Thing 7: real-life networks

CC image courtesy of Aidan Jones on Flickr.

Throughout my traineeship I’ve been lucky to have been given lots of opportunities to go out and meet other professionals in the field. The first proper “networking” activities that I was part of was with the London Research Libraries Trainee Programme. The graduate trainees of the various libraries of the University of London take part in visits and events to help them understand how different libraries run and the roles within them. The first event, a welcome party at the start of the year, taught me a couple of things about networking events: 1) that I will attempt to eat as much free food as possible and 2) that I freeze up whenever I’m told to “network”.

This is something I’ve consistently encountered with each event I go to. Socialising informally – fine, but when it’s timetabled in as “networking opportunity”, I get all awkward and begin to panic. What this “thing” has brought to my attention though is that, thankfully, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Joeyanne Libraryanne’s great blog post on networking for introverts has really been insightful and hopefully I can use the tips that she highlights from “Networking for people who hate networking” to take some of the pressure off next time I’m faced with the dreaded networking opportunity. But what’s really important for me is to not look at it as a structured activity but just as free time when I can chat to other people who are in the same place for similar reasons.

Though I feel like I’ve become more comfortable networking in real life as time goes on, there are a couple of things that I’ve found impact on what I get out of it: firstly, going to an event with someone that I already know. Though this is very nice, I do have the tendency to talk to only them for the whole time and personally, being on my own forces me to push past the awkward-barrier and have a chat to other people. Secondly, I’ve been finding that sometimes I’m just not “in the mood” for networking. I think I have a mixture of introvert and extrovert characteristics, and presumably this is the more introverted side of me that sometimes just wants to be alone or with people that I know and are comfortable with. For me, the only way around this is to just fight through the unwilling thoughts and get stuck in.

I became a member of both CILIP and ARLIS this year to take advantage of the fact that graduate trainees are charged at student rates (otherwise membership would be a really tricky decision as it is quite expensive). I enjoy being a member and getting the publications sent to me and I think I have been to quite a few events with both organisations. Admittedly I don’t have much of an excuse as I’m in London where most things are happening and I have lovely employers who encourage me to go to workshops, visits, conferences.

With ARLIS (the Arts Libraries Society), I’ve been to a workshop on art and design reference resources, an event on art librarianship as a career and a visit to the National Maritime Museum. All these events have been fantastically helpful and interesting in their own way and because it’s all about arts libraries everything is directed very much the way I’d like my career to go.

CILIP events are obviously much broader and I’ve really enjoyed getting a sense of other tempting routes of librarianship. The New Professionals Day held fairly recently was a fantastic opportunity and there was lots of time in between sessions and at breaks to network.

I’ve also been to a couple of things run by cpd25  including a visit to the Wellcome Library and a one-day conference on applying to library school. I’d recommend keeping an eye on their events page to anyone working in an academic library in London as they do arrange really interesting things.

These have, for the most part, been paid events but there are still a wealth of networking (and professional development) events that you can attend without paying a penny. The London LibTeachMeet is probably the best event that I’ve been to, for networking and for information. It had a great atmosphere and there was an opportunity to meet all kinds of librarians and information professionals. I’ve found that at London events, it’s often hard to meet someone not working at an academic library, so for me it was a chance to speak to people in other sectors. I’ve also attended visits and meet-ups organised online. LISNPN is a great one for organising nice pub meetups and, thanks to Rosie, I went on a visit to various libraries in Oxford which was organised through the forum.

Thing 6: online networking

 

LinkedIn

CC image courtesy of BlogMama on Flickr

I want to like it, I really do. But every time I get motivated enough to go on LinkedIn, I find that there are suddenly much more pressing things to do like making a cup of tea or staring out of the window. Let’s face it, it’s not the most exciting interface and the people on it aren’t posting amusing or terribly interesting things. It’s all very professional, which is – to be fair – why I want to use it.

It’s just that LinkedIn is not really doing anything for me right now. My fairly minimal profile hangs around in cyber space and serves the purpose of popping up as a pretty neutral top result when I google myself (see Thing 3).

In an effort to get more out of LinkedIn I added a photo and… well,  that’s about it. The information on it isn’t out of date but neither is it putting everything that I do out there – I feel a bit uneasy about basically having my CV up for the world to see. Things that I have done though are to join groups, so I’m now going to make an effort to keep up with what’s going on in the library groups.

 

Facebook

I point-blank refuse to use Facebook for professional networking. My profile has got the privacy settings ramped up as far as they go and I use it solely on a personal basis. I signed up in 2006 I think when it was fairly new and you could only join if you had a university email address. Since then it’s scary how big it’s grown. I use it for contacting friends and sharing photos. There are better mediums for doing both out there but everyone seems to be on Facebook so it’s just easier.

Although I’m not going to use Facebook for any sort of professional medium, I do see the merit in libraries having institute Facebook pages. It’s a great way to interact with users because, as I say, everyone seems to be on it.

 

LISNPN

I found out about the LIS New Professionals Network when I first started my traineeship and it’s been really useful. I’ve used it to connect with other graduate trainees and new professionals and a few months ago I visited Oxford and it’s libraries, an event organised totally on LISNPN.

