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With 2 hours to go of this working year, and my inbox down to zero (mainly due to the creation of a ‘random’ folder), I decided to resurrect this rather old reading habits meme, as previously done by woodsiegirl, jaffne, joeyanne, stupidgirl_no1, ioverlord, and – of course! – infobunny. And probably others I have missed (sorry).
(2 queries arise from that paragraph: am I odd for naturally referring to people by their twitter usernames? probably. did I just link to all those posts just to get more visitors? of course not! perish the thought)
Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Let’s get this out there to start with: I read a lot. I appreciate that this isn’t going to particularly set me aside in this company, but it does mean that if I didn’t snack while reading, I would probably die of malnourishment. I eat whole meals while reading. Favourite reading food? Anything that can be eaten with one hand.
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
Horrify? no. I did this when I was younger, but haven’t done for years, mainly because I have no need to. Writing in a book you own, that isn’t rare/unique etc is fine by me. As long as it’s done in pencil! Pen in books does horrify me. Dunno why.
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Bookmarks! but not yer proper fancy bookmarks, all with pictures on and everything. I’ll use anything that comes to hand – preferably paper, but have been known to use photos, rulers, random bits of plastic. Train tickets work well, but I have a nasty habit of leaving them in the book when I need them to get off the platform *sigh*
Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Fiction all the way! I do read occasional bits of non-fiction, but they tend to be quite narrative-based.
Hard copy or audiobooks?
Generally hard copy. I will sometimes listen to audiobooks (especially if the reader is someone appealing), but it takes me much longer to listen to a book than read it, and I’d generally much rather just get on with the story!
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
Actually, I’m the sort of person who tends to read to the end of books! If I’m really into a book, you just can’t prise me away from it. This has led to me having to impose restrictions on my in-bed reading – poetry, short stories/essays, or novels only if they’re not plot-driven. Wodehouse is great for that. Other fave night-time authors are O Henry, James Thurber, John Donne, Alan Coren, E B White, Stephen Fry, Ring Lardner. If I try reading something with a strong plot, I never get any sleep 
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
If I can’t figure it out from context, and have OED access at hand, then yes. I likes words 
What are you currently reading?
Horror of horrors, I’m actually between books at the moment! Day-time books anyway, my current bed book is Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
Recent books have included the new Stephen King, General Bramble by Andre Maurois, and an old favourite, Joan Aitken’s Midnight is a Place. I think this is going to be next, when the partying finally stops and I’m sober enough to focus 
What is the last book you bought?
Loads for christmas presents. I’ve actually been buying myself quite a few new books recently. This is normally taboo, as it would cost me a bloody fortune to keep myself in new books, so it’s generally library and charity shops all the way. I love charity book-shopping! The thrill of the unknown!
Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
More than one, often. I tend to finish books very quickly (my goal for this year has been a book a day, and I’m currently at 1.045! hurrah!), and so I find I can switch without getting too confused. I’ll switch books if I need a handbag sized book for a bus journey etc.
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
Anywhere. Anytime. My sofa is probably the comfiest, but I’m happy reading under almost any circumstances!
Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Series books! There are more of them And I can get a bit obsessive about reading them in order as well – no spoilers for me!
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Depends. I’ll receommend different things to different people, but I do have some staples that absolutely everyone should read: Catcher in the Rye; and Diary of a Provincial Lady.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
Roughly alphabetically by author’s last name (all the A’s together etc), with works by the same author grouped, and series books in order. This only holds true for the main collection – I have sub-collections in other rooms that are much more higgeldy-piggeldy (ie kid’s lit in the spare room; old-style Penguins downstairs looking decorative).
Recent mentions of Graduate Trainees (in various contexts) have had me thinking back to my graduate trainee days. Spoiler alert: I *loved* being a graduate trainee. Absolutely adored it. I sometimes think that it would be my ideal job: roving the library, a few weeks here, a few days there; some nice project-work to be getting on with; sticking my nose in to absolutely everything; a veritable library JOAT.
Alas, this is probably never going to happen. But I did have the chance to do that for a year, which is more than many prospective librarians. Especially now.
I did my trainee year at the John Rylands University Library at the University of Manchester, and it was brilliant. Graduate traineeships work slightly differently at all institutions, and at Manchester we worked in different departments in short blocks, to give us a taste of life throughout the library. From knowing absolutely nothing about the workings of a large academic library, I got to attend faculty and Senior Management Team meetings. From never having handled a rare book, I was sent to check the accession slips in the incunables. From never having used a bio-medical database, I started training students in how to use them.
Some of my fondest memories are of my time in the John Rylands Library on Deansgate. They were preparing to re-open after refurbishment, and we go to be part of moving the collections from off-site into their new storage areas. We also got the run of the building. And what a building! Stunningly impressive to visit; inspiring to study in; and quite frankly astounding to work in. It’s so odd to visit now, to remember ‘oh yes! I spent hours in front of those cases, with accession numbers and archival tape’.
