Quite a lot actually, when you’re a librarian. A recurring professional issue in librarianship is defining what a librarian does to a member of the public. Laura (Theatregrad) recently blogged about her experiences as a librarianship student discussing her course with other students, giving a really interesting perspective.

What is a librarian anyway? We have the traditional stereotypes – the middle aged woman wearing a bun with a twin set and glasses on string around her neck. What does she do? Well she’s knowledgeable, but she’s a bit stuffy and reluctant to share information – you have to ask very nicely and you have to be very quiet when in her presence. I’ll admit that I held this perception of a librarian until I graduated from my undergraduate degree in 2005 and starting trying to find out about librarianship (this fact is ever present in my mind when I talk to people outside the profession).
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Sax 1 by chickadee

(Post title will probably be lost on you if you haven’t been watching Treme on Sky Atlantic, but my boyfriend has been singing it constantly the last couple of days!)

I mentioned in my post at the start of the year that I wanted to attend more conferences this year, and in particular my first international conference. I’ve now stopped jumping around ecstatically and can share the news that I’m going to ALA Annual in June this year (it’s in New Orleans hence the Treme and jazz references!).

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I’m organising CILIP West Midlands Members’ Day and AGM 2011 at the moment, and during the day I’d like to take the opportunity to get people’s opinions on what the focus should be for the branch over the next 12 months. As marketing officer on the committee, I’d particularly like to find out what people’s needs and expectations of the branch are. What support would people like from the branch? What sort of events would they like us to run? Where in the region would they like events/networking opportunities? How would they like to communicate with the branch? It would also be good to get views on the discussions about the future of branches and groups (read Emma Illingworth’s blog post for an excellent overview of the recent meeting about this), though that may be a bit ambitious!

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