Mind Bloggling

Amazing things are happening in Scotland...

2012-01-13T09:14:00.000Z

One of my public sector digital inspirations, Dan Slee (Walsall Council), recently made some predications about digital in local government in 2012, including this one:

12. Amazing things will happen in Scotland. Some of the brightest people in the public sector who are innocavating aren’t in London. They’re north of the border serving as police officers as well as in local government. It’ll be fascinating to see how this develops.

Which is nice.

It’s good to get a more objective perspective. I’ve been feeling a bit disheartened recently by (what seems to me anyway) our lack of progress on the digital front and have been looking south with jealous eyes. On reflection, I think this is actually more to do with people not talking enough about the good stuff they're doing rather than no good stuff happening at all (is it the Scottish Calvinist thing?).

And I this year certainly does have the potential to be a very interesting one for digital in Scotland (and hopefully that means lots for me to blog about!).

We’ve certainly got things off to a cracking start with the announcement of #Tartantm - concurrent TweetUps for public sector types in all the major Scottish cities on the evening of 22 February.

It’s ambitious. But it’s got two of our most dedicated public sector social media advocates, Carolyne Mitchell (South Lanarkshire Council) and Gordon Scobbie (Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside Police) behind it (assisted by others around the country), so it can’t fail.

If you work in the public sector and are interested in using social media to engage or to build online communities, you should get yourself along for food, chatting and tweeting. There's more info at http://tartantweeple.wordpress.com/.

So, I’ll see you there! (And if you really can’t be there – and you’d better have a damn good excuse - then follow the Twitter hashtag #tartantm.)

Forgive me blogosphere, it’s been six months since my last post

2011-12-09T09:30:00.000Z

To be honest, I wasn’t even going to bother today, then I noticed that I’d had 250+ views last night (from Russia?!). Thought I should give them something new to read should they return tonight.

Looking back, I was very clear that this blogging lark was primarily a selfish enterprise – I hoped blogging would encourage my reflective practice – and if anyone else found anything useful, then great, but it wasn’t my primary objective.

As time has gone on, I’ve had some really good conversations here, made connections with people that I wouldn’t have otherwise and been asked to do fun stuff off the back of what I’ve written here. And people do seem to have found at least some of my ramblings interesting/useful. Which is nice. There has even been some reflection on my part :)

But the last six months have been very disappointing for me professionally. I don’t think there’s any need to go into the detail here, but suffice to say, I’ll be glad to see the back of 2011. There’s been very little to blog about, and when there has been something to write about I've not really been in the mood to do it.

But, I'm hoping for better things in the new year and look forward to get my blogging mojo back on! I can't be having a go at the lack of public sector blogging in Scotland if I’m not doing any myself.

Why information professionals should be at the heart of government digital engagement activities

2011-07-07T13:30:00.000+01:00

This is my the proposal for Online Information 2011. I have to write approx. 5000 words on this by mid September - I will be looking for your help!

In 2004, commenting that people were increasingly confident to search out information themselves, Maewyn Cumming made a prediction about government information professionals:

"We will appear in more places than we do now. At the moment, librarians are cropping up everywhere, in weird and wonderful little corners, running or helping organize websites and intranets, even document and records management systems. We will be in places that don't initially always appear to be information management places. I know librarians who are working in enterprise architecture systems.” (Cummings, M. 2004, p16)

That librarians should support knowledge management across government was a key theme in the literature in subsequent years (Taylor and Corrall. 2007, p. 301). Attempts were made to place knowledge and information management at the heart of government. In the UK, the Knowledge Council was established as a cross-departmental body to raise the profile and give encouragement and direction to information and knowledge management initiatives. Information Matters: Building Government's Capability in Managing Knowledge and Information (HM Government, 2008), recognised that knowledge and information professionals are “experts who have key roles to play in contributing to the success of their organisations”.

However, this paper will argue that information professionals can play an even more central role at the very heart of government business.

Digital technology has revolutionised the way in which people communicate and share information – the growth of social media over the last couple of years has been particularly spectacular. Good use of social media can help governments better understand, respond to and attract the attention of specific audiences. It enables real two-way communication with people in the places where they are already engaging with their interests. Social media can enable people to participate in proposing and shaping policies and laws, to provide feedback on programmes and services, and in some instances influence service design.

However, the ability of civil servants to use social media and the growing stakeholder demand for these channels is causing tension as government departments work to update pre-digital processes which do not work as effectively in the digital era. The pace of change is already rapid and is increasing in speed. This can cause further tensions, as many stakeholders’ contact with departments can be sporadic, making it difficult to know how and where best to engage with them. Engaging with stakeholders in their own spaces is creating a whole new set of learning opportunities for civil servants.

This paper will outline the roles involved in digital engagement within government, set out the skills required and explain why information professionals are ideally placed, not only to take on some of these roles, but also to assist in building digital engagement capacity more widely across government.

The author will draw on personal experience as an information professional who has worked in several ‘weird and wonderful little corners’ within government and is currently involved in the development of a digital engagement strategy for the Scottish Government.

References

Cummings, M. (2004), "A vision of the future", Network Journal, Autumn Issue, 2004
Taylor, K. and Corrall, S. (2007), "Personalized service? Changing the role of the government librarian", Journal of Information Science, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 298-314.
HM Government (2008), Information Matters: Building Government's Capability in Managing Knowledge and Information, The National Archives, UK.

Learning Points

Overview of the current status of the information profession in government (UK and worldwide)
Digital engagement roles in government and the skills required
Insight into the contribution information professionals can make to digital engagement
Future opportunities for information professionals in government

PS. I have to come up with a title for this paper - by tomorrow. Any suggestions?

Save library websites

2011-06-24T10:00:00.002+01:00

It’s all that Gillian Hanlon’s fault. There I was, minding my own business, doing a bit of this, bit of that, arranging the odd unconference now and again and having a rant about information literacy (or more likely the lack of it) every so often.

And then Gillian asks if I’d like to run a session on library websites at the 2011 CILIPS Conference (held in Glasgow in early June).

Now, I may possibly have given the impression that I know something about websites somewhere along the line. Indeed, I have worked on website development for a fair chunk of my professional career. However...library websites were a bit of an unknown quantity for me. I’ve looked at the odd library website (some very odd) but I’d never really paid them much attention and I’ve certainly never been involved in the development of one.

But still, a good website is a good website – the principles apply whatever the service being offered. So I said yes, not a problem. And off I went to look at library websites.

Many days later I emerged blinking into the light, with what can only be described as a heavy heart and a bit of a sare heid. With very few exceptions the UK library websites (academic and public) I looked at were pretty dire. Indeed, I had to go to North America to find good examples for the presentation (although they certainly have their fair share of pretty dire examples as well).

What I went looking for

The presentation contended that highly effective library websites are

1. purposeful

2. integrated

3. user centred

4. content rich

5. inclusive

6. findable

7. flexible and responsive

Most of the UK library websites I looked at were none of these things.

Why ever not?

Possibly because:

The responsibility for the library website has been foisted on someone who’s not really interested/has too many other things to do and can’t give it much priority/is interested but doesn’t have the knowledge or skills to do much with the site.
The corporate web team aren’t very interested/helpful (they’ll be dealing with competing requests from across the organisation and may be able to give the library pages much attention).
There may be little room for maneouvere. The library web pages on a council site for example will have to comply with the overall corporate look and feel, etc.

Or any combination of the above.

Why does it matter?

Well...the current #savelibraries and related campaigns are all well and good, but they seem to miss the importance of the online face of the library. For an increasing number of people the website will the first element of a library service they engage with – for many, the website will be only element of the library website they engage with.

People make their minds up very quickly about websites, and their view of a website will impact their view of the rest of the service.

And, whether we like it or not, the push towards online services is going to get ever more insistent.

So what can we do?

Well, we’ve been plotting, Gillian and I. Plotting what we might do to help improve public* library websites north of the border. It’s not a secret plot, so I can share it with you. We are looking at

Setting up a group for folk interested in the development of library websites/online services. Possibly a CILIP Special Interest Group, but more likely something less formal...a LinkedIn Group maybe, or a Community of Practice.
Creating some guidance. Or perhaps a ‘good’ library website template?
Offering some training on website design, usability, etc.
In the longer term, perhaps getting the Public Library Quality Improvement Matrix (PLQIM) updated to cover online services specifically.

