Conferences and note-taking

In the past three months I have been to three library conferences, one big [approx 600 delegates], one medium [I think about 200 delegates] and one small [less than 100 delegates]. I got a lot out of each one as individual experiences, but I also found myself reflecting on them as a group and considering the ways in which my attitude to getting the best use out of them has altered.

In the past I would write copious notes, which I would then turn in to lengthy blog posts afterwards, generate numerous tweets during, and actually find myself having consumed so much information that I struggled to put it to some productive use. In fact I often found that once I had blogged about my experience, I rarely thought of it again.

I recently read this very interesting blog post on conferences and note taking, and as I'd just been to the CILIP Cymru Wales conference in Swansea [the medium sized one!] it really resonated. It advocates organising your notes into categories and assigning action points to them, this should then [hopefully!] translate into a 'to do' list and make your notes more useful.

I made very few notes during the sessions at the CILIP Wales conference, other than to jot down references to various articles or resources and a reminder to investigate them further. I barely tweeted at all, other than to comment on how much I liked the food and being by the beach! In short, I mainly listened, talked to other delegates, and generally absorbed the atmosphere, rather than trying to cram in loads of note taking. As a result I came away with what I felt was a more manageable list of ideas that I could explore later, instead of my more usual overwhelming pages and pages of notes that would probably just end up forgotten in a desk drawer because I didn't have time to go through them.

When I went to a big conference at the beginning of July (the CILIP conference in Liverpool) I felt it was important to continue this practice. I did take notes this time, there were so many sessions crammed in that I thought I might start to loose track of what I meant if I just jotted down keywords and to do lists. However I did still stand by the mantra of 'less is more', and tried to avoid copying everything down and attempting to quote speakers. This was made much easier because the speakers slides would be made available online, so we could access them at a later date.

In the past I have used my tweets as a form of note taking, I find that I am unable to listen properly to the speaker, take notes and compose tweets all at the same time, so combining the tweeting and note taking seemed to be a good solution. I would simply Storify my tweets after the event and then use them to compose my blog posts. However, as mentioned earlier, the notes I took this time were quite specific to me, things I wanted to try out, or explore further, or ideas they sparked. They weren't a record of what was said, and so would be pretty unintelligible to anyone else but me. It seemed pointless putting them out in public, and so I just took notes and didn't tweet very much.

And I actually felt more comfortable not tweeting. I've always been happy to tweet from conferences and believe in sharing what's happening, especially for events that can be prohibitively expensive to attend. But I did always feel a pressure to accurately convey the speakers intent and to provide enough context. There was a freedom to not feeling that responsibility, or having my attention split that I quite enjoyed.

Last week I attended the ARLIS conference in Cardiff. It was my first time at an ARLIS event, and it was also my first experience of being part of a conference working party. I found that being part of the organising team meant that I experienced the conference from a different perspective than if I had been a delegate (unsurprisingly!!).

One of my responsibilities was to blog about the conference afterwards, so I found that informed how I made notes. I didn't get to attend all the sessions, I spent some time manning the reception desk, but when I did I was no longer taking notes for myself, but instead for the blog. It meant the types of notes I took altered, because they had a specific purpose, and I adjusted what I recorded to suit that need.

So I guess what I mainly learnt was;

• For me, notes with a purpose, either because I've been asked to feedback on a session, or as a 'to do' list, seem to be more effective than simply trying to capture everything that happens.
• That it's hard to give my full attention to things if I have a competing obligation (like tweeting, or being an organiser) so if I want to do those things I need to make sure I factor it in.
• And that one of the things I like best about attending conferences is the networking (although I hate that term, and just think meeting people!) and that I find it a lot easier to do at the smaller conferences.

Hopefully, having the chance to reflect on what works best for me means that when I attend future events, I can bear it in mind and get the most out of the experience. I'd love to hear other peoples feelings about how they get value from attending them too!

Library Camp Wales 2014 in Cardiff

After months of planning the day of the first ever Library Camp Wales dawned bright (although sadly not sunny!). If you've never heard of a Library Camp before, it is an 'un-conference', a free, participant driven event. The idea is that instead of booking speakers and presentations, the attendees pitch ideas on the day and contribute to the discussions.

After setting up in our fabulous venue, the Glamorgan Building in Cathays Park, our Library Campers started arriving and got stuck in to playing Human Bingo.



Some of the Library Camp Wales team manning the reception area

After the sessions were pitched and the timetable for the day was arranged the day got under way.

