Isabel's Careers Information Blog

CILIP NE CDG AGM and talk, March 22nd 2012, Robinson Library, Newcastle

This was the first CILIP NE CDG AGM I’d attended but the second event in a week as I’d also been to the informal chartership event held at the Town Hall pub on Tuesday 20^th March.  I’ve been considering taking a more active role in CILIP, not only because I’m currently putting together my chartership portfolio, but also because I feel that this will enable me to feel more a part of the profession. I’m especially interested in the Career Development Group having worked for a Connexions Service and with careers adviser colleagues responsible for training and development for many years.  So it was good to go along to the AGM and find out more about the work they do and the events they arrange.

The AGM was introduced by the Chair, Tracey Ainsley who gave a summary of the annual report. It was interesting to hear of the events that the group had put on in the past year and the plans for the coming year, including a marketing course, chartership and certification course, visit to libraries in York and an annual sponsored walk which this year is along Hadrian’s Wall. Treasurer Michelle Walker then went through the group’s finances. It had been a successful year due to some well attended fundraising events and joint events with UCR Northern.  There was a reminder that CILIP members’ day will be held in Newcastle on 13^th September. Nominations for the committee officers for the coming year were also agreed on.

After the AGM was wrapped up Eleanor Routledge, the librarian at Marie Curie Cancer Care, gave a talk.  The Marie Curie National Library Information Service has two libraries, in Newcastle and Edinburgh.  This is a reduction from 11 in 2008. It seems that Newcastle was lucky as they had funding from a covenant. Eleanor explained where the information service fit within the organisation, it’s part of the skills and training department which seems a good place for it as it supports career development. The service is staffed by a full time library manager based in Edinburgh, a part time assistant librarian (Eleanor) and a number of volunteers who are an essential part of running the service.

The service’s objectives are to meet users’ study/research/further education needs, improve clinical practice and empower all staff and volunteers. Its users are hospice based staff and volunteers, community staff, students, Marie Curie HQ and other Marie Curie centres and palliative care professionals.

The library provides a range of services to its users. The range of information resources available covers palliative cancer care, bereavement and communication, management, research and ethics. Items can be renewed by phone, email or in person and there’s a self-issuing service and out of hours returns box.  Literature searches, inter-library loans, computer access, printing and photocopying are also provided. The service also acts as an administrator for NHS Evidence.

Eleanor described the range of printed and electronic resources available via the service. These include the usual books, journals, videos and DVDs as well as quick reference materials. Electronically there is access to 18 e-journals, NHS Evidence, the Pillars VLE (NHS NE VLE), Marie Curie’s Learn and Develop VLE (which Eleanor demonstrated) and an intranet.

Current awareness services are offered: there’s a content page service, a specific interest service, a monthly bulletin highlighting palliative care articles from that month, a palliative journals club and PubMed email alerts. There’s also a library committee which has been set up to increase awareness of the service to other parts of the country without a library and to look at ways of promoting the service.  At the moment this is a local committee but there are plans for a national committee.

In addition the library provides further support in the form of information literacy training, attending education seminars, courses and programmes and help and advice.

The talk raised many questions from the audience about funding, working with volunteers and providing a remote service to users.  Having previously worked in a library that provided a service to offices across the country and overseas I was interested to hear how the Marie Curie Library Information Service dealt with the logistics of this and how they were promoting the services to these users.  The Service certainly seems to provide a wide range of services to users and is proactive in promoting them within the limitations and restrictions they have.

Social Bookmarking for Sharing Knowledge and Information

I've been lucky enough to take part in a European Project which is developing online tools to help organisations share the knowledge and expertise of staff working in widely dispersed locations. The project, called Mature, http://mature-ip.eu/ started in 2008 and ends in March 2012. It involves a number of universities and research institutes across Europe as well as partner organisations.

