• Complete my MSc dissertation – finished in July
• Attend more conferences – I attended lots of great conferences and events in 2011
• Implement the Getting Things Done system at home and work – I seem to have this sorted for electronic information, though need to work on physical organisation of paperwork and notes
• Participate in Library Day in the Life – I took part in both rounds of Library Day in the Life in 2011
• Continue to blog – I posted 44 times on this blog in 2011, and also blogged for Evidence Base and for projects I’m involved in

As it was a useful exercise for helping me focus last year, so I’ve decided to set myself more resolutions/goals for this year. In common with Erin, these are general aims so cover all areas of my life.

1. To work on CILIP Chartership (reflecting on achievements and updating wiki on at least a monthly basis)
2. To improve physical organisation, particularly in home office – notes and paperwork etc.
3. To achieve a more productive balance between different parts of my life ensuring I make time for professional, personal, and social activities
4. To continue to blog about professional issues and ideas as well as reflection on activities
5. To publish at least one paper (preferably peer-reviewed)

Bring it on!

1. My ALA 2011 badge complete with ribbons!, 2. Louisiana State University, 3. Osney Building at University of Oxford, 4. CILIP signage

Well, it’s seen me get full time, permanent employment for the first time – and it’s in a job I love! I really enjoy the variety of projects I work on at Evidence Base, though I’m the first to admit that some of the projects have been a steep learning curve for me as they’re not in areas I know well. This year however I helped put together a successful bid for funding for a project to support the m-library (mobile devices in libraries) community (see project blog). It’s an area I’ve been interested in for some time now and it’s great to be working on a project I’m so passionate about. The community focus is my kind of thing too – I really enjoy working on projects that help support practitioners.

In other activities, for the first half of the year my focus was mainly on my MSc dissertation. It had been dragging and dragging for over two years but I finally got myself sorted and really knuckled down. I enjoyed the research itself but I have to be honest – I found the process hard. I work predominantly from home so I was spending most of my waking hours sat at the same desk either working or studying. But in the end, I completed the dissertation and was delighted to discover I got a distinction. The dissertation, Strategic marketing in academic libraries, is now available online, and I should get my MScEcon certificate soon.

Another highlight this summer was attending my first international library conference. The seed had been planted at LILAC 2010 (it was recommended to me by a Canadian librarian I met there), so I applied for sources of funding and was delighted to be awarded one of the John Campbell Trust conference travel bursaries. This, in combination with support from my workplace, meant I was able to attend ALA Annual 2011 in New Orleans. I organised a study visit to Louisiana State University and combined this with the visit to the conference. I blogged before, during and after the trip and enjoyed it so much that I made a decision it wouldn’t be my last ALA conference.

ALA Annual wasn’t the only conference/event that I attended this year; I’ve organised, attended and presented at a number of different events. Highlights have included:

• Organising our CILIP West Midlands Member’s Day and AGM at Staffordshire University
• Attended Handheld Librarian, my first online conference
• Winning the pub quiz at Urban Coffee Co with our CILIP West Midlands team
• Speaking at the CoFHE conference on mobile technologies in libraries
• Attending the CILIP AGM 2011
• Speaking at the Oxford Social Media about your online brand
• Attending and facilitating sessions at Library Camp UK 2011 in Birmingham
• Attending the LIS DREaM conference and workshop
• Speaking at Internet Librarian International 2011 on productivity for librarians
• Attending and tweeting Online Information 2011 (and participating in a panel session on social media)

I’ve also been involved in two exciting projects – 23 Things for Professional Development (CPD23) and Festive 24 Things. I really enjoyed being part of the CPD23 organising team, and I’m sure there is more to come with that. I’ve just started analysing some of the evaluation data and hope to help produce an article or presentation with my collaborators to disseminate our findings. Festive 24 Things is always a fun project and this year Damyanti and I (along with Trudi who also helped) decided to do it as a quiz. There’s still time to enter – submit your entry by following the link in the final blog post (closing date is tonight at midnight UK time).

2012 is set to be another exciting year, but I’m hoping to achieve more balance between work, professional activities and other activities – things such as DIY and crafts which I haven’t found as much time as I’d have liked to this year. I’ve been very careful with the activities I’ve chosen to commit to next year and I hope they all complement each other well:

1. ALA Emerging Leaders (attendance at ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual conferences and project work between)
2. Chairing CILIP West Midlands committee
3. CILIP Chartership

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2012 – cheers everyone!

