Over summer I’ve got two main projects on the go; collection management for the Teaching Practice collection (for trainee teachers), and managing a project working on development of induction activities for the VLE. I also usually have two enquiry desk duties per week, each of which is half a day (this week mine are Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon).

Work activities on my desk this week

Today I spent most of the day on the induction project, although I did spend a little bit of time weeding.

Morning activities today included:

• Sorting and responding to emails – nowhere near as many each morning since I recently reorganised my folders and accounts, using my librarian skills to good effect!
• Reviewing induction material sent to me by one of the project team – gave feedback for a few minor amendments
• Moving the HTML content from one VLE topic to another, uploading images to new topic, and changing the structure slightly (splitting a long section up into component parts)
• Adding the complete structure to the new topic (with blank marker pages) to get a better idea of the overall induction package
• Weeding the Teaching Practice collection – finished Music and did the Sport/PE section so just Geography and History to go now

Afternoon activities included:

• Reviewing more induction project material to ensure we’re sticking to the project brief and covering the areas we need without going overboard – a real threat to this project has been creeping into more advanced material, so it’s important we establish and stick to what we believe is necessary information for induction level
• Helping a colleague rearrange furniture – he’s swapped desks and needed to rearrange all his PC equipment (he’s a lucky so and so who has two monitors!)
• Adding some of the quiz questions to the VLE including feedback – remembered I could include images as answer options which makes the screenshot questions easier to understand
• More photographs, screenshots and image editing
• Starting to think about what, if any, files (physical or electronic) I need to handover before leaving – I’ve been at this workplace for almost 5 years, but most of what I have produced is publicly (or internally) available. Hopefully my meeting with my manager next week will help me think about all the things I’ve likely forgotten about!

Probably reads as a pretty boring day, but I’m excited about the induction activities project and want to make it a really useful tool for all our new students, taking into account different starting knowledge points and different learning styles. It’s all starting to come together nicely now so fingers crossed it will be complete before I leave!

If you’re interested in following other librarians, go to the wiki and use the links to people’s blogs, or use the #libday5 search in Twitter. Looking forward to #libday6 when I should be in my new job!

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Over summer I’ve got two main projects on the go; collection management for the Teaching Practice collection (for trainee teachers), and managing a project working on development of induction activities for the VLE. I also usually have two enquiry desk duties per week, each of which is half a day (this week mine are Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon).

Current to do list (I also use RTM for smaller subtasks)

I took some photos of my workplace today (including the one above of my overall to do list), you can see them all in this set on Flickr. Others have also been adding photos for the project, I find it really interesting to look at where people work.

Morning activities today included:

• Sorting and responding to emails
• Finding examples of different types of material for the induction activities (book, CD, DVD, and chapter from edited book from well known or general study skills material) – always amazes me how long it can take to find a good example!
• Taking photos and screenshots of example materials and example searches on OPAC (library catalogue)
• Adding the images and brief explanatory text to the VLE
• Putting together some multiple choice questions for the induction activities
• Covering the Lending Services Helpdesk for 90mins whilst other staff were at a meeting (this involved selling some withdrawn books and binding materials, issuing reservations, renewing a laptop loan, helping students find books, and helping a student with a corrupt USB drive – oh and cutting my hand whilst guillotining some scrap paper!)

Afternoon activities included:

• Adding more induction material to the VLE (think this will be repeated every morning and afternoon for the foreseeable future!)
• Glancing through the CILIP Defining our Professional Future report, and printing a copy to read soon
• Flicking through the online version of Library & Information Update from CILIP
• Organising my calendar for the next few weeks before I finish this job role (including arranging some meetings with my manager)
• Trying to sort out a crashing issue with Photoshop (using advice from Twitter) before editing images ready for web use – it seemed a little better later on, but still crashed when I tried to open multiple files so more investigation needed tomorrow!

If you’re interested in following other librarians, go to the wiki and use the links to people’s blogs, or use the #libday5 search in Twitter.

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Over summer I’ve got two main projects on the go; collection management for the Teaching Practice collection (for trainee teachers), and managing a project working on development of induction activities for the VLE. I also usually have two enquiry desk duties per week, each of which is half a day (this week mine are Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon).