The project got its name from the concept of knowledge maturing. The aim was to bring web 2.0 technology into the workplace. There are a number of different tools being developed and tested. The software which we have been working with is called Soboleo (the Sobo part of this represents Social Bookmarking the remainder is Lightweight Engineering of Ontologies).[[posterous-content:HnBvreijhFuBIDrAofyk]]We started working with the project in December 2009. It was certainly a new experience, taking part in conference calls with developers in Germany, trying to figure out the terminology used (with my information background I should've been more familar with some of it!) and coming up with terms our staff would be comfortable with given the range of IT confidence in the organisation. it was also good to be able to work with the Institute of Employment Research at the University of Warwick.

Although the emphasis of the project has been about sharing learning and knowledge, from an information perspective it has been interesting to be involved in the development of a system incorporating user created metadata. The software allows users to tag themselves and colleagues with areas of expertise, as well as tagging websites and documents. Users can also edit this information to create relationships between tags and add extra details such as description and hidden or alternative labels. In theory, all of this helps to make the programme more useful as the search results should improve as more information is added and relationships are created.  

We did an initial trial with a small group of staff which allowed us to feedback to the developers who took on board our suggestions and made changes to the system. Unfortunately budget cuts in the summer of 2010 meant that we worked a 3 day week for six months. There was no time to spend on the project and we had to put our contribution on hold.

However, when we returned to full time work we were able to return to the project and roll out further training. We trained all staff in our section of the company during the summer of 2011. This involved a half day of training with hands on time to become familar with the system. Some staff, especially those who are comfortable using websites such Facebook and Flickr, got to grips with it very easily, particular searching and tagging. Others found it more of a struggle and generally the editing of the information was seen as more difficult to do. It's been interesting to see how non information professionals create metadata and whether or not this has aided retrieval of information. Much of what I have noticed in this process has been reflected in my wider reading of the topic of tagging, folksonomies and uncontrolled vocabularies.

In January 2012 we continued rolling out more training, this time to staff in other sections of the company in Leeds, Northallerton and Doncaster. This was perhaps the trickier part of our involvement in the project as we don't have the relationship with these staff that we do with the staff in Northumberland. However, by this time we had been able to refine the session which helped us to deliver the training successfully and with confidence. By the end of January we had trained over 100 staff at all levels across the company, although the majority were Connexions/IAG advisers.

Some of the advantages and disadvantages of the system have been highlighted in discussions with participants.

Advantages

• Users are already familiar with searching for information and easily grasped the idea of tagging each other.
• The tags are user-generated, therefore users should be adding keywords that they will use when they come to search the system and that are familiar to others working in the same profession. This should make retrieval easier.
• The ability to tag people as well as tag and upload documents and websites means that search results provide information and access to the knowledge of colleagues in one place.

 Disadvantages

• Without having one overall editor, the folksonomy (called the topic list in the programme) becomes too long and unwieldy. As no one has complete responsibility for editing of this information it is too easy for users to leave it for others to do.
• Information added can quickly become out of date. There's currently no alert system to ensure that information is updated or removed.
• The system does not recognise alternative spellings or typos unless a user adds them which can result in poor search results even when information is available in the system.

As the system has been a work in progress there have been some difficulties during the training such as it's slow speed, being logged out or passwords not working. Across the company different systems and intranets have been used to store and record information.  Staff who had good experiences of their current systems were inclined to think that this system wouldn't be of benefit to them, while other staff who had problems with their systems felt that Soboleo could be a good alternative.

Being involved in the project has allowed us to take part in a review meeting in Innsbruck, where we contributed to a presentation before the review panel. The meeting involved contributors from all over Europe and we certainly found that different nationalities have different ways of working! We were also able to see the other tools being developed. We presented our work at a conference at the University of Warwick and there was a lot of interest in it.

My work on the project is now over as the service I work for is coming to an end. The idea is that the system will continue to be used within the company and it is disappointing that I won't be able to support users and see if it is picked up by them in the long term. The system itself is open source so there will be the opportunity for others to use it. I feel that I've gained a lot from working on the system in terms of my professional development and experience and hopefully I'll be able to transfer these skills to whatever I do in the future.

