Yesterday I got yet another trip out the office up to Leeds to attend the CILIP Yorkshire and Humberside Members’ Day (#cilipyh). I’ve never been to one of these before so, aside from the pre-registered sessions, was unsure what to really expect.

Opening up the day was the amazing Biddy Fisher with her keynote address… Of the few times I’ve seen Biddy speak now I’ve come away feeling really positive, not just about the work we do within the library profession but also the role of the professional body and the value of active participation within it. She is one of the most encouraging people in the world and always uses these opportunities to emphasise her support for the New Professionals network and her hopes for the future of the profession (much of which I’m in complete agreement with). I also love the fact that she refers to her key points (advocacy, advocacy, advocacy) as Biddyisms. Maybe we could start referring to 2010 as the Biddyisation of Librarianship?

Much of the content for Biddy’s keynote revolved around initial results from the Defining our professional future programme survey. In asking information professionals about what skills they use within their roles I was surprised to hear that teaching skills came out so low (only 50%). More transferable/generic skills – interpersonal, customer service, ICT and general management – ranked much higher than traditional library skills (or core competencies) such as cataloguing (47%), classification (46%) and indexing (24%). Biddy suggested that one of the reasons for this may be that people don’t often recognise what skills they’re using and take much of their professional knowledge for granted.

This is particularly worrying as if we, as information professionals, fail to recognise the skills we have and how we use them how can we possibly begin to advocate the importance of these in plain English to those outside the sector? If that’s the case then rewriting the Body of Professional Knowledge has never been more important. Overcoming these confusing messages may well be the first challenge in defining our professional future – reasserting ourselves as information professionals and the importance of information work.

The second challenge I guess would then follow much of what Laura Woods (Woodsiegirl) and Ned Potter (theREALwikiman) outlined in their afternoon session on Escaping the Echo Chamber. Increasingly the advocacy we do do in the information sector targets the wrong audience. For example we advertise library services in the library to people already using the library’s services; we discuss the importance of professional knowledge with our fellow professionals; and we limit professional activities to events hosted by and for the profession.

The term ‘echo chamber’ can refer to any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an ‘enclosed’ space.

Much of my personal activities within the animal rights movement follows a similar scenario – I discuss the problems of overfishing with people who don’t eat fish; I host information stalls at events (more often than not) where people already know what the society does; and I advertise activities on forums already aware of up-coming actions. Following the #echolib conversation really hammered much of this home for me. It’s a problem I have at work/it’s a problem I have at home.

The fact that very few people outside my work place knows what I do at work has bothered me for a while. But I don’t talk about work at home with my family or friends because I’ve always thought it extremely dull – I fear the glazed eyes look – and have never tried to correct people when they joke about how many books I’ve stamped that day. I’ve spared them the wonders of RFID and self-service in favour of chatting about the incredible falafel I had for lunch because frankly I thought they’d find this far more interesting.

But the work I do is interesting and I’m really coming round to the idea of advocating this more outside my peer network. The last couple of months have really opened my eyes to the importance of networking and how much more confident I feel in myself discussing professional concerns, asking for help and encouraging others to get involved.

The enthusiasm Maria Cotera has for professional networking is exhausting but it’s infectious! I’ve needed a giant kick up the ass for a while with regards to building networks, nurturing networks and developing networks. The idea of speed dating terrifies me, I find small talk uncomfortable and social whores (in the nicest possible sense of the word) are downright intimidating. But I’ve come to realise that I’m not the only one put off by the word ‘network’ and it’s really not as scary as it sounds. In fact the three people I met during the speed dating part of Maria’s session were not monsters at all… not in the slightest. We discussed diving, holidays, Germany, work, chartership, how scary networking sounds but really isn’t and most importantly how we can help each other.

I honestly don’t know what’s taken me so long to see the value of CILIP and making friends (not colleagues, actual friends) within the profession but I get it now, I do, so thanks Maria! Next step… world domination (or rather, more active engagement with the Yorkshire branch and Career Development Group – it’s a good start)!

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 10:34 am and is filed under Libraries, Personal and tagged as big conversation, career development, cdg, cilip, cilipfuture, cilipyh, echolib, networking, new professionals, professional development. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.