Thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

 Librarians were, still and will continue to advocate their profession. They advocate in many ways and at different levels from the day they joined the profession and probably until they retired! I do agree public libraries are suffering at the moment in the UK but they are not alone, school libraries is another important sector that has being suffering form cuts and low profile.

I chose to be a librarian and since I made that decision I have been explaining the important role of libraries and their value. I work in international private school fairly stable working environment. I advocate my service to the school community, students and teachers. Explain to students the important role of the library in their learning. Unfortunately it takes as much effort as to advocate teachers as well. They do not encourage or direct students to use the valuable and costly resources available for them in the library. Once I had a discussion with a teacher who believes that a librarian does not need to have a high qualification to run a library. I wasn’t expecting that from an educator who supposed to be working in partnership with library staff to facilitate teaching and learning for future generations.        

Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

This thing shows you that there are many ideas and ways of attending /organising face- to- face events that could help develop your professional. They are great ideas but as the thing mentioned, events cost money and time. Due to the financial difficulties we are all facing at the moment it is difficult to ask your employer to bear the cost of sending you to a conference or workshop. As result of that some institutions started to explore cheep ways of providing PD for their staff such as in house training or fund for local/regional events.

 

I’m a librarian who is currently does not have the money or the time to attend conferences or professional events?  I substitute them by relying more and more on e social networks. However enjoyable they are to use, great on answering questions and connecting you with peers across the globe, face the face events will still be the best way to pick up, up-date and share ideas. I have to admit, it has been quite some time since I attended an event. I have been busy enriching my experience since I finished my masters. I think it’s about time for me to start looking into this. What I would really like to attend is one of those big conferences where I can meet many librarians and information professionals to compensate for the years I have not been able to. But I have to fund it from my own money and use my own time.

I have no fear of speaking in public as I did this before although it wasn’t library related issue. Perhaps working overseas for quite some time and in different countries where you exposed to different cultures and people with different background and understanding I think has enable me to overcome the fears of speaking in public

Thing 14: Zotero, Mendeley, citulike

Just like Isla did my masters dissertation following the traditional way of writing reference, generating and adding references manually. I wish I was aware of any of thing14 tools then.

Zotero / Mendeley / citeulike

Explored the 3 tools but got hocked on Mendeley. Since I have not used it before, I spent more time going through it trying to familiarise my self with it. I like its features and the support it gives. I will be willing to introduce it to my students as a tool that will help them go through the reference process effectively and efficiently.

Thing 13: Google docs, Dropbox and Wikis

     

Useful tools for those who work in the learning and teaching environment not just librarians and information professionals. I was first introduced to Google docs as part of in house training. I saw its usefulness immediately and decided to use it wherever documents needed input from the library team.  For example, I collaborated with the team on writing and updating documents concerned with policies and procedures that needed to be included in the staff manual. It saved us the hassle of sending documents backwards and forwards and allowed us to do the job effectively and efficiently. I would love to use it more and more.

     

I explored dropbox for the first time via 23 cpd. It’s the kind of tool that will probably make my life easier and saves the worry of having to make sure that I have the document I need before I set off from my desk. I have opened an account and I have now started to load my documents. It will definitely become part of my daily working life and I would recommend it for my team. 

 I would prefer to explore them a bit more. I have a feeling that I might not need to use them at work as we store all documents that are related to the library in a folder designated for library use only on the school Intranet. That way the library team is able to have access and everyone can comment and update.

Thing 12: Putting the social into social media

In regard to the advantages and disadvantages of social networking:

Social networking has no doubt made it easier for librarians and information professionals who work in isolated or poor environments to communicate with colleagues world wide. However, the tool of virtual communication can be very expensive and not easy to acquire by an individual. For example in the third world, the majority of librarians use their offices’ computers and Internet connection to communicate virtually.

 I have used social media to develop my career professionally at a slow pace before, but after I joined cpd 23 I started to use it more often at a wider and deeper level. Cpd 23 has helped me to increase my contact list, follow blogs and join interesting professional groups. Because of this I’m spending more and more time now on social networks than ever before and I am enjoying a large number of professional debates and discussions. Therefore I will most likely try to keep and increase my contacts and groups through social networks. 

Social networking creates a sense of community in terms of giving you the opportunity to follow like minded people and join discussions where you feel your comments could be useful and helpful, and where your questions could be answered.   

Thing 11: Mentoring

Being mentored is a great way of motivating and developing your career. However finding the right mentor who has an interest in what you do and who is willing to spend the time and energy mentoring can be a scary and tricky process. It is fair to say that I have been thinking about how to find a mentor for quite some time.

In most cases I come across mentees who found formal mentors via work, a colleague or their boss, but in my case, I will most likely look for a virtual mentor. The down side of having a virtual mentor is losing the benefit of face-to-face contact, which could impact negatively on the relationship between you and the mentor. However the use of Skype and other such ways of communicating could help avoid the substitution of face to face contact thus helping the relationship.

My informal mentor is someone I respect, reach out to in the most difficult of situations and is someone who I feel comfortable enough with to discuss my career options and take his advice on board. He has given me a tremendous amount of help.

Thing 10: Graduate, Traineeship, Masters Degrees

My undergraduate degree was in Library and Documentation Science (Khartoum). It was a four year course which I think is a bit long, the whole course could have been done in less than four years. I chose to study librarianship because it appealed to me than any of the other courses available to me at that age, no doubt the love of reading and being in libraries at different stages of my learning have contributed. Throughout the course I kept being asked, ‘what is librarianship and what does it entail?’

After graduation I got a job as a library assistant for 3 years in an academic library. It was an interesting job but not very challenging. I then got married and joined my husband who was working in a famine zone with SCF. I had to stop being a librarian and instead I became a research assistant for a researcher who was trying to find out how people cope with famine. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a research assistant as it allowed me to travel around villages collecting data. Following this I moved overseas, but this time I was able to be a librarian for a couple of years in one of the international schools.

On my return to the UK I worked in public libraries for sometime. My husband was then sent overseas again and since I wasn’t sure about being able to find a job out there, I decided to upgrade my qualification by taking a distant learning masters degree course whilst living overseas. Aberystwyth was recommended to me and I liked the course so I went for it. Fortunately, I did find a job as a librarian in an international school whilst doing my dissertation on the use of e-resources by HE students in Kampala- Uganda, where I was living at that time.

Now, I’m still overseas, this time in Khartoum-Sudan, where I work as a Deputy Library Manager in an IB international school. I find working in international schools very interesting as I am able to deal with students and teachers from different backgrounds, reading cultures and different attitudes towards libraries and librarians. Chartership, I have been thinking about it for quite sometime but have never had the courage to take practical steps toward it. I think my main worry is how I will find a mentor which lead me to the next thing (mentoring)