I didn't get to take part in many sessions as I was wandering about making sure everyone had all they needed, but I did get to facilitate the Speed Networking event, which was very noisy!

Speed Networking in action

Lunch involved a lot of food (Library Campers were very generous with their contributions) and we also had our very own customized cupcakes.

In the afternoon I got to attend a session on library skills and qualifications (which I'll blog about separately). Before I knew it, it was time for the wrap up and awarding the prizes for the badge competition, Human Bingo prize draw, and cake competition.

Winner of the Cake Competition!

We rounded the day off in Buffalo, enjoying 2 for 1 cocktails!

A card catalogue in Buffalo Bar, photo courtesy of @karen_gibbins

Check out a Storify of the day here.

Library Camp UK 2013 part 1

Last week I set off for Library Camp UK 2013 at the new Library of Birmingham. I’m not sure how many people were attending, but it certainly seemed as though there was a really large crowd gathered. If you’ve never heard of a Library Camp before, they are a series of 'unconferences' held around the UK. Free to attend, they operate an 'Open Space' policy meaning there is no formal agenda or speakers, attendees set the schedule on the day and the direction of the sessions is guided by the participants.

Session pitches

 

Although I had considered whether or not to pitch a session, in the end I decided not to. There were so many great pitches to choose from it didn't feel necessary.
 

The first session I went to was run by @llordllama on performance in presentation, and it was the perfect start to the day. Unlike some sessions, it was less of a discussion and more of a teaching and learning experience, although still very interactive. He illustrated the ways we might convey confidence using body language, facial cues and voice. It was useful to think about how we can use our style of presentation to engage with people and get the best out of situations. Not to mention learning to recognise what those cues might be telling us about others, and how that could affect how we approach them. A lot of the session involved audience participation, and most people seemed to leave smiling.

The secret garden on floor 7

 

The second session I attended was Evidence-based Librarianship, which was a very, very popular. This meant that the group was large and you had to really raise your voice to be heard. We were also sharing the room with a second session and the noise occasionally made it hard to hear. Such is the burden of popular sessions!
 

However despite those issues, I found the session really interesting and you can read notes from @pennyb [who pitched the session] here. It focused on service led research, and although I didn’t really feel like I had much to contribute personally I still enjoyed it. It was interesting to hear the difference between academic librarians in the UK and in the US, where involvement in research as part of your job is more widely expected. 

Concerns were raised about how difficult it can be to find out about research in the field unless you happen to be actively involved in it. A number of resources were mentioned that could help, such as Educause and the LIRG website. But there was also a call for a more formal bringing together of information centrally, and the thought that it should be the responsibility of CILIP to provide it.

I was also very interested to hear of a scheme run by the University of Brighton that matches dissertation students with libraries looking to undertake research.



The falafel stand was often mentioned in the run up to Library Camp

As I had been so unorganised as to not bring any food to share, I decided to go out for lunch to the explore the Christmas market [way too crowded], and look around the library, which is truly stunning.

Career Paths and Networking

Back in July 2012 I attended the CILIP Career Development Group/New Professionals conference and had intended on blogging about it, but I never got round to it and now so much time has passed it doesn’t really seem worth it. Plenty of people who attended wrote up their own thoughts on the event, a couple of which you can read here or here or here.
 

However I thought one of the sessions I attended might be useful to share as it focused on Career Paths and Networking and was presented by Jeremy Clarke of Sue Hill Recruitment. It aimed to highlight some of the ways in which you can approach career development regardless of whether you are just starting out or more established.

To begin with Jeremy highlighted the importance of planning, and asked these questions;

• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be?
• How will you get there?

Once you begin to answer those questions you can target areas that perhaps need improvement, and focus on trying for jobs that will help your progression. He also mentioned that it might be worth doing a 'skills audit' at this stage to help you answer some of those questions.
 

If we accept that the idea of a ‘job for life’ has pretty much gone, then the idea of training for just one particular type of role makes less sense. Transferrable skills and the need to be more flexible in our career choices is becoming increasingly important, so Jeremy suggested we think more in terms of ‘portfolio careers’. Selling your skills and experiences, and trying out various job roles and ways of working to demonstrate your flexibility.