Kiyomi asked me to write a guest blog post and complete an interview as part of her leaders of tomorrow series on her blog. I decided to write from an international perspective about my experience at ALA Annual, and share my top tips. Hopefully they will be relevant to anyone attending a large conference for the first time, whether it’s ALA, SLA or any other library/tech conference. The blog posts are now both available on Kiyomi’s blog:

• Leaders of tomorrow: Jo Alcock
• 10 Top Tips for attending an ALA Conference by Jo Alcock

Bloapp is a tool you can use to create a customisable mobile version of your blog (great for institutional blogs although the customisation is a little limited). I followed Ned’s instructions to create a mobile version of the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog as shown below:

Joeyanne Libraryanne on Bloapp

If you’d like to read my blog this way, you can download the Bloapp app to your iPhone (it’s free) and then scan in the QR code below.

Scan from within Bloapp to add Joeyanne Libraryanne

It’s a really easy tool to use – I’d recommend giving it a go as it really does take about 30 mins – 1 hour (depending how much customisation you need). Great idea for library blogs – though of course it will depend on Bloapp’s success as to whether people use it. If you want to create your own for your blog or your library’s blog, follow Ned’s comprehensive guide.

CPD23 logo

Many readers are likely to have heard of the 23 Things staff development programmes (also known as Learning 2.0) which have been used in a number of libraries across the world over the last few years. For those not familiar – it’s an online self-discovery learning programme used to introduce library staff to some of the technologies relevant to libraries (particularly social media). It’s achieved via a reflective blog which serves as an introduction to blogging as well as recording progress on each of the 23 ‘Things’ thoughout.

In the UK, a number of public and academic libraries have run the programme, including Cambridge who did it last summer. Some of the Cambridge librarians loved it so much that they’re doing it again – in fact this summer they are running two versions! The first is a repeat of the initial programme, whilst the second is what this blog post is about – 23 Things for Professional Development. So what’s that then?

Free CPD this summer!

23 Things for Professional Development is a free online programme open to information professionals at all stages of their career, in all types of role, and anywhere across the world.

Inspired by the 23 Things programmes for social media, this new programme will consist of a mixture of social media “Things” and “Things” to do with professional development. The programme starts on 20 June and will run until early October 2011.

Each week the CPD23 blog (http://cpd23.blogspot.com/) will be updated with details of the next thing to be explored.  Catch up weeks and reflection weeks are built into the programme, so it’s not a problem if you’re going to be away for a week or two!

Please do spread the word to any friends, colleagues, or groups that might be interested: please pass on this message and link to http://cpd23.blogspot.com. If you’re on Twitter follow @cpd23 and tweet with the hashtag #cpd23.

If you already have a blog and you’d like to register for the programme, feel free to add your details to the registration form (there will be a list of participants and hopefully a Google Reader bundle to subscribe to early in the programme). If you don’t yet have a blog, don’t worry – the first thing will take you through setting up a new blog and registering it.

I was invited to contribute to one of the ‘Things’ but loved the idea so much that I asked if I could be involved in helping to plan the programme. I haven’t done much yet so can’t take responsibility for the superb reaction it’s had so far (both in the UK and further afield), but it’s been really great to work with a group of such enthusiastic librarians. I can’t wait for the programme to launch! We already have people registered, and lots more thinking about it. If you are interested in sponsoring the programme, please contact us.

