Pass with distinction

I didn’t expect it to take me 5 years to complete, but I’m glad I stuck with it and finished (if you read my earlier blog post about Belbin’s roles you’ll note that I’m a completer-finisher by nature so not finishing things really frustrates me!). Although I grew to dread working on the course (particularly the dissertation which dragged for 3 long years!), I do feel proud to have completed it and to have come away with a distinction.

I got some very positive feedback on my dissertation which I’m really pleased about – especially given the fact that I’m a researcher in my day job now! I am now contemplating repurposing it into a journal article, which is something I might look at in future (it was on strategic marketing in academic libraries). I believe a copy will be added to Aberystwyth’s institutional repository (Cadair), so I’ll post a link to it once it’s online.

For now though it’s time to celebrate!

cpd23 logo

What?

As I mentioned at the beginning of summer, I’ve been participating in and helping organise the 23 Things for Professional Development (CPD23) programme. The programme was slightly different to other 23 Things in that it focused on both tools and also techniques and strategies for professional development (rather than just web tools as in many previous 23 Things courses). I authored two of the ‘things’ – Thing 3 on Consider your personal brand, and Thing 19 on Integrating the Things. I’ve also helped encourage conversation on Twitter and have contributed some of the @cpd23 account tweets as well as looking out for queries on the #cpd23 hashtag. As a participant I blogged at Joeyanne’s 23 Things for Professional Development and have recently completed all 23 things.

So what?

Participating in the programme has really helped me assess where I currently am, what skills I would like to develop further, and consider my next steps towards that. It’s played an important part in deciding to work towards CILIP Chartership and has helped me consider what I’d like to include in my development plan which I’m hoping to work on soon.

As an organiser I have developed a number of skills (particularly using tools like Google Docs to help in project planning) and have really enjoyed working on a collaborative project of this scale. We never expected to have over 500 registrants (yes really, 806 valid blogs at the last count!) but we have utilised each other’s strengths and skills and I feel really proud to have been a part of it.

Now what?

The 23 Things for Professional Development programme has officially finished but our work as organisers isn’t done yet. I’ve put together the evaluation survey (with input from the rest of the team and others involved in 23 Things evaluation such as Michael Stephens who I had the pleasure of meeting at Internet Librarian International), and will be analysing the results of that in the next few weeks. We’ve also had some participants willing to be interviewed so I’d also like to do some phone/Skype interviews.

Then comes dissemination. Some of the team have already spoken about CPD23 at events – I’d like to help with some of these in future and also write a paper or two about different aspects (linking back to Chartership as writing is one of the areas I’d like to develop!).

Many people have also indicated that they would like a follow up programme with additional things so that’s something to consider, and we’re planning to run the programme again for those who didn’t get chance to work on it this time round. The programme will stay live (as long as Blogger does anyway!) so can be completed at anytime but we appreciate it’s good to work on it at the same time as others for support.

I’ve really appreciated having a reason to spend time reflecting on my professional development, and am now looking forward to starting the CILIP Chartership process. I’ve learnt a lot about myself and about reflective professional development – the structure of this blog post came out of CPD23 Thing 5 on Reflective Practice which was one of the most useful things for me. I’m planning to use a similar structure in future for the reflective posts on my Chartership journey.

Would be nice if Chartership involved chartering a boat...

So, the dissertation is over and I should get my results in December. I’m taking a little bit of a break from studying now but I’m planning to start my CILIP Chartership next year so I’ve started doing some preparation for that.

To charter or not to charter?

For me this was an easy decision to make – I’ve been wanting to begin my Chartership for a while now. Since starting my first professional level post in October 2008, I’ve been engaged in a number of different professional activities in order to increase my understanding and further develop my skills. Professional development is an important element of my career, and I view Chartership as the first step of this journey.

Finding a mentor

One of the parts which I thought sounded most difficult is finding yourself a mentor. There are lists on the CILIP website but I’ve heard people say they’re out of date in terms of people’s availability. It’s a bit like online dating; choosing someone who seems a suitable mentor and asking them if they would be willing to take you on. Fortunately, I had it a lot easier than this in the end. I’d been having some discussions about Chartership on Twitter, and the lovely @jaffne offered to mentor me. She’s already informally mentoring, but she’s planning to do the training early next year ready to mentor Chartership candidates. Hurdle one – done!