Chartership Progress: February 2012

Since my last post about my progress I've had another meeting with my mentor. These meetings have been very helpful to check that I'm keeping on track and doing the right things. I thought I hadn't made enough progress but my mentor thought otherwise. Having these meetings in my diary is also a good target for me to work to so I get things done as I'm very good at procrastinating. I do feel more focussed after I've talked things through and raised any questions I have.

One of my main concerns has been how my application would be affected if I was no longer working in a professional job (or possibly unemployed). It was helpful to talk this through and get some advice. Hopefully it won't be a problem. I'm aiming to submit during the summer and should have completed most of the work before the change in my circumstances.

I've also been wondering about job descriptions and organisational plans and objectives. I've had two job descriptions in the eight years I've been in this job but the current one doesn't really represent what I do. The current job description is a legacy from a TUPE takeover four years ago. I think I'll need to combine them and perhaps reflect on the descriptions in my personal statement.

Although I've had some training for the volunteering I'm planning to do I haven't actually been able to make a start on the work. I still intend to go ahead with it as it will be useful experience whether or not I include it in my chartership portfolio.

In January I co-delivered a lot of training on an online system we have been using called Soboleo. It's based around tagging so I have been reading up on the subject of tagging and uncontrolled vocabularies in the professional literature. This has been useful to confirm my thoughts on the pros and cons of the system and provide some new ideas that I hadn't thought of.

I've also been trying to gather more evidence. My mentor suggested that using the chartership matrix document would be helpful and it has been, although perhaps not exactly in the way it's supposed to be. I think I'm supposed to collect the evidence and then use the matrix to check it against the criteria. However, because I've been collecting evidence from a few years of previous experience I've listed the evidence (going back through old diaries to check on the events and training that I've been on), reflected on how they meet the criteria and then looked for the evidence. For some of these events I may not be able to find anything but I think doing it in this order will save me from having to sift through a lot of paper.

There have been some drawbacks to this method. To my shame, although I am a librarian/information professional I must be the most disorganised person in the office. My desk is piled with papers and once I file things away I forget where. I work/have worked people who are very tidy and organised who like to schedule housekeeping days where I feel compelled/obliged to tidy up and throw things out. Now I am discovering that some of my evidence has vanished into the bin at some point over the last few years. I am hoping that the gaps won't be too large.

I also only have five and a half weeks left in my current job. The service is closing so we will need to throw out/give away/shred most of the equipment, resources and paperwork and won't have access to IT or telephones in the last week. It's suddenly starting to feel very imminent even though we have been aware that this was going to happen for a while.

My next steps will be to finish collecting this evidence, amend a version of my CV for inclusion in the portfolio, decide on a structure and begin to think about the personal statement.

Using Netvibes to Create a Virtual Library

Since summer 2010 the service which I work for has experienced severe budget cuts due to changes in Government policy which has affected all areas of work. About a third of staff were made redundant, offices were closed and for six months between October 2010 and March 2011, we worked a 3 day week. The budget for information has been completely cut and I am no longer able to purchase hard copy resources. For a long time I had struggled to maintain a hard copy library in the face of increasing pressure to cut it as it was considered no longer necessary. However, broadband connectivity in Northumberland is not especially good, especially in the more rural locations, so I had always argued that we needed the hard copy resources as back up. Unfortunately, since summer 2010 I've had no budget at all and therefore had no alternative but to go completely electronic (I was able to buy software before the budget cut so we have those resources at least). 

I still needed to provide an information service to staff but I had to consider how to do this without a budget. Some areas of careers information are updated regularly, for example, information about university entry and LMI, so before the cuts resources in offices were replaced annually or when new editions of publications were available. There were various free resources available but some of these have also suffered from the Government’s cuts and are no longer free (publications such as It's Your Choice and Which Way Now?). Although I still update the Connexions Northumberland website, technical support has been cut, leaving me limited in what I can do.