• Complete my MSc dissertation – so it’s obvious that my motivation has slipped on this as I have favoured speaking at conferences and writing for publications and blogs, however this year I must complete my MSc as I have a deadline of September 2011 (a whole 5 years since I started my course in 2006). I’ve finished paying for it now too, so it’ll be worth the effort to complete the qualification. I am really interested in my topic area (strategic marketing in academic libraries), I’ve just been bad at bringing it to the top of the priorities as it didn’t have to be done, but now it does.
• Attend more conferences – whether it’s speaking or attending (I gain a lot from both), I really want to get out there this year and attend some great conferences. I learn so much from attending events and chatting to people, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to do more of this in 2011. I’m currently exploring and applying for funding, so we’ll see if anything comes of that. I would particularly like to attend ALA Annual this year so a lot of effort/planning is going into that (keeping everything crossed I can organise funding), and I’d also love to go to CILIP Umbrella as I haven’t yet been to the biennial CILIP conference and it would be great to attend.
• Implement the Getting Things Done system at both my home office and at work - I’ve always been keen on using to-do lists and calendars to manage my time, but I’ve recently been learning more about the GTD methodology and would like to properly organise both my workspaces at home (I often work from home) and in the office (we’ll be moving offices soon so this will be a good opportunity to get properly set up).
• Participate in Library Day in the Life – many people have asked me what I do in my new job and it’s very difficult to describe, so I’ll be participating in the Library Day in the Life project again this year to hopefully share a bit of what I get up to nowadays. It’s a really great project to get involved in so I’d encourage anyone reading to consider joining in too, you can read all about it here and see some of my previous Library Day in the Life posts.
• Continue to blog - obvious one this, and I don’t imagine it will be a difficult one for me. I find blogging so incredibly useful to gather my thoughts, get feedback from my peers, and reflect on what I’ve learnt. I contribute to a number of blogs now, and the number continues to grow, but I hope to continue blogging here as my main area for sharing my thoughts and experiences. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it is I’m genuinely passionate about and what drives me to do the work I do. I think my blog changes direction to reflect my interests, but I like having the space to share these thoughts and keep a record of them.

Those are the main things I hope to achieve in 2011, let’s hope I manage to achieve them. If you have any resolutions you’d like to share (I know for some people this acts as a motivator), please feel free to add them in the comments.

So what did 2010 bring? Well, I certainly satisfied that itch I mentioned this time last year!

It’s been a good year for attending events – the highlight for me was getting the sponsored student place for LILAC 2010. I absolutely loved the conference and spent a very enjoyable 3 days chatting to librarians from different countries about their experiences with information literacy. I always learn a lot from attending events, both from the formal sessions and from the conversations at the event, and this was particularly true at LILAC. I met some fascinating people and was able to chat with American and Canadian librarians (such as Sarah Faye Cohen who has always been an inspiration, and a lovely Canadian librarian who I chatted to throughout the dinner evening); these conversations really helped improve my understanding of issues common to many librarians.

I also attended my first UC&R/CoFHE conference this summer, for which I had two presentations accepted. I spoke about using social media to build your professional network (this was primarily aimed at new professionals), and I collaborated with Emma Illingworth to present on your library brand and the student experience. This was something of interest to both Emma and I, but not something we had much practical experience with – our presentation seemed to generate further interest in the area and marketing in libraries seems to be really taking off now (including an interesting book proposal from Ned Potter).

The major change of the year for me happened in late summer, when I applied for a new job at Birmingham City University. I was delighted to be offered the job, and started work as a researcher at Evidence Base in August. I was ready for a new challenge and that’s certainly been realised! I haven’t written much about my new job but I am really enjoying it so far. It’s very different to my previous role, involving working as a researcher for a self-funded department which is part of the university library (it used to be part of the library school). So far I’ve been involved in research and evaluation work for library/information community, including working with JISC projects. I’m looking forward to starting back after a relaxing break and beginning some new projects as well as utilising my skills to develop Evidence Base’s web presence and hopefully run some events.

Through my new job, I’ve been able to attend some different types of events and was invited to speak to school librarians about how they can help prepare students for university. I really enjoyed the event and have been invited to speak to a different group of school librarians about the same topic next year. I was also invited to a UKOLN organised event for the cultural heritage sector focused on social media. I used a case study approach to demonstrate how problems at my workplaces have been addressed by utilising social media.

I have also been busy with CILIP West Midlands commitments as Marketing Officer. My role includes managing our online presence (Twitter, blog, Flickr etc.), producing monthly email updates, and communicating with our users wherever possible to understand their needs and how we can meet them. As we are a relatively small committee, I’ve also taken on additional responsibilities including event organisation. We worked with The Birmingham Salon to organise a successful debate involving both library and information workers and the general public (focused on the new Library of Birmingham), and in November I organised and chaired a Hustings event for the CILIP 2011 candidates (Vice President and Councillors). This was quite a stressful thing to take on with all the governance that must be adhered to (and especially as I’ve never chaired anything before), but I’m really glad I did it – I developed a number of new skills, and we got some great feedback too which was very pleasing. We utilised online streaming and were able to include questions from outside the room which worked really well, and is something I’d definitely like to do again in future.

