Now, for me, the good thing about Thing 2 has been discovering new blogs to subscribe to and making the effort to leave the comforts of Google Reader. I’ve revisited a lot of my old faves and it’s been particularly interesting to see how layouts have changed, what widgets/links people have on display and the way they write their ‘about’ bits. It’s got me thinking more about the way my website looks, which I guess leads nicely on to Thing 3.

Although Lex Rigby isn’t an exceptionally unusual name it’s unusual enough for me to literally dominate Google. After scrolling through the first 10 result pages to find a fake Lex Rigby I gave up, it’s all me. Like commenting, vainity searches are also something I do quite often. This is mainly because when I look at my blog stats there’s always someone Googling my name and I like knowing that what they find is OK with me (I still find it unnerving when I see it’s someone from my own institution looking me up though).

At last year’s New Professionals Information Days I spoke a bit about personal brands in my presentation and used an example of some minutes from a Communist Students meeting that I was listed in the apologies for. I’ve never been a Communist Student and it’s not something I really want my name associated with but it was proving difficult to get this removed from the results list. So what did I do? I buried it! I got all up on the Internet so everything I wanted people to know about me was right there on the front page and because I’m persistent it still is.

The name I use on the Internet is (shocker) my real name, purely because I’m way too unimaginative to think of anything clever. Alexis Rigby (I think) is a Scottish swimmer and as no-one ever calls me Alexis it would be weird to use it. All my usernames have always just been Lex or lexrigby but my first email address was lorimeyers@finebody.com (!!) I’ve no idea where I got the finebody domain from but Lori Meyers is a NoFX song (have a listen, still a classic).You might also be wondering what ‘Just another dent in the damage’ means… well, this is also from a song – see One More Reason Why by Count me Out. I tend to call my blog Dents in the Damage for short and have a Tumblr called ‘Smaller Dents‘ (where I post random funnys).

Google images has a lot of pictures of me too (and black cats for some reason) so if you’re really desperate to see what I look like… well, I look like this:

Or there’s that little mug shot of me on the right of my site as well! Come talk to me, tell me how rubbish the salad is.

I’m not really sure I have a visual brand as such, my brand is really to just be me. I tried for a long time to keep the professional self removed from the personal self but again I can’t be bothered to maintain two identities (not online, it’s too difficult). I am what I am and I hope people accept that and can ignore the parts of me that they’re not interested in and concentrate on those that they are. Yes, I talk a lot about being vegan, I talk a lot about conservation, I talk a lot about music, I talk a lot about funny pictures on the Internet and I talk a lot about being a librarian. This is the profersonal me… Is it unprofessional? I don’t think so. Thoughts anyone?

Over the last year I’ve been working on my Chartership, pulling together a portfolio of evidence to reflect on my personal and professional development. It’s a professional qualification awarded by CILIP to members who are able to demonstrate an active commitment to CPD (or continuing professional development), an ability to critically reflect on personal and service performance and exhibit an understanding of the wider professional context. I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard! Really hard. Not because the task is particularly difficult but because it’s really hard to judge whether you’re on the right lines to meet the overly ‘woolly’ criteria for assessment. It’s not like having an essay question to answer or a topic to investigate. It’s identifying gaps in your own knowledge and proposing a plan to resolve them, anticipating the outcome, estimating a timescale and then reflecting on the learning experience and how you’ve applied new knowledge. It’s all very complicated without really needing to be. I think I’ve met the criteria but as it’s a very personal thing I would, whether the assessors agree is another story.

As part of the process you get a mentor and the best advice I can give anyone is to find someone you feel 100% comfortable talking through your anxieties with. There has been so many times when I thought to myself ‘why am I actually even doing this?’ It’s not like I’ll be getting a pay rise or anything but it does mean I tick an extra box on the personal spec for the next step on the career ladder (should it get accepted that is). Aside from that it has actually been worthwhile… I promise. I’ve been to so many really useful events and done so much cool stuff this year, simply because I’ve been able to say ‘oh but it’s for my Chartership’. Luckily my organisation are really supportive when it comes to this kind of thing so it really would have been silly for me not to take this opportunity.