 

 

He also gave us a number of practical tips on where you can find out about job opportunities, such as;

• Local & national papers, and trade publications
• Websites such as Lisjobnet
• Recruitment agencies – although these are often better for temporary positions
• Social media – LinkedIn, or Twitter accounts such as @UKLibraryJobs or @LISNPN
• Listservs such as LIS-LINK, or ARLIS-LINK if you’re interested in art librarianship
• Organizational websites – as it’s increasingly expensive to advertise through traditional channels, some organizations will only advertise on their own website
• Direct approaches – some organizations will keep a database of potential applicants and let you know when vacancies arise
• Word of mouth – networking and personal contacts

The second part of his presentation focused on networking, a skill which many people can find off-putting or uncomfortable, so he shared some practical tips he'd picked up over the years that had helped him to get started;

• Learn to smile & say hello – basic but important, and the easiest way to get chatting to someone
• Ask someone you know to make introductions – you probably won’t have to ask outright, just mentioning that you don’t know anyone else there might result in them offering!
• Approach singles – always less intimidating than a group, and often grateful for someone to chat to as well
• Prepare in advance – if you have a couple of topics/questions in mind it can help fill the dreaded ‘empty silence’
• Go with your boss – I’m guessing this depends on how well you get on with your boss
• Learn to listen – try not to fall into the trap of panicking so much about what to say next that you forget to pay attention to the conversation

Some of Jeremy's recommendations for successful networking included;

• Picking the right event – some events make it easier to network than others
• Realize that there are ‘sliding scales of networking success’ – you shouldn’t expect all networking experiences to be the same, and never compare yourself to others, what you need to achieve your goals may not be the same as someone else
• Set yourself targets – ie I will try to talk to at least 3 new people today, as it can help you to feel less overwhelmed and keep you focused
• Consider what it is you want to find out – having a goal or purpose can help focus your thoughts
• Have an idea of what you want to communicate – networking is a two way thing, you’re not just looking to find information from others, but you are also taking the opportunity to advertise your own skills and experience
• Follow up afterwards – a good way to ensure that you don’t get forgotten, particularly if your networking has been done at a large event with lots of people

 

And a related tip I remember from a similar training session – always have an ‘out’, a way to disengage naturally from the conversation, rather than see it flounder. Common examples include, 'I'm going to get another drink/visit the toilet/check out the trade stands/find the next presentation or session'. Personally I’m not a fan of the ‘there’s so and so I just need to go and have a word with them’ method as it can come across as a bit rude!

 

CILIP Umbrella 2013 #ub13

Last week I went to CILIP’s big annual conference, Umbrella, for the first time thanks to a bursary from the Cataloguers & IndexersGroup. I will blog in more depth about some of the sessions later, but I wanted to get down some of my impressions of the event as a whole.

Never having been to a conference of more than about 200 delegates before, I was incredibly excited to attend Umbrella, which I think had about 600. Before setting off, I had gone through the list of sessions to try and get a feel for what I wanted to go to and was fairly overwhelmed at the choice, there was a lot going on!

Biddy Fisher giving the opening address at Umbrella

What were my highlights?

Un-brella 2013 - I headed up the night before the conference, so went to the drinks event they put on. It was great for a first timer who didn’t know anyone else there, as it meant I got to know people before the conference began, I would definitely recommend it. Un-brella also ran a number of other events over the two days, including ‘un-conference’ sessions (and ‘Human Bingo’ which was a great ice-breaker) I thought the team were great, and they did a fab job over the conference.

Janice Lachance (CEO, Special Libraries Association) - I found Janice’s talk really inspiring, I could tell from Twitter that not everyone shared that feeling, particularly with her suggestion to ‘release your inner executive’ and proposition that the word ‘librarian’ could be limiting. While I get where people were coming from, personally I did connect with it. I think if you bear in mind the context of what she was saying (many members of the SLA work in corporate environments) it’s more understandable. I found it encouraging that she spoke at Umbrella, it was a recognition that those of us working in less typical library sectors may need to consider different approaches to suit our workplace.

Ben Showers – although much of Ben's session focused on the skills we need for the future, I found his discussion of projects that use technology to open up collections and the work of the JISC/OCLC digital visitors and residents project most useful. Likewise Rebecca Bartlett’s portion of the debate (!) about libraries without walls, outlining mobile technologies and interactive tools at the new Library of Birmingham, was very interesting.

Future skills – I ended up in a few sessions that discussed training for library staff, both formal and informal, I’ll blog more on them later, but it was really interesting to see the approaches of library professionals in the UK and around the world. Transferable skills were definitely the buzz words of the conference!