Collecting evidence

Chartership is assessed by portfolio, so evidence for all relevant activities must be collected along the way to include in the portfolio. Although I haven’t formally started Chartership yet, you can use previous evidence from any point after qualification, so I’m very glad I’ve been blogging as some of it may come in useful! I’ve set myself up a Chartership wiki to record activities and reflection along the way and given access to my mentor who has already starting giving really useful feedback (and the odd encouraging nudge to do stuff!).

What’s next?

I’ll be continuing to blog as normal, as I find this a really useful way of recording and reflecting on my activities. I have my annual review at work very soon, so I’m hoping to be able to build targets that I can also work on as part of my Chartership. Before now, a lot of my extra professional activities have been separate to my day job, but in my current role there’s a lot more blurring of boundaries and I’m hoping Chartership will bring them together even moreso.

My mentor should be trained in March next year, so I’m planning to officially register for Chartership soon after that. In the meantime, I’ve got a copy of ‘Building your professional portfolio‘ to read and I’m enjoying being able to think about and focus on elements I want to improve which will help towards developing my personal and professional development plan (PPDP).

I’ll also be recording progress using the #chartership tag on Twitter too and would love to chat with others chartering on there. Rachel keeps mentioning a possible Chartership chat on Twitter at a set time – anyone up for that or shall we just carry on using the hashtag as and when we’re working on Chartership related activities?

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.

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!

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.

The time has finally come – I just can’t put it off any more! I’ve been taking a break from studying whilst I settle into my new job, but I can’t really use that excuse anymore as I’ve been in this job for over a year now.

I’ve been researching ideas for my dissertation for a while now, and have been spending a lot of time reading, researching and thinking – now it’s time to do some real work. I’ve been talking to lots of people about my ideas; I must mention special thanks to Sarah Oxford from University of Worcester who I visited in the summer (for a totally different reason!) and really inspired me to start properly thinking about my dissertation and continue research in a similar area to her own.

I have finally narrowed down my topic to marketing in HE libraries in the UK, although I’m still refining the methodology. Having worked on a part-time basis with my boyfriend and his marketing business, I am interested in the strategic marketing side of things, as I feel libraries should probably be doing more of this. I’d like to find out what, if any, market research UK academic libraries are currently involved in, if they have a marketing strategy, and who holds responsibility for the direction of the marketing.

I’m also interested in innovative marketing methods, and hope to do a case study approach for a few of these. I would like to know more about how academic libraries in the UK are currently using social media, so one of these may be good as a case study (e.g. a successful library blog/Facebook/Twitter account) but from a marketing point of view rather than a technical point of view.

I submitted a dissertation proposal earlier this month but haven’t heard anything back yet. The working title is “Marketing UK Higher Education libraries: a current perspective”. I imagine there will be some alterations and suggestions for improvement, but I hope the research area is agreed in principle and that I can be assigned a dissertation supervisor soon. I have to be honest, I have found distance learning difficult – it’s great to be able to work at your own pace and when I was really keen to work through the Diploma everything was fine, but it’s been isolating at times, especially when home life or work life takes over and you lose motivation for studying. I went to the research study school to prepare for the dissertation in September 2008, which seems like a lifetime away now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to start work on my dissertation properly next year, and if you work in a UK academic library (and particularly if you have responsibility for marketing!) I may well be in touch begging for help!

This may well be my last blog post before Christmas – if so, Seasons Greetings to all readers and I hope you enjoy the festivities whatever you get up to.

Details of the survey (taken from the website):

Whilst academic librarians have as a core responsibility facilitating the research of others, not as many conduct their own. The purpose of this study is to understand more fully the motivations and barriers for UK academic librarians to conduct research and to publish. This study will take place during the autumn and winter of 2008. This study will form the core of a dissertation in support of an MSc Information and Library Management at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

The researcher has asked for the link to be passed on to other academic librarians and would like your views on research even if you are not actively involved. If you are an academic librarian in the UK, please help by completing the questionnaire.