(NB. This touches on a related issue of the relevance of our professional skills in areas such as web development, user experience design, etc...but that’s for another post)

In the meantime

While we’re thinking all this through, we’re going to get better informed and work out exactly what we're dealing with.

Gillian’s going to look at getting some questions added to the Electronic Services Survey – so we can get a better idea of what is being used in the way of Content Management Systems, which libraries have some input into the design of their websites/which are constrained by organisational set up, etc.
And I’m going to have a proper look at those websites I’ve been so critical of. I didn’t study any in great detail for the purposes of the presentation, and some got little more than a cursory scan. So, in a poor man’s Better Connected, I’m going to work up a set of criteria based on those ‘seven habits of highly successful library websites’ mentioned above and review Scottish public library websites against those criteria. I’ll share these for comment here when I’ve drafted something.

If anyone would like to help with any of this...that would be much appreciated. And get in touch if you're interested in any of the stuff mentioned above (training, guidance, etc).

Resources

The presentation I gave at the conference is on Slideshare
The web resources used to produce the presentation are bookmarked on Diigo
As are all the library websites referenced in the presentations

* we’ll tackle academic library websites at a later (unspecified) date :)

Seven habits of highly effective library website

2011-06-07T09:00:00.006+01:00

Update 8 June: my presentation is now available on Slideshare.

Later today I'll be leading a session on ''effective' library websites at the Chartered Institute for Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS) Annual Conference at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow (Twitter hashtag is #cilips11).

I'll blog about it properly in due course, but for the moment I've got a couple of lists set up in Diigo to accompany my presentation:

1. resources for website design/usability/writing for the web/etc
2. library website examples used in the session

PS. I never could get into using Delicious...but I really like Diigo.

Public sector blogging in Scotland

2011-03-13T13:32:00.000Z

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this you think that people blogging about their work is a GOOD THING. And possibly also that blogging AT WORK about more personal stuff is also a GOOD THING. If, however, you’re not convinced, have a read of this and this. And if you’re still not convinced – why on earth are you reading this blog?!

I’ve been blogging about my work (with the occasional post about more personal stuff) for about four years now. I’m still not very good at it, but I think the fact that I’m doing it at all is a GOOD THING. For me, even if it’s not for anyone else. And for me other people blogging about their work in the public sector has been a VERY GOOD THING - I’ve learnt a hell of a lot from the blogs I read.

Because it’s a GOOD THING we need more folk doing it. There are some very good blogs with a public sector focus written in Scotland. Here are some that I’m aware of - in no particular order (and with apologies to any I’ve missed out):

But we can do better! So I’ve being having a think about how we might get more public sector folk in Scotland blogging. (And I’m talking here about blogging outside the walled garden of the Communities of Practice space – lovely though that garden is.)

Blogger extraordinaire Mr Dave Briggs recently wrote a post about Public Sector Bloggers, which aggregates content from UK public sector blogs (very few are written this side of the border), and mentioned it’s growing unwieldiness (cos of the increase in blogs). Suggestions for the future development of the site include better categorisation and the addition of blogging guidance.

But...I’m wondering if a Public Sector Bloggers type resource specifically for Scotland/Scottish bloggers would be something worth developing?

What do you think? Would existing Scottish public sector bloggers be keen to have their posts aggregated in this way? Would it be a useful resource for encouraging people to blog? Or could we just make more of the existing Public Sector Bloggers site?

I’d also be interested in suggestions for other ways to encourage more blogging in the public sector in Scotland.

Spikkin, speerin and a fly piece

2011-02-07T09:00:00.003Z

Last Thursday I did a wee turn at the Scottish Knowledge Management Network (SKMN) meeting, which took place at the rather plush Subsea 7 offices in Westhill (Aberdeen).

I’d been at the ancestral pile in Aberdeenshire for the previous five days and had gone a bit native, so I called my slot ‘spikkin, speerin and a fly piece’. For the non-Doric speakers, that roughly translates to ‘talking, questioning and a cup of tea and a biscuit/cake/sandwich’ – which I thought summed up the day nicely.

When Mike McLean (Improvement Service) asked if I’d do a slot at the meeting, I asked him what he’d like me to talk about. An update on ScotGovCamp and something about my information literacy activities, he said. But rather than do separate presentations, I thought about common themes to link the two and then tried to tie them up nicely with a knowledge management bow…

…and basically what that boils down to is me and what I do on a daily basis…

...that being three things: communities, collaboration and conversation. I could talk about all three all day, but decided to concentrate on the third. The main point of my presentation summed up by David Weinberger in the Cluetrain Manifesto: “business is a conversation...and ‘knowledge workers’ are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations”. My slides are available on Slideshare.

In the spirit of GovCamp, I wanted the session to be a conversation so I tried not to spend too much time talking before asking:

is conversation important within and between organisations important?
do you have interesting conversations?
if not, why not?

leading us into an interesting conversation about conversation ;-).

Find out more

The rest of the day

I’m not going to write in detail about the other presentations as that will be done better elsewhere, but the main points I picked up were:

Let people learn and share their way not yours. [Dave Briggs]
A knowledge management strategy can make a corporate re-organisation less painful. And Sharepoint can be useful :-) [Annie Robertson]
Faced with the dual drivers of continuous improvement and financial stringency, we need more than ever to lead and manage the use of knowledge as an asset, to improve quality of care, create innovative solutions, and maximise use of existing resource. (NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Social Services Council are holding a series of Social Innovation events to “co-create” Knowledge Management Action Plans for Health and Social Services Organisations. Looking forward to hearing more about these.) [Annette Thain]
Jamie Kirk is going places (initially to North America in late May to study apps for government). [Jamie Kirk]
Before encouraging others to share we have to show willingness to share with each other. [David Friel]
The Knowledge Hub (KHub) is coming and will be fab. Join the KHub CoP if you want to find out more [Mike McLean]

Thanks are due to Subsea 7, and Annie Robertson in particular, for hosting the meeting and for admitting that sometimes the private sector can learn from the public sector :-).

What the IL have I been up to?

2011-01-10T10:00:00.037Z

I’ve been really bad recently at keeping up with developments in information literacy. And to contributing to the information literacy community. The odd thing will pop up in Google Reader or my Twitter stream that I’ll skim over and highlight in the information literacy community of practice or tweet using the #infolit hashtag. But it’s intermittent and a bit half hearted.

So I’m doing a bit of cramming now to get up to speed in advance of CILIPS ‘Information literacy: what’s it all about?’ event at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on 20 January – at which Jenny Foreman and I are delivering a workshop.

If you’re not already signed up to attend, you should – not least because our workshop will be ace. There’s a great line up in addition to me and Jenny:

Christine Irving will be chairing
Debbi Boden (Director of Library Services at Glasgow Caledonian University and chair of CILIP’s Information Literacy Group) will give an overview of information literacy
Ian Watson and Michelle Drumm from IRISS will talk about their information literacy programme for the social services
Dr Audrey Sutton will present on information literacy in education

As to the workshop, I don’t want to give too much away yet...but it'll be based on the social media game – developed by David Wilcox – which you may have seen in action. It’ll be the first time we’ve tried it, but I think it’ll work. If it does, we’ll do a full write up and put all the materials in the community of practice. If it doesn’t, we’ll flee the country.

And in other news, there have been developments recently regarding a new home for the Scottish Information Literacy Framework. I hope to bring you more details shortly...

Ten Tweasons To Tweet

2010-10-19T08:47:00.000+01:00

This may surprise some people, but I wasn't an early adopter of Twitter. Like many folk, I didn't 'get it'. I remember having a conversation with a colleague a couple of years ago, he telling me how great Twitter was, and me just thinking 'eh?'

I can't remember what prompted me to sign up in the end. But I took to it pretty quickly. I'll admit, initially, I treated it as a bit of a numbers game - I remember getting quite absurdly excited when I got my 100th follower :-). I got past that though and Twitter is a genuinely useful work tool for me. As I recently commented to a colleague (on Yammer as it happens) it's probably where I get most of my information these days.

