Category: CPD23

Thing 10 – how to get where you’re going

Onwards and upwards: to the how, why, and where of my career so far.

Well, the background of this little library fairytale can be found here and here, as originally written for the Library Routes project. It’s a sordid tale of intrigue, smuggling, dark deeds, derring do, and a disturbingly accurate dot matrix printout.*
So that’s where I’ve been…where am I now? Well, I’m still in the law firm library I’ve been in for the last six years, still enjoying what I do, and gradually accepting that perhaps I am actually a proper professional after all. I have no great and glorious career plans – I think I’m pretty lucky just to be in a role I enjoy (despite my occasional muttered swear words on bad/stressful days), and am happy to continue doing what I do, for as long as I’m allowed to do it. 
I’m not a thought leader, profession inspirer, groundbreaking researcher, or any of the exciting things that other people seem to be, or want to be, but I’m content and enjoy my job, and try my best to help others in their work, where I can. Which is, in itself, a pretty good achievement I think.
*At least one of those claims is true.

Thing 9 – Evernote (or Nevernote)

Now, I have to start by saying that I don’t think Evernote’s going to have much appeal for me – I’m not a heavy bookmarker of sites for personal use, and my work ones are already organised into folders or subscribed to with RSS feeds. I don’t have to use images for my work, and if I see images I like/that inspire me for crafting, I’ll do a sketch of what I would make based on that image, but I don’t usually need to go back to that image again. I’m not altogether sure that the IT restrictions in my workplace will allow me to download and install it on my pc either, but I’ll give it a shot….

Ohhh, it’s a big download! 55.7MB, which took over 5 minutes to complete. Now, I don’t know if it’s just that my pc was playing silly buggers this morning, but that’s a looooooong time, and makes me worry that IT are going to tell me off for downloading big stuff!

Ok, it’s downloaded….and has spent the last 5 minutes making my computer hang because I asked it to open. I am not feeling very kindly disposed towards this so far!

Right: it opened. And spent 10 minutes “preparing to install” and slowing my computer down to a snails pace before I gave up and tried to cancel it…and which point it panicked and actually started doing stuff.

And….10 minutes later, it seems to have finally finished its messing about, and installed itself! That’s 30 mins of my life I’m not going to get back…but at least it did install on my work pc, so if it is useful, then I can access it in the place where I spend a lot of my time.

Now, I need to register myself…ok. Done…time to look around….

Right, I’ve had a poke around, and I have to say, I really don’t see a need for Evernote in my life. I just don’t “live” online enough for me to have a need for any of the tools it’s offering. I have a notepad of paper and a pen for when I want a note or to-do list (and scoring off an item on a paper list is so much more satisfying than ticking off an online box, or editing text), I don’t need to share notes/to-do’s/images with anyone else, or be able to access work-related lists when I’m at home, or vice versa. It may well suit others perfectly, but for someone who prefers paper over virtual for most things, it’s a non-starter.

Now…how long will it take to un-install?

Update: 5 mins to uninstall. And, the Evernote help screen doesn’t work if you search for the word “uninstall”, “delete account” or “close account” in the Support Information search. You just get this page. Nice and helpful. So, if anyone does figure out how to close an Evernote account, can you let me know please? I found this on deactivating an account, but that’s not the same as deleting it, and I refer to wipe out unused accounts rather than just put them into hibernation.

Reluctantly professional

I try and pretend I’m not, and keep it well hidden, but actually, I can be quite Grown Up and Professional. So much so that I’m going to be Revalidating my Chartership this year – ohhh, get me, eh?

But…I am not-so-good at saying why I’m fabulous, or keeping up with collating my evidence of professional activity nice and accessible in a voluntary way, so I’ve got two things that are going to help me with Revalidation. The first is my employers internal appraisal system – as our Library service’s work is entirely internally focussed, it’s important to be able to demonstrate that we’re still maintaining a high standard of professionalism and awareness of activities and developments both in and outside our specialist fields. The appraisal system allows my boss and I to set realistic targets and activities, keep track of them, and update them as progress is achieved. All of which works nicely with the Revalidation process!

