The blue skies of Librarianship

This blog is part of 23 Things for Professional Development, a course encouraging information professionals to explore online tools. The current post is in ‘Bitesize’* format.

Librarianship, my route in and my hopes and dreams are Thing 10, and mentoring is Thing 11. These things have pretty much gone hand-in-hand for me throughout my working life, even before I entered librarianship. I’ve only had two ‘official’ mentors in my time (in my current workplace and in the Chartership process) but there are countless individuals, both senior to me and among my peer group, who have supported my development and challenged me in similar ways. The majority of these would probably be incredibly embarrassed if I described them as mentors!

For a bit more about my career and progression in librarianship, I’d recommend you check out my library routes posts. I’m currently developing myself in my science librarian role, still awaiting judgement on my Chartership application, and still looking for a full-time librarian post in the East Midlands.

*A truncated post to allow me to briefly consider CPD23 Themes I didn’t have the chance to investigate more deeply.

My desk: a mixture of professionalism and junk?

This blog is part of 23 Things for Professional Development, a course encouraging information professionals to explore online tools.

I already started thinking about my personal brand during week 2 of CPD23, when another participant commented on how my blog and website appeared to someone who didn’t know me. Long story short, I come across as professional (score!) but also a little bit serious, which is a bit more of a mixed blessing!

Me and My Site

This got me thinking about the history of my website came about. I created its first version in around 2003, before the concept of social media had really started to catch on. It was a combination of a place to put up information about myself, such as my CV, and a place for me to practice my html. I guess this is history is part of what gives the site its serious flavour!

Am I happy with this? Well, yes and no. Having looked a bit at my blog with fresh eyes I decided it was very dry, and I at least needed to add a picture of myself (already done). I’m also considering making my blog my front page on the site. I don’t think too much of a redesign is possible as I hand-code the site in html (except for the WordPress blog, where I hand-code the template!) and don’t have much time to make changes currently. I know there’s mixed opinion about the need for having a personal website at all in the social media era, and I know the URL I have chosen is impossible to remember, but I do love my site, and I like reminding myself I can use markup language occasionally!

My Visibility and Web Presence

The pay-off for having maintained my own website for a while is that I do quite well in Google searches for my name. I knew this already as I search for myself quite a lot! Part of this is to keep an eye on how visible I am, but I also teach searching techniques and different search engines. As I know what tends to come up about me, I find searching for myself a useful way to compare and contrast different sets of search results!

In searches, there’s a few other Katie Frasers with quite high visibility: especially the one who works for ‘Take a Break’ magazine! Generally, my website features highly across search engines, as do my Twitter account, my Linked In page and my Academic.edu page, all of which I update fairly regularly. For some reason, Google is the only search engine which offers another Katie Fraser’s Linked In page first. I tend to fit the way my style to the kind of service I’m using. On Linked In I’m professional, and on Twitter, I post a mixture of personal and professional stuff. I’m not consistent with my profile pictures, but I do always use a picture of my face, and my face IS consistent!

Generally, I’m quite happy with the way I appear online. I do concentrate more on my professional identity in things I post on the open net, and save my more personal thoughts for either places where my information is quite locked down (such as Facebook) or for face-to-face encounters. However, I don’t think anyone reading my Twitter account would think that I’m always a serious person!

Our local situation
Nottinghamshire have cut opening hours at many branches, and generally we were in agreement that their approach to cuts were not particularly strategic, and their solutions not particularly imaginative; i.e. reducing opening hours and cutting book budgets, rather than thinking about how best to serve their communities and looking at alternative revenue sources. MPs can only make recommendations to councils, but it’s good that she would encourage ours to take a different tack.

Changes to library services
As a trained lawyer, Anna was keen that volunteers did not replace professionals, so we were generally on the same page here. I also made her aware of some of the issues around charging for library services, and the (profession-wide) suspicion that charging for internet access or non-paper books (both have happened in local authorities) set a dangerous precedent which might eventually lead to charging for e-books, if not traditional book loans.

The national situation
Anna was quite interested in The modernisation review of public libraries, which I’ve found immensely informative. She did offer to raise a question about what happened to this report in parliament, but as Ed Vaizey seems to have ruled out implementing any of the ideas in the report, I suspect that there’s little that can be done. It’s a shame, because many of the recommendations in the report are small, but only seem implementable at a national scale.