MOSI - attending a wine reception in such an unusual venue (Museum of Science and Industry) and hearing about some of the amazing life changing and life saving activities that libraries are involved in at the Libraries Change Lives award ceremony. It really hammered home the amazing impact libraries can have on their community.

Photo courtesy of @Librarianpocket (Victoria Treadway)

Any down-sides?

Timings – a number of the sessions had four talks squished into the hour, it wasn’t long enough. A good proportion of the presentations I would have really liked to have heard more from, but there just wasn’t enough time to go into them in detail. Perhaps less choice would have allowed for longer sessions?

Seating – or lack of it! It meant eating lunch (it seems wrong to complain, it’s not the lunches you are there for, but they were terrible!) while sat on the floor. At coffee breaks you’re trying to juggle bags, conference programme, cup and saucer with nowhere to sit or a table to rest belongings. I wouldn’t ordinarily mind, but I don’t think it helped to facilitate networking.

But, overall it was a fantastic experience, and I’m so grateful that CIG gave me the opportunity to go, it certainly left me feeling inspired, and with things to mull over, which I suppose is the purpose of a conference!

Watching Phil Bradley give the closing speech

Check out presentations from the conference on the CILIP website.

Library Camp London part 1

On Saturday 2nd March I headed to Senate House Library for Library Camp London. If you've never heard of Library Camp before you can read more about what's involved here, but to put it very simply they are 'unconferences' whereby the attendees are encouraged to set the programme of sessions and actively participate.

On arriving at the stunning Senate House there was a great deal of excitment caused by the film crew in the courtyard below, apparently they were filming the next Muppets movie (but sadly I didn't get to see any Muppets).

After the session pitches, the timetable was arranged and it was down to business! The downside of a Library Camp, is that there are always far more sessions that I want to attend than I am actually able to go to, so you just have to make your choices and hope the ones you missed are blogged about afterwards. In the morning I decided on two related sessions, 'Creative CPD' and 'Design your own LIS course'.

Creative Continuing Professional Development was proposed by @ellyob and got such a large response we ended up dividing into smaller sub-groups. The idea was to look at ways you could continue to develop your professional skills if you can't afford expensive training courses.

Our group started by sharing experiences of CPD activities we'd been involved in which led to us listing solutions and alternatives to keep training costs as low as possible. They were coming so thick and fast that it was getting difficult to make sure we had managed to list them all properly!

Top tips included;

• Join CILIP sub-groups and volunteer for commitee roles
• Investigate free online courses (check out the BL's free Intellectual Property course for example)
• See what in-house training is available
• Webinars (see the Open Education Database for listings of free webinars for librarians)
• Speak or volunteer at conferences (you get to attend for free then!)
• Pursue sponsorship/grants/awards (try SLA Early Career Conference award, CILIP John Campbell Conference/Travel Bursary or Aspire award or First Timer award for the IFLA conference, BIALL conference bursaries)
• Ask to visit libraries (lots of libraries offer tours, they just don't advertise the fact!)
• Job-shadowing (see Karen Pierce's account of the Do Something Different Day run by Cardiff University)
• Join ARLIS/SLA/BIALL (the courses are often cheaper! See also Historic Libraries Forum or
• Look for informal groups in your area (LIKE [London], LIKE North [Yorkshire], CLIC [Cardiff], TAFLIN [Tayside & Fife] to name just a few!)

But there were loads more suggested, and I'm sure some of the other groups came up with plenty of things we hadn't even thought of, which hopefully will be writen up and appear on the Library Camp London wiki.

Then it was straight into the second session, organised by the #uklibchat team, Design your own LIS Qualification. The session was live tweeted, with the team monitoring questions and responses from non-attendees so opening up the discussion to a wider audience than just those in the room. They had also set up a Google Doc prior to the session to pose a number of questions that would direct the conversation.
If you've got a LIS qualification, where did you study and what was the best module?
Which elements of your LIS qualification have you used the most since starting work?
Which elements have you not used so much?

The general consensus in the room was that the practical aspects of librarianship were far and away the most useful, a number of people had found they used the cataloguing skills they'd learnt most, and many others found the IT and web design aspects most useful. Liz Jolly explained to us that LIS courses are supposed to be vocational, that it is the diploma which is the professional qualification and the dissertation is an academic extra. She also suggested we check out the new CILIP Professional Knowledge and Skills Base for further clarification on skills required.

It was also interesting to hear the point of view of employeers on what they were looked for in employees, which included project management skills, awareness of the issues surrounding the sector as a whole and practical experience.