I decided to investigate the use of electronic and online resources to fill the gap. I researched a number of web based tools that I thought might be useful. I wanted something that was free, allowed me to gather a number of different sources of information together and organise it in a way that would be useful to staff. 

I looked at the Netvibes pages of a number of other libraries and information services who were using Netvibes to provide access to current awareness. I discovered a range of services such as the Scottish Government Library, Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries and Dublin City Public Libraries on Netvibes. There are also some careers services using Netvibes although they seem to be HE services, e.g. University of Sussex and Robert Gordon University. 

Netvibes is a good solution because RSS feeds, website links, access to our website, Twitter page and Facebook page can all be added. Once the page is made public there is no need to log on so no passwords or usernames are needed.  The ability to create multiple tabs allows for each subject in the CRCI (Connexions Resource Centre Index) classification scheme to have its own page plus I can add additional tabs as required. The images below show the page I created.

I had also been looking at how I could add our professional library catalogue which is currently on our intranet. This catalogue was set up by the IT department and is not easy to search or use. I felt that if I could set up a catalogue on Shelfari or LibraryThing it might improve access and I could also add it to the Netvibes page. At the moment I've added a Shelfari list but I still think this is an area that I could explore and develop.

I emailed staff about the site, with information on what it contained and how to use it and invited comments. Initial feedback has been positive. I plan to follow this up with some evaluation using a Google Docs form or Survey Monkey. I have also added a widget with Google Analytics code which should give me an idea of the number of users of the site. I'll post more when I've gathered some results from this feedback.

Some (Late) New Year's Resolutions

I'm not really the sort of person who makes new year's resolutions, generally because I know there's no point as I am bound to break them. Especially if the resolution is something like giving up chocolate or going to the gym more regularly! However, a few career related resolutions probably wouldn't go amiss, especially as this year is likely to be a difficult one. I've never been one for planning my career; moves and progress have always seemed to happen by chance and circumstance, but taking more control should help me feel more positive. Perhaps resolution is the wrong word to use and maybe goals would be more appropriate. Anyway, here they are:

1. Complete and submit my chartership application. I'm aiming to do this sometime between April and September, all being well. A lot of this will depend on number 4.

2. Get published professionally. I've enjoying writing this blog and I've written up an article about the CDG conference I attended last November but I'd like to submit something to CILIP Update or similar.

3. Get more involved professionally. Anyone need a committee member?

4. Find a new job. This might be the trickiest resolution of all. I'm not expecting to get my ideal job immediately but I'd like a role that gives me something to get my teeth into and/or increases my relevant experience. My current job will finish at the end of March although I may be employed until the end of July.

Some are these resolutions will be connected: 2 and 3 should help with 1, the first 3 may help with 4. It'll be interesting to look back in 12 months time and see if I have managed to fulfil any of these resolutions.

Chartership Progress: December 2011

After a busy November, December has been fairly quiet. I made a plan last month and looking at it now I seem to be falling behind. Although I probably shouldn't be too hard on myself as I did get my PPDP completed to the deadline I'd set myself and there have been lots of things happening at work to distract me. I do need to make sure that I don't fall too fair behind though as I am aware that I can be quite good at procrastinating!

The main areas I'd decided to cover in November were: collecting evidence and researching/reading articles for the gaps I'd identified in my PPDP.

I have started trying to collect my evidence for the experience I'm backdating. I have to finish this fairly quickly as I don't know when I'm going to lose access to everything on the system! Our contract finishes at the end of March and we'll be transfered to the county council, meaning goodbye to our current systems. I plan to give myself until the end of January to collect everything I might need. I think I'll use some of my Christmas break to check through the evidence I've already collected. I suspect not all of it's going to be useful.

I have begun researching articles but I think my searches have been too broad and I need to concentrate and narrow my subjects. It's difficult because at the moment I feel like I don't know what I don't know!

I'd decided to look at cataloging and classification (as it's not something I do a lot of in my current job), concentrating on systems used in careers information organisations. I currently use a system called CRCI (Connexions Resource Centre Index) and previous to this a system called CLCI (Careers Library Classification Index) was used which I don't have knowledge of. I believe university services use another system?

