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Decided to merge my last three days of Day in the Life together, as I did too much miscellaneous stuff, and not enough sitting down and writing. Consider this edited highlights!

Wednesday morning I spent looking for some new DVDs providing training in team building, meetings, and other workplace communication skills. Unfortunately the only materials I could source which seemed good enough to keep student attention were the ones we already owned (but on DVD rather than video). Too expensive to justify buying twice, so I'm still looking, if anyone has any ideas!

After that, an induction session. It was arranged as part of an induction programme for a small course, but only the library session was on Wednesday. Isolate library sessions never seem to encourage students to attend. Terrible turnout: a few arrived on time and a few late, making eight out of an expected twenty. I wasn't presenting, but did lead the tour, and felt a bit better about making the effort to organise the session when the students who did come were interested and asked lots of questions.

Most of the rest of the day week involved wrapping up activities, as this was my penultimate full-time week in the post. Wednesday concluded with my late night in which I created (by request from the head of my section) a list of keywords for induction demonstrations (such as databases) for the different departments I cover. There's some general subject-specific keywords, some comparative ones to show the difference keyword choices make, and a classic article to use in citation searches for each of the four departments. Sourcing and trialling these took me most of my late night shift, bar ten minutes which I spent editing margins so the crib sheet fitted onto a single handy sheet of paper!

Thursday and Friday morning (I work only the morning on Fridays to compensate for the late night) involved summary activities which more or less ran into each other. There were a couple of highlights. On Thursday afternoon we had an interesting session on the government's new Customer Service Excellence standard, which we're working towards, identifying measures we could use to demonstrate our excellence.

The best part of the week for me, though, was the announcement that I've made the Project Board for the Big Conversation: a discussion that CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the UK) is running to determine its future. I'm really pleased and got lots of nice comments on Twitter from people who were happy to have a New Professional on the board. I've got project experience from my PhD and other academic activities, plus a billion opinions on research methods, so I'm hoping to be valuable in choosing a strategy for the project. The first meeting kicks off in February. Definitely a memorable week for me!

Picture: Sign at the new Nottingham Contemporary art gallery. I caught the end of the David Hockney exhibition on my week off this month.

Labels: academic libraries, CILIP, librarydayinthelife, professional development

I'm not easily angered, but was infuriated by a recent blog post from CILIP's Chief Executive, Bob McKee. The offending part of the post was a throwaway comment, towards the top, in which he referred to those voters who turned up and carried a proposal for an increase in membership fees through as 'wonderful'. It doesn't seem outrageous to read into this that those members of CILIP who voted against the proposal, and who were, for a range of reasons, unable to attend the meeting in person, were less than wonderful. I've reposted my comment on his blog below for your consideration.

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.

Labels: CILIP, professionalism

There was an interesting conversation happening on Twitter this week about whether or not to charter. I understand completely that many people feel rather disenfranchised from CILIP, and don't feel like they get their money's worth from the organisation. Chartership, similarly, is an aid to professional development, but not the only way to expand ones knowledge and self-awareness (and I'm sure there are some who (whisper it) cannot be bothered... although I've never met any self-proclaimed non-bother-ers).

My background is in psychology, and there a completely different conversation is happening: whether the unchartered should even be allowed to call themselves psychologists. It is understandable that people are more worried about ensuring a certain level of training from someone playing with their minds than someone fetching them a book. As Joeyanne Libraryanne pointed out the equivalent conversation in librarianship is whether a qualification is needed at all. However, isn't the whole point of calling us a profession to point out that librarians do more than just fetch books? I really hope we do, as I get bored of fetching books quite quickly.

For me, CILIP membership and chartership is a complete no-brainer. I have been indoctrinated somewhere along the line to believe that professional organisations are a good thing and CILIP does seem to have given back to me for everything I've put in. I'm a CILIP blogger, which has given me incentive to keep on blogging, I've been sponsored to attend the Mashed Library Conference via CILIP, and I'm a member of the CDG Yorkshire and Humberside committee where I've helped organise events which gave me experience and information. I even read the Gazette and Update on the train. Oh yes, I'm one of those.

