It seems to be an age old question in the library profession and has no doubt been pondered many times before but it is one that has been bothering me recently; why is it so difficult to find professional development opportunities, and engage with the profession if you live beyond reasonable travelling distance toLondon?

Engagement with the profession outside of the daily job can take many forms such as:

• Being an active member professional organisations such as CILIP andSLA
• Reading, writing and thinking about current writing about the sector in the form of journals, blogs, newspapers etc
• Going to talks, seminars and conferences.  Or speaking at these events.
• Engaging with other information professionals either in person or online (or both!)

There are many, many other ways too.

I try to do the things listed above.  Some are easier than others. Some feel more worthwhile than others.  Last year I was a member of CILIP and SLAbut I’ve let my subscriptions run out and haven’t renewed them because I wasn’t getting anything from my money except for a magazine.  Not great value for money on the professional development front.  Twitter on the other hand is free and offers awesome things like #uklibchat.  The internet is great because physical geography is not an issue.

Location seems to be a big problem, or at least it feels to me like it is.  I can’t travel far for events without taking time off work and paying for expensive train tickets.  But I really really want to be involved.  When I moved to Yorkshire I was excited because I’d heard fantastic things about the regional Yorkshire branch of CILIP.  Regional branches are a great idea in theory as they prevent the organisation from being tooLondoncentric creating networking opportunities within regionalised communities.  The CILIP regional branch reality was disappointing.  As far as I’m aware theYorkshirebranch doesn’t do that much but I’d love someone to prove me wrong. Perhaps I’ve been looking in the wrong places for extra curricular library related activities to engage with and have missed out on everything so far.  Perhaps CILIP regional branches aren’t the place to look in general for engagement with the profession.

Similarly location is a big issue when it comes to engaging with the profession throughSLA.  I love the idea of being a really activeSLAmember.  I’m definitely part of the special libraries community but SLA stuff is on the whole London based (although I did go to a Manchester based event last year and would love to see more northern based events, I’d even volunteer my services for organising one if it meant extra curricular library based fun!)

To look at the situation in a more positive light, whilst it often feels like everything happens in London, there is plenty of anacedotal evidence to suggest professional engagement takes place in all corners of the country.  LISNPN meet ups seem to happen inBristolon a fairly regular basis with success. It seems from Twitter that the librarians over in Cambridge have some cool things going on outside of the job, similarly I know when I was in Oxford there were opportunities to get involved in things outside of work.  In the CILIP regional branches corner, CILIP West Midlands seem to have a good thing going on with social events, library visits and interesting publications. The first ever library camp took place in Birmingham last year whilst a mini northern version will happen in Manchester later this month.  Then there is the brilliant idea of LIKENorth which I really hope will take off and be as great as the original London based LIKE seems to be.  That list is by no means exhaustive but just to indicate that things happen outside of the M25.

Things just don’t seem to happen where I am.  Either that or I just don’t know about them.  I suppose the solution is to take more responsibility for making stuff happen.

Image credit:  Alex Noel-Tod at http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1724304

As I was so busy with my dissertation I decided to put it on hold for a while which worked out very nicely as then I got offered my current job meaning I could write up a career story which featured my current role as a media librarian too.

Writing my career story came with a couple of challenges.   The pressure was on because despite keeping up with this blog for over two years now still I’m not overly confident with writing, especially when I know it will be out there on the internet to be read by a lot of people.

Firstly deciding upon the content of my story proved quite a challenge; despite not having a very long career to cover to date there was still a lot to cover.  I tried to give a balanced account of my journey from undergraduate study, to my graduate trainee year, library school and then my first job as a qualified librarian.  I chose to give a brief account of the most important parts of all of these rather than lots of detail about my current role because I thought it important to show the journey rather than the end destination.

Also challenging was pitching my story to the level of the audience.   Trying to put myself back into the mind-set of someone who knows nothing of libraries, except that they are a place to write an essay, to explain how it can be an exciting and interesting career.

Here is the career story that I finally came up with:

 “In my final year at Warwick like many others I didn’t know what I wanted to do next.  The idea of a career involving research interested me and I enjoyed the customer service aspect of my part-time job at Warwick Arts Centre but I didn’t know what type of jobs would require those skills.   After discovered library and information work at a careers event, I realised it was the type of job I would enjoy as library and information careers bring together helping people, working with new technologies and researching information.

After graduating I was successful in finding library work in the form of a graduate traineeship with the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford.  During my yearlong contract I was able to gain experience of the core aspects of library work; enquiry work, user-education and cataloguing and classification.  The trainee scheme incorporated an excellent training programme and gave opportunity to learn about the wider profession through visits and work shadowing opportunities which was valuable in helping to decide what to do next.