In my enthusiasm, I kept records of some of the work I did as a graduate trainee. (If you’re interested, you can see them here) I’m incredibly glad that I did! It’s very valuable for me to be able to trace that early development; a record of the time when I was learning that I loved being a librarian!
My graduate traineeship gave me very high expectations for the rest of my career. I was treated as a professional. My ideas were listened to. I was allowed – nay, encouraged! – to come up with suggestions and ideas for projects. It instilled in me a deep and abiding love for the profession, and a respect for those who practice it well. It also gave me a very strong loyalty to John Rylands – they gave me a fantastic start, and I’ll always be grateful to them for that.
This makes me all the sadder that there are no graduate trainees at John Rylands this year. I understand that budgets are tight, and may well need to be spent elsewhere, but I do feel that graduate trainees are an excellent investment. They’re good for the library itself, who get enthusiastic, intelligent staff with new ideas and outlooks (for a fraction of the cost of a professional). They’re also good for the profession as a whole. I certainly wouldn’t be half the information prof I am today without my traineeship. This isn’t an attempt to big-up my value to the profession! But extrapolate that to all the graduate trainees, every year (there are currently 56 traineeships advertised on the CILIP page), and that’s an awful lot of potential information professionals who may not be being developed to the best of their capabilities.
If I had gone straight into my MA, I would not be as enthusiastic about the profession. I would not be as confident in myself as a professional. I would not have as high an opinion of my fellow professionals. I almost certainly would not be where I am today, and I like where I am today. Very much, in fact. I wouldn’t have got involved with SLA Europe, and be in a position where I can now help other new professionals.
I’m certainly not saying that graduate traineeships are the only valid route into the profession! I’m saying (in a long, rambling, ranty kind-of way) that they are a valuable route which can produce quite unquantifiable benefits. Ah, there’s the rub. ‘Unquantifiable’. Who has money now for anything unquantifiable?
There was an email recently on lis-link about the possibility of setting up a network for graduate trainees. Perhaps what we need as well is a network for past graduate trainees – perhaps an off-shoot of Library Routes/Roots? – where we can share what traineeships have brought to our careers. Start to try to document the unquantifiable. Be a concrete reminder of what could be lost.
I was supposed to be submitting my chartership, via the trial e-portfolio system, before 31/12/09. This is not going to happen.
I am meeting my mentor tomorrow, and I was supposed to have done a CV, an updated PPDP, and a draft evaluative statement. Most of this is not going to happen.
Why? I jokingly remarked that it was because I was too busy developing professionally to spend time on my portfolio. While this was a flippant remark, it does have a grain of truth. Since I agreed to submit by the end of December, I have become more involved with SLA E, and my work as co-chair of the Early Careers Committee has increased. We have also been very busy at Mimas, with all my projects taking off at once!
Another contributing factor has been my frustration with the e-portfolio system. I have found it very un-intuitive to use, and found the lack of documented help/instructions very frustrating. I’m normally quite keen to be an early adopter of these things, but just found that I couldn’t get to grips with this system.
After contacting some other people who were using the system, and finding that they wanted support too, I set up the ning, where we could share ideas and tips. This sense of having a peer group did help, and I started to feel better about the system.
Then I tried using it again. It might just be me, but I found that it was really detracting from my chartership experience. I had no feeling of something coming together, just of odd pieces of evidence stuck on at various times. I found that I was really dreading coming to look at it, and really wasn’t enjoying doing any chartership work. So I have decided that I probably won’t be submitting using that system.
I hadn’t realised quite how stressed I was, both by the e-portfolio system and the December deadline, until I decided that I wasn’t going to make it. I hate missing deadlines – it feels like such a failure! – but in this case it’s actually an enormous relief.
What this extra time (I’m hoping to submit around March/April) will give me is a chance to completely revisit how I am thinking about my chartership. I realised that while some of my disjointed feel was down to the e-portfolio system, much of it was due to the fact that I didn’t have a coherent plan for my portfolio. I knew in a vague way what should be in it, but I’d just been picking things out as I went along. I hadn’t been using my PPDP properly, as a basis for the structure. Frankly, I didn’t have a structure! I’d been assuming that as long as I was doing the development activities and the reflection, that the portfolio would pretty much organise itself. I was very, very wrong.
So, what I will have for my mentor tomorrow is this blog post, explaining why I don’t have any of the things I was supposed to prepare. But I do now have a better appreciation of what is involved in putting together a chartership portfolio, and am feeling geared-up to get going with it. And a little enthusiasm is worth a boat-load of paperwork, right?
Well, having left it very late, and prompted by woodsiegirl’s great post, and Neil’s rather pointed comment, here’s my decision on the proposed SLA name change.
I’m voting yes.
