Thursday 25 August 2011

Thing 13 - Google docs, Wikis and Dropbox

Just spent a tiring day spending loadsa money in Nottingham - sadly not for me but for my young son. He's come back with bags full of tops and jeans though we had a strange encounter in BHS where one of the assistant seemed miffed that I took him in the ladies changing rooms to try his clothes on. I told her that he was abit young to go in the men's on his own but she said I should have taken him in there. Thought it would have been more embarrasing for the men with me being there than for the women with my son being in the women's changing room.

Back to the subject of Thing 13, File sharing is often a problem with our team as we are on split sites - Peterborough and Stockport. Our biggest problem is book selection where we work from spreadsheets and we end up having to email them to each other quite a few times each month. Joint projects also cause problems too. Google docs and Dropbox may help with this. I couldn't actually get Dropbox to download on my computer so didn't get too far with this.

I use wikipedia quite a bit though wary of the accuracy of the content there. I also find wikireadia useful. I hadn't heard of Library Day in the Life Project before and spent some time looking at this. I may contribute in the next round (January 2012). I could put a reminder on my Google Calendar! I also looked at the Library Routes Project, again, this was new to me. I may even contribute my Thing 10 from my CPD23 to this wiki in the near future.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Thing 12 - Putting the social into social media

If you had asked me 6 months ago do you blog or tweet or have you joined facebook or linkedIn, I would have laughed at you and told you don't be silly! So, in that respect I have made a giant leap into the unknown. I don't think that I've taken full advantage of what's out there and I'm just a passive spectator. I maybe need to actively participate in an online discussion or follow a tweet from an ongoing event. A few blogs mentioned that they followed the progress of the riots through Twitter. I enjoy blogging and tweeting but I'm not sure if anybody actually reads them. I'm only getting the negative effects of social media as I'm getting a few nuisance tweets so may have to cancel my twitter account if it continues. I've not really followed facebook through but I'm finding the email updates I get from joining LinkedIn 23 steps group useful. I think that if I get into the situation that I'm having to look for another job, I would probably use social media alot more.

Sunday 21 August 2011

Thing 11 - Mentoring

I haven't got a mentor. Every year I put Find a mentor on my to-do list and keep meaning to go on the CILIP web site to find one in my area that can mentor librarians that are revalidating but never seem to get round to it. Maybe this should be my prime aim for next year, particularly that I will be in my final year of revalidation.

Thing 10 - Why I became a Librarian and how I got there

I didn’t start off as a Librarian. I started off doing the usual thing you do in my era as a girl from a working class background growing up in a small town with a handful of O levels do - leaving at 16 to do a one year secretarial course and ending up at in an office job at one of the local large firms. I quickly got bored and did a few evening classes to improve my O Level tally with a vague idea that it might get me a better job. I was also discovering the bright and exciting lights of city life and in the next round of redundancies (in which there were many rounds) I volunteered redundancy and headed off to Nottingham with a vague idea that I was going to do something different. I managed to quickly fix myself up with a temporary job while I decided what to do next. I ended up enrolling on one year part time A level courses in Psychology and Communications and Media at South Notts College (Possibly one of the happiest years of my life) and then was encouraged by my Tutor to go on and do a BA Honours Degree in Social Sciences.

Three years later, with a 2/1 Degree under my belt, I was still no clearer what I wanted to do except that I wanted to use my Degree. After more hours pouring through careers books, I came up with 3 ideas - Social Research, Careers Adviser (to provide young people better advice than I had been given) or to work in a library - preferably in a Social Sciences Department in a University Library. After a very dismal interview at York University to do Social Research and then trooping off to Guildford for the same course and never hearing anything back, I gave up with that idea and went for Plan B - working in a library.

My first priority was to get myself some library experience under my belt before applying for a place on a postgraduate Library and Information Management course so I wrote to various libraries in the East Midlands to see if I could get myself a 6 week voluntary placement and was lucky to end up locally at Gedling Area Libraries. I initially did 6 weeks and after a stint on the enquiry desk, a class visit, a morning learning about aromatherapy, going out on a bear hunt with the under 5’s and decorating the children’s library, I learnt that librarianship was much more than I had previously thought. I carried on going to Carlton Library on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings while temping in the day time, with the idea that the more experience I could gain, the better chance I would have in getting a postgraduate place. I then managed to spend the summer combining temping with setting up an information centre at Netherfield St Georges Centre in an attempt to gain as much experience as I possibly could. After a major setback at a certain University’s open days/interviews which shall remain nameless where it was proclaimed by their Head of Department there that they rarely rejected applicants unless they were really bad and then receiving a rejection letter a few days later, I was offered a couple of places - Sheffield University and University of Northumbria. Better still, University of Northumbria offered me a much envied mature student’s bursary which sealed my decision. (From there I learnt that quite a few people had been put off by their experience at the University which remains nameless by their rejection letters too, there was obviously a lot of bad applicants that day!).

I’m used to condensed courses with my evening classes and fitting 2 A levels in the shortest possible period but this course must have been the most intensive thing I had done. I think what struck me more about this course was not the content itself but the work ethic of everyone and how everybody worked together to cram which was effectively a 3 years degree in to a 9 months Postgraduate! A bigger challenge was to follow, trying to find a professional library job against brighter and /or more experienced candidates.

I knew my experience was still limited compared to most people so as soon as I finished my course, I found myself some voluntary work - this time at Mencap and Dial (UK) in Doncaster and again combined it with more temping. After becoming an expert on how to get from Nottingham to Doncaster on public transport in the shortest possible time and how to live on nothing for the last few years, I was given a break. I was offered an interview for a Resource Centre Assistant at Arnold and Carlton College but after being unsuccessful, I then had another phone call a few days later asking if I would like a temporary library assistant post in the library. I didn’t have enough experience for the initial job but the Librarian had decided that she liked to give me a chance and came up with this additional job instead!

After 6 months I was finally successful in obtaining my first professional job (albeit job-share) at Charles Keene College as an Assistant Librarian. I still filled in my spare days trying to improve on my experience by signing on the Nottingham County Council Professional Register and working at Arnold and Carlton as a relief library assistant. After a couple of years of building up my experience with this strange mix of jobs, I decided to have another go at applying for a full time professional post and managed to find one quite quickly - my current post at RNIB.

I’ve been in my current post since 1996, a lot longer than I planned. The job has changed radically, responsibilities have come and gone particularly with the new advancements in technology, and I’ve survived quite a few restructures ! I’ve managed to charter in the process - via the old report route B way and I’m now in my second year in revalidating which has made me keep my focus on professional development. One of my aims was to become more involved in networking which I’ve achieved. I still keep my eye on the job market but realistically there has been very little to apply for lately.

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Thing 9 - Evernote - I need to be convinced about this

After looking at the notes and registering on the Evernote website and reading through their guide, I'm not really convinced whether I will use this. I read some blogs and while some nearly convinced me to download Evernote and have a play with it, others had the same doubts as me. I decided that as I'm behind and I want to blog about things other than the 23 steps, I've not investigated further for now - unless someone can totally convince me that's it's worth spending my evening doing so.

Thing 8 - Google Calendar

Just starting to recover from The Big Chill Festival and now persuading my brain to focus on some work on the 23 steps which seems to have fallen by the wayside at the moment. I had a go at the google calendar and although I enjoyed setting it up for August, I can't see myself making use of it and maintaining it. I'm quite happy with using my old-fashioned diary which is very portable and accessible and can be easily carried around in my bag. I use the Outlook calendar at work which is set out in a very similar way to the google calendar and I can access other work colleagues' calendars via this. I couldn't see the extra benefits of google calendar compared to what I use now.