Dumpling in a Hanky

For Thing 22 , we're being asked to discuss the idea of volunteering, and whether we have ever done this in a professional capacity. I have to admit that, since qualifying, I've not actually done anything in the way of volunteering in libraries, but it was probably my volunteering in a library that got me onto my library course in the first place. After realising during my uni course that science was not going to be the career for me, and locating a postgrad course that looked interesting, and local (Scotland is not exactly swamped with universities that run library postgrad courses), I bumbled my way through my undergrad, and got ready to apply for a course that I had heard had far more applications than available places. So I needed to convince the organisers that I was committed to the idea of being a librarian, and that they should let me on the course. Due to the "interesting" approach of my uni and personal advisor (i.e. they didn't manage or advise in a...

Image credit Whatever happened to 21 being a big deal? You don't get anything exciting when you turn 21, other than, for some reason, a lot of cards with a key on them. It's a bit of a cheat, really - all the good stuff happened at 16, or 18. Hopefully, Thing 21 won't be like that. Oh. It's about promoting myself. I hate that. I think I'd rather have a card with a key on it, to be honest... Anyhoo, I'm meant to be compiling a list of my interests, my strengths, and examples of when I've done things demonstrating a skill that stemmed from an interest. And then update my CV database with those. And share interview tips or experience I've had in my career. Well, it's been a long time since I was last interviewed and (fingers crossed), I'm not planning to need to be interviewed in the near future, so any tips or experiences are in the distant past. Although the HR manager who kept accidentally playing footsie with me under the table whe...

For this Thing , I'm meant to be blogging or thinking about my Library Route/Root, or the path that brought me to librarianship, back in the Good Old Days. However, I was involved in the discussions that kicked off the creation of the wiki, and have blogged both my library route , and my root  previously, so if anyone was particularly excited to find out, they can have a look at those - there's been no major changes since I wrote them. I haven't however had a look at many of the other entries since the wiki was established in 2009, so I went over to poke about in some of the newer entries. From reading a good few of those, it seems that librarian career paths can mostly be summed up as: I didn't ever consciously think of libraries as a career, but ended up in them by accident, and it was a happy accident. I started off as/qualified in something else, but I realised eventually that libraries were for me. I always knew I wanted to be a librarian. It seems that ...

Ok, I'm caught up (ish)! I shall hold back on the firing of glitter guns, and the triumphal music, while I sit quietly, and Think About What I've Done for Thing 19 . This is the type of Thinking About What I've Done that's good, unlike when as a child I would be sent up to my room, to Think About What I've Done. That was bad. And usually involved climbing a wall/tree/building I wasn't supposed to. Anyway, what have I done with the Things I've looked at? And what have I used that's new? Well, to be totally honest...I've done everything, and use nothing new, mainly becuase I'm either already using the tools anyway, or they're not relevant to my current role. I blog, and have done for years; I subscribe to the RSS feeds of blog that interest me; I manage my online presence reasonably actively; I use RSS for current awareness daily;  I'm active in my professional groups; I organise myself the way that works best for me; I'm qualified, ...

I wonder if the makers of Jing are secretly Scottish...or perhaps  Oor Wullie fans? Because Jing's name is awwfy like wan o' Wullie's favourite wurds... Anyhoo - Thing 18 , one which looks at a tool for recording your actions on your computer, in order to let others see exactly what you're doing on your computer, rather than have to explain things in a convoluted way. A screencast! Lovely! This is actually something my boss and I have been discussing on and off for a while - the ability to have a recorded version of how to find/use the things that new staff are most going to want to use on their computers, that we have responsibility for. To have that sort of information available to them at any point (after they've recovered from the induction process information bombardment from every department) would be quite handy. The sound recording aspect would be redundant, as we have open plan offices, and sound disabled on the computers, so an ability to tag things wi...

So, I'm so late that I can incorporate the delayed Thing 17 on Prezi and Slideshare into the correct numerical order of Things. Which makes me happy, in a perhaps-abnormal way. I knew there was another reason I hadn't blogged CPD23 topics for a while...honest. Unfortunately, this is going to be another Thing that I'm going to skip merrily over (although not without thoguht, or explaining why). These tools are aimed at those giving presentations or teaching substantial groups, which is not something we really do. We don't have to give presentations using Powerpoint or similar to senior internal management, and our inductions for new library users are either in small groups (new trainee intakes) or one-on-one sessions (new employees at any other time). The training we give each group or person is hands-on, and tailored to their experience level, and specialist interest area - there is no "standard" training given, and the resources we refer to for each person...

You may well have seen my grumpy-day post earlier on advocacy and activism, so Thing 16 is going to be a meandering thing around some of those points. I still don't feel comfortable with telling people how fabulous libraries are, just because I'm a librarian. I have no more expertise on whether a local public library is useful for anyone than I do about the local Council gym - I don't use either one, so I'm not going to tell anyone that they should be using either one of them, as I am not informed or knowledgeable. Nor do I have any motivation to use either service myself - they just do not have anything to offer me. I don't keep this blog in order to show my employers what work I'm doing. In fact, keeping a blog when working in a special library can be quite difficult, and I very rarely refer to specifics of the the work I do on the blog, unless it's to illustrate a wider principle, I am very careful not to refer to anyone or anything that goes on in my...

Oh, Thing 14 was the last thing I did, back in August! Life and busyness in work got in the way, but I'm aiming for a full-on assault of lots of Things now, while I have a moment! Ok, so this was about attending, presenting at, and organising events. Now - two of those activities I'm perfectly happy with, and one puts the fear of God into me. Attending events I love doing this: I get to meet lots of interesting people, learn new things, and generally go away from them having gained lots of useful tips or contacts. The only problems for me attending events are: Time Time out of work to attend events is time that I'm not available to deal with enquiries, or do my day-to-day tasks, so it's got to be something relevant enough to my duties that being away from them will be recompensed by better skills to do those duties afterwards. Distance Often the most relevant courses and seminars for me are nowhere near me, usually in London. Attending a course in London woul...

