I've spent a happy afternoon reading through thing 6 and thing 7 and checking out the online networks I wasn't a member of. I use facebook for my own personal use, but I don't fancy using it for professional purposes. However, I was particularly interested investigating Linkedin and as I was suitably impressed (I like the idea of having a more professional network) that I created my own Linkedin profile and I've started to make a few connections. It will be interesting to see now whether this public profile will appear on a Google search under my name now and I must remember to keep it current and up to date (something a former colleague of mine, Nick Stopforth, is very good at doing)! Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how to add a Linkedin profile to blogger?!! It gives you the html code and I can't work out how to get it on this blog. Is it under Gadgets?
I then investigated the LATnetwork, with my information literacy hat on, and I had a good browse through the resources and events (there was a particular resource about training and student inductions which I'm looking forward to having a good look through). And as ever, the beauty of online networks meant that I soon came accross a local network (the toon library teach meet blog) and got engrossed in watching presentations of a past teach meet back in May (Lucy Carroll's 'Getting students to do the work for you' particularly got me wondering whether we could do a similar induction to City Library for new customers and use some of the talent from the film studies courses at the local universities? Something to ponder on). So I'm now following LATnetwork and toonlibtm on twitter - so hopefully further updates won't be missed and who knows, I could even look at attending any face to face teach meets in the future.
And on the note of face to face meets, I'm disappointed not to be able to attend the Newcastle CPD23 meeting this week. However, I'd be really interested to attend any future ones. I really do find face to face meetings beneficial as well as online networks. I'm so thankful that work are very supportive at sending me on training courses and allowing me to attend professional meetings when appropriate. From this, you do start to build contacts up and it's amazing to find out that the library world really isn't that big at all. I was recently at a business training event in London and a month later was at a Google training day in Newcastle. And lo and behold there was an information professional from Sheffield who was there at both and we were able to just carry that professional conversation on from where we'd left off.
And finally, I did join the LIS New Professionals Network a while ago but I haven't really looked at it since, so I must get stuck back into it and get the most out of it....there are lots of connections to be made!
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Monday 11 July 2011
Reflective Practice
So on to Thing #5 of CPD23 things and musings on reflective practice. This is a subject which I have given a lot of thought over in the last few years. I was prompted to do this when my colleagues and I were sent on a specially designed 10 week course at Northumbria University, before we opened the new Newcastle City Library in 2009 and it resulted in us asking as a group to have reflective practice built in to our monthly meetings. This proposal was presented to our senior management and included the following:
However, reflecting is not always about reflecting on things as a group and I realise that I do it naturally ever day as part of my job and sometimes it's never written down. An example of this can be seen in an e-book taster class that I ran for a group of customers who are visually impaired (VIPs). I had never delivered a class to VIPs before and neither had any of my colleagues, so I went into the class with a certain gaps in my experience and not knowing what would work and what needed to be tweaked. And I came out of the class knowing exactly what needed to be changed (let's say that it wasn't the most successful class I've ever ran due to technology and staffing issues amongst some of the reasons!). However, I was able to come back and say to my colleague who was running the same class only a few hours later, what I would have done differently and what the set up of the class was (we were using the Newcastle Blind Society's computers and set up). So Luke went off armed with this knowledge and delivered a much better quality session to another group of VIP learners. Just an example of reflective practice in action, with nothing written down but simply passed on orally.
Having said that, I definitely think there is a place for written down relective practice, something which I appreciated during the Chartership process, and I do try and undertake it after I've attended conferences and training. However, I do need to be better at reflecting more quickly after these days / events and I'm hoping that blogging will provide me with a better way of doing this. I need to keep reminding myself that it is a very simple process as Greenway (1995) says plan, do and review. Can't be that hard can it?!!
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"Library and Information Officers (LIOs) are going through substantial changes to their working practices and in the new city
- Develop a greater collective group awareness
- Become smarter at sharing information
- Establish priorities between teams in order to overcome isolation and be effective managers
- Reflect regularly on events and working practices in order to celebrate and integrate successful ways of working and to ensure that we learn from mistakes and work is not duplicated.
