Thing 16

Reading this week's thing has made me realise that I should probably do more in this area. I am always putting the case for libraries with family, friends and colleagues but have not really gone any further than that. Although my main job is in an FE college I also do some hours in the Public Library and I do try and promote the Public Library to our students too so I guess that counts. One of my areas of interest is accessibility and so I am keen to show the students with learning difficulties whom I work with in college that they can use the Public Library and what it can offer them. I have taken accompanied a group of college students on a visit to the Public Library which they enjoyed. I guess there is not a lot more I can say at the moment other than pledge to spend some time looking at the links in this "thing" and reflect on what else I could be doing.

Thing 15

I have attended various seminars, conferences and events over the years although not all whilst working in a library context. Many related to a previous Human Resources training role concerning commissioning training for social workers. I have also been involved in organising such events. In terms of library work, apart from training events, I have attended the LIS show a couple of years ago in Birmingham which I enjoyed and have networked with peers at study school at Aberystwyth. More recently I have asked my line manager if I can attend the New Professionals Conference in 2012 and this has been agreed and put in my development plan for the year. I found out about library camp too late unfortunately.

As for presenting I have done this on a small scale, mainly in a training context or sometimes to management. I am looking forward (!) to the next couple of weeks of non- stop inductions to new students (I have jumped the gun and made my first Prezi for this). I have not given any presentations to fellow professionals as yet.

I tend to use Powerpoint as a prompt rather than be totally scripted but I always have some notes as a back-up. I have often used file cards (tied together with a treasury tag in case I drop them) one for notes for each slide. I am not then tied to notes on Powerpoint and can move away from the screen. I am more confident if I believe I know my topic well, and even more confident if I think my audience don't! It is a bugbear of mine if people write wordy Powerpoint slides and proceed to read them out so I tend to summarise (in case anyone is visually impaired) and presume my audience are literate .

Another point which I think is important to mention for anyone about to give a presentation is to slow down and take your time - aim to speak slower than you think you need to. Everyone rushes when nervous and the audience need to digest what you are saying. Pause on a slide to give the audience time to read it before rushing to the next or pause to take a sip of water - what seems like a long pause or gap to you will not seem so to the audience.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other cpd23 participants have to say on this "thing".

Thing 14 - Zotero, Mendeley and Citulike

Again, these tools look interesting and very useful. I have not used any of them before - it almost makes me wish I had carried on past the PG Dip to write a dissertation - maybe one day! They are probably beyond the needs of most of our FE students, but could be of interest to our growing number of HE students. I will aim to familiarise myself further and promote them in skills sessions.

Thing 13

Keeping it very brief as the busiest weeks of the year approach. I have scratched the surface of Thing13 to get an idea of what the software offers I can see potential for google docs and Dropbox although currently we tend to rely on sharing files via a shared drive as none of us work remotely.

I have attended a course previously on blogs and Wikis and am pleased to be able to put my basic blogging knowledge into practice on the CPD23 things. I haven't as yet exploited my knowledge of Wikis....at the moment my feelings are so many "things" so little time but I think it is just that time of year and once the new term gets off the ground I will be able to revisit some of the 23 things at a more leisurely pace.

Thing 12

Suddenly I feel a bit behind with CPD23 things having been on holiday and come back to the pre-term frenzy. I will try and blog a few times over the next couple of weeks to catch up before term starts, after which who knows when I will get the chance!

Briefly Thing 12 then...

I definitely think there are more advantages than disadvantages to social networking in a professional capacity and hope to become more involved as time goes on. Prior to CPD23 I had dabbled a little using Facebook in a personal rather than professional capacity and followed a few blogs.

Since starting CPD I have had a look at Twitter although I feel I am not able to get the full benefit at the moment as it is blocked at work and my phone is not yet of the 21st century... soon be Christmas! Since finishing my studies at Aberystwyth I had missed the sense of community offered by Moodle discussion threads to distance learners, so I am enjoying reading, writing and commenting within the library blogging community since starting CPD23. When working in libraries such as those in schools and colleges where library staff may be lone working or in a very small minority it is good to be able to network with others in similar situations and share best practice.

Things 10 and 11

I have taken a rather circuitous route into library work. It was something I always wanted to do but when I graduated in French Studies (back in 1990) I wanted to be out earning money. I was young and in love(!) and didn't want to commit to 9 months as a graduate trainee before going back into studying which was, as far as I knew, the only option at the time. I was also keen to use my language skills. I acquired my first job as a result of temping - I happened to be working at the English headquarters of an Anglo French company who on discovering I was fluent in French offered me a post as bilingual PA to the the finance director. Despite my bosses attempts to interest me in the financial markets, finance wasn't really my thing however. My second and much more "me" job was at a multimedia language centre at Loughborough University, this was followed by LA and SLA at library headquarters in British Forces Germany. After starting a family and returning to the UK, due to circumstances I left library work for a while and spent 7 years working my way up in local government HR. This gave me many transferable skills and experience including training, project management, budget management and partnership working. However I missed library work and then I found out about Aberystwyth's distance learning course and applied and was accepted onto the course. I felt I would be better off working in a library environment whilst studying, so took a large cut in salary (money isn't everything I learnt since 1990!) and applied for my current post as part-time LA in FE and later also in the public library. Having recently qualified I am now starting to think about chartership and looking to move to a professional post where I can put my both library knowledge and experience and skills gained in libraries and elsewhere into practice.

Reading some of the other CPD blogs about this thing has reminded me that I too used to put library tickets into my Enid Blyton collection and was a librarian at my junior school. It is definitely a vocation ;)

Things 8 and 9

The weeks seem to be flying by and it is quite difficult to keep up with the "things" thank heavens there's a catch up week soon. As far as Thing 8 Google calendar is concerned I have decided that one is not for me because I use Outlook at work. Going back to one of my early posts I am still a bit nervous as to what information I put out in cyberspace and so don't quite like the idea of saying I am on holiday in Timbuktu in a calendar so someone can hack in and go burgle my house - call me old fashioned but I only write that on my kitchen calendar! Current revelations of hacking scandals have done nothing to reassure me I have to say. So I think I will stick with my work calendar for now which is just shared between colleagues, and my kitchen calendar without which my life and the lives of my family would fall apart.

Thing 9 Evernote looks much more interesting though and I can see its potential. Amazingly network security at work allowed me to download it onto my PC. I have not yet had as much luck on my home laptop however - maybe because it is this week's "thing" there is a lot of traffic so I will keep trying. I have tentatively made a couple of notes. Previously I have just saved everything of potential use to my Delicious account.

As there have been quite a few new things for me to get to grips with so far it is going to take a while to get the benefits and realise the potential of some of them but at least keeping up with the course is making me have a go. One thing coming out of CPD23 is that I should really upgrade my phone to take advantage of what is out there.

Meanwhile I am catching up with many tasks in the LRC and preparing for the new term whilst the students are on holiday - no customers but lots of maintenance going on around me - trees being chopped down outside my window, roof, which was stolen over the weekend being replaced (yes that's right, stolen!) so not very peaceful - but there's never a dull moment.