of people and why that’s important. Maria asked us if those closest to us, friends and family know what we do, I’d never really thought about this, it’d be an interesting vox-pop, although I think I know what the general response would be! One of the participants, Marianne, thinks that word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways of getting our message ‘out there’ in terms of what we do and what we stand for. I think there is something in that, but really depends on the people we want to get our message out to. If we want to influence politicians, the people with the power then it may well take more than word of mouth.

Demonstrating our value and communicating that was something that Maria was keen to explore, but for me, this comes back to who we want to get our message out to. As our professional body CILIP do work to lobby government and influence decision makers, getting libraries, librarians on the agenda, showing how important we are to society. There are many advocates for the profession and tools are available through the CILIP website like the advocacy toolkit to help people get going with their advocacy activities.
As well as activities from CILIP, we have seen examples of activism from groups like the Voices for the Libraries, defending and promoting the value and need for libraries to benefit society as a whole. They have challenged and resisted the proposed cuts across the public library services across the country, showing resilience and commitment.

Bit of a tangent there, sorry, but getting back to the session, it was interesting to hear the views of those from across the sectors. As an academic librarian it’s difficult to see my role as a facilitator of social change. I understand that education and development side of being at university. A lot of graduates do want to contribute to the development of society in some way, but in order to achieve real social change it has to come from everyone rather than a government or librarians or social workers. Everyone needs to agree that there should be more equality across the board, not just with information provision and access. However, I guess if we’re going to start anywhere then this is a good a place as any!
It was an eye opener hearing the experiences of those working in public libraries or citizens advice bureaus or charities or prisons, working with vulnerable people with specific information needs that getting that key piece of information will not only answer a question or resolve an issue, but improve their quality of life in some way.

This session certainly made me think, social change is such a massive thing, Maria gave us some examples of the kind of information work happening overseas and in the UK improving the information provision, literacy skills of people having a positive impact on their lives. There are lots of ‘haves’ in the UK, but increasingly there seem to be more of the ‘have-nots’. For me it’s difficult to know where to put the focus.

There was also some discussion around whether library courses are teaching future librarians the right skills to take this agenda forward – advocacy? collaboration? communication?

So, do I think librarians can facilitate social change?
As ever I don’t have a clear cut answer to this question. On the one hand I do think librarians can facilitate social change, but not on our own. Like I said earlier, it’s such a massive thing that in order for there to be a real, positive change in society making things more equal, making information and services more accessible then it has to be a joint effort, which for the UK, has to have the support of those in power. The majority have to be in favour and support change. If things aren’t as we think they should be then we should resist and stand up for what we believe in and there are many ways that we can do this.  Finally, social change will mean different things across the world. In some cases it could be a small change implemented, supported and sustained that makes a huge difference to people. Where do we focus our time, energy and resources, our local communities or internationally?
This brings me onto my other hand – there are so many different agendas which are worthy and deserving of support, not just the library and information one, how do we fit into those agendas to strengthen them and our own?

To conclude then, a very thought provoking session with interesting contribution from across the sectors. Rather than answering any of the questions Maria raised it’s made me ask more questions about whether we, as a profession really can facilitate social change in the UK and overseas.

I’ve never been to an un-conference before but since getting a ticket I’d been following the developments of Library camp on the website www.librarycamp.co.uk and on the  Library Camp wiki so I had an idea of how things would work, people had been posting pitches for sessions on the wiki and then they had circa 30 seconds to do their pitch in real life at the start of the day – we, as participants could set the programme for the day, how cool is that?!

I arrived at the venue at around 9.30, bumping into Richards Hawkins (@usernametaken10) to find the place already buzzing with conversation. After receiving a warm welcome from members of the organising team, I got myself a name sticky on the go and went to join in the chat. I was however distracted by the millions of different sweet treats on offer! Cakes, flapjack, brownies, tablet, biscuits of all kinds, the #cakecamp really deserves a post of it’s own! Needless to say I’d gone into a room full of library and info pros on sugar and caffeine highs!

The day started proper at around 10 with @pigsonthewing directing us into a room for the introduction of the day. Here Jo McCausland @libraryjmac welcomed us and explained a bit about how the day would work. Before people started their pitches for sessions, our poet for the day Mark Niel performed a couple of poems, one based on words that participants had contributed through the wiki. We were asked to give 3 words about libraries. Mark was around the whole day dipping in and out of different sessions so he could write another few poems about the day, which he did and performed in the closing comments.