My job is partly about encouraging others to use social media, so it is important that I can articulate that usefulness. So here goes...10 reasons why Twitter helps me do my job, and (hopefully) do it well. (NB. this is very much a personal perspective - why I tweet – my reasons may not resonate with everyone.)

1. I get information from Twitter faster than I get it anywhere else. Not so very long ago, I found out that the Scottish Government publications contract had changed (a couple of days before this information appeared on our Intranet). It's not a replacement for other sources of information, but complements the current awareness tools I use - RSS feeds, journal alerts etc. I follow people who have similar roles/interests and I know that they'll tweet stuff which is relevant to me.

2. Having said that, I follow a wide range of people in an attempt to keep my perspective from becoming too narrow! Twitter is a great way of getting exposure to a range of views and opinions.

3. Twitter allows me to vary my level of awareness of issues. I'm interested in lots of things, but to different degrees. Twitter allows me to maintain a general awareness of what's going on in lots of different areas, but also facilitates routes into those issues that I need to have a deeper understanding of.

4. It's a great professional development tool. My CPD framework requires me to have an understanding of all aspects of librarianship, and to keep up to date with developments in the field. I follow librarians and information professionals from all over the world. Even what may seem the most mundane comment (someone griping about a Library Management System for example) can provide a useful insight into their role. As I no longer work in a traditional library role, I find this really valuable.

5. I could leave it at that – using Twitter as just another information source. But I'd be missing out on the most powerful aspect of Twitter – the ability to engage with fellow tweeters. I've had conversations with people I would never have 'met' otherwise. I’ve chatted to Pat Kane, Ian Rankin and Sarah Brown in recent weeks...but enough name dropping...I don’t follow many celebs on Twitter - they're often not very interesting :-).

6. So, Twitter lets me punch above my weight. I work in a very bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation (is there a more bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation?!) and I’m pretty near the bottom of the food chain. I spend a lot of time at work being frustrated at my inability to bring about any change – or even to have a conversation with someone who can. There’s no hierarchy on Twitter – just lots of people who want to get things done.

7. And I like sharing information. I'm a librarian. I can't help it! I'll tweet links that I know will be of interest to the folk who follow me. If I'm working on something that may be relevant to my followers, I'll tweet about that – and get instant feedback on it. I may also post on Yammer, on LinkedIn, or on the relevant Communities of Practice, depending on what the information is and who I think it’d be of interest to. But it'll get the greatest exposure on Twitter – and what I do is of interest beyond my organisation.

8. I've written before about the limits of traditional conferences and Twitter is a great way of following events. I can't go to every conference I'd like to (in fact, attendance at any external event is increasingly difficult). By keeping an eye on the relevant hashtags, it's possible to follow several events all happening at the same time without leaving my chair. (NB It's always interesting to see how similar the issues being discussed at these events are - even if outwardly the focus is very different.) Sometimes it's possible to actively participate in an event via Twitter - asking the panel a question, for example.

9. I can react instantly to content. For example, I don't have as much time to comment on blog posts as I'd like. If someone posts a link to their latest blog post, I can send them a quick comment via Twitter – and maybe spark off a conversation.

10. I'm not very good at old skool networking. I find it really difficult approaching people at events. In addition to the fairly obvious networking potential of Twitter, it's also great for getting to 'know' people before you meet them in person. Having a laugh about someone’s avatar (usually mine!) is a great ice breaker

So that’s my ten. Any other good reasons to tweet? Or, reasons not to?

The Second ScotGovCamp Blog Post

2010-06-14T09:33:00.000+01:00

David beat me to it on the ScotGovCamp blogging front, but I hope there will be lots of ScotGovCamp blog posts in the coming months...

What's a GovCamp then?

GovCamps are self organised unconferences for people that work in and around government. The GovCamp movement was started by Jeremy Gould in January 2008 and there have been a number of central and local government focused events in England.

GovCamps

are free
have no set, pre-defined agenda
focus on attendee participation
integrate with online stuff
are relentlessly positive, constructive and creative

Generally, the GovCamp movement enables those who are interested in developing innovation and technology in government to come together in an informal setting to share their ideas.

If you're still not sure, check these out:

But why a ScotGovCamp?

ScotGovCamp is partly about me :-) I've blogged before about not finding that I get much from traditional conferences these days and the un-conference format appeals to me. I can't really justify a trip down south to attend one, so I got to thinking that organising my own event would be the only way I'd get to join the fun.

But it's not all about me :-) We're probably a wee bit behind our neighbours when it comes to digital engagement. And for being such a wee country we don't seem to be as good at sharing our stories. Where we're probably a bit further ahead though is the way central and local government works together, and in partnership working more generally - we just don't talk about it enough!

So I mooted the idea of a GovCamp for Scotland in various places at the start of the year, and there were enough expressions of interest to warrant taking things forward.

Where's it happening?

I've attended some brilliant events at the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh - it really is a brilliant, inspiring space. It's pretty central as well - with lots of nice pubs nearby for the partaking of post camp sherberts...

The folk who work there are also rather brilliant - I hope some of them will be able to participate.

When's it happening?

Don't worry, it doesn't conflict with the World Cup, T in the Park or the Festivals. And it's a Saturday, so you won't have to miss any work.

Who should attend?

Govcamp isn't just for gov or techie types. If you have any interest at all in any aspect of digital engagement in Scotland then you should seriously consider coming along.

There will be lots of gov and techie types there though, so it'll be great way to make connections.

What's on the agenda?

Nothing as yet (see above), but here are some of the topics that might come up (I've pinched most of these from LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber which happened this weekend just gone):

Social media and efficiencies
Our digital future – what does it look like?
Digital inclusion/exclusion
Libraries and social media
Online content strategy for local/central government
Connecting, public culture and cuts – how the social web can help cultural institutions connect with the public
Stuff you can do with Flickr
Enterprise 2.0 – deploying social technologies within our organisations to improve communications
Open data – what steps do we need to get us sharing our data?
Free and good enough technologies – the next stage of digital services development?
Smart cities and the internet of things
Social Media Surgeries – is anyone holding these in Scotland (or something similar)?
Engaging less able people by the use of virtual walks/events in their area or field of interest
Front-line social media: engagement, consultation and learning
Does the growth in social and geo-sensative gaming have any implications for government?
Innovative responses to emergencies
Do we need a Scottish version of data.gov.uk?

How do I sign up?

Can I help out?

Yes please! There's still a fair bit of organising to do.

Get in touch via

the Scottish GovCamp group on Dave Briggs' UKGovCamp site
Twitter - hashtag: #scotgovcamp
the Scotland Web 2 community on the IS/IDeA CoP platform (login required)
this blog

Hope to see you there!

On reflection

2010-04-25T15:01:00.000+01:00

It seems an appropriate time to be reflecting. It's annual performance appraisal time and also almost a year since I started in my current post. It's also a year since 5 days study leave saw me hours away from having a completed CILIP chartership portfolio!

I've also attended a couple of events recently that have moved on my thinking in this area.

The first, was organised by my colleague Paul, along with the Housing Studies Unit at the University of Stirling. The half day (and a bit) reflective practice taster session was targeted primarily at regenation practitioners, but the content was fairly generic and applicable to anyone who wants be more reflective.

(the photo is from the room at the Stirling Highland Hotel where the event took place)

We kicked off by fondling a lemon :-) and talking about our thoughts as we did so. An interesting exercise designed to help us understand the way we make associations. Unfortunately, being in the later stages of a cold that had hung around for 4 weeks I couldn't smell the lemon which meant I wasn't able to engage all my senses!

We then looked at a simplified version of Kolb's learning cycle - essentially: what? so what? now what? - and how to apply that to our reflective practice.

That was followed by a discussion about the barriers to reflective practice, including the reality that it's not the way we've been educated to write. And in my case that's something that has been amplified by being in the civil service for so long!

We'd been given some homework to prepare for the event - writing a diary style entry examining something that recently happened in our professional life. As mentioned in previous blog posts ad finitum I've been trying to be reflective in my practice for sometime now, so I cheated a wee bit and took along a blog post I had already written. We worked in pairs to rate each others homework (along with some sample pieces) on the following scale:

1. Description
2. Description with reflection
3. Stepping back and mulling it over
4. Critical reflection

My partner and I agreed that I'm probably at level 2, so I've a bit to go yet.