As the Nottinghamshire Public Libraries service is not one where intervention on the grounds of the statutory duty seems appropriate, there’s not a huge amount to be done at this stage (apparently MPs are expected to only raise questions about issues that affect their own constituency) but it’s good to have made contact and raised awareness of the issues we’re facing, and I’d encourage others to do the same with their MP. I’ve urged Anna to get in touch with me if she has any questions, or would like further information on libraries in general, so I’m hoping there’ll be some follow-up.

Blue skies over the library. Maybe I should have had a shot of one of the departments here instead!

John Dupuis, author of the Confessions of a Science Librarian blog, recently wrote a fascinating post entitled A Stealth Librarian’s Manifesto (please do go and read it) talking about the need for academic librarians to insinuate their way into the communities they serve. There’s also comments on the blog about how this manifesto applies to other sectors. I was halfway through commenting on his post, when I realised that I had one of my own brewing.

The stealth librarian’s manifesto had me nodding most of the way through. We should become part of our users’ landscape. We should be integrated into research and teaching and we should be collaborative. With all these I agree. However, I baulked slightly at the separation from the information profession the manifesto encouraged in parts: “We must stop going to librarian conferences” and “We must stop joining librarian associations”? Yikes!

On reflection I think this reaction is partly about my background. As an ex-academic (at the PhD student level) and relatively new librarian (I graduated from my librarianship course just over a year ago) I’m very conscious of what I’ve learnt from the knowledge and expertise of other librarians. I’m wary of the danger of ‘going native’ – a concept from anthropological ethnographic research, where those studying a culture can come to identify with it so strongly that they become estranged from their own culture. I still think that there’s a lot I have to learn from other information professionals, and I don’t want to lose sight of the new ways of seeing the world I’ve learnt as a librarian.

However, this reservation isn’t meant to be a cutting critique of the manifesto. I can see how those who are more established librarians already feel confident within the profession, and see progress as pushing the other way and focusing more on the community they don’t yet know. There’s a perfect balance where librarians are embedded in both communities, participating in the lives of the groups that they support, yet secure of their own identity as professionals, secure of their own expertise.

I think maybe I’m getting to the stage where I’m secure enough as a librarian to start pushing the stealth angle a little harder. I’ve taken some steps towards becoming involved in the communities I serve, particularly in terms of conferences and social networks, which is where I’m comfortable. One of my next big aims in the role is to increase how embedded I am in the on-campus scientific community, where my liaison so far has been a little too reactive (as opposed to proactive) for either the manifesto or for my own preference. There’s other constraints here – I have found it more challenging to become a part of both library and departmental communities in my current part-time role – but that’s all the more reason to invest my effort in this area, and develop some stealth librarian skills.

CILIP HQ

One of the blog posts which has disappeared down the virtual sofa during Operation Move House is my talk at CILIP’s New Professionals Information Day (NPID)(an annual event aimed at new information professionals, students and the information-profession-curious). This ran in London in October (at CILIP HQ) and Newcastle in November (at the rather beautiful Newcastle City Library.

I was going to upload the slides for my talk after the event, but without the context of the talk they felt rather disjointed, so I thought perhaps a blog would capture it better. The two days also influenced my current professional activities to some extent, which I wanted to reflect upon: but more on that later.

I was asked to speak at this event because of my work on CILIP’s Defining Our Professional Future (DOPF) as a new professional. I was given the suggested title ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway: Working with people at all levels‘ but in the end the talk was more about how neither part of the title applied to me!

1. Feel the Fear: I wanted to talk about how positive my experience working with senior professionals in DOPF had been. The project board was inevitably made up of people with an enthusiasm for CILIP, but who felt it could do better. I wanted to point out that working with other information professionals (senior or otherwise) seems intimidating, but it’s actually probably easier than working across disciplines, and that there’s no reason (or stigma) in getting involved even at a very early stage in your career.
2. Do it Anyway: this talk actually persuaded me to reflect on the way I become involved in professional activities. Enthusiasm always hits me before fear: I commented in the talk that my motto is like ‘Agree to do it, and then feel the fear afterwards’. This means I get into some random situations, but nearly all of them have been positive for me, so I wanted to talk about harnessing that enthusiasm!