I'm also looking at information systems. Although my first thoughts on this topics was to examine library systems, I'm now looking at those systems I'm using at work. There are a few I've been using recently such Moodle and Soboleo (a website we are using as part of a European project) and I've started a Netvibes page which I will blog about later. I've also discussed with a colleague the possibility of some work we could do together which would help me demonstrate further evidence in this area. This will depend on how busy we are in January!

I'm going to be starting some volunteering in January which I hope will allow me to gain another perspective on both of these topics. More on that in a later post.

My main worry is that February and March are likely to be difficult and stressful months and from April I may no longer be working in a professional information role. It'll be important to finish my chartership but it may be difficult to motivate myself with the distractions that are likely to be around during this time. However, the knowledge that I need to get it done will hopefully be the incentive I need to keep going.

More Thoughts About Using Facebook to Answer Enquiries

A while ago I wrote a post about using Facebook to answer careers related enquiries. We had a short trial using the discussions section of our Facebook page. Unfortunately the trial wasn't a success and we didn't get asked any questions.

At the moment the number of people 'liking' our page is quite low, despite promotion in schools and via other social media sites and our website. Some informal feedback has suggested that young people don't want to 'like' our page because it wouldn't be cool to do that. This was also a factor in the lack of engagement with our discussions page.

The discussions page wasn't really very visible and looking at other Facebook pages that have tried to engage users in this way, most have used their walls to answer enquiries. We wanted to use the discussions page so that we had somewhere to refer back to as wall posts get lost as new ones appear. However, now Facebook have done away with discussions, saying:

We want to make sure the tools you use to manage your page are as effective as possible. Here’s an update that may affect how you connect with your audience:

Reviews and Discussions: The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall. To focus on this, we’ll be removing the Reviews and Discussions apps on October 31st. 

As we didn't get any discussions going we don't have the problem of trying to archive old ones, but now there is an issue of how to get discussions going without them being lost.  There are applications that can be added so maybe I'll have a look at this. I'd be interesting to here about how other people have tackled this problem.

Review of careers information websites

I've been sidetracked recently by CPD23 but this blog was original set up to discuss careers information. Therefore I thought I'd take some time to look at a few careers websites that you may or may not know about.

There's an abundance of careers websites around all claiming to provide information for free. But are they any good? Do they provide independent, impartial information or do they have an ulterior motive? Are they linked to people and organisations that want to use them to sell their own products and services? (Not necessarily a bad thing but something to be aware of). Is the information up to date? Who's written it? These are the kind of considerations we should bear in mind when selecting any type of resource whether online or printed but it's all to easy to search Google/type in a URL and hope for the best. The sites I have selected to explore today are general careers information resources.

icould.com

inspiration, encouragement and discovery. The idea is to help you make the most of your potential and talent, by showing how others have used theirs.

And

We’re not seeking to replace face-to-face support, but if you are a student, career starter, career changer, careers’ professional, parent, teacher or employer, we believe that icould is an important resource for you.

They do this through their online library of careers videos. You can search through these videos in a number of ways: employment sector, life theme, tags, and there's an advanced search option too. The website also contains articles. The Focus on section of the site is sponsored but it isn't obtrusive. There are a few games to help you: Fortune Teller, Buzz Test and MeTycoon. The Buzz Test is an online version of David Hogdson's 'The Buzz' book based on Myers-Briggs and much loved by many careers advisers I know.

The site is well liked by many careers advisers . It's visual and appealling to both adults and young people.

Careerbox

Careersbox is a free online library of careers related film, news and information. As the preferred digital new media partner to the Institute of Career Guidance, the largest careers body in the UK, Careersbox aim is to deliver the right information at the right time to careers advisers and job seekers.

Our case study films show real people doing real jobs, giving viewers insight into careers across all sectors and helping them to find the right career.

