Just a short post today as it’s Friday evening and I have a friend coming to visit. I’ll just give a brief overview of today’s tasks:

• Worked on the Emerging Leaders project (gave feedback on survey and added liaison details into our contacts spreadsheet)
• Updated the contact list of JUSP libraries in Surveymonkey (new libraries are joining all the time and I add them into the contact list monthly) and scheduled a feedback survey to go out to them next month 
• Had a catch up call with my manager (we don’t usually have these daily but have a lot of little bits we’re working together on at the moment and this is the easiest way to update progress)
• Had a Skype call for the m-libraries community support project with the programme manager at JISC – this was really useful and we discussed future activities such as a community event, the community website, and the m-libraries conference in September
• Produced a document outlining our ideas for the m-library community event 
• Updated the Twitter guidelines for JUSP based on feedback from the project team
• Wrote a blog post for the Evidence Base blog reporting on the LIS DREaM event I went to on Monday

Hope you have found this insight into my week interesting. My work varies every single day depending on the projects we’re working on. It’s a nice mix at the moment – two external projects and some internal research for the library. 

Today I was working from home which usually means I can get a lot more done, but today my brain seemed to be on slow mode. I did get things done in the end but I worked into the evening to get everything done, which I’m really trying to get out of the habit of doing. My to-do list also seemed to grow rather than shrink today – I’d get one task done and need to add another two or three! So what did I actually do today?

My day began with some sorting and planning – prepping for a couple of calls, organising my tasks, and keeping project documentation up-to-date. Then I had a call with my manager where we discussed things we’re up to at the moment – project progress for the m-library community support project and JUSP, and some focus groups we’ve been asked to do on e-books for our library (based on the results of a library survey we ran at the end of last year). We started planning these and I suggested using Eventbrite to organise the booking. Last time we did focus groups the administration was a nightmare – we have two part-time support staff but this doesn’t cover the full week so I was also responding to some of the messages. It got very confusing with three of us trying to organise the participants and the sessions they could attend (and especially when we had to cancel one of the sessions), so I’m hoping Eventbrite might make things simpler. 

Lunch next, which I always enjoy at home because I can have something other than a jacket potato (today I had gluten free pasta with tomato and mozzarella sauce) and watch some TV (today I watched a very emotional episode of One Born Every Minute). 

This afternoon started well – one of the senior managers noticed my news in the recent library newsletter about being an ALA Emerging Leader and wants to feature it in the wider University newsletter. Could be useful for the Chartership portfolio!

We’re currently finalising some use cases for the JUSP project to demonstrate how libraries are using the service. We visited a number of libraries last year, and interviewed more over the phone/Skype. After writing up each library’s interview as a case study, we decided that they would best be presented as use cases. They are now written up and we’re getting approval for use of quotes from the libraries involved. I made some amendments based on one library’s feedback today. 

Then it was time to make the edits to the report write up of the m-library support project fact-finding survey. Some grammatical and formatting changes, and some additional quotes added in to demonstrate some of the examples of current m-library initiatives. 

I also tidied up my Chartership evidence submission form. I’m using a Google spreadsheet so that I can add things easily from anywhere with web access (I have a copy of the form starred in my inbox and can also access the form through my browser on iPhone or iPad). I had columns for what area of my PPDP and what marking criteria each piece of evidence supports, but this was a free entry text box. I’ve now added each option as a checkbox so I can just tick the box and easily check what information I have for specific areas. It’s working well for me so far (I’d be happy to share or give more details if anyone is interested). 

Tomorrow I have a couple more calls (are you noticing a theme here?!) and hopefully some work-related blog posts as I’m falling behind (it’s unfortunately something that always slips to the bottom of the to-do list as it’s not as essential as other tasks, but I still need to make time for it).

Day in the office today – which ironically usually means I get much less done (too many interruptions and errands). It took me longer than expected to get in this morning (had forgotten what traffic was like during peak times!) but I travel by public transport and always have my iPad with me so I can work on the way in. I finished drafting comments for the report I’ve been reviewing during the journey, and caught up with news on Twitter.

