New header

I have to admit to being very pleased with myself as I have managed to create a lovely new header and logo for my blog. I don't use Photoshop but found some tutorials on the web that I was able to adapt to the version of Photoshop I have access to. It took a little while to get my head round it but I think I'm pleased with what I managed to come up with. Although the blog title refers to the L-Space of Terry Pratchet's Discworld, I've always had a (very) amateur intereset in astronomy so I also like to think about the other meaning of 'space' too. I'd recently changed my blog background to an astronomy one to reflect this so thought I'd like to stick with stars for my logo image. It'll need a few tweaks yet to get it just right, but I'm pretty happy to have got this far without too much trouble.
Although we didn't cover Photoshop in the CPD23 things I think that carrying out some of the tasks for the things has encouaged me to play around with stuff that I maybe wouldn't have before. I still haven't managed to finish the 23 things but it seems to have achieved it's aim in pushing me to try new things and extend my skills. Oh well. 13 things down, 10 to go. Not convinced I'll get all the way there but watch this space...

13- collaborative working

Ok, this is going to be very short as Blogger seems to be objecting to me publishing anything of more than a few lines. We have a shared network drive at work so that our team, which is split across three sites, can all see, and work on, documents that are relevant to the whole team. Although Google Docs and Dropbox look interesting, they're just not necessary to us for work purposes. I can see that if we didn't have this shared drive though then collaborative working tools would be great. We do have access to a Wiki, set up in the PB system, but it's rarely used. I think we all forget it's there sometimes. On the whole I think I'd maybe use dropbox for charter documents, so I don't have to rely on remembering my USB stick, but it's not relevant to my working practices. The only thing that worries me is that nothing on the web stays there forever. Therefore, I'd make very sure that any documents I stored online were well backed up!

test post

Just checking if this is working as I've been having problems with publishing Thing 13.

Thing 12 - Social networks

Thing 12 seems to be covering a lot of the ground that we've already gone over in terms of how we use and feel about social networks. I've already said in previous posts that I'm a very limited user of these networks. My Facebook pages are private and I don't think I'll ever use them for work purposes. I'm still intending having a good look at Linkedin, but time just seems to run away from me. It's on my expanding list of things to do though. I'm afraid I find Twitter a complete waste of time for professional purposes. There's just so much rubbish on it. I know I can choose who to follow, and I have kept it quite a short list, but I just don't have time to filter through even that stuff to find the odd gem.

Social networking does have a place though. I've made contact with other librarians via CPD23 that I would never have met normally and have enjoyed establishing some relationships and sharing ideas. It's really good to be able to get a feel for who and what's out there and what others are doing, both in the same sector and in the wider profession. I don't think social networking will ever replace face-to-face contact as I don't believe it allows you to establish the same depth of relationship. It is much more superficial and it's very easy to ignore an e-mail, blog post or twitter feed. You can't really do the same when the person is standing in front of you. I'm glad I've dipped my toe in the waters of social networking though. I have enjoyed writing these blogs and seeing what everyone else is up to. Surely that's the whole point of CPD23, to get us trying out things we haven't done before and see what works best for us. I don't think anyone doing CPD23 will use all of the tools we are being introduced to, but we cherry pick the ones that suit our own way of working and doing things.

Thing 11 - Mentoring

Like me, many people doing the CPD23 things will be registered for CILIP Chartership and have a mentor. However, I have never been a mentor myself. I suspect that I'm probably in the majority there. My experience of the mentoring process to date has been fairly limited. I admit that I am making my way through Chartership extremely slowly and find it hard to get motivated. My mentor also works in academic librarianship but at a University rather than my own sector of FE. He has recently moved away though and, although I said I would be happy to continue the mentoring relationship via e-mail, I'm not sure if I've done the right thing. I said in earlier posts that I am a champion procrastinator and not having to talk to someone face-to-face and attempt to justify why I've done nothing will not do me any good. It's easy to ignore an e-mail from my mentor so maybe, in my case, finding a new local one would be better. I'll maybe give it to Christmas, see how I get on and then make a decision.

My mentor did give me some useful tips and advice on the chartership process and the kind of things I should be including in my submission. He was especially helpful when I was getting confused by the criteria that CILIP have so there is definite value in being able to talk to someone, share ideas and find solutions to problems that you might be having.