Once I’ve heard back from CILIP (which could be up to 3 months) I’ll hopefully write something a bit more useful for others but for now… IT’S FINISHED WOO-HOO.

]]> http://www.lexrigby.com/2011/06/20/chartership-portfolio/feed/ 1 http://www.lexrigby.com/2010/12/22/and-finally-what-will-2010-be-remembered-for/ http://www.lexrigby.com/2010/12/22/and-finally-what-will-2010-be-remembered-for/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:01:41 +0000 Lex http://www.lexrigby.com/?p=1602 Just because I love ‘year in pictures’ round-ups.

The Gulf Spill?

Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake?

Eyjafjallajokull?

Football?

Landmark decision making?

The Chilean miners?

Freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi?

Or…

The announcement of a Royal wedding?

The end of the world as we know it?

New gadgets?

Students uprising?

Or…

Josh and Zac Farro quitting Paramore (meh)?

Check out the Boston Big Picture for more: parts one, two and three.

Anyway… I’m signing off this until the new year so hope you have a wonderful Xmas break. See you around Twitter/Tumblr. And with that here’s a video of my favourite Xmas song. Enjoy.

Oh and here’s No Doubt covering it:

But what is Chartership?

It is a professional qualification awarded by CILIP that’ll give me a fancy MCLIP after my name. I’m not really bothered about that bit though to be honest, it’s not like I ever use any of the other letters… the main reason I decided to start my Chartership was because I wanted to do more cool stuff. It’s a chance to tick off some training gaps and work on smaller projects not directly related to my day job.

For me personally it’s been a great excuse to get involved with cataloguing – something I’ve always wanted to have a go at but never really found a need to. Unfortunately it’s not something I ever learnt at library school due to some problem with the licensing but I always imagined I’d really like it. It seems to appeal to the anal side of my personally.

So basically Chartership, for me, is like the next step in terms of qualifications post library school. It’s suppose to demonstrate a commitment to career development as you build a portfolio of your professional activity – identifying training gaps, proposing actions and reflecting on outcomes. In the olden days it also got you a pay rise but that doesn’t happen so much now – I think people just appreciate having a job. It’ll look good on my CV though and may be considered in future job offers.

Mentors and Personal Professional Development Plans

The first thing to do is find yourself a mentor. There are some useful tips available on the CILIP webpages about finding a mentor and a regional list (member’s only) including contact details of prospective mentors. There’s a lot of advice for people struggling to find one but I actually found mine really easily. All it took was one email saying “you might not remember me but you told me you liked my bag once, will you be my mentor?” It worked out quite well, she remembered and I got my 1st choice mentor.

Once you’ve established a mentor and you get the mentor agreement paperwork stuff out the way the journey begins, so to speak. Creating a personal professional development plan (Word doc) is hard! Harder than you think actually and it took me a while. I wasn’t sure how many ‘needs’ I needed to include or how to lay them out, nevermind identifying these needs in the first place. I started by having a look through some online examples (members only) and then decided to use Bethan Ruddock as my guiding light, not just because her portfolio is the most recent example I’ve seen but because I like it structurally and it literally saved itself to my Google Docs account. It was just asking to be my number source, being all easily accessible and that.

At the time of writing my PPDP I also decided to trawl through my blog archives to see what I’d been doing over the last year, with the aim to back date some of this stuff – an example of why it’s always good to blog about what you do. Another good reason why it’s always useful to write up your notes after an event is that you can use it as evidence in your portfolio, which means less work later! Great!