Careersbox, in partnership with BT, also provide a series of videos on interview techniques. I know this is an area often requested by careers advisers and it's helpful to be able to direct them to a good source of visual content. BT Moving On is also a useful resource for interview skills (and is available as an iphone and android app which I will have to get around to trying).

Another plus is that from just a quick look around the site I've managed to find videos of female engineers and men working in hairdressing in childcare, so it would be possible to recommend this site (and the icould site) from an equality point of view.

A new feature on their site is Skills Explorer. There are only a few questions so it can't be compared to the detailed questionnaire programmes such as Kudos, and some of the questions could probably do with some explanation and context.  You can be emailed a skills report when you've completed it. When I tried it I wasn't given a wide variety of occupations but this is still in BETA so changes can be expected. It could however be used as a started point for discussion.

Lifetracks

aims to be the first place all young people turn to when they're making decisions about their work, study or training. We believe all young people have the capacity to make their own decisions and life choices, provided they have access to high quality, impartial information and advice.

The content covers learning, working, skills and experience, through articles, videos and podcasts. Each article has a 'What's Next?' list at the end from which you can select tasks and save into your own to-do list once you've registered.

Unfortunately, funding cuts mean that the site content will be moved to thesite.org so many of the plans for the site won't be going ahead.

Drawbacks 

Although it's good to have these visually appealling, informative, free sites, they are not without pros and cons. IT systems in many schools and organisations such as the one I work in either can't or won't allow for use of video and sound which will render much of the content useless. This is probably the major drawback for most people and I've often had to wait till I'm at home to be able to view videos from such sites - I don't think young people want to spend their free time watching careers videos!

I also mentioned earlier that currency of information is important, something that's not always possible to find out on a website that might not include a publication date or updated on date. However, sites such as icould and Careersbox also make good use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, letting us know that they are constantly updating and adding to their sites.

CILIP CDG UK National Conference, Future Inns, Bristol, 21st November 2011

My attendance at this conference was fairly last minute as I was lucky enough to win a sponsored place. I was booking flights on Thursday afternoon to fly down to Bristol on Monday morning!

Apologies in advance for the length of this post - there were a lot of presentations! Despite this I don't think there was one session that didn't hold my interest in some way.

I applied for the sponsored place because the theme of this year's conference seemed so relevant to me. The overall theme was 'The Practical Professional' and many of the presentations focused on the transferable skills information professionals have and how we can make the most of these for our career development, whether improving our services or thinking about changing sector. As I'm fairly sure that my next career move is imminent within the next 3-4 months and that it will more than likely involve changing sectors I was keen to get any advice I could.

The morning sessions focussed on being a career chameleon. The first presentation was from Amanda Poulton. Amanda has worked in public, academic and NHS libraries so was able to speak about the benefits of changing sector, the transferable skills that all librarians have and how important it was to research a new sector. This research might include work shadowing, networking on Twitter and joining professional groups. All of this will allow you to find about the skills needed in that particular sector. I found her advice about looking at your skills, matching them to the new sector and explaining how you would use your skills in practice incredibly useful.

Next up was Emily Hopkins. As a library manager in an NHS trust she has experienced an great change in a short space of time but was able to speak about how she had managed this in a positive way. The changes included mergers (getting people to work together and merging policies and procedures), moves (including providing a service when library stock was in storage for six months!), restructures (re-evaluating the service to meet the needs of new customers) and IT issues. Again, she highlighted that library and information professionals have valuable, transferable skills and that sector knowledge can be picked up on the job.

Katie Burn & Kirsty Whitehead both from University of York, gave practical tips on how to be a career chameleon. Both are currently on secondments – Katie as an executive officer working on the refurbishment of the library, Kirsty working as an academic liaison assistant.  They spoke about having clearly defined career goals, making the most of challenging situations, managing and coping with change, having a commitment to keep developing your skills and building effective relationships. Their final tip was to be proactive and dynamic. I thought this was useful advice as it can be easy to have a negative mindset when the outlook seems bleak but actually doing something can help you to feel more positive.