Upon starting the graduate traineeship I discovered a postgraduate qualification was essential to progress further in the profession. I was given an AHRC studentship to study for an MA in Librarianship full-time at the University of Sheffield which is a course accredited by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.  Although titled librarianship the course allowed opportunity to explore information in a broader context.  I took modules focused on information in healthcare, business, and education as well as the role of libraries in society, archives, databases, and management.

I now work at ITV as an assistant media librarian.  My role is based within one of the television libraries in which copies of ITV programmes are stored.  Unsurprisingly the collection is massive, with copies of TV programmes and news broadcasts held within the library.  The team I work with are responsible for providing tapes of programme for use in many ways.  It’s important and exciting work; we provide access to the material so it can be reused in the programmes you watch today. Maintaining a library of the content also ensures the heritage of the company is preserved as the programmes it makes will be preserved and accessible for the future.

I love library and information work because the possibilities are incredibly varied, organisations of every sector employ information professionals in a range of roles.  The scope for getting involved outside work is also vast; so far in my short career I’ve attended international conferences, delivered conference papers and been to many interesting lectures.  I even hope to publish a research paper in a library and information journal.  I’m a member of professional member organisations including the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Special Library Association (SLA) which offer fantastic events, networking opportunities and a chance to make your career more than just a job.“

I can reel off many excuses to explain my slack attitude…

• New job – I’m now 7 weeks into my new job, it’s been a stressful, exhausting but really good fun. I’m finally starting to settle in and get used to the routine but the long days and lack of lazy days is taking its toll.  I had planned to get lots of blogging and reading done in my lunch breaks, as I’ve done in other jobs but lunch time has turned into the time to be sociable in the canteen.
• New city – Moving to a new house, in a new city, with new housemates that were complete strangers from the internet has also been stressful and tiring. I’m finding I have less time in the evenings to concentrate on professional development as I’m trying to spend time with my housemates, which normally involves lounging in front of the tv.
• Too many weekends away – Once again my life follows the routine of work hard during the week and play hard over the weekend. This is not helpful for having spare time for professional development.

I can’t see any of the above changing any time soon so I need to find a way of ensuring I keep on top of blogs and current awareness and all that professional development jazz…otherwise before I know it 2012 will be here and I won’t have clue where my career is going, what is going on in the sector or what anyone else is doing.

So here is my continuing with continuing professional development to do list:

• Finish #cpd233. I’m not going to abandon ship because I started it and will finish it.
• Set aside one lunch break and one evening each week to read around the LIS literature and blog.
• Overhaul my CV and reflect on what new skills and knowledge have been gained from my current job.
• Come up with career goals and work towards achieving them.
• Set in motion the process for publishing an article from my dissertation now that I know I have a good enough mark to consider letting people read about my research.

I’m interested in how others who have long commutes to work (I walk 35-40 mins each way so can’t even get stuff done on the way!), busy social lives or mad housing situations manage to find time for continuing professional development?

When the opportunity arose to step in and help out with the organisation as a result of another organiser getting a new job I jumped at the chance to gain experience in organising an event.  Getting involved definitely made me realise how much is required to organise an event, even a very small one. There is so much to consider to make an event successful.   Co-ordinating the speakers, who were my fellow trainees, was tough at times as we had about 16 or 17 speakers.  Trying to make sure everyone knew what was required of them in terms of presenting was important and hard to get right whilst trying to create a running order of speakers was particularly challenging especially deciding who to put first and who to put last.

As well as giving my own presentation on the day I also took on the master of ceremonies role, giving a welcome speech, introducing guest speakers and presentations and telling everyone it was time for a lunch break.  I did enjoy this aspect of organising and would love to do it again.  I’m not at all bothered about standing up in front of a room full of people to talk when it is just for things like welcome speeches and introducing people but presentations are a much more scary affair.

I hope this post has given a useful insight into organising events.  On reflection writing everything down has made me realise how much of a contribution I made to organising the event and how much effort is required even for something quite small scale.   Organising is something I’d definitely like to do more of in the future, perhaps more than speaking although I love speaking too.  I’d love to be part of organising more little library meet up type events in my area because informal things are

“Library Camp is marvellous, magical, thrilling, exciting, exhilarating, exhausting, AMAZING”

I think those words and many more such as inspiring, though-provoking, joyful and fun could also be added to the list of warm and gooey describing words.

Warm and gooey was how Library Camp made me feel.  Despite requiring an exhausting 5.45am start (to take advantage of cheap train tickets) and possible lasting damage to my teeth and waist line from all the sugary cakey goodness, Library Camp was like therapy for recharging the librarian soul and spirit.   After a stressful summer of dissertation writing followed by job seeking and then that limbo land of waiting for the new job to begin, my confidence was waning and I was feeling out of touch with library things.