We went round the whole room and each of us introduced ourselves, finding out who people were, where they had come from and why they were at Library Camp. There were lots of people that I follow on Twitter there, it was ace to meet them in real life, some I didn’t get to talk to properly, but next time. Anyway, introductions done it was time for the pitching. Lots of people came forward with suggestions for sessions, giving us an idea of what they would like to discuss, writing them on a post it and sticking them into a slot of the programme which was drawn up on a white board.
Once all the pitches were in, participants went for a cake break while the organisers put the pitches into themes creating the programme for the day. The programme board was then brought out into the refreshment area and we could have a look at which sessions we wanted to go to. There were 7 sessions for each time slot.We had a paper version so we could fill in the sessions we wanted to go to.

Session 1 – Transitions

The first session was at 11 and I chose to go along to one facilitated by Jo Alcock @joeyanne and Jean Allen, a school librarian. The theme: transitions. I have been following and where possible contributing to Jo’s work which looks at the transition from school to college to university and was keen to discuss with others their experiences, ideas surrounding this theme of transition. It was a lively session, with plenty of discussion as people were keen to contribute. There were varying perspectives from participants as we went round the room saying what we wanted to discuss. Jo managed to identify the key topics:

• The expectations and assumptions we make of the information skills of the students coming into university
• Inductions
• Skills levels
• Professional library staff in schools – the role of the school library service
• The expectations the academics have
• Use of e-resources in school and at university
• Digital natives – is this true? Are the children growing up around technology really digital natives?
• Public library collaboration – how do we all fit together?

Everyone had an opinion to contribute, it was great to have a range of librarians from schools, HE, FE and public. All of us clear that information skills of our young people need attention and development and they should be treated as skills for life.

Assumptions – digital natives?
A lot of reports exist around the subject of digital natives. Are those born into a world where technology is the norm and the cloud is common really digitally native? This is something that came up briefly during the transitions discussion. In my own experience, and this seems similar to others in the room, just because those coming into university now have grown up with access to and using technology doesn’t necessarily mean that they are digitally native. Certainly in my sessions when I ask students if they have used a database or a library catalogue or social media other than Facebook and for used it for learning, I get a lot of blank looks and generally speaking the majority do not know what I’m talking about. This was confirmed by Jean Parris @ShirazSmiley, a HE Librarian and a mum to 2 teenagers she shared this view – also that not all young people have access to a PC at home. It seems then we need to challenge this assumption that all our students are digital natives, au fait with the technology and tools available for learning, socialising and both.

Information literacy skills development
There were some good suggestions of how to address this, as well as more collaboration between schools, colleges and universities, there was discussion around teaching teachers, academics about information literacy skills so that they can include them in assignments and assessments, looking at ways that they can develop them in their students. This is something that we’re working on at Brighton with the development of an information literacy module for staff. It’s in the making and has been developed by academics in the Centre for Learning and Teaching and the Information Studies department and librarians from across the university libraries. The plan is that we will also deliver some of the sessions on the module. Jean Parris @ShirazSmiley mentioned that they had a similar thing in place at UWE with mixed take up from the academics.

Johanna Anderson @jo_bo_anderson looks after education students in her job and made a good point about incorporating information literacy skills into their training, whether they are doing a PGCE or a degree with QTS.

Jean Allen gave us an insight to how she works with the teachers at her school with comments from other school librarians in the group. The school librarians confirmed what @joeyanne has found from her research, that they would like to know what is needed when the students get to university in terms of information skills.

It seems that whatever level we’re working at, school, FE, HE, we’re all trying to get more collaboration on the go with the teachers/academics.

Jo @joeyanne mentioned a research project that Jane Secker @jsecker and Emma Coonan @libgoddess had done looking at information literacy from a HE perspective, an Arcadia project: The Cambridge Curriculum for Information Literacy, this is work that Katy Wrathall @katywrathall is going to continue with.

Related to this was our own skills as teachers. If we have to deliver information literacy skills training then we need to know how to plan, deliver and assess the sessions. I have done a short course; Teaching in Higher Education, other had done the full PGCert, something that I might like to do next year as part of my continuing professional development.

Inductions
The dreaded inductions came up, I’ve mixed views on inductions. I’m not sure how useful they are to the students, particularly for the undergraduates and this related to the information skills we were talking about. For me inductions are about information, rather than skills.
Samantha Halford @samanthahalf suggested that there needs to be continuation of contact with the students once the induction session has been done. An idea of getting a regular slot in the timetable for a module to highlight key resources, workshops to students could be a good way of doing this, but like Samantha said this really depends on the relationship with the academics.

