Steps West Newsletter of the Career Development Group, West Country Division No. 5 – Spring 2010
In this issue
Editorial
Editorial ― Meet the Committee ― Course Report “Marketing Yourself and Your Service” ― Forthcoming Events ― Course Report “Bidding for Funds”
Welcome to the first issue of Steps West in 2010 and a belated Happy New Year to all our readers! The committee already had its first meeting in February where we welcomed our newest member Tasha Cooper and congratulated Jon Scown on his election as President of the Career Development Group. Jon has been a member of the West Country committee for many years and we wish him all the best for his presidential year. In this issue you can read about past events and find out what we have planned for the coming months.
Meet the committee Katrin Flemming – Newsletter Editor Shortly after I started my first professional post at the University of Bath Library as an Information Librarian overseeing the Cataloguing department, I decided to join CILIP and embark on the fun journey of Chartership. To support the whole process and gather valuable evidence for my portfolio, it seemed like a great idea to join a divisional group or branch committee of CILIP and I can honestly say I do not regret this step. Joining this group of around ten very active library professionals gives me the chance to meet librarians from other sectors and other areas. The committee usually meets four times a year and our main focus is to be a first
point of contact for our members regarding career development issues and to support members through organising relevant events, for example training courses, library visits, Chartership days and social get-togethers. When I attended my first meeting in July 2008 there was no vacant position on the committee, but within the hour I was elected as Newsletter Editor. There hadn’t been a divisional newsletter for a few years and I thought this would be the right challenge for me to take on. Apart from helping with a newspaper at school many years ago, I did not have much experience in this field, but the other committee members and newsletter
editors from other divisions were very helpful. We publish three to four issues a year. As this takes up a lot of time, I am less involved in organising events, but the newsletter is a very useful tool to promote these and also gives group members the chance to read about our activities and voice their own opinion. It also gives new professionals the chance to get an article published. Being on the committee has opened up my mind to what is happening in other library sectors and gives me the chance to engage in professional discussions. It has made me more confident in shaping ideas and voicing my own opinion.
A group of CILIP, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Registered Charity No. 313014 Debating issues – developing awareness
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No. 5 – Spring 2010
Marketing Yourself and Your Service, 23rd November November 2009 by Nicky Cryer, English Heritage On a wet November day a small, but enthusiastic band of librarians gathered together at North Swindon Library to attend the Marketing Yourself and Your Service workshop. During these “credit crunch” times it never hurts to be reminded of how we can make the best of ourselves and the services we offer. The day was presented by Nicola Franklin of Sue Hill Recruitment, and focused not only on how to market ourselves as individuals, but also how to promote our library service within our own organisations. Delegates came from a variety of backgrounds including school, industry, special, university and government libraries. This ensured that there was a wide variety of experiences and circumstances feeding in to the topics under discussion. After an initial introduction the morning session focused on marketing ourselves as professionals. As well as general information from
Nicola on subjects such as CV’s, application forms and interviews, we also completed exercises designed to help us focus on the technical and transferable, or “soft” skills that we all had. The exercises not only helped us to identify our strengths, but also encouraged us to focus on our satisfaction with particular aspects of our work. This led into a session where we were able to examine and discuss the alternative jobs and/or environments where our skills could be utilised. The afternoon session focused on marketing our library services within our current organisations. Nicola emphasised that our marketing audience was not restricted to our users, but also included the movers and shakers in the organisation, who needed to be regularly reminded of the benefits and value of the service provided. We had been asked to bring along material relating to the mission statement / objectives
What other attendants thought… It was great to be in a small group and talk informally about professional issues.
The course gave me lots of useful advice about my own skills.
of our organisations and we used these to answer the question: How can your library and information service help? Nicola encouraged us to explore how our services could support the organisation in achieving its objectives. This fed in to further exercises where we considered the profile raising activities we already undertook, and looked at other options available to us. The benefit of such a mixed group of professionals was evident here as each sector had interesting and differing ideas to contribute. Finally we looked at the barriers to raising the library profile within our organisations and strategies to overcome these. Needless to say we all faced a challenge in financing promotional activities! In these circumstances the consensus was that we should make the most of personal meetings and word of mouth opportunities, bringing the ‘personal touch’ to library promotion.
I enjoyed the opportunity to compare with other librarians.
I enjoyed hearing about what is being done in other organisations and sharing knowledge through the workshops and discussions.
No. 5 – Spring 2010
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Forthcoming events events April 2010 Introduction to Social Networking Cheddar, Somerset
June 2010 11th June 2010 Preparing for Certification and Chartership - joint event with the Career Development Group, Devon & Cornwall Division Plymouth, Cornwall Reflective Practice and Portfolio Building Bath
September / October 2010 Visit to the Met Office - joint event with the Career Development Group, Devon & Cornwall Division Exeter, Cornwall Visit to English Heritage Swindon, Wiltshire These events are currently in planning status and will be advertised widely once we know exact details. If you are interested in any events already or would like to suggest any others, please do get in touch with us – e-mail: cdgwestcountry@googlemail.com.
Would you like to... - Find out first about all the Career Development Group events taking place in your area? - Secure those places on ACLIP / Chartership workshops early? - Stay in touch with Career Development Group news? - Advertise any events you are running? If so, then why not subscribe to the monthly CDG Bulletin? You will receive an email once a month with all the latest events and news about the Career Development Group throughout the UK. To sign up, just use this link: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/CDGBULLETIN.html And join our growing network!
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No. 5 – Spring 2010
Bidding for Funds, Funds, 9th February 2010 by Valerie Bearne, Bath Central Library This fascinating seminar, held in the Exeter Central Library, was delivered by Kathy Roddy, a qualified librarian and professional fundraiser. We were given the first two rules of fundraising: 1. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. 2. Fundraising is friend raising. The three key elements of successful fund raising are Relationships; Research into the funder / the need / the effect; and Recipients. We learned that funders will all want to know what outcomes, outputs and impact their grants would make. To get started, you need to write a fundraising plan, which will tie in with your service
plan and/or business plan. Include some shelf bids (things you would like to do if money suddenly became available) as well as your long-term bid plans. Do include your costs following a successful bid, i.e. report writing, publication and dissemination, monitoring, evaluation. Funders expect you to state your total costs, including overheads. You can then cost those that you provide anyway as your contribution. Kathy recommends that the best way to identify funders is by scouring volumes 1 and 2 of A guide to the major trusts, but there are many others such as A guide to UK company giving and the Directory of grant making trusts.
Once you have identified a potential funder, ring them up, and start to build a relationship with them. Say who you are, what you want to do, and ask if they would be interested. It gives them a chance to weed out inappropriate applications, and increases your chance of success, since they need to feel they know you, and understand what you want to do. Kathy was a most knowledgeable and enthusiastic speaker. She gave us the confidence to feel that we were going away with the knowledge to locate the most worthwhile funders, and that we had gained the ability to succeed in writing bids for funding.
details,, ideas, suggestions Contact details Please send any comments about the newsletter or your ideas and suggestions to the Editor Katrin Flemming (k.flemming@bath.ac.uk). If you want to find out more about the group, please contact our Secretary Nicola Healey (cdgwestcountry@googlemail.com) or check our website (http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/careerdevelopment/divisions/westcountry/pages/default.aspx).
If you require a large-print copy, please contact the Editor Katrin Flemming (k.flemming@bath.ac.uk).