Thing 23 - Reflection

  by  Auntie P 

23 Things - all done and dusted! I've really enjoyed the 23 Things for Professional Development programme, both as an organiser and as a participant. It's certainly been useful in assessing where I am with my professional development, and where I would like to be. It's encouraged me to find out more about CILIP Chartership, which I hope to start next year.

I'll be completing the evaluation survey after I've published this blog post so I've been thinking about which elements of the programme I have found most useful. For me, it's been the 'thinky' posts that I've got the most out of - particularly Thing 3 on personal branding, Thing 5 on reflective practice, Thing 11 on mentoring, Thing 21 on evaluating your skills and areas of development. Many of those things I have wanted to work on for a while but it's been really useful to have them included in this so that I had to dedicate time to them. Thing 5 on reflective practice has been the most useful to me - I'm now trying to evaluate all my professional development activities with the 'What? So what? Now what?' model and will be doing this on my main blog when I write about the 23 Things for Professional Development programme.

Another positive outcome is that I've also started commenting on people's blogs more and I'm really pleased about that as I know how great it is to receive comments and how the conversations that happen in blog comments can be really useful to all involved.

I've recently completed my first annual IPR (Individual Performance Review) at work and as part of that I worked on a personal development plan so I decided to wait until I had completed that process before blogging this final thing. I looked at what skills I needed to improve my performance at work, and I now have a series of targets and areas to focus on which I hope will also be the areas to focus on in my Chartership. These include:

• Networking
• Presenting
• Formal writing (e.g. academic writing)
• Organisation skills (including project management, event management, time management and delegation)

Some of these I have already been working on developing, but I think I can improve on each of these areas. Some I have specific targets for, others I hope to incorporate into my professional development activities in the future. I plan to continue with the committee roles I am currently active in for both CILIP and ALA, and next year will be involved in the ALA Emerging Leaders program (January-June) which in addition to helping me understand more about ALA and how I can get involved,  I hope will include developing most of the skills I need to (particularly networking, organisation skills and presenting).

I found this activity really useful for helping me focus future professional development - I sometimes find it difficult to prioritise activities and as I take more on, I have to sometimes turn down opportunities that I can't fit in due to time commitments or that aren't within my current scope. I think knowing my areas of professional development focus should help me prioritise in future which will definitely be beneficial.

23 Things for Professional Development has been an incredibly useful process and definitely something I'm glad I participated in. Three cheers to all organisers and participants!

  by  What What 

This will be the last blog post on this blog (though it will remain online and I will still chack comments) - if you want to continue following my professional development activities, including CILIP Chartership and ALA Emerging Leaders, please subscribe to my main blog, Joeyanne Libraryanne (you can subscribe by RSS or email from the links in the top left above my photo). Hope to see some of you over there and on Twitter :)

Thing 21 - Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview

Interesting thing, this one (even for those of us not currently looking for work). As I'm about to embark on my Chartership it will be especially useful for me to consider my current interests and skills and identify gaps to address throughout Chartership. I'm going to have a go at answering the questions posed in the blog post.

(Apologies for the long blog post - I just kept writing as it was really useful! Also no pictures I'm afraid).

Identify your strengths, take a good look at yourself, your tasks at work, your career, your life: what do you like to do?

Along with many librarians, I like to help people. It's what first attracted me to librarianship and it's been a common theme through all my jobs and voluntary activities (right from gymnastics coaching which I qualified in aged 13!).

I also like to solve problems. By nature I'm a completer/finisher and so I love to start with a problem and end with a definitive answer. Things don't always work out that neatly unfortunately, but I'm happiest when they do.

Something else I like to do is to plan. I'm a planner in all aspects of my life; work on a shorter term basis, life on a longer term basis. I don't have my whole life planned out or anything like that; I prefer to be flexible to make the most of opportunities as they arise and also as I mentioned, I'm terrible at decisions! But I do feel happier when I have a plan so that I have something to focus my activities. It's like saving money (another thing I like to do) - I'm much better when I have a specific goal to work towards rather than just saving money for the sake of it. I'm constantly reviewing my plans depending on my situation, and always feel better when I'm settled on a plan.

What do you dislike?

At school I loved every subject (yes, I was frequently called a swot) apart from Art and History. Art because I was rubbish (I'm still not very creative and would love to be moreso); History because it just didn't interest me much. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy visiting museums and learning more about past civilisation, however generally I prefer to focus on the present and the future. In my research, I obviously need to examine the past in some way to set the context, but that's nowhere near as interesting (for me anyway) as finding out about cutting edge developments and considering the implications for future.

