Chartering - Day 4 - Update

OK, the good news is that I'm getting somewhere. The bad news is that my final destination is not going to be reached by the end of tomorrow.

The PPDP, training log and CV are all 95-ish% done. Copious bits of paper have been whittled down to about 25 pieces of grade A evidence. I have a title page, a bibliography and even a glossary (for all those baffling civil service initialisms!). But I have barely started the evaluative statement - and that is pretty crucial!

It's not down to lack of focus. I got distracted for a wee bit this morning when my new toy arrived. That very generous Amazon voucher referred to in an earlier post has sacrified itself to bring me a rather lovely DeLonghi expresso/cappuccino maker. Thank you (ex)colleagues! But other than that and breaks for meals and other necessary functions, I have worked like a trojan this week!

I thought I could get this done in 5 days, but I may have been a tad optimistic. One day to go, but at this point in time I could be doing with another 2 at least...

Chartering - Day 4

Hmmmm...only achieved about 50% of what I'd planned to do yesterday.

So, need to up the ante somewhat today. The CV and the training log are more or less done, so today I'm going to concentrate on the PPDP and the evaluate statement.

Oh well, at least the weather's rubbish. Less chance of me being tempted to go outside!

I'm on the Internet!

Just been 'Googling' myself - for valid CPD-related reasons! :-)

64 results for "lesley thomson" AND "information literacy"

Including the presentation Jenny and I put together for the CILIPS 'Skills for Scotland' Conference held in Glasgow on 19 March ('Information Literacy in the Scottish Government') on Slideshare! 87 views so far.

Chartering - Day 3

Plan for today:

1. get CV, training log and Personal and Professional Development (PPDP) plan up to date
2. write at least 250 words for evaluative statement

Chartering - Day 2 and a quarter

So...I've been through the aforementioned towers of paper and now have a folder of 'evidence'. Each item selected meets one of or more of the 4 assessment criteria:

1. An ability to reflect critically on personal performance and to evaluate service performance
2. Active commitment to continuing professional development
3. An ability to analyse personal and professional development and progression with reference to experiential and developmental activities
4. Breadth of professional knowledge and understanding of the wider professional context [CILIP, 2004.]
   

This will need some further refinement as I've probably got a bit too much. As I'm doing that I'll also attempt to get it into some kind of logical order.

A minor complication is that some of this evidence is in a 'virtual' state at the moment - ie on my memory stick rather than on the floor! For these particular items I have just inserted a temporary place holder into the folder. CILIP requires a hard copy portfolio (although I think one of the 3 copies required can be electronic), so I will have to print these out at some point.

I'm also going to have another look at some examples of successful portfolios this afternoon. Just as a check that I'm on the right lines.

And I may just get round to spending the very generous Amazon voucher which my lovely colleagues presented me with last Thursday! :-)

CILIP. 2004. Chartered Membership Handbook. London: CILIP.

Chartering - Day 2

I am sitting on the floor of the study (formerly known as the 3rd bedroom) literally surrounded by piles of paper that collectively tell the tale of the first 4 years of my career as a fully fledged librarian.

The objective for today is to sift through these towers of paper and create a new tower made up of the stuff that best demonstrates the four assessment criteria (more on those later).

First things first, think I'll go and make a cup of tea...

Chartering - Day 1

Today I'm in the office collecting together pieces of paper and transferring electronic documents from corporate systems onto my memory stick.

The aim of this exercise is to have absolutely all the potential evidence I may need for my portfolio available to me at home - so that I don't need to come into the office again this week.

Reflection

I'm on study leave this week - in order to put together my application for chartered membership of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP).

The application primarily consists of a portfolio which demonstrates that I am a 'reflective practioner'. As this blog is essentially all about reflection, I'm going to aim for a daily post this week!

Information Literacy is everywhere!

Attended a couple of Science Festival events on Friday night including 'Doing Astronomy from Scotland: The Scottish Royal Astronomers and Lord Crawford's Treasure Trove of Astronomical Books' with Professor Owen Gingerich (Harvard University) and Professor John Brown (the Astronomer Royal for Scotland)

Billed as 'an entertaining history of astronomy in Scotland from the Crawford Collection, among the five best astronomical libraries in the world, through the story of the post of Astronomer Royal for Scotland and to a summary of the latest work being done in Scotland by the astronomer royal and others', the lecture nicely combined one of my loves (old books) with one of the other half's (astronomy).

It seems that I can't ever get away from information literacy. Asked what he thought would be the key body of knowledge from today that presenters at the Science Festival in, say 100 years time, will be talking about, Professor Brown replied that Wikipedia would be a contender! Professor Brown uses Wikipedia a lot apparently - although he was quick to point out that he always double checks with other sources.

Well, a wee bit more...

Although, having said that, I should at least post about the paper that Jenny and I presented...

[Photo: Morag, Jenny and I outside the Holiday Inn in Cardiff City Centre, 31 March 2009]

No more LILAC

Contrary to my post below, I've decided that I'm not going to post a full LILAC report. Partly because others have already posted more articulately than I could about many of the sessions (see Sheila Webber's Information Literacy Weblog and the Scottish Information Literacy Project Blog) and also because I don't really have anything more to say about the conference!

Round up

I do intend to write a proper conference report at some point, but in the meantime, just want to jot down what I thought were the main messages:
Information literacy is not just for librarians.
University's are not equipping students for the information environment of the workplace.
Information literacy instruction needs to be timely, integrated and contextual.
Ethics are a key component of information literacy (and don't appear in any definitions of media or digital literacy)

So, as I've already said, no surprises.

Third day lucky

I possibly spoke too soon (see also 'sense of timing' referred to below) re getting anything out of the conference. I attended 4 sessions this morning - of which, 2 were my favourite sessions of the whole conference (apart from ours of course!).

Nathan Rush's session about the wiki he developed for research students at De Montfort University was useful because Nathan was prepared to admit that it was not a success. For those of us who who feel that librarians are often guilty of trying to force Web 2.0 solutions onto problems that may require more traditional responses (or not even exist at all) this was a welcome approach.

And Sally Patalong's talk about Coventry University's 'employability modules' was interesting because it showed academic librarians actually thinking about information literacy needs in the workplace (albeit with a very limited 'business information resources' focus).

Departing

That's me just leaving Cardiff now - this is a fairly short leg of the journey (I have to change at Bristol) so I'll do a longer post later.

I'm quite sorry to go. I walked past the Millenium Stadium ticket booth on my way to the station and there appear to be plenty of tickets left for tonight's game - at very reasonable prices! I was tempted...

I have been to Cardiff before (this was my fourth time) and I'm sure I'll be back. It's brilliant city.

You don't get a chance to see much of your surroundings on these things, but we've been walking back from the venue through a bit of Cardiff I hadn't seen before and the conference networking evening on Monday night was at Caerphily Castle.