Morning activities today included:

• Sorting through emails and responding to a couple of email enquiries (local college librarian re-arranging a visit to discuss inductions and education student researching pedagogy and andragogy for her dissertation)
• Changing loan status of some books which are no longer in such high demand
• Selecting books for withdrawal in the music education section of Teaching Practice (found some gems which I’ll photograph to share!)
• Organising classmarks of books to be changed where they would be more findable from another area (Teaching Practice is usually browsed, not found by searching OPAC, so logical placement in terms of the area of the curriculum it supports is vital)
• Returning books I’ve been too lazy to return and kept renewing even though I have finished with them (librarians are such rebels!)
• Enjoying a lovely slice of gluten free chocolate cake made specially by a colleague (this was definitely a highlight!)

Afternoon activities included:

• Answering a couple of phone and in-person enquiries – mainly just directional enquiries though, no meaty research enquiries this afternoon
• Briefly covering the Lending Services Helpdesk (and helping a lost student find a book)
• Looking at the latest issue of SCONUL Focus – read part of a particularly interesting article about improving support and liaison links with academic staff and researchers
• Discussions with a colleague about changes to the curriculum and how our soon to be developed induction activities can be embedded into the new modules
• Discussions with a different colleague about the progress on the induction activities (this turned into an epic conversation but I think we both had a clearer idea by the end!)
• Drafting some ideas and activities for my areas of responsibility in the induction activities (mainly activities using multiple choice questions with clear feedback at each stage)
• Testing capabilities of the VLE – thankfully inserting images into multiple choice questions is relatively straight forward!

I forgot to take photos today so I’ll be sure to take some tomorrow and add them to the blog posts.

If you’re interested in following other librarians, go to the wiki and use the links to people’s blogs, or use the #libday5 search in Twitter.

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My workshop was examining ‘The Wild West’ scenario; an era of instability and regional divides, largely market driven but relatively open. We began the day by trying to visualise this scenario and what it could be like if this was the case in 2050. We thought about how this might affect currency, language, global resources, communication, and education. As you can see from the overview, in this scenario UK Higher Education consists of 20 academic and research intensive universities, 2-3 major vocational institutions in regional clusters (merging FE with HE), and around 25 new entrants from the private sector, mainly operating for profit. Funding of learning comes from employers and students (no state funding), with research funded by industry, state and regional partners.

The first activity looked at what an academic library might be like in the scenario. Possible models included a geographic shared service (similar to Worcester’s academic, public and history centre currently being built), all HE being supported by one national library service, or libraries working as trading bodies becoming specialists in certain areas which other libraries may choose to buy in. Key themes which came from these discussions included the concept of regional hubs to support teaching and research (maybe even a Starbucks University!), the possibility of research intensive universities publishing and selling their research to increase income, and collaborative opportunities for educational institutions and businesses for both learning and research.

The second activity required us to think about certain people within the scenario and what their relationship with the academic library would be. We looked at learners (researchers, undergraduates, adult learners), library workers (junior librarians, specialist librarians, library managers), and university staff (lecturers, academic authors, university managers). This was an interesting exercise, my group looked at adult learners (for whom we felt a lot of their current needs would still exist in this scenario), library managers (for whom we felt would need more business skills such as negotiation, networking and marketing), and academic authors (for whom we felt would need support with the publication process and measuring the impact of their work).

The final activity was to produce a timeline from 2010 to 2050 with key milestones, assuming that we would reach the Wild West scenario in 2050. We had to come up with some headlines (we were encouraged to make them radical) and place them on the timescale where we thought they might happen. Suggestions included Google competing with Amazon for online sales of physical books, shortly followed by the last ever physical textbook being printed. Each of the groups predicted news of library buildings closing (though not the service), and key publishers going bust. Most of the headlines were things we predicted in the next 20 years or so, it was more difficult to predict what might happen in 2030-2050.

It was a really interesting workshop, and I enjoyed the different approach of scenario building. It was very difficult to picture things in 40 years though, especially when you think how much library services and society in general has changed in the last 40 years! Keep an eye on the project website for more information or details of the different scenarios.

There was also a lot of crossover between the discussions at this event and those of CILIPs Defining our Professional Future project, which I’m looking forward to seeing the report from.

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I wasn’t able to attend this event, but I followed it via Twitter thanks to @LISResearch and @lenocsor. You can see the tweets in relation to the event at the TwapperKeeper archive. Obviously, I didn’t get the benefit of attending the day’s events but I did get a flavour for the discussions and could follow up links mentioned and view presentations online.