I also joined the American Library Association (ALA) this year (my membership card came through this morning!). I’m hoping to be able to get involved with the work of ALA and have joined the New Member’s Round Table – hopefully I will be able to attend a conference to get a flavour of the international perspective.

With all this going on, unfortunately progress on my MSc dissertation has slipped slightly. I did finalise my topic (strategic marketing in academic libraries, focusing on the West Midlands region) and completed a draft of the introduction and literature review, but am still finalising the draft methodology (thankfully my new job has helped develop my research skills which I’m hoping will help speed things along). The dissertation will be a major focus for the next few months.

In my personal life, I finally learnt to drive this year and have adapted to gluten free life (I was diagnosed with coeliac disease on 31st December 2009). I’ve also been cross stitching more and more in my free time – it keeps me sane by relaxing my mind and is something I hope to be able to continue.

The year ended with a new project which I really enjoyed – Festive 24 Things, an online advent calendar which I did with Damyanti Patel. I’ve always wanted to do a 23 Things style programme and this was a great introduction to that.

So, what are my hopes for next year? I think I’ll leave that for a resolutions post tomorrow. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2011!

Guest blog post 1

The first is on one of my favorite library blogs (and one I recommend to many librarians), Librarians with Lives. This blog takes a different approach to most, encouraging guest blog posts from other librarians with lives. The main focus of the blog is CPD for the time-stretched and I’ve been wanting to write a guest post for a while but wasn’t sure what to focus on. My recent event amplification blog posts gave me an idea about following events from afar (which I have found incredibly useful), so I wrote a brief introduction and some tips for their blog:

• Following events from afar on the Librarians with Lives blog

Guest blog post 2

The second post was for CILIP Update blog, and discussed the CILIP West Midlands Election Hustings event I organised recently. I was really pleased with the positive feedback from the event, and will be writing a post for the CILIP West Midlands blog about live streaming which we utilised to extend the reach of the event. The post on the Update blog gives a brief overview of the event (and included another plea to encourage people to vote):

• Who should I vote for? – a CILIPWM election hustings report on CILIP Update blog

The election closed yesterday and I’m pleased to say my efforts to encourage people to vote may have helped as the election received a higher response than usual. If you are interested in the results, I blogged about them on the CILIP West Midlands blog.

Festive fun

And finally for a bit of fun! I have been wanting to run a 23 Things type programme for a while, and have been discussing some ideas with Damyanti. She came up with a brilliant idea to theme it around an advent calendar, and so Festive 24 Things was born. We’ll be posting a short blog post every day along with relevant web resources we think you might find interesting. We’ve kept the Christmas theme throughout so each post will share links to Christmas related resources or get you to use a tool for a Christmas related task (I’m not saying any more now, you’ll have to wait and see). This also gives me an excuse to try out a new plugin I’ve installed called Blackbird Pie which should enable me to embed a tweet:

Welcome to our online advent calendar #festive24things, we hope you'll follow & enjoy http://bit.ly/e6Ajn0

November 30, 2010 12:36 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@festive24things

festive24things

Go on then, what are you waiting for?

• Festive 24 Things blog
• Follow Festive 24 Things on Twitter

I’m really excited about this project and hope you’ll join Damyanti and I throughout December (1st-24th) as we discover new tools and have some Christmas fun. Happy Advent!

Original Joeyanne Libraryanne blog theme

With a little help from Cookies and Java (my boyfriend’s marketing and web design company) it has since developed into the brand you see now (pictured below for those using a feed reader!):

Joeyanne Libraryanne current theme

I’ve allowed the Joeyanne Libraryanne persona and the blog to develop organically, and have been surprised at how much I enjoy writing (and LOVE networking via the conversations it has enabled!).

Initially I set up the blog to record my distance learning study progress, but my passion lay in social media and new technologies, so the blog became a way to share my findings from exploring and playing with new stuff. My interests have developed and the blog has enabled me to explore these in more depth and share with others.