When I arrived at work I found a lovely surprise parcel of goodies from Lisa Jeskins who is part of the LILAC Conference organising committee. I’d been telling lots of people how much I love the LILAC conference whilst I was at ALA Midwinter last week so had joked that I should be on commission. Lisa clearly thought I should be so sent me these:

I’d also had some new stationery delivered so I had quite an exciting start to the day (I know I’m sad but I love getting new stationery!). After a quick catch up with my colleagues, we decided to bring forward a discussion we were planning for next week (it’s rare that we are all together). We’re getting our communication in order and have devised a new system to help share news from our department with the rest of the library and with those external who are interested in our work (most of our work is external). Internally, we’re using the library newsletter whilst externally we have an Evidence Base blog (and may later set up a MailChimp mailing list once our new website is sorted). My colleagues aren’t very familiar with blogging so I agreed to help them get started and provide some informal training for them. Unfortunately we had many hurdles (it seemed to take ages to get their accounts sorted!) and then we got interrupted by an IT guy so we didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked.

I went out for lunch with Damyanti, but we went slightly later than expected and lost track of time whilst we were there so I returned back to work later than expected. Oops! Time for lots of grovelling to manager and quickly preparing for a project Skype call – I’d done my own preparation but hadn’t had chance to discuss with my manager. The call was for the JISC m-library community support project, and we’re at the point now where we know broadly want people want from an m-library community and we need to make decisions on how we can best deliver that. It was a productive call and I certainly feel a lot clearer about our activities for the short term at least. I’ve been interested in investigating how libraries can utilise mobile technologies for a long time, and I’m really enjoying working on a project I’m so interested in. There’s lots of really innovative work out there and we’re hoping to be able to share this with the wider community to prevent duplication and help drive developments further forward.

After the call (and after adding actions to my to-do list and tidying up project documents), I did a bit of work on the Twitter account for another project, the Journal Usage Statistics Project (JUSP). We’ve had a Twitter account (@JUSPSTATS) for a few months now but we haven’t been using it often, partly as it didn’t really have clear ownership or purpose. I’ve worked with some of my colleagues on the project to discuss our intended use and have developed some guidelines. Today I shared them with the rest of the project team, answered some questions about Twitter use to a colleague who is new to it, and set up some saved searches on Twitter to keep an eye on. The Twitter search interface is a lot better than it used to be and seems to work well – I didn’t know it was so easy to set limits such as language and geography in addition to keyword and phrase searches.

That took me to almost the end of the afternoon – there was just time for a few emails and actions to be added to my to-do list regarding the JUSP project, then I visited the library general office to return the travel insurance card (I took it to Dallas for ALA Midwinter) and headed home. Thursday and Friday I’ll be working at home so hopefully able to get some real work done!

Today was another continuing professional development event for me, again in London. This time it was a joint event organised by CILIP in London and Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) on Writing for Publication (which I will share the notes from later). It was only a 3hr workshop but the style of learning really suited me – there was lots of discussion time and it was fairly informal with questions welcomed throughout. I didn’t necessarily learn anything ground breaking (although knowing the publication process from the journal editor perspective was useful), but it reinforced a lot of things I should know but seem to forget when I have a writing task and a barrier stopping me doing it.

The workshop finished at 1pm, so after lunch at my favourite place in London for gluten free food (Planet Organic), I got a train home. During the afternoon I worked on the train – mainly catching up on and organising emails, thinking about my writing homework (there is a follow up session in a couple of weeks), catching up with my boss, and reviewing the m-library report we need to get finalised soon.

I got home at about 5pm and worked a bit more during the evening. Because I’ve been travelling a lot over the last couple of weeks, I’m not as up-to-date as I like to be with responding to emails, reading RSS feeds (I’m way behind and might have to hit mark all as read even for my favourites folder) and managing my to do list. As a mobile worker, I do sometimes find it difficult to switch off from work. I can’t just leave my office/workplace and stop work for the evening, and I like to leave it in as tidy a state as I can before the next day (no half finished tasks). After yet more emails, I spent some time sorting out my mailing lists and filters so that my inbox doesn’t get overloaded (this is a particular pain at the moment as many I subscribe to are US based so they fill up in the evening due to the time difference).

