Christmas soon comes and goes with all the excitement of having a week off from week (more important than Christmas itself). I always have big unrealistic plans in the break which only get half fulfilled. I managed to catch up with my revalidation log to the end of the year (currently a very long word document reflecting on all my professional activities). I’ve taken the philosophy of reflect on everything and then when the time comes to sort out my final portfolio, just pick out the most relevant. I think it will be easier to take out than try and add after three years when the memory starts getting blurry. I managed to complete my log form for my second year ready to email to CILIP. I’m going to have another quick check for spellings and then send it off. I‘ve also started to assemble my portfolio and went through my evidence so far in the last 2 years and made a list of where I had gaps. I treated myself to a new box file and a couple of packets of plastic folders to organise everything after a recent course on building portfolios. I’ve given myself a deadline of the end of the month to get my form sent and gaps sorted. I’ve put this as one of my EARNs in my professional development plan for next year – Essential as opposed to Achievable/Realistic and Nice to do aims.
I’ve put engage in a professional activity each month as one of my Achievable/Realistic aims and now trying to plan ahead for these next few months to try and make sure I can put something down. I was going to put starting blogging about my work for December and keep a tab on the hours spent each month on my blog. I also had an email from the Communications Officer of the CSG Branch asking if I was still interested in helping out, I had initially volunteered in our last meeting and was christened the title of Communications Assistant. I’m initially helping out with the CILIP monthly emails – chasing committee members for ideas, collating the info and then emailing the finished result to CILIP by a given deadline. There’s also going to be some proof reading in the near future. It will be good experience and something else to include in my professional activities.
It’s been a busy week on the phones as expected and it has taken up most of my week. We had our Reader Services Team book selection meeting at last with all the usual arguments. I’m not sure that we got the mix quite right this month; we seem to be top heavy on non-fiction. It doesn’t help that the collection development topics were feminism, black issues and military history (non ww1 and ww2). I think we’ve restored the balance with the imports as we concentrated on crime, thrillers, romance and family stories. The selections are varied and include titles from Max Hastings – The Korean War to George R Martin’s A Game of Thrones and biographies as diverse as Ken Dodd and Malcolm X.
It’s my turn to go to the main book selection meeting next week and whoever goes, gets the bonus job of picking the Mills and Boon and Western titles. One of the titles has caused great hilarity – The Highwayman by Michele Hauf. One of our readers was keen to see more titles by this author, particularly the vampire ones – this one is vampire meet historical which will also please our Taken by the Viking fans (One of the big favourites with the readers).
I’ve been doing my least favourite job this week, catching up with the completed customer requests. It’s the job that gets me complaining the most. There has been a few weeks backlog due to the cataloguer being off in the last couple of weeks and for some unknown reason there was a lull in titles going “live” in general. There are pages of them and worse still, a lot of the titles that are ready are ones with loads of requests on them (the real must haves with the customers) - Jean M Auel’s latest, one of the many Diana Gabaldon Outlander titles, likewise Peter Robinson ( Inspector Banks) and The King’s Speech.
Friday saw a break in the routine as there was a realisation that we still had our Christmas display up on our Noticeboard. It was my turn to do the next display. The topic was our best reads for 2011. I found it difficult to pinpoint 2 standout books and had to cheat a bit and pick 2 books I had read recently and enjoyed – The Unseen by Katherine Webb and Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd. It made a nice change, designing a few quick posters and trying to think how to make the display eye-catching but not too cluttered.
Finally, after a few weeks rest, my son's blog crazy about chickens is back in operation again. Check it out on
http://mattcrazyaboutchickens-jane.blogspot.com/.
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