I’m a keen advocate of research, making evidence-based decisions wherever possible. I’m involved in my own research as a librarian (for work-based projects and to inform elements of my job role), and I also spend my free time researching areas of interest -sometimes for articles, presentations or blog posts; sometimes just to increase my understanding.

One of the things I was really impressed by at LILAC 2010 was the emphasis on research-informed information literacy teaching, using both existing research and conducting original research to help make decisions about the approach to teaching.

Commitment to research by librarians is something I’d love to see more of, but I think all too often it’s overlooked as other activities take priority.

The librarian as researcher event examined the importance of research for practitioners, and I was particularly interested in Miggie Pickton’s presentation which you can see below:

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You can see a programme of the day including presentations and supporting material, and view other blog posts covering the day, or view the archive of tweets, but I wanted to share some of the themes raised during the event which I’ve been contemplating since.

Are librarians teachers or trainers? Which should we be?

This is an interesting topic and something that I think many academic librarians face. I think of my information literacy work as teaching – I set learning outcomes, aim to develop skills and knowledge, and where possible assess learning (this is usually during the session through verbal and written feedback). However sometimes I feel more like a trainer, and I certainly feel (in my experience anyway) that this is how some of our academic colleagues see us. Academic librarians are often invited in during a course to demonstrate to students how to use the library or how to access resources/search online databases, and I think this work is probably more akin to that of a trainer rather than a teacher. Some of my colleagues have completed the PG Cert in Higher Education, and many have commented on how surprised other academics are to see librarians there. One colleague just this morning mentioned someone from his cohort asked if he was there because wanted to move into lecturing – we already do it!

Personally, I think academic librarians should be an integral part of each course, providing support for information and digital literacy. I’d like to see more team teaching with academics; I have seen some great examples of this and think a collaborative effort is more beneficial to students. I currently think of myself as somewhere between a teacher and a trainer, but I’m definitely aiming to be a teacher.

Should librarians who teach/train at University level be members of the Higher Education Academy?

This is a really interesting point that I hadn’t really given much consideration to until the event. It was a recurring theme throughout many of the talks though, and something I have since found out more about. I’ve always wanted to do the PG Cert in Higher Education at some point, but not really considered HEA membership or what that might entail. Interestingly, there are different levels of membership – associate and fellow (and senior fellow). Most academics are advised to become fellows (FHEA), but more recently there has been a recommendation for librarians to become associates. They are still eligible to become FHEA though, and I personally agree with Jo Webb’s view that librarians should aspire to FHEA, not just associates, as long as our roles meet the criteria.

Either way, HEA recognition is something that I now understand as important, particularly for academic librarians at universities – it’s definitely something I’ll consider in future.

Who should be responsible for training librarians to teach/train?

Interesting question this one, I don’t really think there’s an easy answer. I do think there is a responsibility for library and information studies courses to include information literacy concepts and also to cover approaches to teaching (learning styles, pedagogy etc.). Even if students from these courses don’t enter academic librarianship, they are highly likely to be teaching or training in some capacity, whether it’s a formal session or a one-to-one basis through enquiries. During my distance learning course I didn’t have the opportunity to study this, despite the fact that I was already teaching in my job role. It seems this is not the case in all courses, some have excellent modules covering these topics – both the theory and practice. I’m not sure what criteria CILIP use for accrediting courses, but I feel this should be an essential topic.

It is also a responsibility of the employer to also ensure that staff involved in teaching/training receive adequate support – train the trainer type activities and opportunities to share best practice.

However I do think, as with all professional development, it is primarily the responsibility of the individual to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to equip them in their tasks. This could be through attending relevant courses, reading or researching, speaking to colleagues, or through peer observation.

How do we continue to develop our teaching skills?

Approaches to teaching change alongside changes in society – in recent years we’ve experienced a move to a more blended style incorporating both face to face and online learning. There’s also been an increase in mobile learning and the use of technology within the “classroom” (e.g.voting systems). It’s not just technology – as the understanding of learning improves this also changes the way we teach. So how do we keep up-to-date?