There’s a lot of great information and it’s really good to have a community of well-wishing professionals that will help with any questions. It moves at a slower pace than Twitter and there’s no character limit so I’ve had some really helpful, detailed responses to queries that I’ve posted.

 

As for the Librarians as Teachers Network and CILIP communities, these are networks that I’ve been lurking around for a while and may continue to lurk for a little bit. And I guess some time in the future something may take my fancy and I’ll get involved.

CILIP New Professionals Day 2012

I just wanted to commit some time to writing about my experience of the CILIP New Professionals Day 2012 that I attended last Friday. There are links to some excellent blog posts about the day handily gathered on the Ned Potter’s post about the day, so check those out for a more comprehensive overview of the day.

The New Professionals Day is a free event run by CILIP to give information, inspiration and advice to those us of taking (or thinking about taking) our first steps in the world of library and information management. The day had a great friendly and enthusiastic atmosphere and there was lots of networking to be done throughout.

The first presentation was from Ned Potter (@theREALwikiman) on branding and how new professionals can positively impact their personal brand. You can tell that this presentation had an effect on me, because look, here I am getting online. I’d been rather neglecting my twitter account of late but was motivated to get tweeting and start a blog after hearing Ned’s sensible advice on the matter. In the past I had been rather put off by social networking as professional development – it seemed like a lot of work for very little pay-0ff. But Ned’s motto of ‘dont panic’ and his helpful instructions of how to ease yourself into the online sphere made me think that it may well be worthwhile (and fun) to develop my personal brand online.

The key message was to do something; we didn’t have to be ‘super-librarians’ (damn, I wanted the cape) but we all have a brand that we can either let be decided for us or we can take steps to try and impact it positively. The great thing about Ned’s talk was the amount of options and practical ideas he gave us on influencing personal brand: from getting online, organising, publishing, sharing or presenting, there was something in there to suit everyones interests and strengths.

Having seen and heard a lot of the Wikiman on the web since I’ve become a new professional, it was great to finally attend an event where Ned was speaking. His presentation was engaging and informative and I’ll certainly be looking back to his Prezi on 5 ways to influence your brand in the future to help my professional development.

After this talk the new professionals split into three groups to take part in various workshops. My first one was Continuing Professional Development (CPD) adventures by Emma Illingworth (@wigglesweets). Emma was great at getting everyone involved and thinking about all the different CPD opportunities (to be fair, we nicked a few ideas from Ned’s presentation). We were given scenarios for information professionals with certain goals in mind and asked to suggest ways in which CPD could help. The result of this was a set of impressive lists of various CPD activities which I’ll try to keep in mind throughout my career.

The second workshop I attended was by Richard Hawkins (@usernametaken10) and Lisa Hutchins (@MyWeeklyBook) onCyberLibrarians: information management jobs in the digital age, which was a fascinating look into the more technology-based side of information management. It was great to hear that the skills that I use in my current job in a fairly traditional library could be used in roles like those of an information architect or website manager. I hadn’t ever considered this side of information management because I didn’t think I was “tech-y” enough, but Richard and Lisa were great at helping us realise how the things that they do weren’t all that far away from what a “traditional” librarian does. It’s all about helping users find the information they need easily.

After the second workshop we stopped for lunch, and at some point during this post it was bound to happen – I had to talk about the burritos. Lunch was amazing. Good call from the CILIP organisers! Food aside, there was plenty of networking to be done and when suitably stuffed, we headed on up to our final workshop of the day. Mine was Have you tried logging out and then in again? with Simon Barron ( @simonXIX) and Abby Barker (@abbybarker). I’m involved a little bit with e-resources in my current job but I was eager to find out what types of things a dedicated e-resources librarian gets up to. Abby and Simon talked us through their jobs and how they ended up working with e-resources, deliberate or not. They showed us that you don’t have to know all the technical bits and bobs, it’s all about understanding what the user is trying to do and how they’re trying to do it – more about people skills than being a computer-whizz.

With all the new professionals back together again after the workshops, the day was rounded off by presentations from Bethan Ruddock (@bethanar) and Phil Bradley (@PhilBradley). Bethan spoke on How to assemble your New Professionals Toolkit: tools needed were a network, a mentor, resources, a plan and a voice. As I listened, it was good to tick things off my mental ‘toolkit checklist’ and helped me identify what could help me further as a new professional.

Phil Bradley spoke about social media and your future career and I loved the uncompromising approach he took to the subject (yes, the rest of us DO have to get on Google+). It is vital for us all to engage with social media as a professional tool and it is our job to understand how to use it. Phil showed us how social media affected the results bought back by search engines and how social media allowed information relevant to you to be brought straight to your attention.

The day was a really useful and thought-provoking event and I took a lot away from it. It gave me a lot of ideas of how to get more involved, further my professional development and it led me to spend my weekend trawling through previously-unbeknownst-to-me social media!

All of the presentations from the day have been listed here on the CILIP website.

…Well, so much for keeping this post short!