Dumpling in a Hanky

I am, as you may know, a member of CILIP, the professional body for information professionals. There are two main reasons I'm a member. I am a Chartered librarian, and I take my commitment to maintaining this visible badge of my professionalism seriously. I have revalidated my Chartership within the previous assessment system, and I have submitted my Revalidation within the new system. To continue being a Chartered librarian, I must be a member of CILIP (although currently the commitment to continue to revalidate my Chartership is voluntary, and has been so for the length of my membership since approximately 2001). So I continue to be a member. I am a registered CILIP Mentor, and I help to guide those information professionals who are keen to be professionally qualified through the Chartership/professional qualifications process. I could not abandon midway through that process the people who are looking to me for guidance in their professional development. So I continue to be...

Last year, I accumulated almost 230 hours of Continuing Professional Development, or CPD, hours. This total includes: The time spent attending professional events The time spent managing the development of the Informed website The time spent creating content for Informed, my blog, and other locations The time spent providing professional training to others Time spent mentoring Chartership candidates While I was doing this stuff, I also: Lost one job suddenly Started two new jobs Applied for 100 jobs Prepared for and attended multiple interviews Completed the time consuming renovations of my house Read 67 books This isn’t a humblebrag, it’s just an example of what’s actually achievable in terms of professional activity and involvement, with a bit of motivation and organisation. My total is well in excess of the average professional body CPD requirement of 20 hours annually (prospectively, 20 hours annual CPD will be a requirement for Chartered CILIP members, to R...

Since my earlier post (multitasking lunch breaks R Us!), I've had some more feedback on peoples feelings about the proposed names for CILIP, and it seems that a lot of people are unhappy that the words "library" or "librarian" aren't included in the options. Now, it may just be because of my recent job hunting experiences, but I don't see that the skills of an information professional are tied to the words library or librarian. If I had restricted my job search to only those sectors, I would never have found a job (there have been a grand total of 3 library roles advertised in 3 months). I have looked at roles with terms like: data, knowledge, information, management, administrator, researcher, project co-ordinator, digital, policy. Those terms are all related to dealing with information professionally, and to me, the core skills of an information professional lie in their ability to effectively manage information, in whatever format it may come in. Hi...

So, recently, CILIP apparently sent out an email regarding a consultation on a change of brand image, and name. I say apparently, as despite being a member, I never got this email. When I went to the website to log in and check why it wasn't sent to me, it didn't let me log in. I tried a password reset, and that email came through, so it *can* send emails to me...but the password it sent won't let me log in. I’m losing the will to keep trying. Overall, this is kind of symptomatic of how I feel about CILIP, and how useless its IT systems are.... Anyway, the consultation is on changing CILIP’s currently, clunky and meaningless name (picked as the best of a previous bad lot, as David McMenemy showed with this link to the 2000 consultation results ) to something more meaningful and relevant is open. If you want to take part, it’s here . I was a good girl, and pootled over yesterday to take part, and after filling in all the bumph, I got to view the glorious options. Oh. My. ...

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...

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 ...

A friend of mine* recently saw a advert for an interesting library post. She's always open to trying new things, and she wondered if it was worth her applying...she ticked a lot of the boxes for the skills that they wanted, and was willing to learn whatever new skills were were needed for the role - she's done it before. But then she saw the fateful words..."Chartership essential". Now, she's worked in various libraries, including special libraries, and Charterships are not particularly recognised or often supported in these sectors, so it's not something she currently holds. But she is a professional, qualified librarian with a wide range of experience, an involvement and interest in the wider profession, and an enthusiasm and willingness to learn, and gain Chartership if a role requires it.    So she decided to phone up and enquire if they were flexible on the Chartership aspect, before possibly wasting her time filling in an application.  Apparently, if ...

Apparently, in the CILIP Chartership system, the person in charge of supervising you is not your Mental. And the person going through the system is not called the Manatee. Illusions: shattered. Image from here

Well, on Saturday I got home in the evening (after a corporate fun day out which was, actually, really good fun) to find a "We tried to deliver but you were out having a life" card from the Royal Mail. I'm well used to these by now, as mail delivery time seems to be between 11am and 3pm in my area. Apparently, working and receiving mail are mutually exclusive activities in this fine city. So yesterday, I did my regular detour to the Depot to collect my undelivered mail. What I ended up collecting was a huge beast of a hard backed envelope, slightly oddly addressed: the teeny-tiny fact that I live in Edinburgh, capital of the country has been omitted from my address. Apparently I now live at the following location: Jennie XXXXXX XXXXXXXX Lothian XXX XXX Lothian? I have a region but not a city now? Then I saw the sticker on the envelope saying it had come from CILIP, and all was made clear. They've made yet another boo-boo. Not as good as the beginning of this year, whe...

Be gifted a large pink unicorn pinata by your boss. Arrange a lunch with your Mentor and boss, explaining to Mentor that a pink friend will be joining the table, and causing much trepidation. Walk down street with large pink unicorn pinata. Join Mentor for lunch, and settle Uni at table. Boss arrives and is happy her suggestion of lunch companion was able to join us. Enjoy lunch. Be amused throughout lunch by waiter studiously ignoring the pink unicorn at the table. Leave and return to office. Deflect attempts by workmen to beat poor Uni on the way, by telling them that he's too young. Done!

From CILIP, to me! After having had my portfolio since September, it missing the October and January Chartership Board meetings, and having no hope of hearing anything until after the April meeting... I passed! On a meeting on the 19th of March, bizarrely! I'm Chartered! - I can put MCLIP after my name! It's a bit of an anticlimax now, after submitting it 8 months ago, and all the incredibly ridiculous problems caused by CILIP, and all the fighting to try and get things moved along... Although one friend has said that she can't help reading MCLIP as McCLIP....maybe that's the Scottish version? :D

I still exist, have just launched into a frantic and concerted effort to pull my portfolio together for Chartership, so all other activities are on hold, and that includes commenting on or posting to blogs…although it doesn’t include reading them, so I’m still busily reading, just not visibly ‘active’. I’ve been having fun compiling my portfolio on a Peanut Butter wiki, which has many advantages….and disadvantages! Overall, I think it’s helped me to organise and compile things far better, despite the many frustrations with formatting quirks between it and Word! Have written an article on the process of using it, which hopefully shall appear in some journal somewhere in the near future… Now, all I have to do is have peeps read it, comment, redraft, and submit…and hope the Board pass it!