I drafted some ideas about what I’d like to do and found some interesting training events that I wanted to attend. Looking through my job description and the objectives discussed during my annual review also gave me some more ideas about identifying and structuring development needs within the PPDP document. I opted to split my development needs into three categories:

• Planning and organisational – activities directly related to my job like developing new induction materials and learning more about teaching information literacy seesions;
• Learner support and resource management – more activities relating to work such as emerging technologies and ereader project work;
• Knowledge, skills and experience – wider professional activities, for example proposal writing, conference attendance, reflective writing and work experience in other areas e.g. cataloguing.

Now all this bit is completed I’ve started on the doing!

Coming next: Special Collections and learning how to catalogue.

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)!

The main value of Twitter, for me, is still very much the use of hashtags – especially the conference related ones I’ve been using a lot lately such as exeter10 and npc2010. During the CoFHE/UC&R joint conference I found following the exeter10 stream particular useful to engage with parallel workshops. Often you find there is more than one workshop you’d like to attend and so being able to attend your second choice virtually is the perfect compromise. It also helps if the presenters put their slides up later so you can revisit the session.

(Click to enlarge)

I think one of the reasons why Twitter worked so well at the CoFHE/UC&R conference was because those people using the tag mostly attended different sessions. It meant that anyone following the conference virtually wasn’t bombarded with exactly the same message over and over again and got a general feel for the variety of events taking place.

The sessions that ran for all delegates like the opening address, plenaries etc were also well documented and it was interesting to read other people’s interpretations of the key messages. In having the archive available it was much easier to write up my report as the gaps in my scribbled notes had (more often than not) been tweeted, retweeted and commented on.

Generally I think the npc2010 tag was even more successful but in many different ways. Whilst the eavesdropping on parallel sessions was as valuable as at exeter10 there was a greater emphasis on using the tag to:

• network;
• crowdsource;
• encourage speakers;
• circulate useful information;
• explore links;
• and generate discussion.

Prior to the conference a list of attendees/speakers was also set up to bring tweets together and closer to the time it became a great place to start when looking for a familiar face/avatar also attending.

However, unlike my previous experience I really feel the use of Twitter during the actual event had its drawbacks (never thought I’d hear myself say that!)… My main issue being the amount of times the same point was tweeted during the sessions attended by all. I think maybe we were all a little too enthusiastic and all wanted to tweet-along but I’m not sure about the value of this. Had I not have been at the event I probably would have found it rather annoying, but that’s just me personally.

At times it felt like I was shouting over people to get my tweet heard (maybe) or racing to type it up first (that’s just me being paranoid about being slow on the keypad though). At other times I chose not to tweet anything at all because others with more followers, more kapow and more engagement with our peer networks did it first. Sounds silly right? But it leads nicely on to my concern about the ‘clique’ question being raised and Twitter newbies not feeling able to contribute to the npc2010 stream.

Engaging with social media is a personal preference and I worry that the non-tweeting delegates felt in many ways pressurised to join up or worse like they were missing out. I don’t know if that was the case or not but there were times when the message really did feel like ‘to be successful you must Tweet/blog/network’ etc. What about the being good at your job part? I’ve been doing this whole social media thing a while because I like it, not because I think I should and I guess I really just wanted to stress the point that it’s not for everyone… If you don’t like it, you don’t like it and that’s fine too!

Maybe one of the ways to address the missing out part is to get the Twitter stream up on the big screen with Monitter or Twitterfall for example? As for the clique part…. um. That’s all I’ve got for now I’m afraid.

For a snapshot of how well Twitter was used during npc2010 take a look at this fancy Summarizr:

• Total tweets: 811;
• Total twitterers: 120;
• Total hashtags tweeted: 38;
• Total URLs tweeted: 88.

Yep, that’s New York Public Library. Unfortunately it’s currently undergoing renovation on the exterior so the place is covered in scaffolding and tarpaulin but it takes nothing away from the awesomeness of inside!