Library Camp was invigorating. It was confidence boosting.  A very well timed opportunity to catch up with library school course-mates, colleagues from days gone by and twitter friends new and old.  Being surrounded by so many wonderful, fabulous and inspiring library types reminded me once again why I love this profession.  Unconference sessions were my contributions seemed well received restoring my confidence in my ideas.  Cake break conversation about my new job reminded me to be excited rather than petrified.

I was hoping Library Camp would have this warm and gooey effect.  Library Camp was founded upon the principles of Open Space Technology, something that attracted me to the event as we used it as the ruling principle of the improvisation module in the first year of my Theatre and Performance Studies degree.  The module had no fixed curriculum and thanks to Open Space Technology improvisation performance sessions always left me with a warm fuzzy feeling.  Thanks to Open Space Technology some very fine examples of improvised performance art sprung from nowhere.  I seem to recall at one point we all decided to put a microphone in the middle of the room and play a version of that bit on Mock The Week where they run in to the middle and say something.  We did that but less funny and more pretentious.   The process was organic resulting in a magical feeling in the air.

I was not wrong with my expectations from Library Camp.  There were negative points such as disorganised chaos is not for everyone, and the lack of structure meant the day sometimes felt too full or sessions rushed.  Perhaps the Law of Two Feet  (in which is you don’t feel you are learning or can contribute you should do something more useful!) should have been stressed more so that those who didn’t feel engaged knew they could leave if they so desired.  Overall the warm and gooey feeling out weights any bad points.

So thank you Library Camp for recharging my librarian battery pack and filling my mind with fresh new ideas.

Finally thank you baking campers for the much needed sugar.

I love social networks.  I love people but sadly as I’ve grown older and left student land to enter the real grown up world opportunities to meet new people have become less frequent.  Social networks are my solution to this as they offer opportunity to find new people and interact with them.  I chose to do this in a professional capacity.  Ever since I started my library career I have used Twitter as a way to communicate with others in the profession.  Thanks to social networking I’ve been able to develop my knowledge and awareness of the profession much more than I would have been able to without Twitter.

Other #cpd23 bloggers LOVE social networks too.

In the personal sphere social networking means we keep in touch less, or put less effort in to keeping in touch Facebook spoonfeeds us news about people in our lives so we know the latest without ever needing to communicate with a friend. But social networks have potential excel in the professional sphere. Elaine Andrew hits the nail on the head when it comes to the value and benefits of Twitter;

“[Twitter] enables professionals to share knowledge with a large number of peers, more than could ever be possible through face to face interaction alone; it enables collaboration with that network of peers; building an online network on Twitter leads to ‘real life’ networks”

Personally Twitter has led to ‘real life’ networks.  Interaction with people on Twitter means that when you go to a conference or other event there are people that you’ve already had some form of contact with.  Twitter can also lead directly to meeting up with people, in the form of a Tweetup.

@jothelibrarian mentions the power of Twitter in creating communities in a blog post here, giving the #oxfordlibrarymafia as a brilliant example.  In this case the hashtag was an extension of an existing ‘real life’ network into the social media world.  Oxford graduate trainees starting using it for self-reference and self-identification (after the phrase was coined at the 2010 New Professionals Conference by Ned Potter if I recall events correctly!) The hashtag grew and brought together Oxford graduate trainees past and present.

As with most things in life there is of course the downside.  Some of the blogs cover the negatives of social media.

Katy Stoddard echoes my thoughts about the pace of social media in her Thing 12 blog post. Social media moves quickly meaning that quite a lot of time needs to be devoted in order to get the best experience.  The fast pace means it is easy to fall out of the loop, if you go away for a day or two then you might miss something major but even by disappearing for half an hour you can find yourself only catching the end of an interesting discussion.  I can often find myself accidentally losing half a morning or a whole evening to Twitter.

Jothelibrarian points out some other downsides, the blog post is very well written and sums things up nicely so I recommend reading it. Jo highlights that social media can be dominated by youth.  New professionals have a strong presence on Twitter which is great but sometimes it can be perceived as cliquey.  Social media communities can also fall prey to the echo chamber.

The downside mentioned by Jo which I agree with most however is about how much of yourself to put out there via social media.  I try to keep my tweeting professional but with a splash of personal.  I hope to become more professional with my tweeting, but at the moment I’m not leading a very professional life in reality so perhaps where life goes my tweeting shall follow. One of the main problems with the professional/personal balance has arisen as a result of fostering friendships with library tweeters.  When social media in the professional  context becomes social the lines increasingly blur and tweet conversations about life beyond libraries starts to occur with those from libraries.  I quite like this though.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, opportunities to meet new people have become less frequent recently but Twitter helps make me feel part of something.

