Integration

Thing 19 - reflecting on what's been covered so far and how I have integrated the Things into my work flow

Reflection
I am now a regular user of Twitter, I have found that to follow trends and people more effectively I have had to download Twitter to my phone as this is the quickest and easiest way for me to access Twitter. I now monitor who I follow to unfollow the people who post random nonsense to better control what I can see in my feed.

I am much more confident at blogging and make more of an effort to follow blogs, this is useful for current awareness in areas I am interested in. I find Ned Potter's blog to be particularly informative, and from comments I have read on other posts so do a lot of other people.

As far as events go I think I am still more comfortable attending them I feel like I lack enough experience to consider presenting at one although I often man a stand at events and this is building my confidence.

Volunteering is something which I will consider, I am fortunate that my employer is willing to let me volunteer for events which are usually staffed by a different department, this has allowed me to work at open days and events like Mini Umbrella. I will continue to actively participate in CILIP SIGs to improve more professional skills like networking and liaising.

I have already identified my strengths and ways to improve my weaknesses as part of the many job applications I have made so I was already happy with Thing 21. Although it never hurts to revisit it!

One drawback I find from CPD23 is that it could have been split into 2 sections, one which was aimed at people at the start of their career and were looking for ways to gain skills to advance in the field, and another aimed at people who were already at a higher level and wanted to increase their awareness of what was available to them. I have managed to create development opportunities as best I can and have managed to volunteer for library events and provide training after developing a training checklist, but, there is only so much I can do and I worry that if I push too much then the answer might become 'no'. There are Things which I won't get the chance to use as part of my job if I don't advance soon such as Prezi and Jing, even the personal brand would be more advanteous to those in a professional post, although it is useful to consider at this point. Thing 20 on library roots/routes was interesting and gave me things to consider for advancing in the field.

Integration
Twitter has been the most integrated Thing as it was something which I had not liked to use previously. I quite often check it out on my breaks now if something I want to follow is happening.  I will continue to attend events and volunteer for CDG and UC&RG. I have considered my personal brand and changed my online presence to reflect this. I have used RSS feeds to set up alerts for new jobs so I can be more aware of them and save time.

A waste of time and money?

Having found myself with some (rare) spare time I decided to investigate a few of the blogs I have heard great things about. One of which is Ned Potter's (aka The Wikiman) which is often mentioned. After having a look through some of his posts I came across this one: The LIS Masters is a qualification of convenience. The wikiman makes some valid points, I did not know I wanted to be a librarian at 17, I could not commit 3 years to a full time undergrad BSc and the MSc delivered by distance learning was really the only option open to me unless I won the lottery and could afford to live for 3 years without working.

However, although I did do the course 'just to get a bit of paper to get me a better job' I also got a lot more out of it, not just the 'interesting stuff' I learnt. I learnt a lot more about the organisation that I work for, not just the business side of it but also what different people do, people which I had seen every day for 3 years and smiled at but never really spoke to. I also got to know people who had done the course in previous years and got to be good friends them.

I agree that the level isn't really of a high standard until you do the dissertation, I don't see how it can be when it's a one shoe fits all Masters. It's not even something that could be split into a series of narrower focussed degrees, where would you draw the lines? Public/academic? What about HE/FE? What about by size? By speciality? The library world is very good at drawing all these classifications, but by making things so specialised has the library world created a situation where it is impossible to have a meaningful qualification? The BSc is a suitable introductary course but what about people who don't have the luxury of knowing what they want to do with their lives at 17?

How far does a bit of paper get you? It depends on how you measure it really. The experiences I have because of my MSc have been valuable to me, but I don't think I'm any better at my job because I have another 3 letters after my name. I'm better at my job because I went out and spoke to people, the MSc was the impetus for it but it was how I chose to tackle the assignments that made it happen.