I think the best approach is to never stop learning about teaching. Even experts (such as those speaking at the event) can still pick up new ideas and techniques. So all the ideas mentioned in the previous question still apply – attending events, keeping up-to-date with latest research, sharing good practice, and peer observation. There was a lot of discussion at the event about peer observation, and it’s something I think I’d really benefit from. I’d like to see what others do within their teaching sessions, and I’d also like a critical friend to comment on my own teaching – I’m sure there are lots of ways I could improve, many that I may never notice myself.

What role do CILIP play?

Having recently been involved in one of the focus groups for CILIPs “Defining our professional future“, I was particularly interested to hear what people had to say about CILIPs role in supporting librarians as teachers. As I’ve already mentioned, although I think it’s largely the responsibility of the individual (and to some extent, their employer) to develop a librarian’s teaching skills, I do also believe that CILIP has a role to play in ensuring that library and information courses includes the core areas likely to be encountered by a librarian. There seem to be large differences in the content covered in courses, and I’d like to see accredited courses all cover core areas (this may already happen, but I know I didn’t get the opportunity to study information literacy which I feel should be included).

I also think CILIP should help promote the librarian as a teacher (e.g. through advocacy and increased awareness), and think they have a role to play in ensuring those already within the profession can develop their skills to deliver teaching, whether in a traditional class setting or on a one-to-one basis.

I really enjoyed the event, and it definitely gave me a lot of food for thought about what our role entails.

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The focus for this post is on tweeting at events, not tweeting in general. My own experiences have taught me that sometimes it is acceptable (and encouraged) to tweet during an event, and sometimes it’s frowned upon. I’d also like to make it clear that of course it is unacceptable to tweet about confidential matters and therefore inappropriate to tweet internal meetings to an external audience, or to tweet any information which is sensitive or confidential.

More recently I’ve been discussing the issue of whether or not to tweet at events with my boyfriend Chris (yes we are proper nerds and spend a lot of our free time discussing such things!). It seems it’s quite a complex issue with a number of misunderstandings, as unfortunately experienced by WoodsieGirl recently. There’s been an interesting debate over on CILIP Communities today which I’ve been following with interest, and I thought I’d share my own views and some of the arguments for and against tweeting at events. I hope to present a balanced view, although I do admit up front that I personally sit firmly in the camp who advocate tweeting at events, for the moment anyway.

So, to tweet…

In the red corner, representing the tweeters – arguments FOR tweeting during events:

• Dissemination to those unable to attend. I think this is the main reason most people attending events decide to tweet about the event – it’s a way of sharing the information with those who couldn’t make it for whatever reason. I’ve followed a number of events virtually, and I’ve also published tweets at events that I know others have followed virtually (and thanked me for them as they were otherwise unable to follow the events that they would have liked to). I imagine this will become more common in future with many staff development budgets being cut and less opportunity for funding events.
• Extending the conversation on event topics. This might be with other tweeters also attending the event, or those following the event virtually. I often find this adds another element to what I’m hearing at the event – someone might tweet a link to a piece of research that is relevant to the topic, or share their own experiences – really enriches the conversation.
• As a form of note-taking. I definitely do this! As Owen pointed out earlier today, tweeting is a natural progression from note taking. I sometimes quite like good old pen and paper, but more often than not I end up using my phone or laptop to check out a link mentioned in the presentation, and I can generally type better than I can write anyway so unless I’ve got diagrams to note down (in which case pen and paper are definitely prefereable!) I’ll use a laptop or my phone. I’ll either write full notes in a document, and just tweet the key points, or I’ll just stick to tweeting and listening if I’m not feeling like triple multi-tasking!
• To group information about an event together online. For this to apply, you’d need to be using a set hashtag; many events now have hashtags that are publicised before the event. This isn’t always the case, and sometimes I have made up my own – at last year’s New Professionals Conference there weren’t many of us tweeting so I made up the hashtag #newprof09, but this year there are an abundance of tweeters, including some of the organising committee so there is a well publicised hashtag – #npc2010
• To archive information about an event. Again this isn’t automatically the case, but whenever I tweet at an event I always use a hashtag – either one already in existence or I make up my own. I then ensure there is an archive of all tweets with the specified hashtag (I use TwapperKeeper) so that any tweets using the hashtag are archived. This helps attendees when

…or not to tweet

In the blue corner, representing those who don’t agree with tweeting at events – arguments AGAINST tweeting during events:

• There needs to be an advantage to paying for and attending the event. This is a really tricky one and I’m not sure of the best approach to this. On the one hand, I think event content (e.g. presentations, handouts) should be online so that they add to the field of knowledge and reach a wider audience, but on the other hand there needs to be a reason for people to attend the physical event. For me, it’s the personal face-to-face networking aspect, and I don’t think Twitter can replace that, but then do you need to attend an expensive event? It’s a really difficult issue, and one I’m not totally settled on.
• It’s distracting to other attendees. Obvious one this one, and I can see that typing away on a keyboard (particularly if on a laptop) would certainly be more distracting than someone making notes on pen and paper. Some conferences try to reduce this issue by having a separate area for people who would like to use laptops (this area is usually provided with power too), although I personally haven’t been to an event like this.
• It’s rude to not give all attention to the speaker. I think this is a common concern, it’s certainly something I felt was happening to me a while ago when not many people were live tweeting events – I think people were presuming I was texting when I got my phone out. It’s easy to presume that someone isn’t paying attention if they are using an electronic device whilst listening to the talk, and in part is true (I’m going to be brave and own up now that I too, like Owen, have occasionally checked emails or personal tweets whilst listening to a presentation that hasn’t grabbed my attention).
• Can encourage bitchiness in the backchannel. This is definitely a downside, although I have to be honest – I’ve never experienced it myself at conferences I’ve been tweeting at. This issue was covered in more detail by Marieke Guy over at Ramblings of a Remote Worker, and there’s some really interesting discussion in the comments.
• Can be irritating for Twitter followers who aren’t interested in the event. A influx of tweets about a conference for a few days can be irritating, especially if it’s not something you’re interested in.

I think that covers the main arguments both for and against, although please let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed.

My own view

I personally feel, like WoodsieGirl, that most of the objection to tweeting at events is simply due to a lack of awareness of what people are doing. Generally, when you explain to people that you are sharing what’s going on at the event with others who couldn’t attend, or using it to make notes for yourself, I think people then appreciate that tweeting events can be beneficial. I tried to keep my against arguments to the point, but my personal view counter-arguments many of them. I don’t think it’s that much more distracting that rustling of papers, and the volume of the presentation should override and background noise anyway. I agree it can be rude to not give full attention to a speaker, but in the same respect you could be writing something totally irrelevant to the presentation, just doing it on paper rather than electronically. The bitchiness I personally haven’t experienced and think it’s the fault of a minority of people wanting to bitch; personally I’d appreciate comments on my presentation even if it wasn’t totally complimentary (although I appreciate there is a line you wouldn’t want to cross). And as for the irritation – it’s unlikely that someone you’re interested in following will attend an event you have no interest in at all, but if you don’t and you object to the tweets there are ways to mute their tweets until the conference ends.

I do think it’s partly the responsibility of the event organisers to run-through the etiquette for tweeting (or not as the case may be) the event, and introducing the official hashtag if applicable. It should also be partly down to the speakers themselves – I know for example Brian Kelly encourages sharing of his presentations and introduces his presentations by pointing out how people may wish to do that (he welcomes photos/videos/tweets etc., others may prefer not to). Then it’s up to the audience to respect their wishes.

As for me, I’ll be tweeting at a Librarians as Teachers: the New Professionals? event tomorrow, which has an event hashtag (#lat10) and discussion on Twitter has already begun with 73 tweets already! As an aside, I found this recent blog post (and the comments) a really useful list of advice for tweeting during a conference.

So, that’s my thoughts, how about you? Anything I’ve missed? What do you think about tweeting at conferences and events? I’d be particularly interested to hear from anyone who doesn’t use Twitter, or who objects to tweeting at conferences (I promise to take your points on board and am genuinely interested to hear!).

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What will the knowledge and information sector look like in 2020?