The key personal learning point for me was the confirmation that even when I think I've been reflective, I've only really been scratching the surface. I thought that once I'd made a conscious effort to be reflective that it would just happen - that it would be a fairly natural organic development of my writing style.

So I'm going to give structured reflection a go. After each event I attend I'll make a point of asking myself some specific questions under the headings of what, so what and now what (we were given a skeleton/template at the event, but I'm going to draft my own version, which I'll share when it's done).

The event also prompted some discussion about how we (the Scottish Centre for Regeneration) can help our learning network members become more reflective in their practice. Should we, for example, build in some time in our events for reflection? Watch this space for further thoughts...

The second event, was a workshop run at LILAC by Merinda Kaye Hensley on critical reflection for teaching librarians (but again, the content was fairly generic).

Over the course of a couple of hours we had the chance to develop a personal teaching narrative and to gain an understanding of how to support a community of practice in the classroom through guided peer observation.

Two key learning points for me. Merinda has come up with 25 critical reflection prompts which I can incorporate into my structured reflection framework. And secondly, that when I learn something from a workshop/lecture/training session I should give some thought to how that learning happened.

OK, having looked back at this post, I think I've just about covered the what?, so what? and now what? Perhaps not up to level 4 yet, but it's progress!

My last LILAC?

2010-04-04T16:25:00.001+01:00

[edited to correct error of attribution]

I’ve been thinking about how best to blog LILAC 2010 (my third LILAC). I’d normally just write something up about all the sessions I’d attended – whether they were particularly useful to me or not. Not this year. In line with the whole getting down with reflection tip I’m on at the moment, I’m going to do a bit of a round up and then blog thematically about the stuff that actually made some impact on me.

So this is the round up and I’ll start with the positive stuff. As usual the conference was really well organised. The venue was great, the programme was packed and the presenters were all knowledgeable and obviously passionate about information literacy (IL). In particular there were a couple of really good sessions on reflective practice that have moved on my thinking in that area.

And it was heartening that the Scottish Information Literacy Project is still getting plaudits (as it has for the last couple of years), in particular for our emphasis on partnership working and success in bringing together librarians from all sectors, and gosh, sometimes, even non librarians! The national framework developed by the project has proved to be an inspiration to a number of other countries.

Wales is a good example. In December 2009, an event, organised by WHELF (Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum) and funded by CyMAL considered the development of a cross-sectoral information literacy framework (for a report, see Karl Drinkwater's post on the RSC Wales blog). An action plan was agreed - including a draft statement and formulation of a steering group. And CyMAL are now providing funding for an information literacy development officer. So perhaps Wales will end up with an IL framework that has statutory authority – something we’ve not been able to achieve in Scotland.

The Irish are also following our lead. Phillip Cohen from the Library Association of Ireland’s Working Group on Information Literacy admitted to stalking anyone connected with the project (including ourselves!) at the conference.

However…I think this will probably be my last LILAC. For a start, I don’t ‘do’ information literacy as my day job anymore. I’m still very passionate about it – which is why I’m more than happy to help facilitate our IL Community of Practice – but it would be difficult to justify my attendance at a conference that has such a narrow focus.

To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want to attend next year anyway. It was great to see that in this – the first LILAC held outside of the UK – the delegate list was very international. But, it was disappointing, yet again, that the vast majority of attendees where academic librarians (HE predominantly). There were a few more workplace and school librarians than in previous years, but public librarians were very hard to find.

Tony Durcan, Head of Culture, Libraries and Lifelong Learning, Newcastle City Council, keynote speaker on day one, talked about the key role public libraries can play in the digital inclusion agenda – and to me, this is where information literacy can have the greatest impact. Yet we had, maybe, one public librarian at the conference?

An even bigger issue for me though, is that every LILAC we talk about how IL isn’t just for libraries/librarians. Yet that’s what LILAC is – librarians talking to other librarians. Perhaps we need to change what the ‘L’ stands for in LILAC and find ways to encourage more non-librarians to attend.

And from a personal learning perspective, I’m not sure I get much from attending traditional conferences these days. I had a great time at LILAC, but I’m not convinced I learnt anything I wouldn’t have gleaned from following the conference tweets, blog posts, etc. And I can make connections just as easily online as I can at a conference. (It doesn’t help that I really dislike travelling these days!)

This is very much a personal view and I’d like to emphasise it is no way a criticism of the conference organisers – who do an absolutely fantastic job. We all have a responsibility to venture outside our comfort zone sometimes and have conversations with the 'unconverted'. But I do wonder how sustainable the conference is in it’s current format?

Further posts to follow. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about LILAC 2010, try these links:

Andy Walsh’s live blogging: http://library.hud.ac.uk/blogs/il/?cat=28
Elini Zazani’s Delicious bookmarks: http://delicious.com/Lilac2010

Twitter stream #lilac2010: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23lilac2010

Ruth Stubbing’s Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/humpydemon/sets/72157616599830860/

Dave Pattern’s wordle: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepattern/tags/lilac2010/

My Life as a Librarian Part II - The London Years

2010-01-24T17:25:00.007Z

Part I - in case you missed it

So, there I am, innocent newly qualified librarian all alone in the big smoke. (OK, maybe not quite innocent, but still a bit of a country hick. To illustrate the point, I thought Luton was a good place to commute to London from. Well, it's looks quite close on a map)...

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was very clued up about the skills that a qualified librarian could bring to a range of posts - including 'non traditional' roles like records management and web management - and carried out a general librarian recruitment exercise every year. Successful applicants were then allocated to the most relevant role dependant on their particular skills/experience.

I was lucky enough to be allocated to the web team at UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) - an agency of the DTI and the Foreign Office. I probably didn't see a book in my entire time there, but got to put my librarian super powers to use helping to manage and develop UKTI's website - which was pretty groundbreaking at the time for combining external website/extranet/intranet in the one site with more or less completely devolved content management.

Over the next two years I worked with a great bunch of people, gained experience in a range of web management activities (user testing, stakeholder management, user support, etc) and even managed to (reluctantly!) pick up some coding skills. The highlight of the job for me though was the training activity. Being involved in a massive programme to train colleagues all over the world in the use of our Content Management System and to 'write for the web', meant developing my trainer skills, but also visits to lots of exotic places, specifically for me: Cairo, Muscat, Madrid, Oslo, Johannasburg, Beijing, Shanghai and...Leeds.

But all good things must come to an end...the endless international travel was becoming a bit tiresome anyway, honest! So after two years I prepared to go back to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in Newcastle - unsure of the job I'd be doing, as my old post had long since gone!

But with the fortuitous timing that seems to have been a feature of my career, I spotted a job in the Scottish Government (SG) library and I went for it. I really liked living in Newcastle and hadn't intended a move back north of the border at this stage, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. So I got the job and spent the next two and bit years as an assistant librarian with the SG in Edinburgh.

A rather more 'traditional' role this one - literature searching, information enquiries, current awareness, I even stamped a book or two. The opportunity to develop and deliver training - this time in information literacy skills - was again the best bit of the job for me.

(There's a whole other blog post to be written about the current state of government library services and their future, but I may not be the best person to write it!)

I really enjoyed this job, wasn't looking for anything else and hardly ever bothered to look at the vacancy page on our intranet. But one day I did and spotted a job for a Knowledge Management Officer - at a grade up from the job I had.

So here I am. Back in a non-traditional role doing knowledge management, digital communications and community management to name but three aspects of my job. But I draw on experiences from all my previous jobs in this role. I mostly think of myself as a librarian. Some days I have something of a split personality. I was a civil servant before I was a librarian - and the two mindsets can be contradictory (something I've blogged about recently).

As for how I got here, well it's obvious that I've had no career plan to speak of - I think it's mostly been a case of taking opportunities when they have presented themselves. I'm quite happy with how things have turned out. If I could do things differently, I'd be more focussed about CILIP chartership and I'd have found some way of completing my Masters dissertation...but I may still do that...

How I got to where I am today! Part 1

2010-01-23T21:32:00.009Z

Bit late, but herewith follows the first of two posts which together constitute my contribution to the Library Routes Project. The project was set up in October last year to bring together the thoughts and experiences of Information Professionals on how they got where they are today, and why they chose to work in libraries at all...

