Chuukaku.com

Just a couple of pieces of news to share. The first is rather self-evident, given the photograph accompanying this entry: I graduated from my PhD! It was a lovely day. I have decided I like the floppy PhD graduation hats much better than mortarboards, they are so much easier to keep on your head. My parents visited and took me for a fancy meal to celebrate. It's rather strange to be officially receiving my doctorate as I write up my dissertation for the MA, and I'm sure I've confused lots of people "You're graduating from a PhD? I thought you were doing an MA?!". Still, I think this slight career path adjustment been the right choice for me.

The other news is that the conference report myself and the other sponsored students at LILAC put together has been published in the Journal of Information Literacy. The report centres around the key themes of the conference, and you can see my handiwork under the 'Supporting Research' theme, one of my favourite topics. The report also features a photo of me in party frock. I'm obviously having a photogenic month!

Labels: conferences, LILAC Conference, media, phd, research libraries

Just a quick post because I haven't seen this anywhere else, to say Jobs.ac.uk is featuring a profile of Katherine Reedy, Learning and Teaching Librarian from the Open University. I think this a really good example of a job where librarianship has changed a lot, with the Open University catering so heavily for distance learners. It sounds like just the kind of job I'd love to do, and I'm pleased she mentioned LILAC - it's given me another positive view on attending.

I was actually quite startled to find out that a lot of the alumni who came to our recent careers' evening had started applying for jobs around this time of year, so I'm checking job sites a bit more thoughtfully at this stage. However, it's important to be realistic about how far I can travel from Nottingham, and while a couple of jobs I'd love are kicking around, there's been nothing in the right region so far.

Labels: jobs, LILAC Conference, media

As a second step in my campaign for media dominance, I'm mentioned in an article in this month's (the January / February issue) of CILIP's Library and Information Update. Hello to anyone who's found their way here from the article - it's on the RLUK (Research Libraries UK) Conference I attended back in October 2008 and here are the posts from the conference mentioned in the article.

Just to avoid / add to the confusion, the article's got a teensy error in it: I'm actually a student with a PhD, rather than a PhD student - I'm currently studying for the MA in Librarianship at Sheffield, and my PhD was in Learning Sciences at Nottingham University. Still, nice that Update were so interested in our experiences as student attendees at the conference, and I hope this is a positive sign for RLUK continuing to offer student places at their future events.

Labels: conferences, media, professional development, RLUK Conference

I contributed to the feature on taking a master's in Librarianship in the Guardian today, talking a little bit about what it's like to be a student in the field. You can find it in the Graduate section. It's trailered on the front page of the section (which is the back page of the Work section) as 'Sssh! Taking a master's in librarianship' but aside from the unfortunate ssh reference I think it represents us quite well. I'm bemused that I'm the only person who mentioned it's not that easy to get a job in the field, but of course, they only took a tiny quote from each interview they did for each section (I'm sure I blathered on far more than that in the phone interview!).

Labels: jobs, MA, media