The role of the public library

It was felt that the public library underpinned the literacy activities of younger children with rhyme time, book challenges etc and those at school, with homework clubs and stuff. The issue of the lack of professionally qualified library staff came up here again and concerns raised that if the schools library service was being cut and the public library service being cut then there’s even less chance for children and young people to have a good start with developing their information skills.

To conclude

In short there seemed to be a consensus that:

• information skills awareness and development, like everything has to start in the early years and go from there.
• there is  a real need for professional library staff to facilitate this learning and each stage, early year, school, FE, HE and beyondFor me this was a dynamic and fluid opening session to #libcampuk11 confirming some of my own thoughts and giving me more to think about and act on in my own role. Ace facilitation from @joeyanne and Jean Allen.

Next post will be about session 2, which for me was Librarians for social change, facilitated by @mariacotera

I think it’s ace that there are different routes into the profession and I’m sure I’m not the first one to mention The Library Routes Project is a great place to find out how information professionals across the sector have come into the profession. I realise that the qualifications from CILIP have been revised over the years and there are discussions going on about the relevance of Chartership, Certification and the like I’ll touch on this, but the bulk post reflects on my route into the profession and where I see myself going.

First up ; Masters Degrees….

I graduated with an MA Information Studies from the University of Brighton in July 2008. I studied part-time, starting it in September 2005. I still consider that I was very lucky to have the opportunity to complete the MA. I was working at the University of Brighton as a Careers Information Officer and my manager was very keen for me to ‘get qualified’ as an information professional. They were very keen on professional development and during one of my staff development reviews we discussed how I could progress and develop a career as an information professional. I expressed an interest in getting a job as an academic librarian. Working in a Careers Centre, I was in a great place to find out about routes into the role, case studies and all that.

As I was already working at the University, I had the opportunity to apply for a course as a staff member, which meant that if the course was related to my job, my manager was in favour of it, me doing the course would help develop the service and crucially, me being accepted onto the course then I could be granted a place with the fees waived. Amazing. I got accepted on to the course, my manager was super supportive and I embarked on the MA Information Studies at the University of Brighton. I continued to work full-time, with a day a week doing the course. I came to an agreement with my manager and they allowed me to take half of the days as work time and the other half I had to make up my hours or use annual leave.
There’s no doubt that this was hard work over the three years that it took me to complete the course, but a fantastic developmental opportunity and I still feel that it would have been foolish not to pursue it.
I graduated in 2008 and during the time doing the course I did not actively engage with CILIP in terms of taking on committee roles at Branch level or with any of the special interest groups. If I could go back in time I wonder if I would do things differently, I probably would. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I was so focused on the MA, that I was working full time, that I had lots of outside interests and at that time in my life I couldn’t imagine doing even more! Anyway, that’s changed now.
I’d applied for a couple of jobs before graduation and was not successful at even getting an interview. I got the usual sort of feedback; lots of applications, many with more relevant experience than me etc.  I was set on getting a job as an academic librarian and I did limit my geographic area as I like living in Brighton, I like the lifestyle I have and didn’t want to compromise on that. The job that I’m doing now came up and I put in my application. A postgraduate qualification in Information Studies/Science was part of the essential criteria, so without having the MA, I wouldn’t have been in a good position to apply for the job. Following the interview, I got the offer and started in this post in January 2009.

I like structure and the MA provided that for me, my professional development taking a clear path. I realise this way of working isn’t for everyone. While I did learn a lot from the MA, there’s nothing better than practical experience for some stuff. There are things in my job that I don’t feel the MA prepared me for, like teaching. I’m not a qualified teacher and there were no modules in the MA which covered user education or anything like that, since though I have completed ‘Train the Trainer’ training and a two day short course called Teaching in Higher Education. The focus is on new academics at the University, but it was really useful for me to go on and I’d like to do the full PGCert. I’m thinking maybe next year for this I did get a lot out of it though, I particularly enjoyed my dissertation and certainly gained a better understanding and awareness of working collaboratively across sectors.
On the whole, I’m glad that I took the MA route into the profession. Shamefully I’ve been working towards Chartership on and off since graduating, oh dear. More on that to follow…

Chartership

Ok, so I’m working towards being chartered. It’s been a work in progress being in my job for a year. I got myself registered, got a Personal Professional Development Plan (PPDP) on the go, got myself a mentor and off I went on a chartership journey. Nearly two years later I’m still on it, which, I know, is rubbish. The worst thing is, I’m so nearly there. I’ve ticked off much of the criteria and really it’s a case of putting it all together and writing my 1,000 words reflective statement thing. So, I’ve booked a week off work in September and the plan is to get this portfolio done and dusted, or at least, done with maybe some dusting at later date.