Does one 'chose' to become a librarian? Are we not born? I think it just takes some of us longer to realise that that's what we are...

Anyway...librarianship wasn't a career I considered at school...and it wasn't ever suggested to me by my careers advisor. In those days it wasn't quite as important to have a specific career in mind when choosing a degree (generally any old degree guaranteed you a decent job). So my decision to study History at Aberdeen University was really down to it having been my favourite subject at school. During my time at uni I had vague notions of having a go at teaching and archaeology appealed at one point, but librarianship didn't register with me at all. When it came to my final year I applied - with little enthusiasm - for a range of graduate recruitment programmes. Unsurprisingly I didn't get past the first interview with any of them.

So I left university with a pretty good MA(Hons) in History and Economic History and no job to go to. I remember considering an Information and Library Studies (ILS) post grad at this point (but I don't remember why!), and also thought getting into IT might be good move, but I was fed up being skint and didn't think I could face any more studying. So I did some short courses in word processing, desk top publishing and the like (including a typing course, which turned out to be one of the most useful courses I've ever done! No one fingered typing for me!) and applied for any job I thought I might have a hope of getting. To boost my CV, I also did some volunteering at the Citizens Advice Bureau - where, incidentally, I developed skills that I've used in every job I've had since.

Four months after leaving university I got a short term contract with what was then the Scottish Office Agricultural and Fisheries Department as an administrative assistant. It was pretty mind numbing stuff but from there I got a permanent position at the Department of Social Security (now the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)) in Aberdeen. Over the next couple of years I had various roles from filing to interviewing benefit claimants.

At first it was great having money...I bought a flat, did some travelling and generally had fun...and I worked with a really great bunch of people. But after three years I felt increasingly in need of something more challenging and thought it was time I worked out what I actually wanted to do with my life.

I can't remember what made me consider librarianship again at this point, but I found myself applying for the first intake of the Robert Gordon University's (RGU) new distance learning post grad diploma in Information and Library Studies. (Bit bizarre doing a distance learning course at a uni located 20 minutes up the road, but I wouldn't have been able to fulfil the weekly attendance required to do the course part-time.)

I was the only one in the cohort who didn't already have a library job, so to get some practical experience I took on a part-time job in RGU's library.

By this time I'd moved into an IT support role at work - which proved to be another opportunity to acquire knowledge and learn skills that would stand me in good stead in later roles. I also ended up having to do a lot of overtime, and looking back now I'm not sure how I managed to fit everything in - full time job with long hours, part time job and part time degree. I certainly wouldn't have the energy to do it now!

I was about two thirds of the way through the post grad course when I applied for, and got, a promotion. A promotion which entailed a move south of the border. I took a break from the studying while all the moving stuff was going on, but because it was delivered by distance learning I was ultimately able to complete the course - and only two years after I should have done!

At this point, I fully intended going for the Masters and put together a really good research proposal looking at information literacy in the workplace. But then I saw an advert for assistant librarian posts at what was then the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI). So on to my first professional post and a move even further south (to London).

So, the scene is set. Tune in next week to find out how I got on as a new librarian in the big smoke!

CPDo or CPDon't

2010-01-13T23:09:00.007Z

2010 is the year for me to finally get serious about my continuing professional development (CPD). In particular, get some extra letters* to put after my name by becoming a chartered member of my professional organisation, the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals (CILIP).

I'm a very good example of how not to 'do' chartership.

I took the first step of registering way back in 2005, full of enthusiasm in my first job as a qualified librarian. Five years later, I have still to submit my portfolio. It's not an immensely difficult task and I was almost there last April. I took some study leave and after a solid week's slog (see my blog posts from that week for slog confirmation) I'd selected the evidence I needed for my portfolio and just had the evaluative statement to write. Then I ran out of study leave. I've not done anything since.

I had a resurgence of enthusiasm towards the end of last year when CILIP announced its eportfolio pilot...with the added incentive of waiving the submission fee if you could submit before the end of December. The thought of getting hard copies of my evidence (a lot of it is in electronic format only) and getting it bound was filling me with terror. The opportunity to put the portfolio together electronically was not one to be missed. So I signed up. And did nothing.

I've been reflecting on the reason for all this doing nothing ness. And the conclusion I've come to is a pretty simple one. It's nothing more than a lack of motivation. I've written recently about how busy I am. And I am very busy. And I feel like I've been very busy for the past 5 years. But, I could have made the time. If I'd been motivated enough.

Those letters would be nice to have (I know my gran would be very pleased), but I don't need them to do my job. I won't get any more money if I charter. I'm unlikely to be looking for another job in the near future. And as I'm now in a non-traditional librarian role, it's not always easy to justify CPD activities of a librarian flavour to my management.

But that's what's now providing my motivation. The very fact that I'm no longer doing 'traditional' librarian works makes my CPD all the more important. The 'traditional' librarian skills are very relevant to my current role. And my future as an information professional rests on my ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Which is where the CPD comes in. It's not about the letters, it's about the process involved in getting those letters.

So, yesterday, I attended a CILIP portfolio building seminar and got myself back on track :-)

*MCLIP

To stream or not to stream

2010-01-08T11:58:00.004Z

You'll have noticed the little experiment with the auto feeding of my tweets to this blog. It was really a spot of laziness on my part as I've not had much time for blogging recently and thought it was better to have something appearing here regularly...just to keep the interest of my reader :-)

I've noticed a few bloggers recently shifting to 'life streaming' It appeals from a personal perspective - would be good to have all my online activity recorded in one place. But...I don't particularly want to read other folks streams...but....I have said before that this blog is all about me! What to do? I have a feeling that if I did shift to a life streaming approach it would make me even lazier than I am now...and I wouldn't do enough of the deeper thinking that writing a proper blog post requires.

And on that subject - just to prove that I have done some thinking recently - I recently contributed to an interesting discussion on Dave Brigg's blog on 'the state of the UK gov blogosphere'. The whole discussion is well worth a read as there are perspectives offered from several gov bloggers, but here are my own thoughts on why civil servants don't blog as much as maybe they should:

Blogging is a good thing, yes, no argument there. And I think we're actually getting to stage where we're getting a good community of government bloggers.

As to reasons why civil servants don't blog…From a personal perpective my own blogging is limited by:

- Yep, a lack of time. My blogging is done in my own time and I'm struggling to do any at the moment because I'm having to do so much of the 'day' job at home as well.

- And yes, also, a lack of things to write about. Not a lack of things I'd LIKE to write about – but a lack of things I CAN write about.

More generally, most civil servants I know are yet to be convinced by Web 2.0 in any shape or form (many still don't see the relevance of the web at all!). Digital engagement more generally requires a dramatic shift in the way civil servants conduct their working lives and change can be difficult for us!

It's also a personal thing though. The reflective nature of blogging doesn't come naturally to everyone. And for civil servants, it's not how we're taught to write! I'm a professionally qualified librarian and for my CPD am expected to be a reflective practitioner. I started blogging as a way of of facilitating that – but I have found it difficult. And reflection isn't always something that is valued by managers.

I'm sure confidence is also an issue. I'm under no illusions that anyone actually reads my blog (other than a couple of my colleagues and my boyfriend :-) ), but as I blog for primarily selfish reasons, my miserable Google Analytics stats don't upset me (too) much. The blogosphere can be harsh. Anyone starting up a new blog would need a very thick skin or they could get disheartened pretty quickly.

From Twitter 12-06-2009

2009-12-07T03:00:00.001Z

National Library of Wales' development of a strategic approach to meeting user needs in a post-Web 2.0 world: http://bit.ly/4I0mgC

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 12-01-2009

2009-12-02T03:00:00.001Z

RT @hazelh: Info pros need to get heads round RDF - conclusion from keynote speakers on stage at #online09.
RT @ingridk: My tuppence on the latest libraries hand-wringing exercise http://bit.ly/7TyQ2g (links to the latest DCMS consultation)
@neillyneil You need to follow more librarians :-) We usually know where all the best conferences are!
RT @neillyneil: @lelil librarians know everything! [tis true. We even know the stuff wot Mr Google doesn't :-)]
Answered door to double glazing salesman...asked if my mum or dad were in :-) It is pretty dark.
Not been in the office today so don't know if my paper for #lilac2010 has been accepted. Will just have to be patient!

