Steps West Newsletter of the Career Development Group, West Country Division No. 10 – Winter 2011
Editorial Welcome to the Winter issue of Steps West. This will be my last issue as the editor and also the last issue of Steps West in its current format. Throughout 2012 we are piloting a merger with the South Western Branch of CILIP and with that will come a combined newsletter which will be edited by David Cawthorne, the current editor of South Western News. You can read all about the pilot merger on the following pages in an article by Lizz Jennings who will chair the new committee in 2012. We also have a very comprehensive report from the recent CDG National Conference by Rachel Bickley. That just leaves me to wish all our readers a happy holiday season and all the best for the New Year!
Katrin Roberts
In this issue 2012 Pilot Merger Scheme ― Report from CDG National Conference
If you are interested in our work, would like to get involved or have any feedback or suggestions, we’d like to hear from you. Pilot Just send us an Scheme e-mail to: 2012 Merger cdgwestcountry@googlemail.com. Lizz Jennings, University of Bath As you may have seen, CILIP has been consulting with branches and special interest groups about the feasibility of merging in order to bring the number of groups down, and also to give groups an opportunity to refine their remit to meet the changing needs of the profession. Career Development Group was no exception to this process, and discussed possibilities with a range of groups. However, due to our size and the geographically-based divisional structure, the closest match seemed to be with CILIP’s branch structure. As CILIP’s Framework of Qualifications has adapted and developed, the functions of Career Development Group have become less clear cut, and a number of areas of overlap were identified. A number of divisions already worked closely with their local branches, and two regions, including the South West, decided to pilot the idea of working more closely together, towards a merger. CILIP South West and the two CDG divisions in the branch (Devon and Cornwall and the West Country) have a good history of working together, and have held a number of combined events in recent years. All three groups were interested in the idea of merging, and have decided to pilot a full merger in 2012. The aim of the new group is to provide a more cohesive group to support the
A group of CILIP, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Registered Charity No. 313014
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CILIP members of the South West. The group will continue to offer portfolio and qualifications support, and build on a strong programme of visits, but also hopes to develop a wider range of events on this basis. The group is also planning to develop a more participative approach to organising events, encouraging members to become involved even if only for one event or project, recognising that the commitment to serve for a longer period of time is a barrier to participation for some members. We have set up a mailing list at: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CILIP-CDG-SW-EVENTS which will publicise events, both finalised, and in the planning stages, so that you can help with organising an event if it interests you. Help may involve collating names and contact details of participants, booking rooms, or being present on the day to liaise with the venue and ensure things run smoothly. You are encouraged to sign up to this, and even more strongly encouraged to ensure CILIP have your correct and current email address in their system, so that you can receive the bulletins. If you would like to get involved in the pilot committee, there are a range of roles available – please contact cilipsw@gmail.com if you are interested. Further details will be available on the website early in 2012.
Conference feedback Career Development Group National Conference, Bristol, 21st November 2011 by Rachel Bickley, University of the West of England, Bristol
The 21st November saw the CILIP CDG National Conference 2011 take place in Bristol. The theme of the conference was the Practical Professional, and this was reflected in an excellent set of papers on a range of topics. Amanda Poulton kicked the day off with a presentation on changing sectors, something which several of the speakers had done. Amanda has worked in NHS, academic and public libraries, from which she has gained a broad range of skills and experience. She emphasised the importance of researching your
target sector if you want to move; from seeking out contacts on Twitter to arranging visits to a relevant library service. Amanda’s presentation introduced a theme which ran throughout the day; the transferable nature of many professional skills. To illustrate this, she showed us some snippets of job adverts, asking us to identify which sector they were from; this was not as easy as you might expect. The different adverts were asking for similar skills and experience i.e. liaison and enquiry work. Our professsional skills can be applied across the sectors; it’s up
to us to demonstrate this when applying for a job in another sector. Next up was Emily Hopkins, who discussed the challenges for a library service in the NHS, with the recent restructure and other changes having a big impact. Emily came into a newly merged service as a library manager. The issues she has had to deal with ranged from maintaining a virtual reference service whilst the print stock was in storage for six months (emphasising the importance of professional skills; with these, the staff were able to keep the service