For me, the process of chartership is the unimportant part of the equation. I've not gone through it, and the stories I've heard indicate that it may not be the most well-developed programme in the world. But idealistically, the idea of chartership is important to me. If librarians really are a profession - if there's some benefit to shared training and continuing professional development - then we need to have a chartership process to reflect and validate our professional activities. My thinly veiled opinion is that there is a benefit. Now, how do we make that benefit more evident, CILIP?

Note: photograph shows view across the lake, University Park, University of Nottingham.

Labels: chartership, CILIP, professional development, Web 2.0

Well, I had an excellent time following #cilip2 on Twitter today (see my previous post for details). It's rather disorienting participating in a physically located session remotely through the medium of 140 character micro blogs, but it worked quite well, with the Twitterers in the room primarily communicating with the goal of explaining to us remote participants. In fact, it was much easier to understand what was happening than tracking a conference on Twitter usually is, as the posts were designed for an outside audience: you can check them out on this summary of the #cilip2 conversation. The major difficulty in following the session was the multiple conversations going on amongst those of us tweeting remotely!

The main point that I took away from the session was the idea, covered by both Phil Bradley and Brian Kelly, that CILIP needs to become more open to experimentation, and less afraid of failure. Having a static website with tightly controlled arenas for interaction is symbolic of the need to control communication and present a formal front, whereas Web 2.0 offers CILIP the opportunity to experiment, and learn from its members in an engaged and flexible manner. A good lesson for any organisation to learn, regardless of technology. I hope this translates into some plans for action on CILIP's part, or at least features heavily in their new communication strategy.

Aside from being part of a fascinating event I also picked up a few new skills participating. The suggestion that there might be Skype (although technical problems meant there wasn't) inspired me into having a play with Skype, which I haven't used before, but which seemed fairly straightforward. I also used a widget to feed relevant tweets into a page on this site so I can share the event easily with others, and I'm sure I'll use that system again. I may not have made the progress on my coursework I would have liked, but I think I achieved a lot today.

Labels: CILIP, Web 2.0

Today is the CILIP Open Council Session discussing how CILIP can use Web2.o to "engage better with the LIS community". Twitter is buzzing with discussion of the best way to follow the session and I've already been added to the Twitter lists of a handful of librarians I've encountered through the #cilip2 tag which is being used to label posts relating to the event (and added some too!). Some Twitterers will be commenting live from the event, and others of us are just waiting to see what happens!

If you're not a user of Twitter, it's still perfectly possible to follow along the discussion. I've put up a widget at http://www.chuukaku.com/monitter.html which updates automatically and provides an easy way to follow the conversation without having to use any Twitter-related applications - should be relatively easy to share as well. Alternatively, you'll be able to access an archive of Twitter posts on Twitter Search (this prompts you to update when new Tweets come in) or can use the Monitter or Twitterfall web applications which update in real time, although you'll have to manually add the #cilip2 tag yourself (my webpage's widget is provided by Monitter).

Labels: CILIP, Web 2.0

I'm a little late to this conversation, but have been distracted by essays and illness. However, I've been following recent discussions about CILP's presence on Web 2.0 with interest. For anyone who's managed to miss the debate it's worth referring to CILIP's Chief Executive blog, which caused the intital controversy, Phil Bradley's comments, which capture its flaws quite thoroughly, and the ensuing CILIP responses.

Part of my views are fairly predictable. I think it would be fantastic for CILIP to get involved in these arenas. I've recently started a Twitter account associated with my blog (although I did have a different presence on Twitter before) and have been involved in several librarian communities on Facebook, Livejournal etc. I'm therefore highly engaged with and enthusiastic about these forms of communication, but oddly enough I think my opinions are more sympathetic towards CILIP than many.

As a librarianship student I am aware my coursemates have very mixed feelings about CILIP, and some really don't see the point. Making a greater effort to engage new professionals through tools they already use can only help address this, and I think CILIP could benefit hugely from stepping up its game on this front.

