Skip to main content

Professionally engaged? A final reflection (Thing 22)




Am I an engaged professional? After working through and reflecting on this last section of the course I would say yes, but with room for improvement both with being involve with CILIP and being a better advocate for my library and libraries in my local area. I have become aware through looking at my own experiences and talking to other librarians that people’s engagement and level of involvement with professional bodies will change throughout their working lives. And this is OK. It’s OK if the only way you engage with CILIP, is to read the ‘Information Professional’ magazine. You may be on 2 committees and attend every conference. That’s great. What’s important is that you are part of a professional organisation and supporting it in whatever way you feel you can – and this may change. I would also say you should challenge them on issues and topics where you feel more should be done which is something I need to get better at doing. Professional library organisations are here to represent us and the profession, and if we don’t support and tell them who we are and what we need, they can’t effectively do this, and support us and our careers.


Interacting with podcasts was a totally new experience for me and I loved it! The Podcast  software on the iPad work well, with the only negative being the limited choice of categories options which I initially chose to look through, and in one case my bad judgement of a podcast. The ‘Out Here in America’ series though has bee a real find for me and I am still enjoying the episodes. With the range of topics and themes of podcasts including library related issues and news, I’m starting to see that podcasts could be another way to engage with the wider library world and keep informed about library news or new titles etc. They could also be used as accessible teaching tools and resources too at work. I didn’t manage to make a podcast due to lacking both time and equipment but reading the instructions again I started to think about uses for creating Podcasts at work. And I feel this could be a great opportunity for me and the pupils to engage with technology and digital media (so developing their digital literacy skills), to create programmes about happenings in the school library, new titles this month or our reviewers recommend. Why not. It’s an exciting prospect. Don’t Vlog – Pod! 


In the past six months I have been involved with more library advocacy work that for the entire 4 years I have been a school Librarian. Faced with halving the number of school librarians in Moray from 8 to 4, my colleagues and I set out inform, educate, and alter mindsets about the values and work of school librarians. Local Councillors were contacted with data highlighting the impact of school libraries on pupils learning, professional library organisations and literacy groups were also contacted to ask for their support in retaining school librarians and be our advocates as were authors we had worked with.  Staff and Parent groups too received information about our work too. Ultimately, we failed to reverse these cuts. On one hand it was clear we should have already been promoting and advocating our service to local politicians and community, but I and my colleagues are also now very aware of what we can to promote school libraries and who to contact and the kind of support they may be able to give us, as well as information we need to provide. Having to work through the library advocacy  section has made me realise that though I  have a greater awareness of contacts and support for school libraries in Moray, I need to have information and evidence to hand about my service (statistics, footfall, annual report, infographics etc) to regularly share with my school and the wider community to show the value the school library. Evidence is part of the key to this process.  Feeding this information to professional organisations like CILIP and CILIPS will also provide them with evidence to be better able to advocate on the sectors behalf. The more people I can engage about the value of my sector and service, the more (I hope) they will become advocates for the service. I think the Cork City Council Library development document I mentioned in Thing 20 gives a clear example of the work that needs to be done to engage the community, and its clear vision for the service is inspiring, and I will use this to see if I can take ideas (scaled down as I am a library one man band) in inform my advocacy and library strategy that I will have to make. 


I have had a mixed relationship with CILIP as I discussed in Thing 21, though now we are over the rocky ground and relations are more harmonious, with a few niggly issues remaining. Reflecting on this relationship and looking at where I am now from seven years ago when I had stopped being a member, it is clear to me that I am in a more engaged place professionally than I was, with a real positive impact on my CPD, and this is down to me being a member of CILIP and seeking CILIP Chartership status that this has happened. I’m now a conference convert and have realised all I have missed by not attending them sooner, gaining ideas and insights into the profession to inspire and influence my work. I’ve discovered Webinars as training tools, I’m actively looking to be involved with re-starting the CILIPS North branch and I want training and committee meeting delivery altered to allow me and others living in more rural areas be able to engage further in the life of CILIP and CILIPS. I’m now realising the more I feel involved in the organisation the more I want to get involved and support it. Not everyone will feel like this and that is fine – I certainly didn’t seven years ago. I’m enjoying the opportunities that being a member of CILIP has given me.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rudai 12: Online Collaborations

In the rural north east of Scotland working with school library colleagues is a delight, a great chance to meet, discuss, share ideas etc. But the rural nature itself can make the physical act of meeting up a bit of a trial – even arranging a meeting can be lengthy process. Our next meeting – now set for 19 th March, was the result of at over 27 emails over two days which got mixed up with a training day date too. Perhaps there are simpler ways of doing things and Doodle has stood out as a potentially useful tool to aid in the arrangement of meetings, and one I shall be looking to trial to arrange the next meeting! When reflecting on recent group meeting a and collaborative working, one in particular jumps out at me, an application for school library improvement funding which a group of us had volunteered/ been volunteered to undertake. Time was limited with only 4 weeks to get this completed – two of which covered the October break. After exchanges ideas, suggestions and commen

Simply Symbaloo

I've been using Symbaloo for a couple of years now and it's a great free web tool. Essentially it's a bookmarking tool for websites which you can curate into different webmixes - collections of websites. Each website is displayed as a tile, which you can re-name, alter the image and move about the webmix You then click on that tile to go to the website.  I have various webmix pages including for  collating web resources and videos for future projects, for CPD reading and webinars and also one for books I've reviewed for Reading Zone. It's a great being able to see what I've read and reviewed and bring up the review with just a click, and remind myself what a book was about before a book talk! As Symbaloo is a website you log into it from any device and manage your webmixes. Also, as someone who used to keep websites open in a tab on his iPad till I needed them, using Symbaloo has allowed me to tidy up by web browser and keep it much less cluttered! One other adv

First Badge

Really delighted to say that I’ve achieved my first badge for  RudaĆ­23 Visual Communicator. I have really enjoyed this part of the course which has been a steep learning curve for me. Now for the next badge!  https://openbadgepassport.com/app/badge/info/67771