I'm not at all sure about asking someone to be my mentor outside Chartership though. I think that sets it up too formally. It's good to network and establish professional relationships but actually asking someone to be your mentor is an extra step that I'm not sure I'd ever take.

Thing 10 - becoming a librarian

I’ve been reading lots of other blogs where people have said that, due to their use of libraries as a child, they always wanted to work in a library. I have to be honest and say it was never a burning ambition of mine, to be a librarian. Like many others I was a voracious reader and heavy user of my local public library, but it never occurred to me that it could be a job I might want to do.

At school I had no real idea of what I wanted to do. I was good at English and History and read a lot. I was hopeless when it came to maths, science or the arts. A careers adviser suggested that I could do librarianship at university, based on the fact I read a huge amount, and the idea just stuck. I suppose you could say I fell into librarianship for lack of any other career path presenting itself. I sometimes think that 17 or 18 is far too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. I would possibly do something different if I could choose again, based on the person I am now, but that’s not to say I regret my career choice. I think (hope!) I’ve turned out to be not too bad at it.

In Scotland a 4 year degree course is the norm for undergraduates and, at the time, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen offered an honours course in Librarianship and Information Studies. It meant I could stay at home and not be too poor a student (this was in the days of student grants. In retrospect I was fairly well off!) so that’s what I did. It’s been 15 years since I graduated so my memories of the course are relatively faint. I remember enjoying most of it (AACR2 and Marc aside!) and still keep in touch with some of the friends I made.

During my honours year I realised that I had no practical experience. Some of the people on my course had worked in libraries prior to doing the degree and were talking about going straight in at Assistant Librarian level once they had graduated. I knew that this was unrealistic for me, and that I might also struggle to get full-time work. I already worked part-time in a shop which gave me some experience of customer care etc. but practical library experience was the problem. I decided to write to all the library services in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire and ask if they had any part-time posts available. Most wrote back to say that any vacancies would be advertised in the local press but one invited me to come in for a chat with the Librarian. Happily this led to me being offered an evening position which I started in the January of my 4^th year. In June, just before my graduation, one of the full-time staff left and I got her post. This meant that I began working in my first full-time library job as soon as I had finished my degree.  Northern College was still using the old Brown system when I started but they automated 3 months later. It was fascinating to see how the library coped with the change of system and my manager felt I was really helpful in assisting some of the older members of the team who were adjusting to a computerised way of doing things.

A few years later came a sideways move to another Information Assistant post at University of Aberdeen. I had enjoyed working in Northern College but felt that it was limited in scope. I hoped that the larger institution would offer more opportunity for training, development and advancement. I was right about the training and development side of it, but not so much about advancement. I applied for lots of promoted posts but was always being told that I had been second choice. That got a bit irritating after a while! Often the job would go to someone external to the university who had been doing similar work already. I understood the reasons, but it didn’t make it any easier. (Somewhat ironically University of Aberdeen now advertise most of their jobs internally. I’d like to get back in there but I don’t think it’s going to happen.)

A few years and many interviews later I applied for the post of Assistant Librarian at Aberdeen College and have been here ever since. I’ve been in this post for 10 years now, but the job has changed quite a lot. My CPD has never really stopped. Initially it was all about the books but with the rapid expansion of internet resources, development of e-books and more focus on user education I have had to change and adapt to new circumstances. 

10 years on I am looking for the next step. I’ve had a variety of interviews over the last few years for Librarian posts with other organisations but they are few and far between and competition is fierce. RGU no longer offers the 4 year degree course but does have a very popular postgraduate option. Although relatively affluent, Aberdeen is a small city with limited employment opportunities and having a local university putting out a new batch of qualified librarians every year doesn’t help matters! So, back to CPD and trying to update my skills again. I’m progressing extremely slowly through my charter, trying to find local training events that don’t cost very much and won’t take up too much work time and hopefully using CPD schemes such as this to update my skills and knowledge.

Reflecting on it all, this career that I just fell into hasn’t turned out too badly after all.

Thing 9 - Evernote

I did sign up for Evernote but it wouldn't work properly for me. I have a feeling it was to do with not being able to download stuff on to my work network, so it wasn't quite right. I looked interesting but, as I can't use it at work, I didn't think it would be worth me pursuing.