It’s an interesting topic to me as an academic librarian with a research based background (my undergraduate degree included a lot of sports based research). As I become involved in more projects at work, I am really enjoying the research side of things (i.e. researching user needs, evaluating our services). I’m reading about other’s research to help me think about the way I work and how that can be improved, or what we can do within the department to improve our service. I’m also doing my own research and this is something I hope to develop further in the future and share with others in the profession via conferences and papers (and blogging no doubt!).

I need to be starting my own MSc dissertation soon, I’m still not 100% sure what it will be on but I’m gradually narrowing it down and hope to submit a proposal in the next few weeks.

I absolutely love my iPod Touch and use it on an almost daily basis. Since I bought it, there have been numerous developments, the main one being the applications to download from Apple’s App Store. I have to admit, this has sucked me in big time and I love trying out the new apps. I tend to mostly try the free ones but I have bought a couple of games and some of the productivity apps (including Appigo ToDo which I previously blogged about).

Apple also added support for Microsoft Exchange which has been brilliant for me. I can now synchronise my e-mail and calendar to reflect changes in my Exchange account from work. This is particularly useful for planning my day as I can check my work calendar from my iPod whilst I am at home or on the way to work.

I’ve noticed over the year that more and more librarians have bought either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, and there have been some interesting developments related to libraries using iPod Touch/iPhones. This post from College@Home gives some ideas of how to incorporate the use of iPhones in libraries, some of which are very interesting (e.g. being able to check the catalogue whilst at the shelves or responding to enquiries whilst on the move – both things which could be extremely useful as many libraries move towards providing rovintg support within libraries). Many libraries have worked to ensure that their library websites and OPACs work correctly on the iPhone, and very recently the first library application made it onto the App Store. I downloaded it the other day and have to say I’m very impressed, I love the simplicity of searching the OPAC as well as the ease of finding the opening hours and locations of each of the branches of DCPL. It’s very exciting, and I hope this starts to become the norm for library services. I think we’ve got a fair way to go yet but these innovations are great news for the future. Ebooks seem to be gathering more users also, and one platform to read ebooks is the iPhone/iPod Touch. I’ve been having a look at ebooks on my iPod including the newly released Stanza application.

There’s a lot of great applications out there so I’m hoping to write a series of blog posts about iPhone/iPod Touch applications, including Stanza, the DCPL library application, and others. Many of these will inevitably be linked to libraries, although as I am also a bit of a productivity freak I may well also include some general applications for improving productivity as well as a few fun applications.

In related news, my ancient Sony Ericsson K750i which I have now had for 3 and a half years seems to be conspiring against me. I’m not a heavy user of my mobile phone (I tend to use the internet to contact people), and this argument has always stopped me from purchasing an iPhone. I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to resist at the moment however as my phone keeps playing up. I have most of the features of the iPhone on my iPod Touch anyway but there is still the disadvantage of having two devices as well as not being able to use the internet on my iPod unless I am in range of wireless connection. I know I don’t need an iPhone but how long can my head win over my heart?

In unrelated news, I received confirmation yesterday that I have passed my Diploma in Information and Library Studies with a distinction! Hoping I can continue that trend when it comes to writing my dissertation later this year.

I’m still keen to continue to Masters level and my plan is to concentrate on my dissertation next year. I’m still not 100% sure what the dissertation will be based on but I’d definitely like to do something with new technologies.

I’ve recently put in a project proposal for running a Learning 2.0/23 Things programme at work which I’ve been wanting to do for ages. I feel there are many people who would benefit from the programme (from speaking to people many seem interested in new tools and technologies but just don’t know where to start with them), as well as raising the level of skill across the department. University of Huddersfield are currently running the programme, and many other academic and public libraries in the UK have either already completed it or are thinking of planning one.

If the proposal is approved I’d love to base my dissertation on our experiences with the programme. I’m passionate about teaching and learning as well as new technologies and this combines the two so fingers crossed I can go ahead with it.