• 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!

CILIP AGM 2011

I recently attended my first CILIP AGM. I helped organise the CILIP West Midlands AGM earlier this year but this was a much more formal affair. I learnt a lot about CILIP and its governance, so thought I’d reflect on my experience and share my thoughts (well, actually it was my soon-to-be mentor for CILIP Chartership who prodded me to record my thoughts and gave me some starter questions whilst it’s still fresh in my mind).

Why did I attend the AGM?

I’m involved in a number of different CILIP activities and a member of my local branch committee and local Career Development Group committee. Despite this, I still feel I have a lot to learn about CILIP as an organisation, including more about its current situation and its strategic aims. As a committee member, I feel I ought to know where the organisation is headed to ensure our branch and group activities are aligned to the organisation’s aims. I thought the AGM would be an ideal opportunity to learn more about this as well as meet some of the people involved.

What did I learn there?

I learnt a heck of a lot! Not only did I learn about the current situation and aims for the future, I learnt more about the structure and governance of CILIP, and experienced my first formal AGM. I also gained some new contacts, and strengthened connections with others.

• CILIP’s current situation and aims for the future – I’d been involved in the Defining our Professional Future project both by completing the survey and attending a focus group, and I’m really pleased to learn that the outcomes of this have been used to inform the future structure and activities of the organisation. The main key areas for development are growing membership (20,000 by 2020); advocacy and campaigning; developing powerful policy messages; linking local, national and global professional networks; delivering professional skills that society needs; building a sustainable organisation that provides great value for members.
• CILIP’s structure and governance – having spoken to a couple of Council members and the Vice President, I knew a little about how decisions are made within CILIP, but I hadn’t realised just how complex it is. Isobel Hood, chair of CILIP Council, did an excellent job chairing the AGM and it provided just a brief insight into how intensive being a member of CILIP Council can be. Considering this is a voluntary position that many people do on top of other jobs and commitments, they really do deserve great recognition for their work. Although I knew Council were the ones responsible for steering CILIP, I hadn’t quite realised how important they were (I had for example thought that Annie Mauger, CEO, would chair the AGM).
• Formal AGM procedures – this was my first formal AGM, so I learnt a lot about the proceedings including for example the fact that motions must be raised in advance of the meeting if it is something the members need to vote on, but that any member can raise a motion. I also learnt that at least 50 members must be present for it to be valid (I would hope that many people could attend each year, but it does raise questions particularly for the future about whether members watching virtually and voting online would still count towards this quota). I made a few mistakes with voting – I abstained from approving the previous year’s meeting as I hadn’t attended, but I then realised that you could vote to approve them even if you weren’t there (though I do find this a little strange and I’m not sure its something I feel totally comfortable with). Some parts of the meeting were closed, whilst some encouraged discussion (as I imagine is typical, the issue of subscription fees raised the most interest). I didn’t dare volunteer to speak this time, but at least I know now how to and I know how to raise a motion before the AGM if I want something to be discussed.
• Networking – it’s often the chatting outside the event that you get a lot of value from, and this was certainly true of this event. I met Annie Mauger (who was just as lovely in real life as she seems online), a number of CILIP Trustees, CILIP staff, and other CILIP activists.

How will what I learnt help me/my service provision in future?

It will definitely help my work as part of CILIP West Midlands committee – CILIP is a complex organisation and the more I know about it, the better equipped I am to support the local branch. I really enjoy working on the branch committee and although there’s not many of us involved, I’m really proud of the work we do. There’s always room for improvement though, and it’s incredibly useful to know more about the CILIP strategy so that I can ensure our branch activities align to that.

It’s also always good to attend events to understand more about the profession and chat to people about the work Evidence Base does. I’m keen to ensure the research we do at Evidence Base can be applied to support practitioners, and I’m conscious that as I’m no longer strictly speaking a librarian in my day job, it’s crucial to gather information from practitioners whenever I can. Twitter is a really useful avenue for this, but nothing beats face to face conversations.

What next?

I always try to keep up-to-date on CILIP activities by reading (or at least glancing through!) documents on the members area on the CILIP website before meetings. Although an AGM isn’t exactly the most fun event you can attend, I really did learn a lot and definitely intend to continue to keep up-to-date and attend future AGMs. I’ve made sure I’m subscribed to CILIP Matters: the CILIP Council blog so I receive RSS updates from Council meetings, and I’d like to observe a Council meeting in future so will keep an eye out for an appropriate date. I’d strongly recommend attending an AGM or Council meeting to all CILIP Chartership candidates (and all CILIP members to be honest!).