Uh-oh, Thing 14 's going to be another one of those ones that I'm not really going to be investigating. Not because I'm lazy, but because it's just not relevant in my current workplace: the only sort of citations we're bothered about here are the legal ones. In fact, the ones we're mainly concerned about here are the incorrect legal citations, and the time we have to waste trying to figure out the correct ones. Top news: advocates don't actually always double check their case references...who knew! I'm trying hard to think of a good reason for me to spend time poking about on Thing 14's suggested tools, but the last time I had to properly cite a bibliographic reference would have been at least 10 years ago. It's not a skill I feel that I need to have in my current role. We don't have users that need to cite material in an academic form, not do we need to support this sort of academic work. If I do ever end up being thrown out of legal lib...

Apparently, collaboration is not just a thing that it is naughty to do with the enemy during a war . It is also a Good Thing too. There are many collaborative tools, and Thing 13 asks us to take a look at one or more of their suggested tools: Google Docs, Wikis, and Dropbox. Now, I've looked at Google Docs in passing before, or when someone's pointed me towards a document they'd like some input on that's being hosted there. To be honest, I've not seen much use for it for me currently - my role does not often need that sort of mass-input to create single documents, or to share them widely. Same for Dropbox - I've not had much need to put a document somewhere that people can later download it from. If I want to work on a document at home, I can access my computer remotely, or email it to my personal email address. So, neither of these two resources currently do much for me, as my work needs don't call for much in the way of document collaboration.. Wikis...

Ok, Thing 12 is looking at "the role of social media in building up networks and a sense of community." Now, I've got to say, I do love me a good social network. I've been a user of MySpace (back when it was actually cool), then moved on to Bebo, and finally, in the last two or three years, I've settled in to Facebook, and Twitter (with the obligatory LinkedIn presence, but I don't count that as part of my part of my active social network), with a steady background of blogs. The main benefit that I've gained from social media is using it to help me get to know so many professionals outside my own sphere. Scots law librarians are a small group, and our concerns are specific to the materials and data we have to work with. They can overlap when we work with UK issues, but otherwise, we're focussed on what we need to do to deal with our own needs. Making contact with non-Scots law professionals, and regularly interacting with them has led to me making s...

It's time to talk about mentals (or mentors, if we're being awffy formal). I've been mentored a-plenty, both formally and informally, and now I'm even starting to do a little bit of the mentoring stuff myself. So how has it all worked out for me? The unofficial mentors In my previous workplace, I worked as part of a team of five staff in an institutional members-only law library, and effectively had a substantial period of apprenticeship to my boss, who spent at least a year supervising the VERY steep learning curve I had to go on. It was mainly her who ended up being the person showing me where things were kept; explaining how those things related to each other; how she'd figured out where an answer might be found for an enquiry we'd received; introducing me to other legal information professionals; and answering the many random and stupid questions I came up with. She also encouraged me to be active in both CILIP, and the group representing Scottish lega...

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 co...

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 ...

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 some...

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 generall...

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 ...

Okaaaaaaaaaaay, Thing 6 is it then! Of the various networks suggested, I'm a member of Facebook, LinkedIn, LISPN, and CILIP Communities...please note though, that there's a big difference between me being a member, and me actually participating in all of these! I have to confess up front, that I don't ever actually go onto either LISPN or CILIP Communites. LISPN I signed up to when it was first launched, as I wanted to help build the momentum to get it going, and be involved, but it moved way past me needing to be there as an encouraging body long ago! Also, it's not really a network that I feel I need to be actively involved in at this point - I feel I'm at a stage in my career where I'm experienced, established in my role, and happily settled in my workplace. This means I'm not greatly in need of the resources available there, which are more suited to those moving to/from library school, first/second/third jobs/contracts, and trying to establish pro...

For Thing 5 , we've to reflect: on what we did, what we learned, and what we can take forward from it. So...what have I learned so far? To be honest...not a huge amount, yet. As an active blogger, Tweeter, and user of RSS feeds, the only thing new to me that the programme has thrown up so far is Pushnote, which I decided not to trial for the reasons I stated before . Is this a bad thing though? No - every new activity needs to build up its participants from basics, and I knew when I signed up that the early stages were unlikely to provide anything new for me. It's the later Things that I expect will be more relevant to me, so this will still develop into an interesting activity to be a part of. Although I have noticed that I've already slipped back into "minimal commenting" mode again - after the second cdps23 post, which encouraged comments on posts, I've not really been posting many comments. This is probably because I don't really have time to ...

Ok, I'm late, but I was on holiday last week - I reserve the right to pay not the slightest bit of attention to work-type things while I'm meant to be relaxing. Or in this case, painting, birthday attending, painting, sanding, painting, cleaning, painting, carpet shampooing, painting, and home-for-sale-listing. I was a bit busy. So, Twitter, RSS feeds and Pushnote, eh? Twitter I think I've pretty much got a good grip on Twitter - I've been on there 4 years or so, and have built up some good relationships through meeting people on it. From the start, my account has been a protected one, so only those who I approve can read what I tweet, and I don't use my real name, or identify my employer. I did this deliberately - I don't want the personal account that I created (where I am very informal, and more "personal" than anywhere other than Facebook) to be linked to my workplace. I like to have a slight disconnect from my work life: you can find this bl...