After a short break, David Clover gave a presentation about thinking big in your career development. He talked about two major activities in his career development: taking part in the Future Leaders programme and the Travelling Librarian award. He spoke about how at whatever stage you are at in your career it is useful to be reflective and to look at your goals from a personal viewpoint. When reviewing our developmental activities we need to have an awareness of the wider external context as well as our own particular interests and motivations.

 Phil Bradley spoke passionately about social media. I've attended a few events on social media aimed at career guidance practitioners or business, but this was a different perspective to anything I've heard before. Phil stressed that as information professionals we should take social media very seriously, make sure we are visible there and taking part. The term 'social media' can be quite misleading; it's not just about 'friends', it's about connecting, communicating and finding information. It was interesting to hear that social media is taking over from search engines as the way of finding information and that search engines are attempting to include these social sources  in their results. I feel that I'm quite well versed in social media but I discovered a few new tools to try out.

Katherin Schopflin spoke about being a knowledge manager. As librarians we have the skills needed for knowledge management as we are experts in connecting people with the information they need. The distinction between the two areas is that librarians often work with explicit information whereas knowledge managers are working with the information in people's heads. Katherin explained how this was done - through audits, processes, developing tools, training and development and project tracking. She said that while there were many benefits such as being at the heart of the organisation, respected with a good career path and lots of (well-paid!) opportunities, the drawbacks were that it's ill-defined and hard to prove value. It's also not for anyone who likes to deal with collections and be on the frontline.

After lunch there was a speed networking session. In small groups we introduced ourselves, spoke about what we did and picked one thing we thought was unique to us (this was something that most of us found difficult!) After 3 minutes we had to switch around and speak to someone else. It was interested to find out more about other attendees and to hear about the variety of services they worked in, e.g. NHS, academic, school, law.

 The afternoon sessions were on the theme of making a splash. The first was by Miggie Pickton and covered how she had set up services to researchers at the University of Northampton. Research has been increasing at the university and they have the same concerns as larger universities. Instead of having a liaison librarian for each subject area, Miggie is a research support specialist. She described the range of people she works with and provides services for within the university. It was important for her to identify the needs of researchers and look at their attitudes to current services as well as what new services could be provided. This was done through a survey as well as face to face meetings and focus groups.

Gil Young, Emily Hopkins and Tracey Pratchett talked about the career 'scramble net' and negotiating it in your 20s, 30s and 40s. All three had worked in different sectors. Emily had been advised early in her career not to be pigeonholed and therefore had moved sectors enabling her to be flexible and gain transferable skills. Tracey also spoke about the importance of transferable skills and demonstrating impact in her work as a clinical librarian. Gil talked about how she faced redundancy and what she did to get through it; networking and planning seem to be key.

Jo Myhill gave a lively presentation about how academic liaison librarians at the University of Bedfordshire are making themselves more visible, both virtually and physically, since being moved away from the front desk. Being a blogger, I was particularly interested to hear that their social librarian's blog, Bedtimes and Deadlines, has 500 subscribers and lots of interaction. The library's use of tools such as blogs, QR codes, Delicious, banners etc has increased hits to their library databases - over 30% of hits come via their library page. Physically, they've used welcome desks and roving to help students. The team even has it's own logo!.

The final paper of the day was presented by Lizz Jennings on a theme of 'Every flavour career beans'. Once again Lizz was another sector changer, moving from special to public to prison to academic libraries and she spoke about the benefits and drawbacks and how to get the most out of changing sectors. I was interested in how she had identified aspects of the same core activities which she had been able to transfer between sectors. She echoed previous presenters who had spoken about looking at your skills and how they can be repurposed for different sectors and being responsible for your own development.

The best paper award was presented to Katie Burn & Kirsty Whitehead, with Amanda Poulton the runner up.