And second is teaming up with someone externally, to act as my informal mentor and Glamorous Cheerleader. The lovely Bethan Ruddock and I had been chatting online, and somehow the idea of us having a wiki to work together on to (initially) put our thoughts and writings into some sort of coherent order as good practice developed. We agreed on a wiki provider (PBWiki, my favourite one), and started cobbling together a vague plan for the layout – what were we doing this for / what did we want to get out of it / what had we done up to that point / what were we doing as we went along / what did we need to be doing. Then we started filling it with content (and occasional complaints), and working with each other to refine things.

A month or so into this, it was agreed that Revalidation was now an active appraisal goal for me this year, so suddenly the work on creating and populating the wiki that had just been Quite Useful was now Really Useful, and has continued to be so, as I’ve focussed my attention on Getting Things Done.

As a professional development tool, it’s been working really well for us – I get great feedback on the material I’m producing, help to refine ideas, suggestions on all sorts of stuff, and in return I get to pick on…erm….help Beth to organise her activities, focus on what she’s doing and why she’s doing it, and give feedback on her materials. Also…there may be a system of chocolate gifts for getting things done when they’re meant to be 😉

And, since we’re such nice, sharing gals, and Revalidation seems to be seen by quite a few people as quite a vague and woolly concept, we decided to create a publicly viewable version of our wiki, in the hope that it’ll maybe inspire people, and show that Revalidation’s not a Terrible Thing…especially not if you have a buddy to cheer you on in doing it. Of course, we removed any swear words or attached/sensitive documentation (it’s like Vegas – what happens on the wiki, stays on the wiki…)

So here it is, CPD For Manatees (so named by Beth because I am still firmly of the belief that the Chartering process involves a Manatee being overseen by a Mental).

It will be updated alongside our private wiki, so you can see how things come together…hopefully! And if you’re considering Chartership or Revalidation, I’d definitely recommend this as either a formal or informal mentoring tool – leave a comment or email me directly if you’d like to discuss anything about what Beth and I have been doing.

Calendar juggling – Thing 8

Righty, we’re on to organising tools then, and this one is Google Calendar.

Now I have to say, I’m not going to be doing this Thing, for various reasons. Mainly, I don’t really have a need for it in my life.

Work
I have a personal work calendar, as does my boss. We can both access each others calendars when needed, and see what each person is up to – this is useful if my boss is unavailable and people want to check with me whether they could schedule a meeting with her, or when she has a gap in her day. Our calendars allow us to easily book meeting rooms in our firm, and keep track of events and plans.
This is the only calendar I have any need to share the information on with anyone, and this is already possible.

We also don’t need to publicise anything to our users: we’re here during core service hours, and sometimes beyond, and if either one of us is not at their desk (holidays etc) we put up signs on our monitors, put on out of office emails, and generally make it clear that the other member of staff will deal with enquiries at that time.

Personal
My brother at one point tried to schedule my trip with him around New Zealand using Google Calendar. We quickly gave up, as I was never in a Google account to see his changes, so he’d have to email me on my normal email to tell me to log in to another email account to look at something he could have just told me by email in the first place….if you don’t use Google as your email service provider, it’s just a hassle rather than a help.
For other personal planning, I use the calendar in my phone, and a paper version, although I’ve not used that much in the last year. I need to get back into that habit, as when my current phone gets replaced, my last two years of activity will get vaporised – not good if I’m trying to keep track of what talks I’ve been to, what events I’ve attended, and use these for my Revalidation submission!

Other reasons
I tend not to want to trust to much of my online life to any one service (for good reason), so I try and keep things reasonably separate. Since I have multiple email accounts, and multiple Gmail/Google accounts (work-related or personal ones), then for this to be useful for me I would have to be consistently using just one single account, and be logged into it at all times. And that’s not going to happen. So for now, Google Calendar isn’t a tool I feel I need.