No. 10 – Winter 2011 Page 3 running with no stock!), to losing users, gaining new potential users, and numerous IT problems! The library had to re-assess its whole strategy and collection development policy in order to ensure that it could provide the service now required. Emily emphasised this need for all library services to be constantly re-evaluating services in times of change, to ensure that it remains useful and relevant. Emily also echoed Amanda’s thoughts on the importance and transferable nature of professional skills. Katie Burn and Kirsty Whitehead then spoke about being “career chameleons”. Both are currently on extended secondments in the Information Directorate at the University of York; Kirsty as an academic liaison assistant and Katie as an executive officer for refurbishment (!). Both of them emphasised the need to be flexible when looking for your next career step, but also the necessity of maintaining clearly-defined goals; what is important to you – what factors have to be in place for you to be happy? They also continued a theme which began in Emily’s presentation; treating challenging situations as a positive opportunity to develop new skills; in this case, being in fixed-term positions. Katie
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and Kirsty offered several other useful tips, including the need to be able to say “no” or admit that you have too much to do, and the suggestion that we should all be looking at job adverts even if not actively jobhunting, in order to remain aware of the skills currently required in the LIS workplace. A major theme through this presentation was change – the fact that it happens frequently and significantly, and the need to treat it in a positive way – and I think this was reflected in every paper of the day. The next speaker was David Clover, who discussed “thinking big” when it comes to career development. David argued that a planned approach to professional development is necessary – where do you want to be, and how will you get there? David suggested that our CPD goals should be big, ambitious, scary and exciting. Sometimes you will need to take risks, and sometimes you will need to invest your own time and money in things. David shared his experience of applying for the Travelling Librarian award. He was unsuccessful, but as the panel liked him they offered him a smaller grant which went towards a trip to the USA to visit libraries there. David was successful in
persuading me, and, I’m sure, others that we should be thinking big; you never know what will come of it. Another comment from David which stuck with me was that we should be setting our own personal goals rather than relying on the formal appraisal systems in our workplaces; our employers probably don’t care where we’ll be in 10 years’ time as it quite likely won’t be with them! A lot of us will have created development plans for Chartership, and David suggested that we need to be continuing to maintain these plans after we’ve chartered, in order to keep our professional development on track. Phil Bradley was up next, with a fast-paced and thought-provoking paper on social media. Phil argued that search engines can no longer cope with the amount of information available online, and that we will need to in the future find things using social media. Phil emphasised his belief that organisations which block social media are damaging themselves by doing so. Social media is a new kind of resource which we should all be using – and we should be moving from one network to another, in the way we would move from one traditional resource to another, to meet our infor-
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mation needs. Social media, argued Phil, is now far more useful than mailing lists or websites; Phil uses people for information, not websites; he pointed out that seven of the top ten results in a Google search for “CILIP CDG” are social media. He emphasised the importance of having a presence on social media as LIS practitioners, as that is now where people go to ask questions; we need to show that we are credible sources. If we aren’t there, someone else will be, and it will be them who appears credible, not us.
that the role can be illdefined and it can be difficult to demonstrate value.
Next came Katherin Schopflin, who spoke about the role of a knowledge manager. I didn’t really have any idea about what a knowledge manager was or how they differed from a librarian, so I found this presentation really helpful! Simply put, Katherin told us, a knowledge manager organises not only information, but also the stuff that is in people’s heads. Many of the skills required and duties of the job are very similar to those of a librarian, but organising knowledge as well as information requires tasks such as skills audits to be carried out. Katherin explained the benefits of being a knowledge manager, being at the heart of an organisation, but also the challenges faced; namely
Miggie Pickton kicked off the afternoon session with a presentation on providing services for researchers at the University of Northampton. Her role was newly-created, with a basic brief to provide services to researchers; she decided that her aim should be to “be useful”. Miggie carried out a survey of researchers’ needs, which provided an evidence base for developping the library service; Miggie emphasised the importance of having evidence to work from. She also made an interesting point which hadn’t occurred to me; it’s not only a good idea to carry out your own research to inform your service, but it also improves your credibility with the researchers with whom you work.