I decided to do Library Day in the Life a little different this time round; partly because I’ve been busy, and partly as I’m not sure verbatim accounts are the most interesting thing to write or read. So instead I’ll be writing a summary of what I’ve been up to this week (using Nirvana, my to do list, to help me as I can check my logbook to see what tasks I’ve finished). My work life and professional interests often cross over so this list includes some pure work tasks, and other professional related tasks such as committee work and studying.

• Attended a half-day internal training session on our competencies framework for the library – this is something we are going to be using as part of our reflection for our annual performance reviews to analyse our strengths and things we need to improve on.
• Packed up my office – we’re moving offices again but we don’t know where to yet so we’ve been moved to some temporary classrooms as others needed our office. It’s the second time we’ve packed up and moved in less than a year!
• Worked on some data for an evaluation project – we’ve been working with one of the JISC Activity Data projects to help them evaluate their project. We’ve gathered data from the service itself and from surveys and focus groups we’ve had with project stakeholders. To finalise the report I created the relevant data tables and charts to accompany the figures.
• Attended Handheld Librarian V – one of my interests at the moment is how libraries can utilise mobile technologies, so I attended Handheld Librarian which is an online conference. It’s great in that it means I can attend without the cost of travelling to America, however the time difference meant it was a late night – the conference was 4pm-11.30pm UK time!
• Attended the Handheld Librarian V virtual expo – the day after the main conference, there is a virtual expo with booths from a number of suppliers. Some were closed when I tried to check them out, but I did get to watch a great demo of iBallz!
• Registered for Library Camp UK 2011 – Twitter exploded (well, the librarian corner of Twitter anyway!) on Wednesday when Library Camp UK 2011 in Birmingham was announced. It sold out in less than 24 hours, and there were 175 tickets! There’s now a waiting list so I made a donation via the website to enable more people to attend.
• Blogged about my experience at ALA Annual 2011 – I used a Tumblr blog for the conference but wanted to also share the main points on this blog
• Applied for ALA Emerging Leaders – I’m keen to support our professional organisations, and when I was at ALA Annual 2011 lots of people recommended the ALA Emerging Leaders program which is for young or new professionals. It introduces them to ALA as an organisation, provides the opportunity to work with others at a similar stage in their career (on a project for part of ALA), and helps them move into a committee position. It’s a great program and some really incredible people have been part of it in previous years. I’m keeping everything crossed that I get a place, but there’s a lot of competition!
• Contacted someone who is interested in joining the CILIP West Midlands committee - Last week I spotted a blog post from someone in the region who is keen to join the branch committee. We’re always looking for more committee members and have a vacancy for secretary at the moment so I promised I’d send some information about the committee and what we do. I love being part of the committee and would encourage others to get involved in committee work – it’s good for developing skills, making a difference, and it’s really rewarding too.
• Organised an informal meetup of library people for a quiz in a local cafe next week - at a meet up a couple of weeks ago, a few people seemed interested in doing quizzes. I love a good quiz so when I found out about one in Birmingham next Monday, I got it organised. Hopefully we’ll have enough people for a team or two.
• Blogged about the LIS DREaM event – I attended the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) project launch conference last week and blogged the highlights on my work blog
• Blogged my Thing 5 for CPD23 on reflection – I’m a bit behind on this but really enjoying the programme, and the reflection was a good one, particularly as I’m hoping to Charter at some point so will need to hone my reflective writing skills
• Had a conference call with colleagues – one of my colleagues is semi-retiring to go part-time so we had a call to discuss some of the work we’ve got coming up and how we are going to organise it. We also all have loads of leave to take – it seems like one of us could be off every week from now until Christmas (and there is only 3 of us!)
• Submitted my MSc dissertation – this is definitely the most exciting thing I’ve done this week; I finally got my dissertation completed and sent off. Organising printing and binding as a distance learner is tricky, but in the end it has worked out best for me to get it printed and bound at Aberystwyth so I just had to send off my signed declarations. So all being well, yesterday was the last day of studying for a while, and it feels lovely to have a clear desk and a much clearer mind (I even bought and built a VegTrug ready to start growing some veg!). I would like to Charter though, and have even managed to find a fool mug lovely person who is willing to mentor me next year. I may set up a wiki to start collecting material between now and then, but my focus has very much shifted from academia; I’m planning to spend my free time supporting professional organisations through committee work and other professional involvements (oh, and some non-professional activities such as crafts, growing veg and hopefully seeing more of family and friends).

And that was my week pretty much – not as much time spent travelling this week (last week I was in London on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday), so lots of time working at home to catch up with everything and get everything in order so that I can enjoy my week off this week.

How to collect data?