What will LIOs gain from reflective practice?
- Ability to develop creative answers to difficulties and enhanced problem solving skills
- Enhanced ability to evaluate and action plan for success (eliminating what doesn’t work, boosting what does, and sharing the result)
- Confidence and the skills to be an effective manager
- LIOs will be actively contributing to their own professional awareness and development through peer support"
As a result of this consultation, we were given 30 mins together as LIOs at the start of each of our meetings. This time was invaluable as we were involved in the opening of the City Library and has been useful since. For example, I attended a course by Karen Blakeman on 'All about Google' course in Newcastle on 31st March 2011 (it was brilliant and I would highly recommend it) and I wanted to feed back what I learnt on that day's course in an hour's session with colleagues. It was great to do this, even though we still need to discuss further about what we could do with this learning next and how we we're going to take it on as a group. Reflection never ends!
However, reflecting is not always about reflecting on things as a group and I realise that I do it naturally ever day as part of my job and sometimes it's never written down. An example of this can be seen in an e-book taster class that I ran for a group of customers who are visually impaired (VIPs). I had never delivered a class to VIPs before and neither had any of my colleagues, so I went into the class with a certain gaps in my experience and not knowing what would work and what needed to be tweaked. And I came out of the class knowing exactly what needed to be changed (let's say that it wasn't the most successful class I've ever ran due to technology and staffing issues amongst some of the reasons!). However, I was able to come back and say to my colleague who was running the same class only a few hours later, what I would have done differently and what the set up of the class was (we were using the Newcastle Blind Society's computers and set up). So Luke went off armed with this knowledge and delivered a much better quality session to another group of VIP learners. Just an example of reflective practice in action, with nothing written down but simply passed on orally.
Having said that, I definitely think there is a place for written down relective practice, something which I appreciated during the Chartership process, and I do try and undertake it after I've attended conferences and training. However, I do need to be better at reflecting more quickly after these days / events and I'm hoping that blogging will provide me with a better way of doing this. I need to keep reminding myself that it is a very simple process as Greenway (1995) says plan, do and review. Can't be that hard can it?!!
Sunday 10 July 2011
Managing information
I often struggle to keep up to date with emails at work when the demands of the job are away from my desk and serving the public. This can often leave me feeling overwhelmed and disheartened as even when I feel like I'm up to date on what's happening in the world - or my very small world and the library world that is!- I'm back to square one when I log back on a few hours later and there's so much information to wade through. So this week I've been looking at Twitter and RSS feeds.
I've taught staff how to use twitter before but never really used it properly until this week. So I've set up a new account, created a profile (I just need to load the picture now), started to follow some colleagues, public libraries and other information professionals and posted my first tweet with my new account. I'm looking forward to setting it up on my mobile and seeing the outcome. My username is AnneLArcher so do look out for me on twitter if you fancy!
And as for RSS feeds, I've known for a long time I needed to get a reader, but simply haven't got round to doing it, so again CPD23 has encouraged me to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time. (I've just gone for a google reader, although its quite scary the critical mass of information google is now acquiring about me!). The only thing I was confused about is how to set up an RSS subscribe feed from this blog (I think my brain has just given up tonight!!). Can anyone help? And how can I put a twiiter feed on here as well? Your advice would be much appreciated.
And in the spirit of keeping tweets to 140 characters, I'm going to keep this post short this week. So....over and out (not quite 140 characters, but shorter than the last posts I've done!)
I've taught staff how to use twitter before but never really used it properly until this week. So I've set up a new account, created a profile (I just need to load the picture now), started to follow some colleagues, public libraries and other information professionals and posted my first tweet with my new account. I'm looking forward to setting it up on my mobile and seeing the outcome. My username is AnneLArcher so do look out for me on twitter if you fancy!