The conclusion of the talk was what a great experience getting involved in the wider profession had been for me, and to make it clear that CILIP can be a great option (if only one among many!) for getting involved in professionals activities.

More CILIP HQ: note the pink CILIP logo in the window

The talk sparked some fascinating debate about CILIP from sceptics in the audience: I emphasised that I was focusing on the positives of getting involved in the Institute, but that I wasn’t a CILIP representative, and that I knew it was only one option among many.

My favourite moment of the discussion was in Newcastle where, together with Maria Cotera (Past President of the Career Development Group), I persuaded Phil Bradley (who was then still running for president, and in the audience as he gave one of the NPID keynotes) to say a little bit about why he’d rejoined and become active in CILIP again: he gave a lovely speech about the importance of professional bodies and the opportunity we have to do something great with CILIP.

It was fantastic to see the enthusiasm and response for running this event in both north and south, and there was some great speakers to chat to, but it’s sobering to realise that this could be the last year that the New Professionals Information Day might not be around next year due to budget constraints.

I suppose the major long-term outcome of the event for me was, having reflected on how positive my experiences getting involved with CILIP were (in DOPF and also as a previous member of CDG Yorkshire and Humberside) led me to resolve to become active more regularly. I’m going to take over on the UC&R East Midlands committee for my institution next: unlike some of the things I’ve become involved in during my professional development, this is a stable commitment (which I think will do me good), but also I’m looking forward to helping develop some random plans on the committee once I start!

Although I’m sitting on the project board, I’m a CILIP member myself, and one who’s not 100% sold on every service it offers. I therefore wanted to take a moment out to be part of the Conversation too, remove my ‘Project Board Member’ hat and have a bit of a chat about the three questions the Conversation is currently mulling over:

• What will the knowledge and information sector look like in 2020?
• Where will a professional association fit into this sector?
• How will you engage with this professional association?

The Knowledge and Information Sector in 2020

Technology is one that will come up again and again (and not just in the information sector). I’ll cover it briefly. I’m not going to guess which technologies will be relevant to information professionals in 2020. Technologies change all the time: if you think that learning to use Twitter now is going to help you in 2020 you’re sadly mistaken. However, I am certain that the information professionals in 2020 will need to be early adopters of technology, experimenters, and no longer those behind the curve in hearing about and adopting new forms of tech. Or else we’ll have gone the way of the dinosaur. End.

An issue that’s more personal to the sector is its fragmentation. I believe in 2020 the sector will be just as fragmented as it is now. It’s inevitable that information management will take place in a range of different institutions: that there will be public and private organisations (and individuals) with different needs. And its also inevitable that whether I work in a university, or a law firm, or a public library, or the health sector, or a school, or for Count Waldstein, I’ll have more shared experiences with those in similiar posts. However, I hope that in 2020 information professionals will have grown better and looking beyond these everyday sectoral  concerns to wider shared issues (information literacy, information management, information systems design).

The role of a professional organisation in the Information Sector

The role of a professional organisation is surely about bridging the gap between those sectors. About developing a shared identity for information professionals. And to do this it needs to definine its boundaries. Who is an information professional, and who isn’t? What kind of work does an information professional do? It’s comparatively easy to tell if you’re a librarian or not, which I think is why CILIP ends up full of librarians talking about librarianship.

You may have noticed that the subtitle above doesn’t say ‘the Knowledge and Information sector’ Why not? In have an MSc in Occupational Psychology, and studied knowledge management. I’ve therefore got some expertise behind this claim: knowledge and information management are the opposite of each other. Information management is all about arranging information in structures so it’s easy to find, and making it easy to convert data to knowledge. Knowledge management is all about capturing disorganised ‘soft’ human knowledge and desperately trying to convert it to data. While these two processes are related, and professionals in both sectors can learn a lot from each other, I don’t think an organisation like CILIP can simply lay claim to the Knowledge sector without a merger with a specialised Knowledge Management group. We can’t claim to be experts in everything, and our identity is strongest when we admit what we are not.