I'm really not very good at making decisions. I always look to others for advice when there are a large number of options to consider. Having said that, I seem to be far better at decision making in certain circumstances. I'm much better at making work-related situations (e.g. during projects and at meetings) than I am at making life decisions - small or big.

Another thing I'm not a big fan of is formal communications. When I'm learning, I far prefer to have a conversation or read a blog post than to read a formal article. Unfortunately that doesn't really suit the academic research world, and I know it's something I need to improve. I far prefer a more conversational style of writing, both to read and write. On a related point, I also don't like unnecessary jargon and acronyms (though I'm a hypocrite as I know I use them).

Do you remember the last time you felt that feeling of deep satisfaction after creating, building, completing something? What was it about?

I always feel a great sense of satisfaction when I've successfully completed something. It goes back to the completer/finisher thing I guess, and applies to all areas of my life. I like to have a clear end point and to be able to see what I have produced by the end. I think that's why I enjoy cross stitching so much - it's great watching the image come together and end up with a final picture.

I also feel satisfaction after teaching someone how to do something, or sharing advice/information via presentations. I used to want to be a teacher and although I'm no longer keen to do that (mainly due to curriculum), I really enjoy the aspects of my job that enable me to teach/present. This also includes my blog posts or tweets explaining things or linking to further information - it's very satisfying when people find them useful.

I find events very rewarding too - it's so great when all the hard work pays off and although during the event you run around like a headless chicken (I always aim for the swan - calm on the surface but frantic underneath, but not sure I always manage that!), I love it. Reading back the feedback and finding out that people enjoyed the event and found it useful is really satisfying.

What skills do you need to do the things you like?

The main skills I need for the things I like to do are communication skills, particularly written and spoken communication. I would definitely like to improve my formal written communication, and continue to improve my presenting skills and networking skills (I find this really beneficial in my work, but very draining and I still haven't mastered the art of avoiding the occasional awkward silence).

Organisation skills are also important for the things I like - managing myself (time management) and managing other people (particularly during events and when working on projects and with committees).

What next?

This has been a really useful exercise for me - it has definitely helped me focus on what skills I need to develop which I will be able to include in my PPDP (Personal Professional Development Plan) for my Chartership and in my targets for my upcoming annual review at work.

The areas I specifically want to work on are:

• Formal written communication (reports, journal articles)


• Oral communication (presenting, networking)


• Organisation (time management, event management, people management, project management)

Thing 10 - Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership

I have previously written a blog post on my main blog about my route into librarianship as part of the Library Roots/Routes project, and will be no doubt writing an update later in the programme (for Thing 20), so for this thing I'm going to discuss specifically my graduate traineeship, my masters degree, and my plans to charter.

Graduate traineeship

My graduate traineeship was at University of Wolverhampton from September 2005 to August 2006. I'd just finished my first degree (BSc Hons Sports Science from Bangor University), had moved to the Wolverhampton area for my partner's job, and was interested in learning more about being a librarian. It was my first full time job and I absolutely loved it. I had a fantastic boss (who I still keep in touch with, she's an amazing mentor - more on that in Thing 11) and was able to try my hand at lots of different things. I was based in a team of science librarians supporting applied sciences, engineering, computing and maths. As my background is in science/maths I was in my element. The traineeship year was more like a paraprofessional job really, though I did get the opportunity to go on training courses and I spent a few hours with different teams within the department.

I loved the flexible nature of the job - no two days were the same. As I began to learn more about what it was I was really interested in, I was able to support the information literacy teaching and was given responsibility for some of the more technology focused initiatives of the team (e.g. developing our VLE presence, using online tools to help with planning). I had regular meetings with my boss and she often gave me new tasks or projects to do but she gave me the freedom to approach them how I wanted to. I learnt so much during this year, and it definitely helped me realise that I wanted to become a qualified librarian.

Masters degree

I started the MScEcon in Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University in September 2006 via distance learning. At the time I had managed to secure a part-time position at a different campus at University of Wolverhampton so I worked 4 days a week, and studied the rest of the week.