And as for RSS feeds, I've known for a long time I needed to get a reader, but simply haven't got round to doing it, so again CPD23 has encouraged me to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time. (I've just gone for a google reader, although its quite scary the critical mass of information google is now acquiring about me!). The only thing I was confused about is how to set up an RSS subscribe feed from this blog (I think my brain has just given up tonight!!). Can anyone help? And how can I put a twiiter feed on here as well? Your advice would be much appreciated.
And in the spirit of keeping tweets to 140 characters, I'm going to keep this post short this week. So....over and out (not quite 140 characters, but shorter than the last posts I've done!)
Monday 4 July 2011
The joys of branding
I love consistency. Maybe this is what drew me to the librarianship world in the first place, or maybe it just represents my slightly anal personality! And this love of consistency came to the forefront when I took part in the marketing and publicity working group in the lead up to the opening of Newcastle City Library in June 2009. In this group we looked at how we were going to re-brand the new City Library and also transfer that branding over to the branch libraries so that no-matter which branch library you walked in to you knew it was part of Newcastle Libraries and you roughly knew the layout of the stock due to subconscious recognition. The outcome was the production of themed, coloured shelf headers which have now been rolled out to most of the branch libraries, new library cards with all the colours represented in a bar code format, poster templates with branded logos so staff can drop local library event publicity in while maintaining a service wide image, a Newcastle Libraries blog with the branding all over it (lovingly developed by Jennifer Clark our e-officer) and uniforms with the library logo on so staff can be easily identified by customers.....And the results are 2 years on?
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In my opinion there is definitely a more joined up feel to the library service and it feels more professional as a result. When you walk in to level 1 of the City Library you see a bright orange wall and orange strips on the self headers to represent the fiction. As you walk up the stairs or take a lift to another floor you are offered a menu of floor and subject options which not only have the text on, but are all colour coded. So it soon sinks in to your subconscious that green = fiction, yellow = children, pink=music and movies, teal = heritage and so on. And I love all of this and I think it's essential that we in the library profession take on these marketing tips that the retail sector uses to great effect so well. There is no doubt is there that an M & S is an M &S wherever you walk into one in the country? The green and black colours, along with floor tiles etc spell out the M & S brand. And so it should be with libraries........but what about librarians? Thing 3 of CPD23 has certainly made me ponder upon this tonight and made me think about whether I should be as concerned with my own professional brand as I am about the library branding.
I have to be honest, I've not given my online brand any thought before now. In the past I've just made sure that if anyone types my name into google, they don't get anything up regarding me and that the focus is the actress Anne Archer and not on me! Protecting my privacy rather than promoting my professional self has been my priority. But maybe I should be proactive in presenting my professional self to future employers? For starters I could start to actively use my dormant twitter account (I have one for training purposes, but don't use it for anything but that) and I could also set up a LinkedIn profile. I could put a picture of myself on this blog and write a bit of a summary about myself. I could put Anne Archer somewhere in the title of this blog so it gets picked up by searches....the list is endless. However, when reading around this subject on the CPD23 blog under Thing 3, it made me kind of nervous as well. There is so much to consider and although I'm all for personality, I do like there to be a line between personal and professional. However, I was reassured to read on Andromeda Yelton's blog there was reference to professional branding being about cultivating networking and relationships. This to me is so important and I feel that in a digital age, face to face contact shouldn't be neglected. So I breathed a sigh of relief at this and although I will definitely consider my online presence more, I will continue to work on those face to face contacts......