After some discussion on what had worked well, what had appeared to be a waste of time, and what people wished they had had the opportunity to do we started to note down our ideal qualification.

The proposed selection

• A greater choice of modules
• Stronger links between theory & practice
• Practical experience of cataloguing
• Opportunities for group work
• Teaching
• Work experience opportunities
• Management skills - people, budgets, projects
• Up to date IT skills
• Strategic planning

There was a call for more teaching from practitioners rather than academics, and that the library staff of the university should have much more involvement in the teaching of courses than is currently the case. In short the conclusion was that courses needed to be much more in tune with what libraries are doing today.

Check out tweets from the session here.

Conversations with Cataloguers in Wales

At the beginning of March I went to a cataloguing event for people working in libraries in Wales organised by Karen Pierce (@Darklecat), who has written up the event on her blog here.  It was an opportunity to get together with others working in the same field and build links.

The day consisted of a number of presentations (one of which I jointly presented!), followed by a discussion session at the end of the day and plenty of chances to chat to fellow cataloguers. Helen Price Saunders (@Ceridwen339) kicked things off with a fascinating talk on cataloguing the Salisbury Library at Cardiff University. The library is made up of books relating to Wales that were collected by Enoch Salisbury. The University acquired his collection in 1886, and has since been adding to it. Helen's talk was a great insight into the quirks relating to taking on a private collection and the interesting modifications that private collectors can make to items that can make identifying them a challenge, such as cutting and reassembling books into their own formats! She also talked about the in-house classification scheme used by Salisbury and inherited by the University when they took it over, and how that works (or not) with their own system.  She finished by discussing whether the collection will be reclassified to fit in with the Library of Congress scheme the University uses, or whether it will continue to use its own. There is a worry that it will lose its identity as a distinct collection if that happens.

Dorothy Hartley talked about the massive job of reclassifying the Thomas Parry Library at Aberystwyth University. Thomas Parry Library used to employ Universal Decimal Classification, Dewey Decimal Classification and Library of Congress classification schemes, but they began moving to one unified scheme (Library of Congress) in 2008. It was a mammoth task (well illustrated by a photo showing rows of trolleys filled with books!) which had to be done with as little disruption to students as possible.  However they finally finished in 2011, ahead of schedule!

After a short break Ken Gibbs and Karen discussed cataloguing the Cardiff Rare Books collection acquired by Cardiff University in 2010.  They explained how overwhelming a task it was as they didn’t have any prior experience, and that even after CILIP training they felt under prepared.  They have now taken on a full time cataloguer for 3 years to make a start.  They also talked about the many gems that have been turned up since they started working through the collection.

Then came the presentation I was dreading! Louise Carey (the Assistant Librarian) and I did a talk discussing the use of the Metropolitan Museum of Art classification system that we use for our art library. It was the first time we had done a presentation on this subject, so we were understandably a bit nervous. After I gave a brief introduction to the history of the museum and our library collections, Louise discussed the classification scheme and its pros and cons.  A copy of our slide show is available here.

Next was a great talk on the TermCymru database from Miranda Morton at the Welsh Government. TermCymru is a database of Welsh terminology which in addition to giving the Welsh term for a word, also provides a context and a rating on the terms status (widely accepted, official etc). She talked about the lack of consistency with search terms and the need to formalise and weed it.

During a break for lunch, many of us took the opportunity to look around the newly refurbished Trevithick Library.

The first speaker after lunch was supposed to be Elly Cope (@ellycope) but unfortunately she wasn’t able to make the event so Karen very bravely filled in and talked us through the massive project to reclassify the University of Bath library from Universal Decimal Classification to Dewey Decimal Classification. It sounded like a massive project which they were doing in stages, taking it subject by subject. The estimates for how long it would take to complete were in the region of another 15 years!

The final presentation was from Jemma Francis discussing archiving Welsh Government publications and making them available to both staff and the general public. She also discussed the current program to digitise the 30,000 items currently in the archive.

The day ended with a discussion, chaired by Steve Hunt from the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group (CIG), on whether to create an all Wales cataloguing group. The consensus was that it would be a good idea to create one, but it was left undecided as to whether it should be a regional part of CIG (particularly as so few of the attendees were CILIP members) or a stand alone group.

We left with the agreement that it might take a little time to decide on the format of the group and what it was to achieve, so to provide a forum for sharing ideas it was agreed that a wiki should be set up. Anyone can sign up to post on the wiki, not just those who attended the event, details are available here.