Lastly, once it’s established what an information professional is, the professional association must be clear about what a good information professional is (those undertaking continuing professional development, for example), and build its membership from these good information professionals. What’s the point in joining a professional organisation when there’s equally competent equally active professionals outside it, and those who merely passed a course inside it? It must actively improve the quality of professionals within its boundaries, for example by masterminding the cross-sector initiatives referred to above. And if it can’t offer this, why call it a professional organisation? Why not have training courses and networking sessions funded by one-off payments? Why have membership at all?

How I’ll engage with this professional association

This time I think I’ve really answered this question before I got to it. How I engage with a professional association depends on what I get back from engaging. I’d love to be able to be a member of a society where being a member is a guaranteed of quality to employers, where collectively we are improving the information sector. However, if that isn’t going to happen, I’ll just have to demonstrate my professionalism through my activities, and do my best to keep an eye on what happens in other across different sectors. I can do it on my own: I’ll join committees, and attend courses, and read the literature of a professional association if it can help me do it better.

So, your move first, professional association. How do you plan to engage with me? What do you think might make me a better information professional? If your answer is convincing enough, I’m on board.

Dear Bob

When I saw the results of the proposal for an increase in CILIP fees had gone through I was surprised by its approval. However, as CILIP is run by the democratic method I accepted that the views of the voting members had been represented. To be honest, I would expect the Chief Executive of CILIP to attempt to disguise his or her own views on such a vote, and to focus on the importance of the vote representing the members. I therefore saw your comment above about the ‘not wonderful’ proxy voters as not only personally insulting, but rather inappropriate.

I submitted a proxy vote against the increase in fees, and encouraged my colleagues to do the same. I had a good reason for doing so. I have recently graduated from a librarianship course. A large number of students on this course saw CILIP as a looming overexpensive drain on their resources. I strongly believe that charging higher and higher prices to account for a failure to recruit these new professionals is just going to drive them further away. I believe that raising fees does more harm to the long-term earning potential (and relevance) of CILIP than good.

The information profession is not my first calling, and I came to it with a strong belief in the importance and power of professional bodies. Therefore I will not be leaving CILIP in protest. I think working from inside CILIP is a better way to change it than leaving. My believe in working within an organisation for change is why I voted by proxy, despite being unable to attend the meeting. However, I sympathise strongly with those who are leaving, and think your (doubtless intended to be) throwaway comment above is only going to further alienate the disenfranchised.

I hope you will forgive me for also posting this comment on my blog. I also have little time, and hope to get extra value out of this content by reusing it.

Regards,
Katie Fraser

I’d be interested to hear any comments, especially from new professionals on the way they see CILIP and its value to their own careers. Who knows, Bob McKee may even be interested in your thoughts.

There are obvious downsides to working weekends, but I’ve got mixed feelings about this. In my old job I was an ‘access assistant’ which entailed working the hours which the core library staff didn’t support: 16.45 to 21.15 twice a week on weekdays, and alternate Saturdays, although there was a member of the core staff on with me 16.45 to 19.00 on my weekday shifts. In my current post the core staff work weekends on shifts, meaning that the load is spread. I can see the upsides of both systems. If you can get the same staff working at weekends they have a far better idea of what’s going on, and can provide a more professional service. But on the other hand, when I chose to work unsociable shifts in my old job this was a conscious choice on my part – in fact I was pleased to be able to work at those times. This meant I was far more enthusiastic and happy about working at those times, and didn’t feel put upon, as I sometimes do now when my weekend shifts come up.

This all ties into the professionalism debate in librarianship. I’m about to embark on training to become a professional librarian, but in my time in libraries I’ve fulfilled various roles and provided a lot of help as a library assistant. The thing I like about weekend shifts in my current job is that there are genuine librarians on-site whenever the library’s open. However, I wouldn’t knock the level of service I managed to provide as the sole member of counter staff in my old post. Part of the reason I was able to help people out was because I was a PhD student at the university, and knew my way around research and the library system, it wasn’t my job to know as such. However, with staff of a high standard willing to work unsociable hours, is it always necessary to have a qualified librarian on-site? I’m afraid I’m going to cop out, and say that I really don’t know.