Thing 8 - Google Calendar

At last, a nice easy short thing to do. Which means this will also be a short post. I had a look at Google Calender and, whilst I can see it's merits, I won't be signing up any time soon. I use Outlook at work so have access to the mail function there and am perfectly happy with it. I can see that anyone with lots of outside work commitments and activities might find it really useful but I don't think it's right for me.

I think that's my shortest post yet. Hopefully there'll be a few more like this and I might start to catch up a bit!

Thing 7 - face-to-face networking

I’m gaining quite a discouraging picture of my professional development through doing the 23 things. I’ve already found out that I’m a reluctant user of online networking tools and am about to admit that I do very little in the way of face-to-face professional networking either. I suppose this is part of 23 things though, to help us find some professional strengths and weaknesses and introduce us to tools to help with those weaknesses.

I’ve been a member of Cilip for some years now, with the ultimate aim of completing my charter. I’ve been qualified for 15 years and in a professional post for 10, so you can see how slowly that aim is progressing! I enjoy reading Update magazine, although I do find that I don’t look at it nearly so often now that it’s online. It’s just another thing for me to remember to go and look at. At least if the magazine was lying on my desk I was likely to pick it up during a slow half-hour. My engagement with Cilip has gone no further than that though.

As part of my Cilip membership I’m also in both the Career Development Group and Colleges of Further and Higher Education. Again, I read the magazines and subscribe to the COFHE jisc mailing list, but go no further than that.

I know that Cilip Scotland has a fairly active local branch, but have avoided getting involved with that for various reasons. It’s something I might have considered but, unfortunately, until the main reason is gone, then I won’t be going down that route.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, as I’ve remembered that I have done some face-to-face networking in the past. We have a local network called Grampian Information and I have thoroughly enjoyed going to their annual conferences over the last 10 years. I wasn’t able to go last year, and will have to miss it again this year due to an overlap between some annual leave and the conference date. Fingers crossed for next year though as I was disappointed that I couldn’t go. The conferences are usually interesting, informative and a good way of meeting new people and catching up with friends from previous jobs or university. I do struggle with networking and talking to new people though. Maybe I should take a look at the book mentioned on Jo Alcock’s Blog (the link to which can be found from the Thing 7 thread on the CPD23 site) as it looks as though it would be ideal for me.

Another obstacle to face-to-face networking is that, as with organisations all over the country, reduced staffing and budgets make it very difficult to get to external CPD events. I did manage to get to quite a few local events in the past but this is now very restricted. I keep an eye out for free events which fit in with the working hours but there’s not much coming up at the moment.

Reflecting on all of this (see, I’m getting better at it!) I think I need to take some action. Initially I’m going to see if I can get hold of the networking book as I think it would help me in those situations. Then I’m going to make an effort to find local events that I can manage to get to. Although I find the thought of these events a little scary, I know I always enjoy them once I’m there so time to do something about it.

Thing 6 - Online Networks

I've found Thing 6 somewhat similar to Thing 4 in that it's all about how I use social networking. Any regular readers will know that I've only really just dipped my toe into the waters of social networking and that I find the whole thing slightly unnerving. However, saying that, some of the professional networking I've done via CPD23 has been interesting and useful and I want it to continue.

So, the online networks then. I've been on Facebook for sometime now and it's strictly a personal thing. I don't think I'll ever change my opinion on that, as I don't particularly want professional contacts seeing my friends attempts to get me to join their Mafia Wars games or my nieces asking me to contribute to Farmville. Similarly, I don't think they would find the minutae of library and information work all that interesting so I prefer to keep the two apart.
I had a look at the 4 LinkedIn profiles that were on the CPD23 things website and that is something that I'll possibly consider doing. I do like the thought of my professional social networking being strictly professional, so this would probably be a good thing for me. I still need to give some thought to my personal branding though before I take the plunge there. Watch this space!
I briefly checked out Cilip Communities but I'm not sure I like the format. I've been a member of Cilip for a long time but haven't really engaged much beyond paying the annual subscription. Maybe I should set aside some time to see what's on offer. Looking at the Communities site though I don't feel encouraged.

