Monday 20 June 2011

Thing 1 : CPD 23 things

Having signed up for CPD23, I have spent quite a lot of today dithering about how to go about "Thing 1". The blog's name will probably change, as I hope will its appearance, but in the end I thought I had better just get started and refine the details later! I'm looking forward to CPD23, and hoping that it will help me not to get left behind in the rapidly changing library landscape. Librarians of my generation have had to adapt to enormous change - I sometimes think that it has been our equivalent of living through the Industrial Revolution - and yet we will still need to keep up and remain employable for many years to come. I'm hoping that the blog may be an aid to professional reflection, perhaps in a more manageable form than annual appraisals, and I'm also hoping that writing things down in front of witnesses might be a useful discipline.

I've had what one of my interviewers in my current post described as "a chequered career" - "no, no, you have broad experience", said another senior ex-librarian - progressing from special to academic to public to special to public to academic library. I now work part time at Cardiff University in a hybrid role, which is roughly two thirds cataloguing and one third subject liaison for the School of Welsh.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Helen, I can certainly identify with your first point as I spent a similar amount of time dithering about the title/layout/content before getting started on my blog. I'm looking forward to keeping up with your future posts.

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  2. Seems there are a few of us dithering about layout etc - I am sure I could spend hours on trying to get my blog to look pretty! Time which would probably be better spent on something more useful - however first impressions do count, so I might do some more tweaking. I am interested in how many of my colleagues (at CU) are doing this - you are the 3rd one I have found so far, so cpd23 seems to have tweaked the interst of quite a few of us.

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  3. Hi Helen, your career sounds really interesting to me as someone who is currently working in public but would like experience in academic! Although I love public libraries I want to branch out to see if academic libraries would suit me too but the cross over seems difficult.

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  4. Really like your blog post; much more personable than mine. Also like your analogy with the Industrial Revolution. There's not enough hours in the day to keep up with everything but hopefully cpd23 each week will provide a fab way to plug some of the social media gap I seem to have

    Louise

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  5. Hi Helen, great first post. Good on you for joining in with the young 'uns, I think we're all going to learn a lot and leave the luddites trailing : )

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  6. Yeah - another Helen. It is a very common name for librarians, I've found! I find your career path really interesting as a school librarian who's considering whether I should venture into something new...

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  7. Hi Helen, well - who to follow? I thought I would start with all the Helens, LOL. I'm looking forward to learning heaps. Nice to meet you. Helen Y (NZ)

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