In my opinion there is definitely a more joined up feel to the library service and it feels more professional as a result. When you walk in to level 1 of the City Library you see a bright orange wall and orange strips on the self headers to represent the fiction. As you walk up the stairs or take a lift to another floor you are offered a menu of floor and subject options which not only have the text on, but are all colour coded. So it soon sinks in to your subconscious that green = fiction, yellow = children, pink=music and movies, teal = heritage and so on. And I love all of this and I think it's essential that we in the library profession take on these marketing tips that the retail sector uses to great effect so well. There is no doubt is there that an M & S is an M &S wherever you walk into one in the country? The green and black colours, along with floor tiles etc spell out the M & S brand. And so it should be with libraries........but what about librarians? Thing 3 of CPD23 has certainly made me ponder upon this tonight and made me think about whether I should be as concerned with my own professional brand as I am about the library branding.
I have to be honest, I've not given my online brand any thought before now. In the past I've just made sure that if anyone types my name into google, they don't get anything up regarding me and that the focus is the actress Anne Archer and not on me! Protecting my privacy rather than promoting my professional self has been my priority. But maybe I should be proactive in presenting my professional self to future employers? For starters I could start to actively use my dormant twitter account (I have one for training purposes, but don't use it for anything but that) and I could also set up a LinkedIn profile. I could put a picture of myself on this blog and write a bit of a summary about myself. I could put Anne Archer somewhere in the title of this blog so it gets picked up by searches....the list is endless. However, when reading around this subject on the CPD23 blog under Thing 3, it made me kind of nervous as well. There is so much to consider and although I'm all for personality, I do like there to be a line between personal and professional. However, I was reassured to read on Andromeda Yelton's blog there was reference to professional branding being about cultivating networking and relationships. This to me is so important and I feel that in a digital age, face to face contact shouldn't be neglected. So I breathed a sigh of relief at this and although I will definitely consider my online presence more, I will continue to work on those face to face contacts......
Friday 1 July 2011
Thing 2
So I've been checking out some other blogs over the past hour and it's been great to see some other colleagues taking on the CPD23, as well as discovering some new people as well. It was reassuring to find out that I'm not the only one nervous about putting my 'opinions' out there and to start to see the debate between personal and professional in terms of online presence...more of which I'm sure I'll ponder on in Thing 3.....
I've commented on a few blogs including Library Leanings (it will be interesting to hear about Carol's health and wellbeing zone set up as a lot of my own work is health related), Did you say Ode? (I always love the way Aude writes) , My First Blog (it was good to be able to encourage someone in their certification), Optimus Prime was a Librarian (I work with Luke on the Info and Digital team and he keeps me right in all things technical!), Agent Paper (I too have a tendency to lurk and look at social media and not always participate), Librarianing etc to name but a few.
I also had a peak at some health librarian's blogs, as I've become more and more interested in health and wellbeing work since I got involved as a trainee in setting up Newcastle Libraries books on prescription scheme 'From words to wellbeing'. This lead me to seeking a health librarian as a mentor when I was in the chartership process and made me curious to find out more about what the challenges and joys there is to be found in the health information world.
And in the process of writing this blog it's been good to see how to create links to other web pages and I had a sneaky peak at the stats and sources people have been referred from to my blog....very interesting! Looking forward to investigating more next time......but for now tea calls!
I've commented on a few blogs including Library Leanings (it will be interesting to hear about Carol's health and wellbeing zone set up as a lot of my own work is health related), Did you say Ode? (I always love the way Aude writes) , My First Blog (it was good to be able to encourage someone in their certification), Optimus Prime was a Librarian (I work with Luke on the Info and Digital team and he keeps me right in all things technical!), Agent Paper (I too have a tendency to lurk and look at social media and not always participate), Librarianing etc to name but a few.
I also had a peak at some health librarian's blogs, as I've become more and more interested in health and wellbeing work since I got involved as a trainee in setting up Newcastle Libraries books on prescription scheme 'From words to wellbeing'. This lead me to seeking a health librarian as a mentor when I was in the chartership process and made me curious to find out more about what the challenges and joys there is to be found in the health information world.
And in the process of writing this blog it's been good to see how to create links to other web pages and I had a sneaky peak at the stats and sources people have been referred from to my blog....very interesting! Looking forward to investigating more next time......but for now tea calls!
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