I think one of the main things that puts me off all this social networking is that there's just so much of it out there. All this information coming at me just gets a bit too much. I already read, and contribute to, various Jisc mailing lists and look at a few blogs and professional websites. There's only so much that one person can do. I think I also like the fact that Jisc mailing lists come directly to my e-mail inbox. I don't have to go out of my way to interact with them whereas with services such as Twitter I have to remember to check it. Sounds like I'm being very lazy here but the job I'm paid to do has to take precedence. I know that social networking can enhance my current post, but I have to balance that with making sure that my work gets done.

As usual, apologies for Thing 6 being so far behind everyone else. Two weeks off and then pretty much straight back into students being on site doesn't really leave time for CPD. I'm hoping to catch up before the end though.

Thing 5 - Reflective practice part 2

(Firstly, apologies to anyone reading. This turned into quite a long post in the end and I won’t blame you if you give up before you get all the way through!)

On the whole, I think the CPD23 experience has been a good one. I’d seen it mentioned on one of the Jisc Mailing lists, took it to my manager and suggested it as a summer activity, and am very glad that I did. It’s been really interesting doing a bit of professional networking, seeing how others are carrying out the tasks and learning from their experiences and opinions. I’ve never blogged before this, and felt that I wouldn’t have anything to say, but have actually enjoyed the process of writing the posts. Ok, so none of it is groundbreaking, but it has made me think about the activities I have carried out and put my thoughts down in a rational order. As I said in part 1 of this post, I tend to think I’m not very good at reflective practice. On reflection though (pun intended!) I think that this isn’t the case and I’m feeling quite encouraged. Reviewing my posts so far I can see that I’m capable of putting my thoughts down in a logical and reasoned manner and maybe all it takes is a bit of practice. Also, I need to get over the whole procrastination thing and write these things down whilst they’re still fresh in my mind. No point in doing a training course or activity and then waiting a week before thinking about it. A lot of it is gone from my mind by then, pushed out by all the other important things I have to think about, like ‘what shall I have for tea’ etc. I think that part of the problem was that I never had a defined place to keep any reflective practice notes before. Now that I have taken the plunge and set up a blog, I hope I’ll keep doing it. Reading some of the other blogs, where CPD23 things is just a part of it and they also blog about other professional issues, has been something of a revelation. I guess I always knew this kind of stuff was out there, I just didn’t really see how it applied to me. I’m beginning to get it now. It makes me feel ancient to say it, but perhaps it’s a generational thing. I qualified and got my first Library job in 1996 and my first professional post in 2001. When I was at University internet use was only just beginning to take off. I have to admit that I barely used it, and saw it more as a tool for time wasting. All my research, on databases like Library and Information Science Abstracts, was carried out on CD-Rom, because that’s all that was available at the time. I can remember having a set time to go and use Dialog Online but we had to have our search string composed beforehand. This was because it was just too expensive for the department to dial-in to a US database without us having constructed the search we wanted beforehand. Oh that makes me feel old! In my first job we had our Issue Desk terminals and a shared PC for the Information Assistants. Not exactly high-tech. Since then I have of course embraced the internet and how it enhances my role and makes life easier. But I just never got to grips with the professional networking side. Jisc mailing lists is about as far as I’ve gone. The tools I’ve looked at with CPD23 such as Twitter and RSS feeds have been interesting and might be useful (although the jury is still out on Twitter at the moment. There’s such a lot of rubbish on there to wade through) I definitely think that the most important thing for me has been reading other blogs and finally understanding why having one myself might be useful. Blogging had always scared me a bit. After all, who would possibly be interested in anything I have to say. I hope I’m reasonably intelligent and articulate, but I know that none of my posts would ever be brilliant or groundbreaking. It’s not about that though. If anyone cares to read my musings then that’s great, but for me blogging is about helping me get my thoughts in order, reflecting on my professional activities and having an easy and convenient place to do that.

Well, what do you know, this reflective thing isn’t so hard after all!

Thing 5 - Reflective practice part 1

Thing 5 – Reflective practice part 1.