I found the course a little overwhelming to begin with; the study school was really intense (a packed week of lectures all day and social activities every evening), and when I got home I felt a little lost - there's so much to get your head around in terms of how the distance learning works before you even think about the content of the course! I soon got into the swing of it though and really enjoyed most (not all, I confess!) of the taught modules. There was a LOT of reading, both in the module pack and the extra required reading. I recently recycled the printed journal articles that I'd read - one of our kitchen cupboards was full to the brim with them all piled up! I found it weird to not have deadlines - it made it very difficult to stop working on an assignment as I don't think you are ever totally happy with something (or maybe that's just me).

I completed the postgraduate diploma section of the course by October 2008 and started my first professional librarian post the following month (at another different campus at University of Wolverhampton!). The dissertation, however, took a little longer. I wanted to take a short break to settle into my new job, but I started getting involved in other professional activities and I found it very difficult to get the motivation to work on the dissertation. I seemed to work in bursts for the next two years - I'd really focus on it for a few months, then send a chapter to be read by my supervisor, and whilst I was waiting for feedback I'd lose my momentum. I had a final deadline of September 2011 so this year I finally focused on it and I completed it a few weeks ago. I should get my grade in December.

I did find distance learning difficult at times - the flexibility to complete it in your own time is great when you're motivated (some people who started the course at the same time as me wanted to complete the full course in a little over a year whilst still working full time), but when other things happen in your life it can be difficult to spend time studying when you don't have to. I also missed the social side of being a distance learner, although I did meet some people local to me and we met up every few months for a natter which was good. I definitely think having a support group of some sort is useful - sometimes you need people to chat to about an assignment or just about the course in general.

Chartership

I have always been keen to continue my professional development. I've been working on developing skills such as presenting at conferences and organising events, and I'm committed to supporting our professional organisations such as CILIP and ALA (and of course I'm also doing CPD23!).

I'd now like to prove this commitment and further develop my skills by chartering through CILIP. I'm going to learn from my mistakes though and I'm actually taking a proper break after studying this time, so I won't be starting my chartership straight away. I've been chatting about my plans to charter on Twitter, and fortunately found a willing volunteer to mentor me. She's not yet taken her mentor training but I already know she'll be an awesome mentor. Hopefully she'll be able to do the training next year and I'll be able to begin my chartership journey next spring/summer. In the meantime I'm going to start finding out more about chartership and think about starting to collect some evidence (I'm hoping to develop a wiki for the basis of collecting evidence as part of Thing 13).

Thing 5 - Reflective practice

Cookie cat reflected in the kitchen window

It's taken me a while to write this post - I think I've been reflecting too much it's taken over the actual writing! I'm a serial planner so I spend a lot of my time reflecting on where I am, where I want to be, and how I'm going to get there (in all aspects of my life). I'm not sure that I'm so good at sharing this or writing it down though.

I read Emma's post with interest, as I really enjoy reading her blog posts on Librarians on the Loose. She writes in a very conversational way which I like, but I also really admire the way she reflects on everything she does and thinks about how she can apply lessons she has learnt in practice.

My blog, Joeyanne Libraryanne, was always intended to be a reflective blog. I write the posts primarily for myself (though sometimes I like to stimulate conversation in the comments on a certain topic), and my blog post tend to discuss either things I have done or things I have been thinking about. However, I've realised recently that many of my posts aren't exactly very reflective, they're more of a descriptive nature.

So what am I going to do about it?

Well, I'm hoping to start the CILIP Chartership process next year, so I definitely want to develop my reflective writing skills in preparation for developing my portfolio. I really like the model described by Emma originating from Borton in 1970; a cycle of What? So what? Now what?

I think when I'm recording future things which might be of use for my portfolio, I'm going to use this structure. I'm hoping to set up a wiki to support the Chartership process and I think I might use these 3 questions as the basis for each activity I do.

I'd also like to try to incorporate more reflection into my blog posts, so I'm going to try to think about including the lessons I have learnt into my posts, as well as recording planned future actions. I'm a user of the GTD system (more on that in a later thing!) so discrete actions to follow up the lessons would be good for me to record in my to-do list app. Hopefully this should help catch the follow-up actions that I often miss due to not allowing enough time for reflection before moving on to the next thing. And by reflecting on reflecting I've definitely got some points to add:

• Use the What? So what? Now what? model for reflective practice in Chartership wiki and blog posts
• Attend a training session on reflective writing (often organised by CILIP)
• Include follow-up actions for relevant blog posts