I also did a bit of work on my ALA Emerging Leaders project – my team and I need to finalise the questions for our survey soon and start sending it out to people. We’re using ALA Connect to share documents and hold discussions (including our virtual meetings). This way our project mentor and our ALA staff contact can also see our progress and help us when we need it. This evening I added a couple of new documents onto the wiki style software so that we can all work together on finalising the survey.

Tomorrow I’m actually going into the office at the university. Looking forward to seeing some colleagues

Just a brief post – today I attended the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) workshop 2, this time held in London. It was an early start (left home at around 6.40am – too dark!), but it still amazes me that I can be in London by 9.30am and at an event before 10am.

On the train journey I worked on a draft of one of our reports (for the m-libs support project), and sorted through work emails.

The event itself was 10.30am until 4.15pm at the British Library.

I have to be honest; it wasn’t my favourite research event as the topics weren’t very relevant to my interests or current research areas and I struggled to see how some of it could apply in practice in libraries/LIS research. I did find some of it useful – I enjoyed the session on webometrics and might do some further investigation into what can be done with sentiment analysis from online social media (e.g. using tweets), and I enjoyed hearing about other attendee’s research/ideas in the unconference half hour. I’ll write a full review of the workshop later this week.

Having coeliac disease means its always a bit of a gamble with conference food (I have to follow a gluten free diet), and the lunch was, as is often the case, pretty disappointing but in the afternoon I got my own special gluten free cake!

Once the event finished I checked into my hotel (staying over as I’m attending a writing for publication workshop on Tuesday), and after a quick catchup of work stuff via email I headed out to catch up with some lovely librarian friends from London and enjoyed a nice meal followed by some cocktails. Great end to the day!