Oh dear. This is the one I haven’t been looking forward to. I’m rubbish at reflective practice and I know it (which, in itself, is perhaps reflective so maybe I shouldn’t be too downhearted). I suspect that many people are probably in the same boat though. I’ve enjoyed the CPD23 things so far but, when it comes to actually thinking about the activities, how they’ve gone and what I can do to expand on them, I get the strangest urge to do some cataloguing, and I really dislike cataloguing! It reminds me on how, when I was a teenager studying for Highers, I’d do anything rather than actually get my head down and study. Even tidying my bedroom was preferable. I’m just way too much of a procrastinator. Does it sound bad that I even have a ‘procrastinaton shelf’ at work? Things that I don’t really know what to do with go there in the vague hope that maybe they might just go away. I tend to clear it off every now and again with the assumption that if I haven’t had to deal with it by now, I can just get rid of it.

But look at this, I’m procrastinating. This is a habit I really need to get out of. So, time to bite the bullet and get down to some reflective practice. I promise that part 2 will be more relevant. (probably, hopefully…..)

Thing 4 - current awareness

I know I'm a bit behind the times with this, and playing catch-up to everyone else, but I've just got started on thing 4. Library 'housekeeping' summer tasks got in the way for a bit and I've had a few days off. It is the summer after all (not that you'd know it from the amount of rain that landed on me at Edinburgh Castle on Monday!). Anyway, I have today set up a Twitter account and RSS reader on Google. Although, like everyone else I imagine, I have been aware of Twitter for some time, I haven't signed up. This takes us back a little to Thing 3, where I spoke about my reluctance to use social networking tools so maybe it is time I dipped my toe in the water. My partner is already on Twitter and seems to use it mostly to keep up with his favourite comedians and the football so I've never really seen the appeal of using it for CPD. Signing up was really easy, but it did take me a while to find a username that hadn't been taken. Later on I will probably go and change it as I'd like it and my blog to have a similar theme. I also need to get a picture sorted out that I'm happy to have on both Twitter and my blog. Again, this goes back to thing 3 where I need to think about my personal brand and how I want to be percieved in the online world. So, having signed up for Twitter and set up a few accounts to follow - some authors, some library related and some news sites, I just have to remember now to go and check it from time to time. I don't have an iphone and, although my phone does connect to the web, the screen is a bit small and it's not an android one, so I won't have the convenience of being able to check it at the touch of a button any time any where. (and I'm not spending £200 upwards on a new phone just to make checking Twitter easier. Might just have to steal my parters iphone occasionally!)

RSS feeds were the next thing I looked at. I did this once, years ago, for a 'Beyond Google' course I did, but never kept it up. Google Reader was also very easy to set up, especially as it imported all the blogs I am following for CPD23 things automatically. It was also pretty straightforward to sign up for a few different blogs. The only thing now will be, as with Twitter, remembering to check it. I suppose it will evenually become automatic. Just like checking my e-mail really. I'll hopefully soon get into the habit of looking at Reader and Twitter regularly and find out lots of interesting things.

I'm going to leave this here and might do another post on this topic later. I'm interested to see how I get on with RSS and Twitter. Will I check them regularly? Will it be information overload? I'm not going to do anything with Pushnote though, mainly because it doesn't work with IE and that's the browser I use at work and home. I can get firefox at work but I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort. I'll stick with Twitter and Reader for the moment and see how it goes.

Thing 3. Personal branding.

Googling myself was interesting. The first things that came up were two facebook pages which, when I checked, were not my Facebook pages. I was actually quite glad to see that, as I have my Facebook settings as private so it clearly works. Not that I have anything particularly incriminating on there, I just don’t want to share my personal life with the whole world. Is it bad for an information professional to say they are slightly unnerved by social networking? I could never really get the point. Ok, it’s great for some things. My brother lives in China so it’s an easy way to keep up with him and see photos of where he is. I never use it for anything more than a quick “Hi, how are you” though. Any personal stuff is done on e-mail or skype. I know people who have hundreds of facebook friends but I have only 22 and all of those are people I know in real life. Ok, some are old school friends that I have very sporadic contact with, but most are people that I see anyway on a fairly regular basis and have no real need to communicate with them on Facebook. I don’t understand why people I don’t know and will never meet would possibly want to see the photos of my recent trip to Royal Ascot with my partner. I put them up so my friends and family could all see them, but why would I want to share those with total strangers? This kind of blog is different as it’s for professional purposes, which I suppose starts to answer the question about how I want to come across online.  I’m definitely one of those who likes to keep their professional and personal online identities separate.