Having a mentor isn’t something I’d previously considered but it is something I feel I could greatly benefit from.  I’m at the beginning and often feel in need of guidance and support.  For example when I was coming to the end of my library course and thinking about job hunting, I often wished there was someone I could turn to to talk over the big decisions about the possible opportunities and paths open to me.  Thankfully the collective of library tweeters proved to be a good sounding board on the surface level of things.

There are a number of people I have a great deal of professional respect for and consider to be excellent role models for someone such as myself.  Currently however I can’t think of an obvious choice for a mentor.   Hopefully once I begin working and become more settled back into profession after the long post dissertation stress break has ended, a candidate for the position of my mentor will become more clear.

As for being a mentor myself, I’m only at the start of my career but I like to think I have great potential as a mentor.  I enjoy helping people, giving advice and offering guidance.   I may have only been a library professional for a short time but I have learnt a lot so far and would be happy if my experiences could help someone else make the most of the early stages of thier career.

On reflection it is a rambling, personal and wooly explanation of my decisions in life so far. So to sum up for clarity…

• Accidental is an excellent word to describe my journey so far.  I liked the idea of living in Oxford and the idea of working in a library didn’t offend.  So a graduate traineeship was undertaken.
• I liked being a graduate trainee and I loved the idea of being part of a profession which meant helping people, researching stuff, and looking after all the important information so the decision to go on to do a masters was an easy one.
• I chose full-time study because I love studying.  If I could have done a masters instead of working after finishing my undergraduate degree I would have done however being a student is expensive.  I picked Sheffield as the AHRC funding allowed me to throw myself back into academia.  Not working is a huge regret because I now lack experience but I loved the course.
• Now have finished the course and will start a new job in October.  I am going to spend the next 6 months working at a television company in the role of assistant media librarian.  I can’t tell much about the job as I haven’t started it yet but whatever I’m doing day to day it will be good to get some more library work on my cv.

That is the bare bones of my story.  The reality is so much more.  So rich and varied that it would be impossible to write it all down.

I’ve only been in the profession two years but have had so many fantastic experiences.  I’ve had a taste of the challenges of day to day work in a library. I’ve work shadowed and visited many different libraries.  I’ve attended conferences. I’ve spoken at conferences.  I’ve blogged, and tweeted, and discovered a whole online world of library people ready to engage in debate and discussion.

Routes image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/97373666@N00/3264396897/

As regular followers of my blogging and tweeting may know that I am guilty of letting my life descend into chaos every so often.  I was rubbish at organising myself as a student the first time around, gradually getting better but never quite achieving the status of being super organised and efficient. At library school I relied on my trusted whiteboard and marker pen for organising everything.   Over the last two years I’ve tried using all the tools below but I haven’t stuck with any of them in the long term except Google Docs.

Thing 8: Google Calendar

In all my jobs I’ve used the calendar feature of Outlook which makes keeping track of what I should be doing in the workplace easy.  However keeping track of my schedule in my personal life has always been more difficult.  How do I remember what I need to be doing and when?

I toyed with Google Calendar whilst I was an undergraudate but I still prefer the old fashioned way. The paper diary and a pen. It’s easy and convenient, fits in my handbag and always seems an easier option than the technological version.  I suppose for those with smart phones Google Calendar is the modern day equal.  I do own a smart phone myself, however its a Blackberry and the Google Calendar option isn’t that great in my opinion.

Thing 9: Evernote

I love finding random gobbets of information and collecting ‘stuff’;  for example interesting websites, recipes, stories from magazines.  As the Evernote website says,

Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see

I LOVE the concept of this however I haven’t yet found a way to transform it into something which is habitual.  I think this is the key to making any of the tools discussed here work, they have to become a part of your routine.  If you already have a routine for remembering things then it can be hard to break.  I have no method and routinely forgot things and lose track of the wonderful ideas in my head. This too is a hard habit to break!

Part of the problem was not having a smart phone. Now that I have the Blackberry I will give Evernote another go as I really do love the idea of it.

Thing 13: Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

Google Docs

I use Google Docs a lot. It’s fab, especially for collaboration.  I doubt any group work for my masters would have gone as well as it did without the magic that is collaborative essay writing and presentation making.  I’ve also used it as a tool for accessing my documents from multiple computers easily but then I discovered Dropbox…

Dropbox

Dropbox is also rather magical and sounded like the answer to all my problems however I’m not completely sold.  I suffer the problem of too many devices, files and folders flying backwards and forwards via email, Google Docs and usb storage devices.  Dropbox allows you to sync files across all your computers so you always have copies of the same document everywhere.  However I actually only own one computer, most of my work is done on my laptop.  The other devices I use occasionally are not my own so Dropbox doesn’t really do anything new for me.

To Conclude…

The tools listed above all have the potential to be extremely useful.  They don’t all fit with my needs and some are not required at all but anything that has the potential to help me be more organised can only be a good thing.