Why am I doing Chartership? I know there are discussions about the value of Chartership and what it means for those entering the profession now, what employers think of it etc. I’m doing it because, like I said before, I like structure and Chartership, for me, provides me with a vehicle to go on a CPD adventure. Some activities I’ve got involved in because people said to me ‘oh that’ll be great for Chartership.’ What I’ve discovered though is that these activities are great for me Chartership or not.

So, I’ve booked myself a week of leave in September so I can get together all the bits required for my portfolio and by the end of that week I’m hoping to have a portfolio. I know there are going to be things that I need to tweak, change, add etc, but I think that having something put together will be ace. I hope I’m not the only one that’s got all this evidence and found the difficult bit putting it all together.

No doubt I’ll blog about how it all goes. I’ve a lot to get done in that week!

Next up Thing 11, mentoring.

Librarian Emma

Thing 8 – Google Calendar

I don’t use Google Calendar for work or personal stuff. We have used it at work for specific projects, like IS for You Week, which was a week of events across our sites to raise the profile of Information Services, what we offer etc. For other stuff we use calendar facility in Outlook. On our staff intranet, Staff Central there is also a calendar that is central to the university. I can see how something like this would be useful for libraries across the sites here. A shared calendar to see what’s going on where, opening hours etc. At the moment we have this information on our central, departmental website. I like the way @CILIPLndn use Google Calendar and would like to see if we (the South East branch) could do a similar thing. We need to see how we use the CILIP events calendar first and where else we add our events and go from there.

Thing 9 – Evernote

I like Evernote. I only discovered it fairly recently so haven’t made extensive use of it. What I like about it is that I can sync it all so I can use it on my iphone and any PC and it will all sync together, but it’s also ace, because they’ve developed it to work on different mobile devices. I use it in a similar way that I use Delicious, interesting things I come across online I pop into Evernote. This has raised some questions for me, the main one; do I need both a Delicious and Evernote account or should I take one over the other? Having this topic for thing 9 is good because it’s made me have a look at both tools and consider the pros and cons. Evernote have written a blog post Making the transition from Delicious to Evernote, which was posted late in 2010 and it gives instructions about how to export your Delicious bookmarks to Evernote. Great. They acknowledge as well the differences between the two tools and one of the things I like about Delicious is the social and the networking bit, which is lacking with Evernote. However, I like all the features of Evernote, the web clippy bit, the ability to add notes and all that jazz. I haven’t yet shared any of my notes with anyone, I haven’t needed to, but I like it that I can if I want.

I wonder if I need to choose one over the other with Evernote and Delicious? More thought required, I’ll add it to my list of things to do. My week of annual leave is going to be busy

Up next Thing 10 – Graduate Traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation…..

Librarian Emma

The Career Development Group (London and South East Divisions) would like to invite you to:

Our next COMMITTEE MEETING on Thursday 25^th August, 3pm-5pm.

The meeting will take place in Boardroom M2, Grand Parade Building, Grand Parade, University of Brighton, Brighton  

http://www.brighton.ac.uk/maps/grandparade/

This will be followed by:

Our SUMMER SOCIAL on Thursday 25^th August, 5.30pm – 7.30pm.

We will meet at the Fortune of War, 156-157 Kings Road Arches, Brighton, BN1 1NB.
http://www.drinkinbrighton.co.uk/fortune-of-war

This is the annual summer get together for both members and non-members. You will have the opportunity to network with other information professionals as well as take part in a photo scavenger hunt at the seaside! We will meet at 5.30pm and the scavenger hunt will start circa 6pm. Bring a digital camera or use your phone.

The event will be attended by members of the London and South East Divisions Committee including local Candidate Support Officers, if you have questions about Certification, Chartership or Revalidation.

Cost: Free or you can make a donation to the CDG International Fund. That’s always appreciated.

Refreshments not included but are available to buy.

Please complete the booking form http://tiny.cc/merrc

Any questions please get in touch eillingworth@googlemail.com