After lunch we did a bit of speed networking which involved rotating around the room forming groups of threes and spending three minutes in each group telling each other about our jobs and what makes us unique – a difficult question which I wasn’t really able to answer! This was however a great opportunity to chat to some attendees whom I hadn’t yet had a chance to meet.
Emily Hopkins then returned, with Tracey Pratchett and Gil Young, to talk about “negotiating the scramble net” of a LIS career from the perspective of librarians in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The really interesting bit about this presentation was that all three of them had had very similar experiences. The themes brought up by the previous speakers were again echoed; the need to be flexible and ready for change, and to see challenges as opportunities. The transferable nature of our professional skills was again emphasised, and all three speakers encouraged us to develop networks and contacts both inside and outside of work; a peer support network can be extremely valuable, which is something that Gil Young highlighted in particular when sharing tips for surviving redundancy – if you tell people that you’re job-hunting, you increase your chances of hearing about something suitable. Another great tip from Gil was to keep your CV up-todate in case you need it; if you suddenly find yourself in the position of needing to find a new job, you may well not be in the positive mindset needed to produce a good CV. Next up was Jo Myhill, with my favourite presentation of
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the day (being part of the organising team I didn’t get a vote for best paper though!), about being visible. Jo started off her presentation by speaking from the very corner of the room without the microphone, to illustrate her point, which I thought was a really effective opening. Jo leads a team of academic liaison librarians at the University of Bedfordshire, who were suffering from a lack of visibility when they moved off the front desk. Jo’s vision of being visible is not just about physical visibility, though – there is a huge emphasis on virtual visibility too. They worked on improving visibility on their webpages, from putting photographs of the subject librarians all over the Library website, to creating blogs with an element of personality (one
of them now has 500 followers!). There is also a focus on branding when it comes to visibility; the team has a logo saying “academic liaison librarians” which goes on everything. I really like this approach – it helps to ensure that students know what an academic liaison librarian is. Last but certainly not least came Lizz Jennings, talking about “every flavour career beans”. Lizz was another speaker who had moved between sectors and, like the previous speakers, she emphasised the fact that there are core aspects of library and information work that are found in every sector; our skills are transferable. Lizz also recommended, like David, maintaining a structured and planned approach to
Solution for puzzle from issue no. 9 N D I G I T A L + + + P
+ O + + C + + + P + I S
F + I B + + + O + H A N
+ O B T + + R + S + C O
+ + O + A T + R + + T I
+ + + T F M E + + + I T
+ + + O A T R + + + V C
+ + L + R G + O + + I E
+ I + A + + E + F + S L
O + H + + + + + + N M L
professional development, even if you’re not working towards ACLIP or MCLIP. Lizz made the very good point that sometimes you can find yourself with too much on your CV, especially if you change sectors; knowing how to be selective in highlighting your skills is a skill in itself! The delegate vote for best paper selected Amanda Poulton as the runner-up and Katie Burn and Kirsty Whitehead as the winners. All of the presentations from the day are available on the CDG website: http://www.cilip.org.uk/getinvolved/special-interestgroups/careerdevelopment/ cdgbenefits/events/Pages/natio nal-conference-2011speakers.aspx.
Contact details, ideas, suggestions + C + + + + + + + + I O
+ G N I K R O W T E N C
words used: activism, BBC, Chartership, collections, digital, footage, information, networking, portfolio
Please send any comments about the newsletter to the Editor Katrin Roberts (k.roberts2@bath.ac.uk). For your ideas, suggestions and contributions for the merged newsletter in 2012 please contact David Cawthorne (djcawthorne@btinternet.com). If you want to find out more about the group, please contact us by e-mail (cdgwestcountry@googlemail.com), check our website (http://www.cilip.org.uk/cdg/wc) or follow us on Twitter (@cdgwestcountry).
If you require a large-print copy, please contact the Editor Katrin Roberts (k.roberts2@bath.ac.uk).