A short post about lots of Things

There have been a number of Things recently that have been very useful to find out about but at the moment I don't have an immediate use for.  These include Things 14, 17 and 18. 

Thing 14 Organising References
At work we support and promote the use of RefWorks as the preferred tool for organising and storing references; it is mainly used by students doing dissertations or working towards their PhD as these tools usually require some effort and perserverance to be of any use.  Thing 14 has highlighted some different alternatives which are useful to know about in terms of increasing my awareness and also it might be useful to be able to recommend a different option to students who find RefWorks difficult to use.

Thing 17 Prezi and Slideshare
Prezi is something I have come across before and is a much more creative tool for presenting information than PowerPoint.  I think we have all at some point in our life sat through a PowerPoint presentation where the presenter has just read out the bullet-points on each slide, therefore Prezi maybe a way of getting away from this.  I don't do any teaching as part of my job but both of these tools could be extremely useful for those that do. 

Thing 18 Jing and podcasting
I know that some university libraries use podcasting in various ways including as a way of introducing students to the many different sources of information available to them.  Where I work we have not gone down this route and have instead just launched subject blogs as a way of providing specific information to targetted student groups.  I think podcasting could provide this information in a different way but wonder how many students would actually make use of them when they are already suffering from information overload.

Thing 15 - First steps on the road to getting involved

I want to start with an apology - this post contains far too much psycho-analysis.  You have been warned!

Earlier this summer for the first time since I started my current job (nearly three years ago) I asked to attend an event.  It was part of the cpd25 programme and the topic was closely linked to the work I do supporting a subject team (I reflected on the event itself for Thing 5).  It had taken me a while to build up the confidence to ask my line manager for permission to go, this was because of several reasons particularly the issues of cost, being allowed to take the time off work to attend and also at the time I (wrongly) thought events such as these were for other people i.e. those on a higher grade than myself.  However despite these reservations my line manager agreed that I could go.  I discovered that attending events outside your normal place of work can allow you to take a step back, review current practices and give you new ideas to try no matter what grade you happen to be on!  Taking this first small step was important; looking back I feel more confident in taking control of my professional development and will keep an eye out for programmes of events to be held this Autumn.


I am not a good presenter.  I have had a fear of standing up in front of groups of people for as long as I can remember; and I have had my fair share of traumatic experiences at school having to do presentations in front of the rest of the class.  Colleagues have tried to allay these fears by saying it gets easier the more you do it but I just don't believe them.  I find myself asking is it really worth feeling so nervous that you don't want to go to work?  Thankfully due to my grade I don't have to give induction talks to the groups of 200 business students in lecture theatres as the colleagues in my team will have to do very soon.  I have had opportunities to take part in delivering presentations to groups of secondary school children about what it is like to go to university but I shamefully turned these down.  I know that in the long-run this is something that will hold me back in my career, but I also know it is better to be honest with myself about my limitations and be happy doing a job I love rather than having one where I dread going to work because I have a presentation to give.      


However what I lack in terms of presenting skills I make up for in my organisational and written communication skills.  (Yes I'm one of those people who everyone hates: organised, tidy and always on time for everything).  I have had comments from people who have said to me I am in the wrong profession and that I could instead be earning a lot more money by putting my skills to use being a PA to some chief exec/managing director etc.  I think I have always been an organised/methodical type of person; I like writing to-do lists and planning my week in advance.  I think this relates to the fact that I like to be in control of what I'm doing and so being super-organised helps with this.  I definitely feel I could offer my skills to help organise a professional event or by volunteering on a committee; I shall endeavor to investigate some possible ways of becoming more involved in my chosen profession.

Things 11 & 12

Thing 11: Mentoring
After reading the 23 Things blog post about mentoring I am seriously considering finding a mentor, particularly as I have set myself the task of finding a professional post.  So guidance about CV writing / interview technique etc would be very useful from someone who is further on than me in their career.  However I'm not sure who to approach so some serious thinking is required! 


Thing 12: Social Media
(also incorporating Thing 6 as I know I didn't blog about this at the time)
I am going to reflect on how successful/unsuccessful I have been in using the social media tools covered so far. 