In a way, I’m glad I’ve waited, because time has given me a great example, which illustrates exactly why I think we need to change. I was corresponding with a senior UK information professional, on official SLA Europe business, and they commented:
‘I am assuming we are working to the usual UK definition of a special/workplace library and not including academic libraries, which sometimes seem to be counted as ‘special libraries’ in the US.’
If the term ‘special libraries’ is handicapping our communication within our own profession, what is it doing to our wider communication and relevance? If information professionals have no consensus about what ‘special libraries’ are, how can we possibly unite effectively as part of a ‘special libraries association”?
I agree completely with woodsiegirl when she says that:
‘Maybe “Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals” will require as much explanation to non-members and non-information professionals as SLA did, but at least they won’t have to work their way past a set of inaccurate assumptions to begin with. ASKP is a blank slate.’
And it’s not as if explaining what we do – without the word ‘librarian’ – is a new thing. The first line of the SLA General Industry FAQs answers the question ‘what is a special librarian?’ thus:
‘Special librarians are information professionals dedicated to putting knowledge to work to attain the goals of their organizations.’
Does that definition also work for ‘what is a strategic knowledge professional?’ I think so. This is what we already are. This is what we already do. What we need to do now is to take the chance on the new vocabulary.
I’ve had recent experience of how a redefined vocabulary can really help you to explain the worth of what you do. Mimas has recently undergone a rebrand, and working the stand at Online last week was my first chance to talk about Mimas using the new vocabulary to describe who we are and what we do. We’re no longer talking about ourselves as a National Data Centre who run some services. Now we’re an organisation of experts who provide quality services to support world-class research and education. The difference was amazing. I felt much more confident talking to people. I felt that I didn’t need to be nervous, or worry that I wouldn’t be able to do us justice. I had been given the vocabulary to communicate on a wider professional level, and there was something in it that resonated with everyone I talked to, from all sectors.
This is what the alignment process is doing for SLA. They’re giving us that vocabulary to talk about our worth and value, but that vocabulary is of no use if we continue to say ‘well, it just means librarian really’. We need to commit to using the tools that the SLA alignment team have given us – and what better way to do that than to accept the biggest vocabulary change of all? No-one is asking you to not be a librarian anymore. They are asking you to use the available resources for the betterment of the profession. And when I think about it like that, well, there’s really no choice. I’m voting for change.
So, I’m back from working the Mimas stand at the Online conference. I’ve done some conference stand work before, but on a much smaller scale, and Online was a shock to the system – on many levels!
If you came to the Mimas stand at Online (and if not, why not?), you probably saw me. You may even have been accosted by me (‘Are you familiar with Mimas?..’). If you came by on Thursday afternoon – when the tiredness was starting to outweigh the professionalism – you might have seen me doing my flamingo impression (one foot up, one foot down, try not to fall over during the transition). We spoke to 270 people in total, which is a delightfully amazing number. It was fantastic to meet so many people – some of them completely new, others who I had spoken to by email or on twitter – and get a real flavour of the diversity of the profession.
It wasn’t always easy. I messed up my spiel on numerous occasions (‘Mimas is an organisation of… umm… centre of excellence of … umm … expertise…’). I got flatfooted by questions that I really should have prepared for (‘Oh, what types of geo-spatial data do you work with?’). I shamelessly referred people to colleagues. I made Lisa talk Spanish. I knocked the end off the banner every time I tried to get into my handbag. I forgot how to type. I forgot how to speak. I let my welcoming smile turn into a hideous rictus. I only just resisted the temptation to sink to my knees on the floor of the stand, and let the world go hang.
But I didn’t. I survived the three days with my sanity largely intact. This was helped by a number of factors. One was my fantastic colleagues, who helped me when I was floundering; bought me coffee; drank beer with me; let me steal their best turns of phrase; and are still – amazingly! – speaking to me. Another was the excitement of seeing my SLA Europe colleagues, who I don’t get to meet up with as often as I’d like. We had a great breakfast, and an amazing trip to the House of Commons, thanks to Darron Chapman at tfpl, followed by a gorgeous dinner and maybe just a little wine… This also gave me the chance to reconnect with Anne Caputo, President-Elect of SLA, and an all-round Very Nice Lady, and to meet Stacey Bowers (SLA’s very glamorous and lovely Director of Business Development) and the very-tired-but-still-terrifyingly-intelligent Stephen Abram.
The main thing, though, that kept me going, was the fact that (secretly) I loved it. I’m delighted with the new Mimas brand, and was really pleased to have the chance to talk to people about it! I enjoy my work so much, and Online was a chance to be able to vent some of that enthusiasm, in an environment where people were interested and engaged. It would have been nice to attend some of the sessions, but working the stand has given me plenty of great contacts to follow up on, and a wealth of things to feed into my personal and professional development. My feet may not have forgiven me yet, but it was worth it
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