This is the big question really, and although I don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future, I do have some thoughts about where I think the profession is moving. I’m pleasantly surprised by the phrasing of the question to be honest, as I personally feel the trend to move towards knowledge and information management rather than librarianship is a welcome one. Yes, I’m a librarian, and I am incredibly proud to be a librarian, however I realise that most people don’t necessarily realise that a librarian can help them (unless they want to borrow a book and need it stamping!). In today’s world of information overload though, most people understand the need for information to be managed, and that’s a side of the profession that I think will grow. I had an interesting discussion with my boyfriend earlier today about this, and we both agree that information professionals can be of great assistance to most, if not all, businesses and organisations, yet many don’t realise that we could help them. As my boyfriend pointed out, if we don’t make people aware of the skills and knowledge that an information professional can bring, we’re in danger of someone replicating this and making the profession redundant, particularly in the digital world (bit of an extreme view I know, but it could happen with some of the online enterprises like Google/Microsoft/Apple, without it necessarily being intentional).

There will always be a place for the traditional librarian skills, but personally I think we need to move away from the stigma of librarian knowing about books and not much else. My boyfriend was recently talking to a client about some of the work I do as an information professional, and they were amazed at the wealth of skills and value information professionals could bring to any organisation. I have experienced this personally too – I had no idea what an academic librarian did until I decided to research it as a possible career. The alternative view to a move in defining our work of course is to re-educate the public, but personally I feel that would be more difficult to change and could potentially lead us to miss the boat with helping to manage digital information.

I believe the information professional is strongly placed to help both organisations and individuals; I still think there is value in answering enquiries and there is evidently demand to meet that need – just take a look at the crowd sourcing going on any social network. Peer networks are becoming important for this role (I frequently ask my network on Twitter for advice or answers to problems), but I still think there is a role for an authoritative source and a hub for finding information. I imagine we will continue to move more to online enquiries rather than face-to-face, and expect that answers to enquiries will need to be quicker than currently where many services claim to get back within 24hrs – this just wont be good enough for much longer.

I think there is still a need for a library building, but as anyone who knows me in real life will I’m sure be familiar with, I personally don’t see those buildings as a place exclusively for quiet study. I think libraries should be an information hub for the community they serve – many are making moves to this with (in my opinion) the welcome addition of free wifi, relaxed seating, and coffee shops. The staff working in these will be there to help customers, and we will hopefully move away from the “shhhh” stereotypes due to heavy policing by staff in many libraries of the past and present.

Information professionals will need to be forward looking individuals interested in the new ways information is presented and organised (tagging is the new taxonomy, who knows what will be next?). They need to be truly customer-oriented, ensuring that the profession as a whole adapts to reflect changes to society and user needs (be it e-books, mobile technology, information delivery schemes, book rentals by post etc.). We will need to diversify, but stay true to our main core focus of information management.

Where will a professional association fit into this sector?

Personally, I see a need for the professional association to work to educate and increase awareness of the profession. They should partner with key organisations who may require support from an information professional, and work with them to ensure they receive the right support.

They should also look externally, which can be difficult, but is necessary from a professional association – they should help the information profession break out of the echo chamber or “singing to the choir” by widely publicising the work of the profession and working to ensure public perception of the profession reflects the true work. They should work with industries that need information professionals (even if they are not currently utilising any), as well as local and national press.

By doing these things, advocates will hopefully begin to help spread the word about the profession too.

They should also support the development of their members (i.e. the information professionals) by enabling networking, both in person and online, and progressing the field by communicating new developments via publications, events, and training opportunities.

How will you engage with this professional association?

Most of my communication is done online, so I imagine personally I would engage with the professional association through online communication means such as blogs, forums or social networking. I do also enjoy attending local events, and definitely see value in more of these. I like to attend training events and conferences, however finances and other time constraints sometimes means this is difficult – something that I think will become more common as we continue to feel the effects of the recession.

I am really pleased that CILIP is opening up conversations about the future of the profession, and this is something I’d definitely like to see continue (open debates on key topics affecting the profession, engaging with both members and non-members and ideally external stakeholders too).

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post, it has helped me consolidate some of my thoughts although I also hope that the focus group nature of the discussion tomorrow will develop and add to these – I’m sure there’s loads I’ve forgotten to mention! If you have anything you would like to add to the conversation, feel free to comment here or you may prefer to write your own blog post or Twitter posts (tagged with the term “cilipfuture” so that they can be found). You can also add your thoughts to the CILIP Communities forum dedicated to this topic, or the recently established The Conversation blog. If you’re interested in following some of the online discussion, you can use the Defining our professional future Netvibes page to help you keep track of the different communication channels.

