Thing 15

Seminars, Conferences and Events

Hm, okay, this is a tricky one for me! Being relatively, um, young(?) I feel I haven't much to talk about (I seem to be doing several things wrong already!) But anyway, I can talk about some non-librarian related things too...

In terms of having attended conferences, my only real experience is the libraries@cambridge conference in January. I guess the best thing I did before attending that was carefully reading through the programme and deciding which bits would interest me most. I guess I did make the mistake mentioned in Katie's blog of taking lots of notes, however in this case I found it particularly helpful to me as I then went on to write up the event for the CATALOG website, which my poor memory would have not allowed me to do without! Beforehand we also created a poster for the displays viewed between seminars and over lunch, and I felt this made me a lot more interested in general about the conference, and thinking about what else others would talk about/create posters for.

Presentations are something I have some experience of doing, although not in my past year here in Cambridge. I find them terrifying to do, but that does have the advantage that I prepare so much for them that they usually go okay! However, all my presentations to date have been on physicsy/mathsy topics, so maybe it is a little different when it is library related.

Finally, I do find there are conferences cropping up, especially in the CILIP Update magazine, which I would be curious to go to. Money is usually the case for not thinking twice about going to them though, even if somehow they are free they turn out to be in Newcastle or somewhere equally far away! I am always interested in attending seminars and talks within Cambridge, especially when they discuss topics such as social networking and the move into 'the digital age'.

Thing 10

Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation

My route into librarianship began through a suggestion from a friend to volunteer in my college library at university. I have always been someone who is not sure what they want to do with their life, and decided to work in the library without thinking that it could lead to something. From there I found out about volunteer programmes in the university library, and spent my summer working there and gaining some invaluable experience. Through my final year I continued to volunteer one afternoon a week and that winter began to research what I would like to do after my graduation. And that lead me to the CILIP accredited traineeships as mentioned, and that's where I stand today. I have had a thoroughly enjoyable year and learnt an awful lot about working in a library, whilst also having the experience of working a full time job! With only three weeks to go I am looking forward to starting my studies again, with Aberystwyth University via distance learning. I hope that some of the theory I learn over the next year will help my work as I continue in a different position at St John's from mid-September. 

After all of this, who knows? I enjoy what I am doing now but I don't know that it's what I want to do for the rest of my life. But I don't think it has to be that anymore, everyone is continually changing jobs nowadays and I feel lucky that working in the information world is quite transferable. Whether changing the library I work in, or moving more into business, administration or archives, I feel there are options are available, and we need to be positive despite the current opportunities being limited in the economic climate! I hope that I will progress to chartership in the future, but we'll see. Things have a habit of just happening...

Thing 7

Real-life networks...

My experience in this area is relatively limited (being relatively new to libraries!) but I am a member of two organisations - CILIP and the Cambridge Library Group. My reasons for joining them both probably stemmed from the fact I believed it would 'look good' to be able say I have interests in my career outside of my day to day work. With CILIP this really remains the case, as I have not used my membership wisely. I guess to me it seems quite terrifying and big! The CILIP website was of great help to me in gaining the position I have today (which they accredit) and I do enjoy flicking through their monthly 'CILIP Update' magazine. As a trainee I paid so little for my membership I guess I haven't felt the need to really get involved, which is definitely not a good thing. Maybe this thing should prod me to investigate a bit more.

The Cambridge Library Group has been of more use to me whilst I have been a trainee, giving me the opportunity to expand on the number of libraries I have visiting. In the past 6 months I have been to the  Archive and Conservation Laboratory at the Sedgwick Museum's Brighton Building, the Radzinowicz Library of Criminology, the Fitzwilliam Museum libraries and the Needham Research Institute all thanks to my membership of this group. I have also spoken to some interesting people working in business and public libraries, and it has given me a chance to meet up with a few of the other trainees on a more regular basis.

I had a little explore of some of the informal organisations listed, beginning with The Library Society of the World. It confused me a little though as all the posts on the front page were rather dated! I had a further explore of the LIS New Professional Network, which as I have already mentioned in Thing 6 I found quite interesting to read what people were discussing, and thought about making my own comments. I also think the downloadable resources are a great idea, and enjoyed looking at 'how to use twitter' and reviews of various LIS master courses (even if it is too late to change my mind now!).

What I would love to find would be an organisation for scientific librarians - reading and getting to know other professionals who are doing something I would be keen to go into would be useful. Maybe it would give me some more ideas of where my career could go.

Thing 4... the important bit

This is a bit late, but I seem to be behind on all my things at the moment!

Okay, what did I do yesterday? I am not new to Twitter, but it must be said that I am not a big tweeter. I find Twitter a little strange, as I never feel I have anything to share with everyone that takes up such a small amount of space! At university I did find it useful though, following organisations such as the university library and computer services. I also like to check it occasionally to see what is going on with friends who are more avid tweeters than me. So it does have it's uses. I do feel it would be more important to me if I had some medium to use it, that wasn't a laptop or pc, so I could it on the move and quickly. Having to turn this on, find the website, log in and then post is not terribly easy!

Again, I feel the RSS feeds would be particularly useful on a phone! I have been using these for a while, without really appreciating what they are and learning what it is an abbreviation for amuses me. I guess SS would be too short? I do think this is an interesting tool to see everyones blogs though, which definitely helps when it comes to figuring out what I should write. Now I can use it more than just for looking at the BBC news on my Google homepage. I subscribed to 'Infoism' which I think will be good reading. It was also interesting to note a blog he wrote on the subject of volunteering in libraries, which I had been reading more about earlier in an email LinkedIn had sent me due to my being a member of the 'CILIP: Library, Information and Knowledge Professionals' group. I would definitely recommend joining it if you are on LinkedIn (which you should be!).

Finally on to Sporify - something completely new to me. A little tricky to get my head around at first - but I did have fun playing around! I was sad to see some people had not posted their 'stories' in their blog, though it did take me a while to figure out how to! I did enjoy looking at all the photographs in The Wandering Librarian's blog of libraries he will be visiting in Chicago, again I find it amazing how many different people are taking part in this.

All in all I have found these (3) things fascinating to play with, and I know I have barely scratched the surface. I look forward to meddling a little more, when some time allows.

Here's to Thing 5...