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 11-30-2009

2009-12-01T03:05:00.001Z

RT @lynncorrigan: RT: @bibliobot: Good to see Google recognises St Andrews Day. Wish my employers would! [pleased mine does :-)]
@standrewsday Thanks! Don't do Twibbons, but I've got my Saltire pants on today :-)
@ingridk It's a right of passage! :-)
RT @snap2grid: My day off coincides with downstairs installing double glazing. Bang bang bang. I will shortly retire to the library.
RT @happenchance: Nine Inch Nails are flogging all their musical Instruments items on eBay: http://bit.ly/5U7NUr
RT @snap2grid: Just spent time in library researching Mills Observatory and finding a ton of info from the helpful librarians.
RT @snap2grid: Finding this info would have been literally impossible with Google. Physical libraries rock! [I've not paid him to say this!]

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 11-28-2009

2009-11-29T03:00:00.001Z

Anyone know if Scotrail is on Twitter?
RT @nwinton: Timely advice! http://www.technicavita.org/social-advice/twitter/how-to-prevent-your-twitter-account-from-being-hacked.html
RT @nwinton: RT @nwinton: Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! [my sentiments exactly :-(]
@MistressMunky Me too! Not the celeb version though...that's just too awful :-)
@MistressMunky The omnibus is my essential Sunday night viewing (has replaced CSI in my schedule!)

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 11-25-2009

2009-11-26T03:00:00.001Z

I have some Google Wave invites left if there's anyone out there who still hasn't got one. (And is willing to admit it!)
@AlistairReid I associate She Sells Sanctuary with the smell of wee.. For entirely different reasons...which I don't wish to go into...
@CILIPInfo Certainly. Just DM me your email address and it shall be yours.
RT @sharon370: The Public Index, discuss the proposed Google Book Search settlement http://bit.ly/avZVi [US site, but may be of interest]
RT @Scotland4me: Tired of waiting for the bus? - There's an Ap for that. http://bit.ly/5BvH1a [I have it and it's great!]
MediaNews Group Inc to block Google News ? http://bit.ly/6jgABy Blimey, they're all it!
New David Sedaris audio book to be issued on vinyl! http://bit.ly/5YCdPT

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

From Twitter 11-24-2009

2009-11-25T03:01:00.001Z

RT @Scotland4me: Bookstart bash: Ten years of a national reading programme marked http://bit.ly/8383H7 [happy birthday Bookstart!]
Off to Raploch, Stirling to facilitate at a Scottish Government conference for community activists and volunteers. #regen
Very good event today at the Raploch. Met lots of ordinary folk doing extraordinary things in their communities. I love my job! :-)
@BenPlouviez It is indeed. The URC, the community and the council have worked together to turn the place around in a relatively short time.
@chibbie It is! As much as I am a fan of social media, nothing beats getting out and about speaking to folk!
RT @Scotland4me: N7: Storytelling at Edinburgh care homes � Tales of One City: http://bit.ly/07yY86D
Miserable out there. Tempted to stay on the train and go round the Fife Circle again.
@BenPlouviez About time you were certified! :-) What were you studying at Cranfield?
@BenPlouviez I did not laugh. Much. :-)

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Tonight's numbers are...

2009-10-31T21:03:00.005Z

Too lazy to do a proper blog post tonight, so here are some numbers...

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be hiring 1000 cyber-security professionals

Associated Press has told employees to prepare for a 10% staff reduction in 2010 (equates to more than 400 news reporting jobs)

The median age of a Twitter user is 31

56% of Twitter users (across all age groups) say they check it between one and 10 times a day. 39% of users under the age of 35 check Twitter more than 10 times a day.

Social media accounts for 18% of the information search market

Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content

The click-through rate for banner ads is 0.08%

73% of bloggers use Twitter

People with Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning the device

35% of bloggers have worked in traditional media

...gleaned from reading 332 blog posts!

Screen debut

2009-09-28T12:22:00.006+01:00

So a couple of weeks ago, I headed off to the big smoke. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the journey (the fact that my ears were popping on the Glasgow Airport bus before I'd even got near a plane was not a good sign). But things all went to plan and I was actually getting quite excited by the time the plane approached London City Airport. I'm very impressed with this airport btw. The views of London coming in to land are great - I could even make out my old tower block in Kennington (helps that it's near the Oval, so I could look out for that first!) And it took no more than about 5 minutes to get out of the airport and onto the DLR. Not sure it's much quicker getting into Central London than from Heathrow though.

After a night in the second smallest hotel room in London (I know it's the second smallest, cos I stayed in the smallest 18 months ago!), I visited ex-colleagues in the Web Team at UK Trade & Investment, who have been dabbling with social media for about 18 months now. My ex-line manager, Cass has just written a 'Social Media Marketing Strategy' which she very kindly gave me a copy of. Cass and I also had a chat with Alistair Reid who gave us a round up of what BIS are doing with social media. I was a bit disappointed not to meet Neil Williams, but I don't think I let it show and Alistair was a fine stand in. After that meeting I headed to DFID for a chat to Julia Chandler who is also doing interesting things with social media. I came away with lots of useful information which will be great help to me in writing my strategy. I'll be more specific in a future post.

Friday was the IDeA Community of Practice facilitators event at the Local Government Association in Smith Square. In my usual over eager stylee, I'd offered to do a 10 minute slot about my experiences as a facilitator. Thirty minutes and I'd have been fine, but I really struggled to come up with something useful I could tell people in 10 minutes. Luckily inspiration came by way of 2 articles in the BA in-flight magazine (Business Life). The first article is about the continuing importance of face to face meetings in business. The second article was about something called social proof. Social Scientist Robert Cialdini wanted to see if he could increase the percentage of people re-using their towels in hotels. By changing the wording on the little cards that usually say something like 'please reuse your towel, the planet will thank you' to 'the majority of guests who stay in our hotel reuse their towels’, the number of people reusing their towels increased by 26%. The theory goes that when people are told what others like them are doing there is a tendency to follow the crowd and do it too. If you have ever joined a queue and not really been sure if it’s the right one, or joined the crowd around the street performer, you are experiencing the persuasive power of social proof. So I need to find some way of applying this to our CoPs (perhaps by offering people free towels when they contribute!). So my presentation was really a plea to fellow facilitators to remember that CoPs are about people and relationships and not technology and that improving interaction is about changing behaviour not tinkering with the software.

I probably didn't really pay enough attention to the first speaker Chris Collison, who talked about communities as knowledge market places, as I was next up and was still working out what I was going to say. His new book (No More Consultants) sounds really interesting though and as I didn't win a copy (10 were given away at the event), I'll be chumming my library buddies for a loan copy. Chris did suggest that in some professions a lack of interaction in communities can be a bit of machismo thing. I hadn't really thought about this before - are some of our members afraid to ask questions in case they appear stupid?

After my 10 minutes, Charmaine Kwame and Andrew Cheetham talked about communities they've set up in the NHS. Their experiences resonated with everyone - we're by no means alone in not getting much interaction in our CoPs. But they are making progress. Don't think their presentation is available yet, but I'm sure it'll be on the wiki shortly.

Next up was a session run by Ingrid Koehler and Dan McCartney on 'CoPferences' which was very useful, as was a later session on Social Reporting (Tim Milner and Tawheed Alam). Not sure the communities that I'm involved with would be ready for an entirely online conference yet, but I think there's potential for us to try some new ways of capturing the learning at our events. I tried a wee bit of social reporting myself on the day - with a couple of tweets - but conditions weren't ideal as the wifi in the venue was a bit intermittent and I wasn't getting much of a signal on my mobile.

After lunch we got down to some 'placemaking'. This exercise, called 'the village' and facilitated by Erica Hurley, involved the whole group building a village using a large table, lots of paper, felt pens and little wooden pieces. We began by volunteering for various roles (mayor, banker, pub owner, etc), with anyone who didn't have a specific role getting a place on the town council reporting to the mayor. We were then asked to build the village in a way that reflected the Facilitators Community (eg, should the village have a strong central core, with some breakaway communities or be a bit all over the place). Erica has had a lot of success using this technique with a range of difference communities. I was a bit upset when someone bagged the farmer role before me but it was an interesting exercise and might be worth trying out with some of our communities. I wonder what our planners would make of it!

