Steps West Newsletter of the Career Development Group, West Country Division No. 9 – Summer 2011
Editorial Welcome to the Summer issue of Steps West. Before the summer comes to a complete end, you can read reports from two recent events and also find information about four events that are coming up in September, October and November; make sure to book your place so you don’t miss out on excellent career development and networking opportunities. 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. Just send us an e-mail to: cdgwestcountry@googlemail.com.
In this issue Report from visit to the BBC Natural History Vaults ― New Professionals Conference report
Forthcoming events Friday, 16th September 2011
Building your portfolio Bournemouth Details: http://tinyurl.com/3vwk4bo Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Course ‘Finding the time to get organised’ and CDG West Country AGM Bristol Details: http://tinyurl.com/3du772l Thursday, 27th October 2011
Visit to the Bodleian Library Oxford Details: http://tinyurl.com/3smd5mx Wednesday, 23rd November 2011
Visit to the Science Museum Library & Archives
(jointly organised with SWRLS &
CILIP South West) Wroughton, near Swindon Details: http://tinyurl.com/3e67u8f
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Impression of past event organised by the West Country Division Visit to the BBC Natural History Vaults, Bristol, 13th April 2011 by Roxanne Lewington, Early Years Librarian, Bristol Libraries On a dark and very wet Wednesday evening my colleague Meg and I joined the CILIP Career Development Group for a visit for the very first time. We had both recently registered for Chartership and wanted to kick this off with a trip to the world-renowned BBC library and vaults to see how they do things. And what a great evening we all had! We were met by five very friendly information professsionals who explained to us that their team of twenty five has a remit of maintaining and building up the collection as well as helping with production. During the visit we were spilt into groups and over the two hours we all visited a different part of the department. Gareth showed us around the temperature controlled vaults. He explained that for every one hour programme made by the BBC there are around 200 hours of footage that are not used which they term ‘rushes’. So for example the Human Planet was a ten hour long series and would have had over 1,000 hours of footage and it is the task of Gareth and his team to look after this material. It was interesting to hear that these vaults are
seen as historical record keeping. They have footage of jungles and forests before deforestation and footage of animals that are now declared extinct. The system used to search the archives is called INFAX and looks very much like the old days of MS DOS. Every programme produced has its own unique programme number and there are over 75,000-80,000 items on the system. They are currently in the process of bringing themselves up to date with the digital world and working with a new system called the Synergy System. Simon then went on to show us the BBC Motion Gallery website. Here all footage for sale from the BBC is listed. The BBC, like many establishments, have to generate income to survive; one way they do this is by selling unused footage to television companies all over the world generating revenue for the BBC. Each clip that is listed in the gallery is described in great detail; it would take a few days just to describe around an hour's worth of clips. There are strings of description terms for each type of shot and for each type of animal behaviour making it as easy as possible for their potential customers to search for a clip using the BBC
Motion Gallery website. One of the most popular clips sold by the BBC Motion Gallery is one of an empty sea and, coming a close second, footage of a polar bear. It became clear that the process of describing unused footage for the BBC Motion Gallery website was an immense task and they currently have about a three year backlog - a workload battle all us library and information professionals can relate to. We also visited the vaults of other programmes made by the BBC with Elaine. Here programmes such as DIY SOS, Life of Grime and Antiques Roadshow would be stored. Elaine explained that her role was beginning to move away from 'librarian' more towards 'media management'. This means that Elaine and her colleagues would be involved right from the beginning of a programme being produced, not just with the end result when a programme needs to be stored. We spent the last session with Siobhan who is one of the BBC's 'news librarians'. Siobhan has to make sure that news stories are archived early every morning from the previous day. The archives are below the news room and consist of news footage from
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the late 1950s to the present day. They have around four requests a week for news stories that are from the 1950s, 60s or 70s. Sometimes the turnaround for archive news footage being on the news is as quick as 15minutes!!
Our visit to the BBC was a fantastic eye opener to behind the scenes activity. It was really interesting for Meg and me to compare our public library background to the similarities and differences we saw at the BBC. We
thoroughly enjoyed our first CDG visit and look forward to attending more in the future. Thank you to CDG West Country and the BBC staff for organising this event!