So I have been thinking about how best to do this. I could just devise a brief paper questionnaire/survey for people to complete on the day, but that’s boring and would involve data entry and analysis for me after the event. An online survey would make the process a little easier for me, but many people wouldn’t be able to complete it on the day and some not at all. I could send email it out to delegates after the day and this seems to work well for feedback from events, but for fact finding whilst people are there I’d like something during the event itself.

What would be really great would be to get immediate feedback to shape our discussion and so that the committee could take actions away from the day. I think it also makes it more interesting for participants if they can see the data. But taking a simple hand vote can be difficult to manage, and some people may not want others knowing their response. I thought back to my information literacy sessions as a subject librarian, where I always wanted to use PRS (personal response systems), sometimes referred to as zappers. Regardless of what Phil and Jennie might think, these are nothing evil, they’re these things:

Turning Point PRS "zapper"

Using these has two immediate barriers; hardware and software. I wasn’t sure if the venue has either of these, so I emailed the committee asking if anyone could borrow a set from their workplace. I’ve tried my own workplace, but no luck there, and haven’t heard any of the committee having better luck. The software for some of these systems is free to download, but I’m not sure how licensing works so would need to check this out. Only a small sample of the branch members will be attending the event and this method wouldn’t enable others to join in (like remote followers), but it’s not rigorous scientific research so I wasn’t too concerned about that – we could always get an idea on the day and get other members opinions later through our blog or monthly email.

But then…

Whilst I was mulling all this over, I noticed a tweet from Emma (clearly a great source of information!) about her use of PollEverywhere in one of her recent information literacy classes. Now you know I’m a sucker for playing with new tools and technology, so I was intrigued to find out more about this.

Taken from the PollEverywhere website:

Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It’s the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.

Sounds great doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too. And I’m pleased to say that after a bit of experimentation, I’m even more impressed with it. The basic idea is the same as PRS systems but responses can be collected in a number of different ways. I tested out SMS, mobile web, and Twitter submissions and all worked well and updated really quickly. Because it’s on the web, this also means that by sharing the details anyone can respond to the poll, not just those in the room. You can also keep it open for longer to give people chance to leave their responses after the event.

Questions can be set up in advance and you can download them into PowerPoint slides which show the details of the different voting options and also display live updates, very neat. It’s really easy to create polls and customise the settings – whether or not people can vote more than once, which methods they can use to vote etc. You can also set a message so that voters receive confirmation of their chosen vote (see screenshots below for the mobile web version from my iPhone):

PollEverywhere mobile web vote

Obviously, the main downside to the tool is that the audience need to have either a mobile phone or a web-enabled device and there may be some who do not have either, or who perhaps don’t want to spend money on a text message. The other downside is the limit to the number of responses. You can have up to 30 respondents for free, 50 for $15 a month, and other incremental costs for extra features and participants. There are options for educational use ($399 per semester), though it appears to need an account for each lecturer – there doesn’t seem to be an institutional deal.

I’m definitely hoping to use this during conferences and events, but Emma has already used it in her teaching and she has blogged about her experiences. Huge thanks to Emma for sharing this tool, I can’t wait to try it out. I also noticed this blog post about using a survey view to combine questions (e.g. for use on kiosks) – lots of useful applications for this tool.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has tried this or similar tools for gathering feedback at events or in teaching sessions? Please let me know in the comments.

DISCLAIMER: EVENT PROMOTION! As marketing officer for CILIP West Midlands I can’t blog about this tool and not use the opportunity to shamelessly plug the event I’m organising. Since drafting this blog post I have visited the venue for the CILIP West Midlands event (Thompson Library at Staffordshire University, Stoke campus) and discovered that they do have some zappers so we may be able to borrow them. I’d like to test out PollEverywhere too though so I think I’ll probably try both out (always good to have backups in case one doesn’t work out!).

If you’d like to join us and see how my experimentation goes, you can find out more about the event at http://bit.ly/membersday and book a place using the booking form at http://bit.ly/bookmembersday. Hope to see some of you there!

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 11:36 am 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!

There are some great speakers, including library workers from different sectors as well as architects, and there will be opportunity for networking with other professionals, both in the library and architecture fields. The event will also include the AGMs for CILIP West Midlands, West Midlands Career Development Group, and the Public Libraries Group.

The conference is being held in Birmingham Theatre Library in central Birmingham (walking distance from New Street station).

It’s open to all – CILIP members and non-members; people local to the West Midlands region and those further afield. The cost for the day is just £17.25 for CILIP members, £34.50 for non- members, and the cost includes lunch and refreshments. You can read more about the day and get booking information from the programme.

It would be great to meet new people, so I hope to see you there!

EDIT: Unfortunately, this event has since been cancelled.