It was a long day but well worth it. The day has made me consider a number of things for my future career development and job search. Firstly, I need to take charge of my own career development which I hope I am starting to do. Secondly, I'm planning to select a couple of sectors to research and target so that when jobs are advertised I can apply for them more confidently. I know that I may have to look outside my wish list of sectors but I think even the process of doing this will be helpful.  Thanks to NE CILIP for providing this opportunity. 

NE CILIP mini umbrella event at Northumbria University, 23rd November 2011

It's been a busy time career development wise for me recently, this being the second event I've attended this week. Monday was the CDG National Conference in Bristol which I will be blogging about and writing about for the NE CDG newsletter.

The theme of this NE CILIP event was 'Bleak House or Great Expectations?' and it's the third mini umbrella that's been held, though the first one I've attended. The first speaker was Isabel Hood from CILIP council who gave a presentation on where CILIP is at the moment and where it and the profession is heading, against both the internal and external context. She talked about the difficult circumstances both the organisation and the profession finds itself in at the moment. This was a good update for me as I'd only rejoined CILIP this year so although this might have been familar to a lot of people present it gave me a good overview of the CILIP of 2011 and its future plans. I was pleased to hear that these plans involved being more inclusive, bring in information people in other types of role, as I felt this wasn't the case when I was a member in the past.

The next presentation was from Rachel Steele, a clinical librarian from Tees, Esk, and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. She talked about the clinical librarian project she was involved in which is running from August 2011 until July 2012. She is working with 4 different groups/teams within the Trust providing among other services, literature searches, critical appraisal and outreach. There are a number of possible benefits from this work including improved skills for clinicians, improved awareness of information resources available and continous improvement in clinical effectiveness. Although clinical librarianship and evidence based practice was something I'd heard of I didn't know anything about it so it was useful to learn some background as well as more about the project.

Mark Steele (Stockton Libraries) and Kathryn Armstrong (South Tyneside Libraries) spoke about the Tyne2Seine project which has linked schools and libraries in South Tyneside and France. The aims and objectives of the work were to: link schools and libraries across national and local boundaries; link authors and reading across boundaries; extend knowledge of European languages; stimulate creativity; share cultural experiences; share and develop expertise; and develop electronic learning. As well as working with partners in France they also worked with 7 Stories and the Customs House.

Dilys Young and Christine Willoughby from Northumbria University Library talked about feedback mechanisms and how these were used to develop services. It was interesting to hear about how national information such as the NSS (National Student Survey) were used to build up a picture of how the library service was performing and how it could improve. The statistics demonstrated areas where they were doing well, such as stock levels, areas where work was needed, ie space and how they were improving over time. Responding to this feedback is key in the current climate. It was interesting to hear that students still place a lot of emphasis on having a physical library space as well as remote access to electronic resources. This was something that the speakers from Middleborugh College had also found.  

After a break, Sharon Reeve from Newcastle City Libraries explained the services they delivered for visually impaired users. She talked about the NEALIS (North East Accessible Libraries Information Service) project made up of 12 North East libraries and funded by MLA.  Newcastle City Libraries have developed a dedicated area for the visually impaired and have reading buddies (volunteers on the Duke of Edinburgh scheme) who help visually impaired readers. The reading buddies help by guiding them around the library, assisting with catalogue searches, etc. Future plans include possibily expanding work clubs to involve the visually impaired, ebook pilots and rolling out staff training.

Finally, Claire Donlan, James Wells and Tracey Totty from Middlesborough College talked about how they were meeting the expectations of their users for new technologies despite limitations. Some of their methods included using free electronic resources available on the web and making the most of what they already had such as their VLE. Gathering evidence of expectations and responding to them continued the theme of previous speakers. I was interested in the free resources they were using such as QR codes, Twitter and Infographics, some of which I've used and others I would be keen to investigate.

Despite the title, this event demonstrated that it's not all bleak in the profession in the North East and there is a lot of positive and innovative work going on. There was a range of stands from CDG, Newcastle City Libraries, Stockton Libraries, UC & R Group and the NE regional disaster network among others. It was good to catch up with some old colleagues and meet some new people.