It’s helped me develop a great professional network, both through blogging and through Twitter which I began using in Dec 2007. I love getting blog comments, they always add so much to the posts and my knowledge – please keep them coming! Thanks to everyone who is part of my network, all of whom are “aces” (to quote @wigglesweets, a part of that network).

My Joeyanne Libraryanne adventures have opened up numerous opportunities for development; I’ve been invited to collaborate for conference papers, presented my own conference papers, and gained confidence to write articles. This is something I really enjoy – I hope to continue to collaborate with colleagues (internal and external) to present at conferences and publish articles, it’s added a lot to my career experience. I’ve always wanted to continue to learn, and I love being able to do so whilst helping expand the body of professional knowledge.

The last couple of years has seen many new librarian/ information professional bloggers from the UK, which has been fantastic. Most of my library blog feeds used to be US-based but now there’s lots from the UK too which is a welcome change. I spoke about blogging and microblogging at the New Professionals Conference last year, which helped get people like TheREALwikiman blogging (and eventually moving to Twitter)! I’ll be presenting on professional networking and social media next week at the CoFHE/UC&R conference, which will focus on my experiences as Joeyanne Libraryanne (I’ll share the presentation afterwards for anyone interested).

In the meantime, I’d like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone who has read my blog during the last three years, and especially to those of you who have contributed to the conversation by commenting. Here’s to another 3 years or more!

I initially set up this blog to record my studying progress, although it developed into something more reflective and practical. Most of my blog posts either report on events I’ve attended, discussions I’ve had, books/articles I’ve read, my experiences… etc. There is usually some reason to my blog posts (although I appreciate at times it may not seem like there is!), and I usually refer to these reasons throughout the post. Most of my posts refer to background information, although these are primarily other websites or blogs to allow ease of follow up for anyone reading the post. I do think that most of my thoughts emerge through consideration of research and evidence, and although in a practical sense my blog posts might not be as detailed as my assignments and I don’t always seek out the opposite point of view, I do generally try to consider other points of view to help develop my own.

As an academic librarian, I spend quite a lot of my time working on an enquiry desk (almost half of my working week!) helping others find research. I’ve learnt to use different databases and use different techniques when searching specific research databases or search engines. I’ve become pretty good at tracking down research, and knowing the best places to start researching different topics (although there’s always more to learn!). So once I’d finalised my dissertation topic (strategic marketing in academic libraries), I was able to go off and find loads of really useful research relating to lots of different aspects of my topic.

Now that’s it’s actually time to write all this research and knowledge I’ve learnt from it up as a literature review, I have to confess I’m struggling a little. It’s not that I find it particularly difficult (although there are times I struggle to get my head around some of the more complicated research analysis despite having a Statistics A Level!), but moreso that the style of writing just doesn’t come naturally to me anymore. I think my time blogging, writing reports at work, and short articles for journals had changed my writing style to be more practical in nature and less formal (I guess more like conversational English). I’m now having to pad out my writing with extra points which I probably wouldn’t usually if they don’t add a lot to the purpose of the article/report/blog post.

I know which I’d rather write, and I know which I’d rather read (give me practical, experienced based advice any day over purely theoretical information), but for academic purposes I have to adapt my writing to prove that yes, I do always research my sources and try to discover alternative points of view, and yes I can critically evaluate research.

I can see the importance of demonstrating these skills, but I’m really beginning to appreciate why I find it easier to blog than to write assignments – of course there is also the fact that I can blog about whatever I choose to, but mainly the issue for me is adapting my writing style to use language I wouldn’t ordinarily use and include more of the theoretical rather than a focus on practical and experience-based information. Don’t get me wrong, I do actually love researching and am really looking forward to starting my data collection for my dissertation, but I’d be a whole lot more enthusiastic if I could write it in a more informal, reflective way.

What do you think? Do you think we may see a shift in the future to more assessed work being written in a similar way to blogs, or is it important to ensure academic writing standards remain the same? Do you struggle to adapt your writing style or is it just me? Am I just lazy and need to kick myself into shape?! I do recognise the irony of procrastinating by writing a blog post about how I’m struggling to write my literature review – almost 800 words added to my blog, zero to my literature review! I’d appreciate other people’s thoughts on my ponderings though.