• It really is all about the connections you make and the experiences you have at a conference. Yes, I attended some interesting sessions, but I took the most from the ad hoc conversations I had, often at the social occasions or just when a group of us happened to meet up over drinks/dinner. It will be interesting to see how this might change in future if the trend for shrinking numbers of attendees at conferences continues.
• Don’t let finances be the only reason not to do something. I almost didn’t apply for Emerging Leaders in case I couldn’t get funding, but I decided to apply anyway to see what happened and I’m so glad I did. I was fortunate enough to have been awarded an EBSCO Scholarship to support my attendance, which really helped. I’d strongly recommend applying for funding opportunities, there are many options out there and they really do want to help support people who want to attend professional development events but may not have the funds to do so. 
• The ALA Emerging Leaders program really is as good as everyone told me, if not better. Not only do you get excellent leadership training and an insight into the way ALA works, you also get to be part of an incredibly exciting and dynamic cohort of librarians. I’m so looking forward to both my group project (which I’ll blog about separately some time) and communicating with the wider group of Emerging Leaders. It also opens a number of doors for you – people are interested in hearing more about your project, and current leaders are interested to hear your ideas. I have also heard about a similar model being used at a regional level, and it’s something I am hoping we might be able to adopt in the UK (adding yet another thing to my ‘I want to make this happen’ list).
• Plan your expected schedule ahead of the conference, but don’t be too rigid – have some backup sessions and don’t worry about sticking to your planned schedule. If you’re having a great conversation or someone invites you to something outside your schedule which you think would be interesting, then go for it (except for sessions you have paid to attend, you are speaking at/organising, or are required to attend of course!). 
• Attend some sessions outside your immediate area of work, or just things that sound interesting. I went to Susan Cain’s auditorium session which was fantastic (and even went to the book signing afterwards), and really enjoyed Lisa Loeb at the wrap up party. 
• Schedule some down time for yourself, especially if you’re an introvert and need to recharge away from other people. Head back to your hotel for a while or just take a walk outside, you’ll feel so much better afterwards. This time I learnt from my mistakes at ALA Annual 2011 and made sure that every day I took a break, usually between the daytime activities and the evening activities. I also spent quite a bit of time in the Networking Uncommons area in the conference – I learnt how to play Apples to Apples (an ALA version even!) and really enjoyed CraftCon which I helped organise. 
• This one is specific to ALA conferences (or maybe US conferences, I’m not sure), but don’t worry if you aren’t at the *whole* session. Be kind and courteous to others at the session (sit near the back and keep quiet when arriving/leaving), but people really don’t mind as they understand there are numerous clashes and so much to fit in. Also sometimes something isn’t what you hoped it would be – if that’s the case, go somewhere else. The conference experience is what you make it and it’s a waste of your time to attend a session you’re not enjoying. 
• Find out if anyone you know is staying at the same hotel as you and attending any of the same sessions/events, especially in the evening. I don’t like to walk on my own in cities I am unfamiliar with, but cab rides can be expensive, so it’s useful for me to find someone I can walk with. This is one I need to get better at!
• Use the conference shuttle buses. Not only does this save some of your energy (and your feet!) but you also meet some really interesting people on the bus. I need to get better at this more informal networking – I tended to wait until people spoke to me. 
• Don’t be afraid to speak to people you consider role models or ‘library superstars’. They’re usually very nice and will be glad you made the effort to say hello. I still need to work on this as am often too starstruck and kick myself afterwards for missing the opportunity to speak to them. 
• Take things to last you at least 36hrs or more in your carry on luggage when flying. One friend this year didn’t get her luggage for a couple of days, and I’m currently sitting in DFW airport for goodness knows how long (they keep delaying my flight further – in fact this sentence was interrupted with news of yet another delay!). Fortunately I packed an international charger in my carry on and have found a socket so I have plenty of power for keeping my occupied on my iPad, and have lots of gluten free snacks with me (though they are rapidly depleting, I’m hungry!). I don’t have spare clothes but seeing as I’m flying home that’s not too much of an issue. I have some toiletries with me to freshen up too so shouldn’t be too smelly!

ALA Midwinter was really enjoyable – it seemed much more manageable in terms of size and organisation of my schedule, partly I think due to the smaller scale compared to ALA Annual, and partly I think (well, I hope!) because I’m getting better at organising myself before and during a conference. ALA conferences are so tiring, and because they are over a weekend it essentially means you pretty much work for two weeks with no breaks. I’m really looking forward to this coming weekend when I am planning to sleep and very little else! Having said that, I am also feeling invigorated – I have lots of actions to follow up and ideas to pursue thanks to some awesome library colleagues. Roll on ALA Annual in June! 

*We were discussing the quota of drinks, showers and meals – I think I may have had more showers than meals, though I had problems with having no hot water in my room at times so the scale may be tilted towards drinks! If you are wondering, the frozen mango tequila cocktail on my final night was my favourite.

Here’s highlights of what I’ll be up to during the conference (my full conference schedule is available here though it doesn’t include all the social meetups).

• Wednesday 18th – arrive in DFW airport, find way from airport to Dallas (fortunately I should have a kind helper in the form of @daveyp to assist with this!), find hotel, eat, drink, sleep.
• Thursday 19th – sleep, register for conference (hopefully – not sure when registration opens), attend Emerging Leaders pre-social in evening.
• Friday 20th – Emerging Leaders all day session to kick off the program, followed by a leadership talk, LITA happy hour, and Emerging Leaders meetup and social
• Saturday 21st – Library Boing Boing brainstorming, Susan Cain auditorium session (writer on introverts), games and gaming forum, CraftCon. NMRT social and tweet up in evening.
• Sunday 22nd – EBSCO scholarship breakfast, NMRT/LLAMA new leaders discussion, CraftCon. Hacklibschool/Library Boing Boing social or ASCLA reception in evening.
• Monday 23rd – Exhibition browsing, Midwinter Camp.
• Tuesday 24th – collapse with exhaustion and head home.