Blogging: I set up my blog when I started 23 Things so I still feel like a newbie!  I must try harder to blog about more 'personal' things and build up the confidence to write about my own perspectives on library issues.  Blogging about professional things like the new tools I have been trying out has been a great way to come up with material for my posts, but we are half-way through the 'things' now and I am slightly worried about what I will write about when the programme has finished!  Success rating: 6/10

Facebook and LISNPN: I was already a member of Facebook and LISNPN before I started 23 Things.  I have been a member of Facebook for several years and I use it for keeping in contact with friends; changing my status quite frequently now I have a smart phone.  I consider Facebook as my 'personal' space as I don't think many of my friends would be interested in discussing library issues on there!  I joined LISNPN about a year ago but after my initial interest I am ashamed to say I have not visited it since.  Action: re-visit LISNPN: update my profile and take a look at the forums and resources.  Success rating: 10/10 for Facebook (feeling generous) and 2/10 for LISNPN (I hang my head in shame).


LinkedIn: I have joined and added some very basic information.  This professional network is definitely something I am interested in exploring further.  However I think I will want to spend a lot more time on it to get any benefit out of it (for example creating and updating my CV).  Unfortunately I don't have much time at the moment so it will have to wait for a few weeks when when I can concentrate on perfecting my professional profile :)  I wonder if people put a link to their LinkedIn profile on job applications?  Success rating: 2/10


Twitter: I am hoping this will become a mix of professional/personal.  I have tweeted a few times and I am slowly building up followers and making sense of the interface.  I might set myself a target of tweeting at least once a day - this will make tweeting part of my daily routine plus encourage me to regularly read other tweets in order to pick up on wider library issues.  I shall let you know how this goes!  Success rating: 5/10 (could do much better).

Thing 10: I never knew I always wanted to be a librarian

This week's 'Thing' sounds like a good excuse for everyone to show off about their qualifications and experience! 

I think very few people want to be a librarian from a young age; I certainly didn't, my only contact with libraries had been the public library as a child and with academic libraries at FE college and university.  My route is probably pretty standard: when I finished my degree I didn't know what I wanted to do, however, when I had finally finished my dissertation and I was handing back my books I saw an advert asking for library assistants for the next academic year.  I decided to apply with the thought that I could work there until I found something else.  I had been there for about 8/9 months when I saw another library assistant job advertised in my home town at a college of further education.  Thankfully I got the job and with the benefit of hindsight the decision to move back home and apply for this post was the best decision I ever made.  I enjoyed this job so much that I started to seriously consider librarianship as a career; I was working as part of a small team of 7 and I therefore got to experience a wide range of duties: budget management, the selection of stock, cataloguing & classification, display work etc.  

After I had been there a year I started the process of applying for a place on a full-time Masters course; I applied to City and UCL.  I decided to accept the offer from UCL to do the MA in Library and Information Studies.  I really enjoyed the year; it was an opportunity live in central London and I made some great friends. 

I soon realised that I was going to need to supplement my career development loan and so I worked part-time as a senior library assistant for a university in central London.  When I finished my Masters degree they were unable to offer me a full-time post (they were going through a period of re-structuring and all posts were frozen).  The economic conditions in Sep 2008 meant that professional posts were virtually non-existent, however I needed a full-time job and I ended up taking an information assistant post (I moved internally after six months to one of their subject teams).  Although I love my current job and have learnt so much about subject liaison work, I still feel I have taken a backward step in terms of my career.  

Taking part in 23 things for CPD will hopefully act as a springboard to help me re-build my confidence by providing ways of reflecting on my skills and knowledge.  This together with some hard work will at some point lead to a successful application for a professional post -fingers crossed!

Thing 9: it's easy with Evernote

At last a thing I can promote to the rest of my team at work!  When I first told my line manager I wanted to do cpd23 he asked me that if there were any 'Things' that I thought might be useful for the rest of the team to know about then I should demonstrate them in one of our fortnightly team meetings.  This is definitely one of them.  I have been using Evernote for a week now and I love it.  Before Evernote if I came across something interesting on the web I would 'printscreen' it and paste it into Word, email it to myself or save it in my internet explorer favourites.  However with Evernote I will be able to access all my saved searches in one place and from anywhere.  Over the next few weeks I am going to explore more of its functionality including emailing notes to my Evernote email address and accessing my notes via my phone. 