On the other hand I think it's worth observing that CILIP can be pretty good at encouraging involvement. This blog is part of the CILIP blog landscape, and I was both pleased and surprised to be contacted to take part at such an early stage in my career. Someone somewhere had got the message that I was keen to become engaged in the community. Compared to other professional organisations I've joined I think this shows a level of interest in new forms of communication and member involvement that is often much closer to zero.

I almost feel CILIP is suffering from having such an on-the-ball community to serve... but what a lucky position for a professional body! I wish the other professional bodies I've participated in were in the position to complain about a community that was too engaged and too passionate! The message to CILIP is that they need to take advantage of this opportunity, but I don't think that's passed them by. Let's hope they seize the day - or at least create an official Facebook group...

Photograph taken at the University of Leicester's David Wilson Library. I love the implication that there are non-Information Librarians!

Labels: CILIP, Web 2.0

As part of my involvement in the CILIP Career Development Group Yorkshire and Humberside (and in conjunction with the University of Sheffield Library and Information Professionals Social Society), my colleagues and I are arranging a career event with speakers from course alumni and other local professionals.

Putting together the poster was good fun, and you'll be pleased to hear that the picture is of a real librarian, who blogs as the Librarian by Day. Picture is used courtesy of Creative Commons Licence and the same rights apply to this poster.

I quite like how the poster turned out, and I'm looking forward to the event as well - hopefully there'll be a good turn out, and proceeds are heading to charity, so it'll be good all round if it's a success. I'll probably update more after the event (on 11th February) to reveal how it went.

Otherwise, the coursework is ongoing (due in the day after tomorrow and should be polished by the deadline) and I've got a meeting tomorrow about possible dissertation projects, so everything's running to schedule. I'll be glad for a rest next week before lectures commence nonetheless!

Labels: CILIP, displays, jobs, MA, professional development

This week has mostly been a thesis writing week: progress is slow, painful, but ongoing. However, I had a break on Wednesday for the CILIP UCR East Midlands Group AGM and library visit to the new David Wilson library at Leicester University. An email about the event just happened to hit my inbox as I was going back to the East Midlands prior to my course, I'm a member of both the UCR Group and East Midlands Branch, and our Librarian at Essex had recently walked us through the plan of the library in a meeting, so overall it seemed like fate was calling me there!

The AGM itself was reasonably brief, but it was good to go and hear about the kind of events they'd run during the year, most of which I was sad I'd missed out on (but unable to attend during my trainee post anyway). Then we hit the library for the tour.

The library has been built using the shell of the old library - the extension was added, then the library moved into the extension, then they renovated the old section, and joined the two, fairly seamlessly. It was a £35m job, and boy, did it show. Everything looks and smells new: especially the leather seating. There are fabulous facilities, like large and well equipped group rooms, and it has another of the exciting book sorting RFID machines I saw at UEA, only this time with the books going directly onto the trolleys!

Everywhere we went there seemed to be something new and exciting to see, from the graduate study lounge, available only with card access (oh, how I want one!) to the chair sponsored in honour of Engelbert Humperdinck! The only bit that isn't super-sparkling, beautifully ventilated and light, and glamorously furnished is, of course, the staff area, but still, a lot better than most.

Do I actually think that this was money well spent? Well, the summertime is always a quiet time for libraries, but over above this the quality of the experience of using the library made the students appear extra-studious in their activities. Of course, it's not possible to rebuild every 5 years, but I think a lot of libraries could benefit from a face lift every once in a while, to avoid a slide into mild grottiness. Also, it seems a rather mundane point, but as someone who's worked in rather old library buildings, I can't even imagine how great it would be to work in somewhere well-ventilated and temperature controlled. What a sad statement about librarianship! The downside? Well, of course, the staff offices were where the air conditioning didn't work, but at least units were being installed! Lastly, the benefits of having enough space for all the books - a rarer luxury than I was aware before I entered the library world - can't be underestimated.

I guess I've come away with library envy.

Labels: CILIP, library tech, library visits, phd