"This one time, at Library Camp…."

So yesterday, I was browsing Twitter at lunchtime, and Jo Bo Anderson posted that she was going to something called Library Camp in Birmingham in October, and wondered who else was interested in attending.

The actual content of the day so far is totally vague and woolly, but that also means that no-one is excluded by it being too sector-specific, and I started seeing lots of people I’d love to get to meet in real life post on Twitter that they were signing up to attend. There’s no way with most of these people that our paths would ever cross at professional events otherwise, so this seemed like a great chance to get together with a wide range of information professionals from across the country. And it was free! And on a weekend, so there were no clashes with work! And in not-London, so therefore travel and accommodation were reasonably affordable! And there was to be CAKE!

So, in the course of an hour I had signed myself up to attend, booked train tickets, found myself a roomie for the hotel room I booked, reassured my partner that I wouldn’t be killed by any of the random people from the internet I’d be meeting, and suggested my boss attend too.

And, amazingly, in less than 24 hours, the whole event has sold out!

The official hash tag is #libcampuk11, if you want to follow discussions about it on Twitter.

Really, I think that one of the major selling points (apart from the chance to network with people across the whole of the profession) was the promise of cake. And as is well known, librarians and cake are a very happy partnership.
To add to the sugar rushes, I’ll bring homemade tablet too, if there’s space in my stuff.

Also…there will be no flutes.

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.

Thing numero seveno – professional networky stuff

So, for this Thing, I’m looking at my professional networks and organisations.

CILIP / CILIPS
I was never a student member, and only joined in the first place because 1) my employer paid the fees, and 2) my line manager at that time was heavily involved in the Scottish branch. The same pretty much applies now as the reasons for me maintaining my membership! Oh, and also because I’m Chartered now, and if you leave CILIP, you lose the Charter (which is fair enough – there’s no point having a qualification that shows your commitment to your own and others professional development if there’s no-one checking you’re doing what you say you’re doing) .

What do I get from CILIP/CILIPS? Well, currently, not much. As a Chartership candidate, I attended a session on the process, and I’ve attended occasional events organised by CILIP, where I could squidge them to kind-of fit with my internal Appraisal goals. I get the CILIP info email on library related news, but as my job involves keeping up to date on most news, I’ve usually already read the articles that are linked to by the time it comes in, and the journal is almost always of no interest to me, as it’s seems to be just about public and academic libraries. I know they do lots of good things, but none of them are currently of any real use to me. I think the lack of relevance of CILIP for me at the moment is because I work in a specialised sector, and other groups already fill the role for me that CILIP seem to do for public and academic librarians.

However, I’m planning to register as a Mentor for Chartership candidates soon, so by being involved in that process I may feel that I’m both more useful to CILIP, and that they are to me. As Loopy says, CILIP’s one of those things that you get back what you put in. For me, I’ve mainly not been putting anything in with CILIP.

BIALL
BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) is an excellent and very active group.  I’m a member because my workplace pays for my professional fees, which is great, as it allows me access to the Journal of Legal Information Management (lots of articles relevant to legal information professionals), the newsletter (updates on BIALL and supplier activities), salary surveys (great to pass to Higher Ups, to show where your salary sits when compared to other professionals with similar responsibilities and experience), and there’s also an email list. The email list does often seem to be the backup plan for people posting initially on lis-law, in order to try and get as many responses as possible to queries, rather than the first port of call, but this is probably because not all legal information professionals are BIALL members. Finance issues mean I’ve not been able to attend a conference since 2008, but when I have been able to attend, the conferences have been informative, fun, and given me a great chance to make contacts outside the Scots law field, and to put names to the faces of the people whose names I’ve seen around the internet.

Hopefully, I might be able to attend the next conference…or is it my boss’ turn? I may have to suggest a game of Stone, Paper, Scissors to settle matters…

SLLG
The SLLG (Scottish Law Librarians Group) group is, for me, the most useful of the professional groups that I’m a member of. Plus, I’m on the Committee, so I have no choice but to be heavily involved*! Again, my employer pays my memberships fees for this group, but seeing as it’s only £15, I would be a member of this group regardless of who paid the fees.
It’s aimed at trying to fill the need for legal-sector specific training for information professionals in Scotland, has a quarterly newsletter, a members email list, and additional regular social events to encourage face-to-face meetings. Which is lovely – letting you put a face to a name….as long as you’re better than me, and can remember which face goes with which name. This is not my strong point! Name badges are often my salvation.
Since it’s a small group, it feels quite friendly and approachable, and the email list allows members to ask each other for help on topics which may be specific only to Scots law.

Side Points
According to a Twitter post from CILIP Info earlier this week, my CILIP membership also means I’m a member of IFLA. I had no idea! I think I’m also a member of some CILIP Special Interest groups, but they can’t have made a big impact on me, as I can’t remember which ones they are!

What Do I Get From It?
So, those are my “formal” professional groups, and I definitely get different things from the membership of each one. I suppose it just shows that no professional group can ever be able to do “everything”.

I’m quite happy to be a member of all of these, although my involvement level varies significantly between none with BIALL, some (and soon to be increasing) with CILIP, and total with SLLG. I also see that, as I have progressed in my career, I’ve become more involved in the organisations I feel I can be useful in: first, with the SLLG, and now also with CILIP as a Mentor.

It’s also meant that my CV, which might otherwise just have shown very little other than the work I do in my firm, could now show me with extra professional qualifications (yay for gaining extra bits of the alphabet after my name!), the skills to organise training events, lots of great contacts throughout the legal and general information profession, and a commitment to helping others develop the skills they need to progress in their careers. Quite a change from “I do this at my desk all day” I think.

*Also, I’m therefore contractually obliged to report that it is The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. And actually, I do pretty much think that. Apart from the fact that we don’t usually have any home baking activities in the SLLG. Yet.