Stephen Dale and Michael Norton's anecdote circle had us exchanging stories were about how CoPs have changed our working lives. We then heard from Tim Ellis, who talked about the programme and project management communities he facilitates. Tim was very enthusiastic about the CoP platform, as was his colleague Matthew Wallbridge, who talked about how useful he'd found Tim's communities when he was learning the job.

Stephen Dale closed the day by talking about the Knowledge Hub - which sounds great, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to use that north of the border.

The chaps are doing a great job of putting all the presentations, video, audio, etc on the event wiki - which is in itself a good example of how you can capture the learning from an event. And it means I've made my debut on the YouTube....

*NB. you'll need to be a member to access the content on the CoPs

Help to create an information literate Scotland

2009-09-20T17:57:00.011+01:00

So...it'd seemed to go really well at the Scottish Information Literacy Project Open Meeting last Wednesday where we launched our new community. Had the usual techy problems, with projectors not working and what not, but my 'jokes' seemed to go down well and most folk seemed genuinely enthused about the online CoP.

I'm expecting a flood of membership requests...if not, I know where they all live :-)

I had to nip off at lunchtime to catch a flight to London, so missed the afternoon sessions, but the presentations are all available on the CoP, so I'll check them out there when I get a minute.

If you've got an interest in information literacy - or even if you're not sure what it is and want to know more - please join us. The community is called 'Creating an information literate Scotland'. And the registration process is very straightforward. Or drop me an email/leave your details here and I'll send you an invite.

CoP a hoop!

2009-09-15T21:49:00.004+01:00

Oh dear, it's been some time since my last post. I could blame the fact that I've been really busy writing my strategy, and that I had 3 weeks leave in August. But, I think it's actually more to do with the fact that I've got about 5 or 6 post ideas floating about in my head, but none has yet to become fully formed.

Anyway, those will get written eventually. In the meantime, here's something completely different...

It's all about communities of practice (CoPs) this week. On Friday I've got a slot at an event for IDEA Community of Practice facilitators in the big smoke when I'll be talking (briefly, fortunately for everyone involved) about the communities I facilitate on this platform. If you're interested, follow the #ideacops hashtag on Twitter.

And tomorrow, at the Scottish Information Literacy Project Open Meeting at Glasgow Caledonian University, I'll be launching our new 'Creating an Information Literate Scotland' community. I'll let you know how it goes!

Day in the life 4

2009-08-01T16:12:00.003+01:00

Mostly creating webpages. And updating links, lots and lots of links. That's about it really for Friday. There was some other stuff going, but not stuff I can talk about it on a public website! ;-)

I'm not kidding myself that anyone (other than the usual suspect or two!) is actually reading this, but if anyone contemplating a career in librarianship/information science/related areas has stumbled across my ramblings, I'd like to point out that (mostly) my weeks are not as dull as this one has been! I'm up against a deadline for getting some old content transferred over to our new(ish) website, so that's why I'm doing so much content management stuff at the moment. Usually my days are a whirl of fun Knowledge Management-y stuff!

Day in the life 3

2009-07-30T12:00:00.002+01:00

Spent most of the morning in a team meeting. Thrashing out our business plan for the next 18 months. I'm going to be very busy :-)

And most of the afternoon was taken up creating web pages.

And I followed* a few people on the way home.

* on Twitter...obviously

Day in the life 2.0

2009-07-29T21:15:00.003+01:00

Spent a big chunk of the day wrestling with our email bulletin system. Eventually gave up on the text editor and just hacked about with the HTML myself. Sent the finished article off to our Comms manager who will check it over before it gets issued to our 4500-ish subscribers on Friday. I hope!

Also arranged some meetings, created some draft web pages in our Content Management System, answered emails and added a few resources to our Sharepoint site.

Photo: another pic from yesterday's training course. This is my graphical representation of what I learned during the day!

What's a librarian's day like?

2009-07-28T20:35:00.011+01:00

A Day In The Life post...

(You can read the post that inspired librarydayinthelife on Bobbi Newman's site Librarian by Day.)

Signed up a day late, but the wiki site is actually blocked by the surf control at work and for various reasons I couldn't do anything at home yesterday.

Anyway, this particular librarian attended a training course on facilitation techniques today - specifically Appreciative Enquiry, World Cafe and Open Space. I'll write about those in detail at some point.

I'd call myself a fairly experienced trainer, but I've not done much facilitation and I'd not used any of these particular techniques before. It was a great course, very participative with a great trainer, a good group, lots of fuzzy felt, post-its and scented marker pens! My hands were covered in felt tip pen marks when I got home...always a sign of having been on a good training course!

I caught up with Tweets, RSS feeds, etc on the way home on the train and wrote this post after catching a couple of episodes of CSI!

Not a typical day...it's downhill from here for the rest of the week!

Photo: output from collaborative exercise at today's training event - turned out a bit like Zebedee, non?

Eek...I have a real job now!

2009-07-15T14:31:00.004+01:00

I've been in my new role for a whole two months now. I've been to lots of events, met lots of knowledgeable people, read lots of interesting reports, attended lots of meetings, browsed lots of websites. So, I've settled in, I know what I'm doing and I'm raring to go, right?

Well, yes and no. I now have a good understanding of what we're all about and of where my role fits into that. However, I am still wrestling with regeneration as a definable subject area. There are lots of different definitions and it's a term that can mean different things to different people. A definition I like is from Newham Council's website:

"Regeneration is about transformation and revitalisation - both visual and psychological. This transformation can be physical, social and economic, achieved through building new homes or commercial buildings, raising aspirations, improving skills and improving the environment whilst introducing new people and dynamism to an area. Regeneration also seeks to provide the right kind of community facilities at the right time."

So that's pretty much everything then?!!

For the purposes of actually getting on and delivering regeneration, the definition isn't really that important. It's only really a problem for my librarian brain that wants to classify and categorise everything!

Anyway, I'm on firmer ground with the Knowledge Management stuff. And there's plenty of that to be getting on with! We currently have 3 main online channels of interaction/communication with our users. We have a (currently fairly static) website, we have 3 communities set up on the IDEA Communities of Practice plaform, and we have a electronic bulletin. At the moment we don't have a coherent strategy for the way we use each of these channels and there's minimal integration between them. We have a vague notion that the website is about tools and resources; the online CoPs about discussion/conversation; and the ebulletin about (one-way) communication. So I have to draft a strategy which will articulate the how, why, when and what of these 3 channels and how we integrate them.

If anyone has produced something similar they'd like to share, I'd be ever so interested. :-)

Very much NOT at Glastonbury

2009-06-29T15:27:00.006+01:00

...although I did listen to a lot of the coverage on 6 Music.

First weekend at home in a wee while so spent some time sorting out paperwork and tidying up in the study. The clutter had built up to the stage that I was finding it difficult to work in there. Once it was all ship shape and Bristol fashion I settled down to my Web 2.0 to do list.

Big news is that I signed up for a Twitter account - @lelil (lelly and lellywelly had already gone :-( ). Not sure what my tipping point was...but I'm sure there will be no looking back now! I've already got Phil Bradley and Karen Blakeman following me! Did have to unfollow (not picked up the technical term for that yet) someone pretty quickly as well - sorry, but I just didn't find Stephen Fry's tweets very interesting.

I have to stay up to date with what's happening in Regeneration - particularly what our various partner organisations are up to. I get enough stuff coming into my inbox without it being cluttered up with email bulletins, newsletters, etc and my Google Reader account has all my library/KM/IM/IL stuff. So I thought Netvibes might be a good way to bring together all the regeneration related news stuff I could ever want. This is the result: http://www.netvibes.com/partnersinregeneration#News. Still a work in progress - have additional RSS services to add and will probably organise the content into individual pages. Might also prove to be a useful resource for my colleagues as well as being a means for keeping myself up to date.

Found this Article from UTNE Reader which bigs up information literacy...yay! Did some digging regarding UNTE Reader, 'cos I hadn't come across it before. It's an American publication which purports to be a 'digest of independent ideas and alternative culture'! Turns out that this article was written by the magazine's librarian...which may account for the pro-librarian slant! Not that that's a bad thing of course!

