ABC – advocacy, bibliographic management and conferences

But not in that orders my lovelies.

Thing 14  – Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike

As I have worked predominantly in UK Higher Education I would say that I have slightly more than a passing aquaintance with bibliographic management software (BMS).
The only points that I would add to the excellent CPD23 run-down are:

1) With some (all?) licenced BMS packages it is possible to get the citation style of the university added to the style list.  If, of course, you’ve managed to get some sort of agreement on a syle – which is no mean feat.  Barring any extra Departmental or Faculty citation/reference style requirements, the inclusion of your ‘house style’ can be a great time saver for students and staff alike.
2) When choosing with which BMS to wrangle, remember to look beyond current institutional/workplace boundaries.  There’s a balance to be struck between the convenience of the workplace and any independent learning or development activities.  It may mean no more than a quick consideration of how you might transport any precious references when the time comes to leave your esteemed establishment.  It’s an issue that can loom large with significant and/or final  pieces of work such as masters dissertations.
3)  Finally, with consideration of your own or a customer’s potential usage there is the desktop versus cloud dichotomy.  You may find that you can have a licenced copy of the latest version of a comprehensive, functionality-packed BMS package like EndNote.  The downside of which might be tie-in to a particular device/IP address.  Would a web-based device-independent option better suit your or their working patterns?

Thing 15 – Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

Come close, shhh, quiet now, I’m going to whisper.
I like presenting.  No, I really do. Yes, it’s terrifying. Yes, things go wrong.  But mostly, librarians/information professionals/like minded customer-focussed folks are interested and interesting. I have never regretted putting myself forward when the opportunity arose and always gained so much:  The exchange of ideas, the re-assurance that the same brilliance and nonsense goes on in other places of work, and perhaps the best bit – the option to nose about other people’s libraries.  Fantastic.  The same goes for attending and organising events.

My only regret? Opportunities have not come my way recently. Time to get out there and see what’s on offer. Any adive?

Thing 16 – Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

At first I found this an uncomfortable read.  ‘I don’t do any of that, I’ve never done any of that’.  Oh dear that’s a bit of a chink in the professsional armour.   However, after racing around the house with the vacuum I have returned to the keyboard with these ideas:

I have done – promotion, particularly in the internal marketplace. You know the kind of thing:

• You pay stacks for this database, your student/staff usage figures are these – how can we encourage more use and get better value for your money?
• Would you like to include a section in your course on e journal/database use/information literacy?  We can write that for you!

External advocacy.

I’ll admit that here my CV  is more patchy.  I was a while back kindly invited to support my boss in writing an article that promoted a tutorial we had written as a team :

Captivating Open University students with online literature search tutorials created using screen capture software

Bouyed up by this success I and another brilliant colleague did try to get an article about our extended hours service off the ground. We met with a few instituitional barriers and ‘Thing 16’ has made me realise that this has continued to to make me feel disheartened.  Pah!  No longer.  I have a couple of plans, one fun and one serious.
1)  A crafty thing for my sister blog inspired by Girl in the Moon
2)  Something (what?) about how brilliant libraianship has been as a way of staying professionally employed whilst doing the family-raising thing.

Ta-ra for now me dears and keep yourselves out of the torrential rain.

Px