I’m really looking forward to meeting my fellow Emerging Leaders and getting started on my Emerging Leaders project for NMRT, which I’ll be sure to blog about if I can. Hope to see some of you there!

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!

If you work in a UK library, please complete the form below (or complete the online version) to let me know your views. The feedback is anonymous – though if you have something you are particularly proud of which you would like me to mention as an example of good practice – please feel free to include links in your response, leave me a comment on this post, or email me.

EDIT: Thanks for the responses, I have now removed the form as the panel discussion has passed.

ILI 2011 (apologies for poor photo!)

Last week I attended my first full Internet Librarian International conference. It’s an event I’ve often followed virtually and this year was really pleased to be able to attend and present on using web tools to improve productivity for librarians (see previous blog post for more information).

I attended really interesting sessions, met great people and had engaging discussions.

Now that I’ve had time to reflect, the main themes I took from the conference were:

1. Embedded librarianship

This was discussed at the SLA evening panel discuss, in numerous sessions and Q&As, and came up frequently in discussions with others.

It is clear that librarians, whatever their sector, need to be embedded into their organisations and with their end users. It’s been said plenty of times that we should ‘go to where our users are’ and this seems to be becoming even more crucial as librarians across the sector are experiencing cuts and organisations may be questioning the value of the library service and the librarians. We hear all too often the argument that ‘all information is online’ and I think most librarians agree that it’s the added value in how we can help people find that information at an appropriate time and in an appropriate format, and it’s clear that this is where we need to focus.

In the academic world, librarians are spending more time with faculty, and in the commercial world librarians are trying to understand their users needs to provide the information they want when they want it (e.g. current awareness bulletins for lawyers). These are definitely good developments and I’m sure we’ll see lots more of that in future.

2. Preparing for the future 

The conference theme was ‘Navigating the new normal – strategies from success’ so there were a number of discussion about what the new normal is and how we prepare for what is likely to be the new normal of the future. There were no definite answers about what to expect, and I still stick by one of my views (and I think strengths) of the profession:

The one constant in the information profession is change

I actually really like this; I think we need to be flexible and adaptable and I’m happy to do that. The world isn’t static and information certainly isn’t – either the content or the format – so as information professionals we need to be able to change to reflect the changes in society.

3. Play!

It was good to see this promoted, and something I definitely agree with. The idea behind this is that as information professionals we should not be afraid to play with new tools, investigate new ideas, and see how we could utilise them. One of the fundamental aspects of the 23 Things initiatives is that we should play with tools on an informal basis to learn more about them, and then think about how we can apply that to our work. It’s something I have been doing today actually (with Pinboard and IFTTT) to figure out how best to bring together information of relevance to one of the project I’m working on.

There are obvious problems with ‘playing’ with things or testing things out in a professional environment, but an important way to learn how to use them is to play. Something Phil Bradley always recommends (which I tend to follow) is to try something out in private or in a personal capacity, and then consider how it could be used in a professional sense when you feel more comfortable with it. We shouldn’t be afraid of trying new tools but on the other hand we shouldn’t throw ourselves into the deep end by investing a lot of time/effort/money setting up numerous different ideas. However, I really do think we need to stop being so afraid to fail that it slows progress and if something involves minimal investment it might be worth experimenting with on a small scale. So go ahead – play!

Now what?

I really enjoyed ILI2011 and I have a lot to follow up on. There was a great deal of interest in the 23 Things for Professional Development course I’ve been involved in organising, so I hope to be able to share our experience with this via publishing the findings of our evaluation survey (shameless plug but please complete it if you have been involved in CPD23 at all, even if you chose not to participate – it will really help us!) and dissemination at future conference presentations (maybe ILI2012 would be one suitable avenue).

It also seems there are quite a few librarians interested in productivity tools and processes which I presented on so I’m hoping to continue sharing any tips I learn or software I find useful either on the blog or via Twitter.