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LILAC 2010 conference dinner venue (thanks to @KathR on Twitter)

After LILAC, I said I’d like to write a blog post with some tips for attending conferences; here are my tips from my (limited!) experience at conferences.

1. Use social media (conference website/blog/Twitter) before the event to begin to find out who else is attending. I managed to find out some of the people I already “knew” through Twitter were attending and also found others on Twitter who were attending. You could even arrange a tweetup to break the ice and put a real life face to all those Twitter avatars (I tried to do this for LILAC but my flight was cancelled and I didn’t get to Limerick until late evening!).
2. Read the abstracts for any parallel sessions you need to choose - fortunately, I enjoyed all the sessions I attended but there were times when the session hadn’t been what I had been expecting from the title. In future I’d definitely try to read the abstracts when deciding what to choose.
3. Book parallel sessions early - my choice was a little limited at times due to them already being fully booked before I booked my sessions. In future I’d definitely try to prioritise reading the abstracts as soon as they are available so that I can book sessions early.
4. Allow plenty of time for travel - just in case something goes wrong. My flight was cancelled but I only missed exploration time, if I had booked for the next day as I’d initially considered, I could have missed a lot of the conference.
5. Schedule in some time to see the surrounding area if you can - I never seem to get this right. Last year I had a conference just outside Edinburgh and managed to visit my friend Jennie, but I only had a couple of hours to see her and the city and would have liked more time. This time I booked my travel as early as I could the day before the conference but due to the flight cancellation still didn’t get to see any of Ireland!
6. Travel light each day - especially if you’re not staying at the hotel venue. I found that there were times I was carrying unnecessary stuff round with me all day, especially on the first day when I was given a conference bag too.
7. Wear comfortable clothing and footwear - obvious one this but it is so true, you don’t want to be feeling uncomfortable during what is likely to be a long day. I tend to wear smart casual workwear (trousers or jeans), but there’s always a range in terms of what people wear. The most important point is to be comfortable (although I wouldn’t recommend turning up in your pyjamas!).
8. Attend as much as you can, but give yourself rest time too – conferences are full on and can be very tiring so make sure you have some time to yourself to rest and reflect. I realised I didn’t have long to get ready for the conference dinner at LILAC, so decided to miss the last couple of sessions and instead spend time in the exhibition area and in my hotel room getting ready!
9. Don’t expect too much of yourself straight after the conference – even if you promised to write a report or blog post, you’ll probably be exhausted and it may actually be better if you allow yourself time for reflection. Next time I may live blog the sessions at some of the conferences I attend, but I think as a sumarry of the conference I’ll write posts on key themes from the whole event after I’ve had time to reflect.
10. Network, network, network - oh, and network. For me conferences are all about the networking. The sessions are great, but it’s the discussions with other delegates that the sessions spark that I find most useful. I’ve spoken to so many different people in different roles and with totally different backgrounds at conferences, but every single person I have talked to I have found something in common with or something interesting to talk about. It’s good practice to take some business cards with you (if you don’t have cards from work, it’s really easy to make your own with your personal email and blog/Twitter/Facebook on). I actually found they weren’t necessary at LILAC as we were all given a delegate list with contact details, but I still had some of mine in case (plus everyone loves a funky penguin card don’t they?!).

I think they’re my main points, and it rounds nicely to a list of 10 so I’ll leave it there. If you have any other bits of advice, please feel free to leave them in the comments, and if you’re looking for more tips you may find some of these posts useful:

• Vicki Owens’ advice after attending LILAC 2009
• Conference attendance advice from Library Scenester
• Conference tips from Stephen’s Lighthouse

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I’m hoping to develop further Twitter support including a list of delegates (more on this later). I’m a bit late in organising it this year but thankfully the conference is on a non-working day so I should hopefully be able to attend, I’m just trying to get this confirmed at the moment.

For anyone else who is wondering about attending but hasn’t booked their place yet, I recently heard about a great competition being organised by CILIPs Membership Support Unit, and the prize is an all expenses paid place at the New Professionals Conference. You can see more details on the competition web page, but the basic idea is to submit a competition entry in any form (essay, video, art, whatever!) which answers the following question:

What would the world be like if information was unmanaged?

I’m looking forward to seeing the entries to this, please do enter the competition especially if you’re keen to attend the New Professionals Conference!

Hope to see some of you there on 5th July.

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