Chartership: what now?

I blogged recently about what CILIP Chartership – by which I really meant the process of putting together my Chartership portfolio – meant to me. Well, as of yesterday, it means that I am now a chartered librarian! Hurrah and jubilation etc etc

Once the excitement had died down a little, I started to think about what being a Chartered member of CILIP means to me. It’s something I’ve been working towards my entire career – I can’t remember if the statement ‘I intend to work towards CILIP chartership’ was on the application for my graduate traineeship, but it’s certainly been on every application form and piece of professional assessment since.

So, now I’m there. What do I do with it? Is this the pinnacle of my professional achievement?

Hopefully not! After all, there’s still Revalidation, and Fellowship somewhere in the misty future. And I’ve expressed an interest in becoming a Chartership mentor, so there’s plenty of room for personal and professional development within the CILIP framework for me yet.

But what does it mean in practical terms? Am I, as @mariekeguy suggested, now ‘always expected to know what I’m talking about’? Do people expect more from Chartered Librarians? Does it have an impact on how you behave professionally? Or on how people expect you to behave? I guess I’ll find out for myself soon enough – but any insights you want to share in the comments are very welcome!

One immediate effect, by the way – a huge rush of affection towards all my wonderful twitter peeps, who were (as always) so immediate and unstinting with their congratulations. Did I mention at any point that you guys rock?

What Chartership means to me

Well, the portfolios are done, bound, and in the post, and it’s time to reflect on what Chartership and the chartering process have meant to me.

Several people have asked me about this already, and I think I’ve tended to be fairly vague and desultory – ‘well, it’s something you’ve got to do, isn’t it? just a few hoops to jump through… but not too bad overall’. But do I really feel like this about Chartership? And, if so, why did I do it at all?

Now, my mentor was a lovely, lovely lady, who I really enjoyed spending time with, but this doesn’t tell the whole story of why I found the mentor relationship to be by far the most valuable facet of the Chartership process. Why? Because of the huge importance of simply having someone to tell me that it’s ok – nay, required! – to say good things about yourself.

I have problems with this, probably a result of an upbringing in which there was no middle ground between becoming modesty and vulgar boasting, but I’ve been getting better over the years, and have generally come to manage to admit when I’m not so shoddy at summat. So why do I – and others! – still have this problem when it comes to saying that we’re actually really quire decent info profs?

Well, guys, I’m afraid it’s all your fault. Yup, this is one I’m putting squarely on the shoulders of my peer group and social networks. Not because you’re mean and horrible, but because you’re just all so darn good at things!

We measure success, not against some abstract ideal, but from a concrete comparison of our achievements with those of our peers. As the general level of achievement rises, so do the criteria considered to denote “success”. and boy-oh-boy, are you lot a load of over-achievers

Just from memory, and in the last few weeks alone, people in my Twitter network have won prizes and awards; have got exciting new jobs and promotions; have given papers and written articles; have got distinctions and started PhDs. My peer group is enthusiastic, intelligent, active, engaged. They serve on project boards, plan conferences, and write manifestos. They write ridiculously thoughtful and erudite blog posts. They edit journals and run workshops and make websites and implement innovative services and oh my guts and garters do these people ever sleep?

And yes, ok, I do some of those things too. But they’ve become the norm, which in some ways is such a brilliant, wonderful, inspiring thing that it makes me want to cry a bit and give you all a great big hug. But it also means that it can be easy to overlook the smaller achievements; to count yourself as insignificant among this gallery of stars, and we need the positive reinforcement of feeling that we have achieved to continue achieving.

So that is what Chartership has done for me. It has given me a still, small place outside the glamour and pressures of my peer group, and allowed me to measure my achievements against myself. It’s given me the chance and the encouragement to say ‘I done good’, and to remember that, sometimes, it’s about what the profession can give me, as well as about what I can give the profession. There may have been some hoop-jumping involved, but those hoops have helped to strengthen and affirm my sense of place within the profession. So there may have been swearing and grumbling and groaning, but I’m glad I did it. [DISCLAIMER: I reserve the right to edit/delete/throw a hissy fit if I don't pass ]

Thoughts on my failure to meet my chartership deadline

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?