Thing 8: Google Calendar vs Outlook

Having failed to catch up with the Things since I got back from holiday I thought it might be better to skip Things 6 & 7 for now and go straight on to Thing 8 Google Calendar as there is something nice about the feeling that I am exploring these tools at the same time as everyone else.  I've spent more time this week reading other peoples blog entries thanks to the RSS feed bundle that I have subscribed to, and it seems fellow cpd23ers are split when it comes Google calendar: they either love it or hate it.  There are several re-occurring factors that influence this including:

• whether your place of work already uses an online shared calendar
• if you have a smart phone  
• if you prefer to use a paper diary/calendar

Where I work we use shared Outlook calendars, we have a shared 'site' calendar and I don't know what we would do without it!  It's primarily used for timetabling desk slots so it is therefore a way of recording everything everyone is doing: meetings, annual leave, staff training sessions or drop-in sessions for students.  Each person puts their initials and the activity on the calendar so that the person doing the timetable knows when each person is free to do a helpdesk slot.  I find it particularly useful when answering the telephone and the caller wants to speak to a particular member of staff - I can quickly bring up the calendar and see whether they are in a meeting or away on leave.  In addition to the site calendar we also share them on a team basis; I have access to my line manager's and he has access mine and the calendars belonging to the other members of our team.  See below for an example of a week view of the site calendar.

I don't use Outlook for personal appointments and instead tend to use a free paper academic diary we get given every year.  However I recently bought a smart phone and I think I may try using the 'private' option in Outlook to record personal appointments.


So where does this leave Google calendar?  I spent some time playing around with it and I like some of the extra features and gadgets it has.  However I'm not sure I want another thing to have to log into on top of using Outlook.  Nevertheless it is definitely something I will come back to if in the future I am in a job that doesn't make use of Outlook.




Home work this weekend:
1) Catch up with things 6 & 7
2) Create an account with LinkedIn and add basic information with a view to building up my profile slowly over the summer.

Thing 5: Reflective Practice

For Thing 5 I thought I would use the opportunity to reflect on a recent cpd25 event that I attended.  The event was held at Kings College London and was entitled: 'Supporting our users: current trends in academic liaison and outreach'.  The two presenters Michelle Blake and Nicola Wright, both from LSE, were clearly passionate about this topic. 

The session started with how the role of the subject librarian has developed over the years.  It was explained that a subject librarian was traditionally defined as someone who was a subject expert or specialist (and more often than not held a degree/post-graduate degree in that subject) who was primarily concerned with creating and building a physical collection to reflect the research/teaching being carried out in their institution.  In contrast the subject librarian of today has a much bigger communication role, including: being the point of contact for academics on all library/department issues, taking an active role in teaching and managing various 'relationships' both within the institution they work for and with outside stakeholders such as publishers and book suppliers.  This means if you are an aspiring subject librarian you must have excellent oral communication and presentation skills - something which I know I must work on!

Next we discussed what we call our subject librarians; it highlighted the vast range of job titles people have even though their roles are essentially the same.  This in turn emphasized the importance of being careful about what job titles we use.  For example, if you told a lay person that you were a Information Advisor, as we do in my institution, would they know you worked in a library?  Probably not.  So why do we insist on using it?  I feel that sometimes we seem too pre-occupied with our image; we need to be bold enough to state exactly what and who we are!  

In discussing the role of the subject librarian the presenters touched upon something I had come across before: the Future Libraries project.  It is a scenario-based strategic planning project with the aim of imaging how our academic libraries and the wider society might look in the year 2050.  The three scenarios discussed in the report were: Beehive, Walled Garden and Wild West.  You can find out more about the project here: http://www.futurelibraries.info/content  

Reflecting on the event as a whole has left me with some questions and things to think about:

• What value do subject librarians add to their organisation?  I am particularly interested to find out how other universities structure their subject staff; where I work we have a separate subject team dedicated to each faculty allowing specialist knowledge about the subject to be built up.  However another attendee at the event explained they have one liaison team who do this work.  It would be interesting to compare the services offered between these two types of structures.
• How will the role of subject librarian evolve in the future?  What will be the impact of new technology?
• The two presenters stressed the importance of telling people what you are doing and making them aware of what you can do for them, in other words, use every opportunity to market the service you offer and the skills you have.