Back to the googling. I didn’t come up anywhere just using my name, but found that I share my name with a singer (strangely enough, born in the same city as me) and someone who was arrested for shoplifting in Fulton County Georgia, USA, on 8^th March. I can say with 100% certainty that neither of those are me. My singing voice would clear the room and on Tuesday 8^th March my diary shows that I was at work. I don’t even have a passport so was definitely not in the US. Honest!

Adding Library to my name got immediate results though. The very first one that came up was my workplace ‘meet the team’ pages. I was also interested to see that a question I’d posted on the Colric Jisc mailing list in 2010 came pretty high up the list too. I don’t have Twitter or Linkedin pages, so that was about it. Nothing incriminating, but nothing very impressive either.

Following on from my thoughts above on professional vs personal I suppose what I take from this is that I actually have a very limited online presence and have to consider whether that is a bad thing. I’m an information professional  competing for jobs with other people working their way up the ladder , many of whom will be much more technologically literate than me. There’s no getting away from the fact that employers do carry out online searches on prospective employees. Although they won’t find anything bad against my name, they won’t find anything that makes them think I’m the person they want in the job either.

That brings me to branding. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the thought of creating a personal brand but, having carried out this activity, I begin to see the need for one. I’ve already established that I want to keep my personal and professional life separate. I just have to work out what information I do want out there. I’m still not entirely sure about that at the moment but hopefully doing the 23 things over the next few weeks will enable me to refine my online presence and, as I’ve already admitted that I can take or leave social media, let me see that there are some aspects of it that could be really useful.

cpd23 thing 2. Success at last!

Have finally managed to follow some blogs. Hooray! I think there must be something in the College's Internet Explorer settings that affect Blogger, as I'm doing this from home using IE and it's working no problem. A colleague recomended using a different browser, so I might try Firefox at work next week and see if I get on any better. I know the college blocks students from using some social networking, such as facebook (hmm, not entirely sure why we always find students on Facebook then. They always seem to find some way around it!) but my colleage had success with Google Chrome so definitely worth a go on the different browser.

Anyway, I digress, I've quite enjoyed looking at some of the blogs and seeing what other people are up to. I'm currently following 6, but three of those are people that I know. I'll probably add another couple of 'stranger' blogs just to get a wider picture of how we're all getting on with the 23 things. I'm mostly sticking with other FE librarians at the moment, but I'll make the next few from different sectors. It doesn't do to be too insular! In common with many others, my selection criteria has been relatively random. Apart from mainly sticking to FE so far, I've gone for blogs that I liked the names of, or checked out people who'd left comments or were following my blog. Some of the names do make me laugh, or are quite intriguing, and it can be disappointing when you click on one and find no posts at all. I'll need to keep a note of those ones and check them out later

But a Friday evening is no time to be doing this. My intention was only to log-on for two minutes to see if it was working. Show's how easy it is to get sucked into this whole blogging thing!

Thing 2 - well, trying!

I'm finding Blogger a bit difficult to use and, from other comments, I know it's not just me. Makes me feel a bit better, as I know I'm not doing anything stupid. According to my dashboard I have 4 followers, but I can't find out who they are. There was one magic moment where they all appeared on my blog page (and it was very nice to see you there!) but it's never happened again. Even clicking on my 4 followers on the dashboard leads to a blank page. I also know I saw the 'Follow' link on my blog at one point, but it seems to have gone again. Going on from that, I have been attempting to do Thing 2 by looking at other blogs and trying to follow them. I know that I can do it from the dashboard by pasting in the url, but surely I should be able to do it from the actual blog page. If anyone can shed any light, and tell me if I'm being completely stupid and doing something very wrong, please please enlighten me! Because it's all been so creaky and clunky to set up I'm feeling a bit discouraged. Not at all the intent of the 23 things programme.

First ever post!

Well, this is my first ever post on my own blog. I've created it for the cpd23 things, that will hopefully introduce me to lots of new ideas and concepts over the next 16 weeks. Working in FE, summer is a quieter time, so I'm looking forward to learning 23 new things and putting them to good use.

I'm not sure about blogging yet. I enjoy reading ones written by other people but am not sure that I would have enough to write about myself. I suppose I'll find out over the next 16 weeks!