Conference feedback New Professionals Conference, Manchester, 20th June 2011 by Sarah Fleetwood, Project Librarian, University of the West of England In June, I was lucky enough to be offered a sponsored place at the New Professionals Conference (NPC) by CDG West Country. I had never attended a professional conference before, and I have to admit to being a little nervous beforehand. However, the relaxed and relatively informal feel of the NPC, along with the friendliness of the other delegates and the helpfulness of the organisers, meant that I felt welcome and at ease almost straight away. The theme of the 2011 NPC was ‘Professionalism and Activism in a Time of Downturn’. Delegates and speakers at differing stages in their studies or early career attended from a wide range of sectors which resulted in some interesting and varied perspectives. In addition to listening to six presentations, delegates attended two workshops and there was plenty of time scheduled in for
biscuit eating and networking. The papers covered a wide range of topics and were largely based on original research carried out by the presenters, all of whom clearly knew their onions inside out. The first presentation of the day was given by Helen Murphy and introduced us to CPD 23 - a programme of continuing professional development that can be carried out in your own time and under your own steam. The programme has been carefully designed to be selfpaced, inclusive, informal and, perhaps most importantly, free. It was an entertaining presentation and certainly got the day off to a good start. Rachel Bickley presented the second paper which was about the importance of establishing a dialogue between new and experienced professionals. Rachel’s
experiences suggest that experienced professionals frequently hold a set of general misperceptions about new professionals. She argued that by establishing a dialogue, we could find out what those misperceptions were and then begin to address them. Such a dialogue would benefit experienced and new professionals alike, and therefore the profession as a whole. Samuel Wiggins and Laura Williams’ paper pondered what makes a ‘professional’. They had conducted a survey with the aim of finding the answer to the question: ‘Do you need a library qualification to become a professsional, or is anyone working in a library or information based role a professional by default?’ They presented their findings and concluded that a true information professional must underpin
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experience and qualifications with a professional attitude. Following the initial three presentations, delegates then attended the first of the day’s workshops. I chose ‘Getting Involved: Activism for New Professionals’ by Alice Halsey and Simon Barron, both from Voices for the Library. Alice and Simon opened by defining activism and discussing what it has to do with being a LIS professional. They were keen to stress that there are lots of ways in which library professionals can get involved in activism and that doing so will not only benefit the profession, but the individual too. Then it was time for lunch, and a very tasty lunch it was too. The second workshop kicked off the afternoon’s events. I attended ‘Raising your Professional Profile’ by Sue Hornby and Bob Glass. They began by discussing the perception that libraries and librarians have been made redundant by Google, eBooks, etc. Sue stressed that as new professionals, it is our responsibility to market ourselves and our core skills, most especially to the key stakeholders of the organi-
sation our library serves. Sue and Bob both felt that libraries need to be central to their parent organisation and that it is up to library staff to make them so. After the workshop it was time for the second round of presentations. Ka-Ming Pang and Jo Norwood began by presenting their paper on the importance of encouraging LIS students to engage with the profession and advocate on behalf of libraries. They felt that stronger networks for LIS students would give them a stronger voice which would benefit the profession as a whole. Megan Wiley then discussed the importance of professionalism in a careers service. As the only information professional in her workplace, Megan is concerned that her colleagues don’t fully understand what a librarian does, and questions whether her qualified status is really valued. She conducted a survey of other careers librarians’ experiences and presented the results. Her conclusions are relevant to librarians in all sectors: We should never assume that our colleagues know what we are doing and should always be ready to talk about our roles.
The support of our colleagues (fellow librarians, or not) is essential, especially in these times of cuts. Katie Birkwood and Naomi Herbert gave the final presentation of the conference. Both Katie and Naomi work for the University of Cambridge and they focussed on how library services can use their special collections as a springboard for community engagement and offered advice on how to do so. It was an inspiring presentation and their slides included some interesting photographs of St. John’s College Library and some of the treasures held within. Following the closing remarks by Biddy Fisher and the presentation of the prize for best paper (which went to Katie and Naomi), it was time to go home. I am sure next year’s conference will be just as successful and I highly recommend that new professionals and library school students alike give some serious thought to going along. Not only will it look good in your Chartership portfolio, but you will have a great day, meet some lovely people, and probably learn a thing or two to boot.
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Just for fun – Word search puzzle Solution for puzzle from issue no. 8 + + + + + + R + + + S P
D + + + + + E + + O + R
+ E + + + + E + C + E O
S + V + + + R I + E + F
+ T + E + + A + T + + E
+ + N + L L C T D P C S
+ + + E M O I + + + + S
+ + + E V M P + + + + I
+ + D + M E + M + + + O
+ I + O + + + + E + + N
A + C + + + + + + N + A
P L Q O A T R K J Z V C
D K L R R G Q O U H I E
X I A A G Y E D F W S L
L I B R A R I A N + T L
words used: career, committee, CPD, development, events, librarian, professional, social media
New puzzle N D I G I T A L J V I P
Y O Y H C D V U P O I S
F O I B K F X O G H A N
O O B T H R R M S V C O
C D O D A T H R E D T I
M T D T F M E A G K I T
O J H A A I K R K N M L
R C J Q K V D G I D I O
R G N I K R O W T E N C
The word search puzzle contains nine words from this issue of Steps West. They are hidden in all directions. The solution to the puzzle will be published in the next issue.
Contact details, ideas, suggestions Please send any comments about the newsletter or your ideas, suggestions and contributions to the Editor Katrin Roberts (k.roberts2@bath.ac.uk). 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).
A group of CILIP, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Registered Charity No. 313014