This was the first cpd25 event that I have attended and I would recommend them to anyone wishing to share ideas and gain knowledge on a particular library practice/theme.  More about cpd25 can be found here: http://www.cpd25.ac.uk/About-Us/index.php 

Thing 4: Current Awareness

Twitter
As I mentioned at the end of my last post I have been meaning to join Twitter for ages and I have now finally signed up.  You can find me at @laurasletters.  However although I have managed to tweet a couple of times I find the interface confusing and it's not very intuitive to use; a work colleague who is an avid Twitter user has kindly agreed to give me some pointers this week so hopefully I will soon be wondering what I was so worried about. 


RSS feeds
This looks like a really useful tool although I'm a bit overwhelmed about the sheer number of items to read after I subscribed to the bundle of CPD23 participants.  I fear that I will keep hitting the 'mark as read' button and never actually have the time to read any of them.  I maybe need to set aside some time during the week (maybe when on the bus to work) to keep on top of this.  Another option may be to delete the bundle and instead build up slowly the blogs/websites that I want to follow.


Pushnote
I had not heard of Pushnote before and I am finding it hard to understand why you would want to use it!  I have decided not to join but I may be persuaded at a later date to sign-up if I come across fellow CPD23ers who have found it useful.

Thing 3: Personal Brand

I have been extremely busy this week after two weeks away: catching up with emails, attending a cpd25 training course, learning how to use our new library management system which goes 'live' next week and going on an organised Harry Potter walk in London in preparation for seeing the last film next week!  All of which I will write about soon when things have settled down a bit at work. 


As a consequence I have fallen behind on the 23 things programme but have lots of plans about how I want to re-brand my blog.  I feel my blog doesn't look very professional, so although it's colourful, the background picture of jellybeans will probably be the first thing I will want to change!  Instead I hope to add colour by uploading some pictures, I will also add my real name and a recent picture of myself and in addition I want to be more consistent with the fonts and style of headings used.  This will keep me busy for the next few days!


One of the activities for Thing 3 was to Google your name and look at the results.  I couldn't see anything relating to me on the first couple of pages which is not surprising since I have quite a common name; most of the hits were for an American actress who shares my name and an American author who has published a book called: 'Clever letters: fun ways to wiggle your words!' which I am definitely going to look up :)


I am looking forward to setting up a Twitter account for Thing 4 as I feel I should have done this a long time ago. 

Thing 2 continued...

Looking at fellow cpd23-ers blogs seems to have become addictive!  I have left some comments and it's nice to see so many creative blog names.  I'm off to (hopefully!) sunny Devon for two weeks on Friday and I'm hoping I won't fall too far behind or lose my enthusiasm while trying to catch up when I get back.

Thing 2: Investigating other blogs

Having already set up a blog and published my first post I have been able to skip straight onto thing 2.  This thing involves looking at who else is taking part and leaving comments on any that I find particularly interesting.  The sheer number of people taking part makes this a little daunting but hopefully it will also provide a range of blogs created by people in different library sectors; I am aiming to become a follower of around 6 or 7, with half from a sector different from my own (higher education).  Having logged on to write this post it was a nice to see I already had two comments on my own blog which suddenly makes this programme feel very real and will encourage me to try and post regularly.

Introductions

So here it goes - my first ever blog post!!  I've started this blog so that I can take part in '23 Things for Professional Development' but hope to continue blogging after the 'Things' have been completed.  I'm still working on the design of my blog so there may be a few colour changes in the coming weeks.



I have been in my current post at Kingston University as an Information Assistant for two and a half years; the time has flown by and I am now at the point of wanting to consolidate my experience and skills to enable me to find a professional position.  Hopefully this blog will allow me to reflect on what I have achieved and help me to decide where I want to go next.



I anticipate that taking part in 23 Things will broaden my knowledge of social media and help me develop ways of incorporating what I have learnt into my work routine.  It starts next week and I'm looking forward to all the new discoveries I am going to make!