And finally, the very talented, and currently very prolific, t'other af has just released Episode 3 of his Epistemology series. Think he's hoping to squeeze at least another couple of episodes out of the franchise. As usual, it's very good.

Chartership activities: none*

* moving my evidence box 50 centimetres to the right doesn't really count, does it?

Captain's (B)log

2009-06-18T12:40:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, I fear it's been some time since my last confession. I've made a big deal here about posting regularly and how Friday is a good day for drafting posts...blah blah blah. In my defence, I've been on holiday, there's a lot going on at work, I'm still finding my feet in this new post...more blah blah blah.

Anyway, the guilt and shame was about to reach critical mass when I stumbled across this post: Captain’s (B)Log: Starfleet Knowledge Management this morning from CA Heidelberger. Well, when I say 'stumbled across', I mean it came via my Google 'Knowledge Management' alert. Anyway, it reminded me of the value of blogs for both personal and organisational knowledge management and that I need to allocate time to post, rather than try to fit it in around all the other stuff I do.

And t'other half should approve of the analogy...maybe ;-)

On the subject of t'other half, he's published a thrilling sequel to his Wikipedia post. There's also a second sequel in post production and I'm commissioning a post from him on search engines. I'm hoping that eventually I'll not actually have to do any work myself - I can just link to his posts!

It's not what you know, it's who you know

2009-05-27T08:11:00.004+01:00

My feelings towards Wikipedia veer from frustration to awe to downright indignation - often within the same minute. There's been a blog post forming in my mind for some time but the t'other half has gone and beaten me to it:

Epistemology Pt 1: How I co-founded DMA Design

And dammit...he's much more eloquent than I could ever hope to be!

Thank blogness it's Friday!

2009-05-18T13:13:00.004+01:00

Well it would appear that - with no conscious planning on my part - Friday is to be blogging day. Yes, I know it's Monday, but I actually drafted this post on Friday. (see previous post about my attachment to pen and paper!). It makes sense really - the Friday afternoon train journey home feels like a natural time to be reflective.

Anyhoo...this week I have mostly been agreeing my high level work objectives and then breaking those down into discrete tasks. I've got as far as putting together a fairly comprehensive work plan for the next 12 months. It will never be a finished document - there will always be things that'll crop up unexpectedly that will have to be slotted in - but it gives me something to work to. And the process of putting the plan together has enabled me to think about priorities, dependencies, etc.

As for chartership...well I'm ashamed to say I've done nothing since my week of study leave. Maybe I should apply my planning skills to that particular project as well!

New Job - Week 1

2009-05-10T16:43:00.004+01:00

I drafted this and the previous post on the train on the way back from Glasgow at the end of my first week as a 'Knowledge Management Officer'.

This week has been in turn exciting, confusing, challenging and exhausting as I've tried to get my head around what the job actually entails and also get to grips with a subject area that's pretty knew to me, ie Regeneration.

Regeneration is such a cross-cutting topic that it's going to be particularly difficult to determine what's out and what's in. But I'd have a cheek to call myself a librarian if I can't develop a strategy for that!

On the chartering front, I had intended to make some progress this week, but I don't think that's going to happen now.

The pen is mightier than the keyboard

2009-05-10T16:27:00.004+01:00

It's a funny thing...well, it amuses me anyway...that geeky as I am, I still struggle with typing directly into the blog post box. I actually drafted this post in my notebook using one of those old fashioned writing sticks - with all the inherent inefficienies that implies. My thoughts seem to flow better on paper than if I'm trying to get words onto a computer screen. And it's way more aesthetically pleasing!

In fact, I'd probably do all of my writing longhand if I had the luxury of time!

Oh well, apparently Neal Stephenson's drafted Cryptonomicon using a fountain pen, so I'm in good company.

Chartering Week Round Up

2009-05-04T20:23:00.006+01:00

So...last week didn't go entirely to plan. Accomplished a lot, but not as much as I'd hoped. As I'm starting a new job tomorrow it would have been nice to have had the thing done and dusted by this point.

I can't take any more study leave this year, but I am going to try to keep the momentum up and get the portfolio completed by the end of May. So, bye bye social life :-) Again.

CILIP has taken a lot of stick recently - if you're not aware of the Phil Bradley/Bob McKee spat*, where have you been??!!!! - but I still think chartership is worth pursuing.

* Seek enlightenment here:
Blog post from Bob McKee that kicked it all off
Phil Bradley's reposte
and the resultant CILIP 2.0 Open Session

Chartering - Day 5

2009-05-01T10:11:00.003+01:00

Going to tackle the evaluative statement today.

The evaluative statement is the executive summary for the portfolio - and it needs to "show evidence of analysis, evaluation and review of your knowledge and experience" (Watson, 2008, p59). Easy peasy :-)

Watson, Margaret. 2008. Building Your Portfolio. The CILIP Guide. London: Facet Publishing.

Chartering - Day 4 - Update

2009-04-30T18:01:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-30T08:32:00.003+01:00

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!

2009-04-29T10:26:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-29T09:14:00.003+01:00

Plan for today:

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

Chartering - Day 2 and a quarter

2009-04-28T11:21:00.004+01:00

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:

An ability to reflect critically on personal performance and to evaluate service performance
Active commitment to continuing professional development
An ability to analyse personal and professional development and progression with reference to experiential and developmental activities
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

2009-04-28T08:37:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-27T16:04:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-26T09:43:00.000+01:00

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!

2009-04-15T19:56:00.000+01:00

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...

2009-04-14T20:52:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-14T20:36:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-01T18:22:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-01T18:08:00.001+01:00

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

2009-04-01T14:12:00.001+01:00

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.

Conference report

2009-03-31T20:19:00.001+01:00

I had actually intended posting daily updates - with a summary of the sessions that I'd attended on each day. However, I haven't really got enough out of any of the sessions to make it worthwhile, so I think I'll just do an overall summing up post of the main issues following the close of the conference tomorrow.

I am actually quite disappointed with LILAC2009 so far. The presentations have been good, I've had lots of interesting chats and it's clear that there are great things being done by librarians. But, I'm not hearing anything I didn't hear last year.

And the focus is still very much on HE. One of today's keynote speakers was Leslie Burger who is Director of Princeton Public Library and there has been a sprinkling of non-HE parallel sessions. However, the vast majority (about 90% as a very rough estimate) of the participants are from universities. There are many reasons why this is the case, but it's something the LILAC committee (all from HE) need to address. One of the themes of the conference is 'information literacy for life' but I fear it's an issue that's only going to get a very superficial treatment.

This is live you know...

2009-03-31T11:04:00.000+01:00

Currently in a session about using an ARG for student inductions...

My favourite gadget

2009-03-30T18:28:00.001+01:00

One personal objective I have for this 3 day conference is to explore my iPhone. I've had it for almost 5 months now and I love it. I'm not using it to it's full potential yet though, so this trip is providing a good opportunity to find out just how much it can do for me. So far, it's provided the musical soundtrack for my train trip, allowed me to keep my other half updated as to my precise location* (via email and text), provided a variety of reading material to keep me amused (via RSS feeds and ebooks), enabled me to check train times, post to this blog and find the telephone number for my hotel (via it's Internet browser), and it helped me get from the hotel to the conference location this morning (via it's GPS functionality).

Oh, and I have used it's functionality as a mobile telephone as well!

* this is of great importance to him.

Journeys

2009-03-29T11:54:00.001+01:00

On my way to Cardiff for LILAC2009. LILAC is the Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference and is THE information literacy event of the year (in the UK anyway). It's a lovely sunny day and some of the journey is along the East Coast Mainline (one of the most scenic lines in the country). I've got 900-odd songs on my iPhone and American Gods to read. This is how all train journeys should be.

(I've been on a voyage of discovery with this blogging lark for a while (I have a restricted access blog within IDEA's Communities of Practice platform) but have yet to embrace it wholeheartedly. And with my usual impeccable sense of timing - now that Twitter is the thing - I'm ready to jump in with both feet!)

Beginnings...

2009-03-28T14:23:00.000Z

OOOOhhhh...it's like that first stroke of the paintbrush on a blank canvas or pencil on a fresh sheet of paper, or even that first tentative step into newly fallen snow...

Welcome

2007-03-27T12:21:00.000+01:00

Welcome