It was my first visit to New York and boy was it good. We managed to explore the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Centre, Times Square, Coney Island, Broadway and 5th Ave, the Comic Museum and divulged in many many tasty vegan treats. I’ll get all my photos up on Flickr soon and get the video posted I took inside the library. But ssssshhhh, I don’t know if that was allowed or not.

Four months ago I made this:

And today I made more! This is what I’ve been Twittering on about for the last year:

And this the last month:

I like that they’re mostly positive… although I must have said shit a lot recently. Oops.

I’ve always used this blog to write about whatever was on my mind. It’s inconsistent but that’s how I always wanted it to be. I don’t want just librarians to read it or just vegans or just crafters. I want people to come here because of one of these things and read about other things. I’ve had this problem with my Twitter feed too and always worry about boring people. Don’t list me as a librarian, don’t list me as a vegan, don’t list me as a knitter – just have a look through what I say and see if you find any of it interesting – I hope you do.

And so for the finale here are my mostly used hashtags made with My Tweetcloud and Wordle:

I don’t really understand why there are so many variations of nsew (National Science and Engineering Week) but nevermind and there are some inconsistencies with Chile and Chile’s but we get the point.

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever received?

“Ask the librarian”, because even when they don’t know the answer they’re pretty good at pointing you in the right direction. It’d be that or “Knowledge is power, arm yourself”.

Who or what inspires you?

Evolution! I have a tree of life poster attached to my fridge to study whenever I’m bored waiting for my dinner to cook. I’m also really into sharks. They’re pretty inspiring given they’ve roamed the oceans for over 420 million years. When people get all manic about how scary sharks are I like to point out that more people die from falling vending machines than they do from shark attacks.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

Usually Bella. She’s a cat that squawks like a crying baby.

What’s your favourite comfort food?

Salt and chilli tofu usually does the trick or chana masala with an onion uttapam. Before a month-long trip to India I famously uttered the words ‘I’ll never get sick of chana masala’ – I did and am yet to live it down.

What do you do to unwind or relax?

Well, I like reading – mainly fantasy/science fiction, or graphic novels. But to really relax I make things. I enjoy knitting and crochet. This week I even dusted off my sewing machine and made a new bag.

What was the last thing that made you laugh?

A YouTube video from Jerkbeast. It was basically this horrible paper maché head abusing people on Chat Roulette (a website that randomly connects its users via webcams). I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak.

What was the last thing that made you swear?

It’s usually Chris Moyles. He really annoys me, to put it mildly, but I still insist on listening to him every morning, we seem to disagree on just about everything.

What would you never eat or drink?

Animals. I’m vegan so there are a great many things I won’t eat or drink. If you take meat, dairy, eggs and honey out of the equation I pretty much eat everything. Oh and I don’t drink alcohol either… get your head round that crazy idea.

Who would you invite to a fantasy dinner party?

David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Shirin Ebadi, Hayden Panettiere (not just because she’s awesome in Heroes but also because I’d be interested in hearing about her free diving and campaign awareness activities for the Whaleman Foundation) and probably Zoli Téglás (singer of Ignite and long-time supporter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society).

What would you never be without?

My iPhone. That’s really sad isn’t it? It fell out of my pocket once in the staff room and was hiding under a chair. I broke out in an awful sweat for about ten minutes whilst I thought I’d lost it.

Favourite song or piece of music?

Anything by Propagandhi, they’re my favourite band of all time. I couldn’t pick just one song but if forced it’d be a toss up between Purina Hall of Fame, Without Love, Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An, Night Letters or The Bringer of Greater Things or… see what I mean?

Where’s been your best holiday destination?

Iran, it’s incredibly beautiful and unrecognisable in real life to that place we read about in the news. The people were welcoming, the food was amazing (apart from the falafel, that was really bad) and the sightseeing totally breath-taking. I like scuba diving too so anywhere involving a warm ocean is good fun.

What’s your party trick?

I’m a dance mat extraordinaire. Seriously, I challenge you to a dance off. When hogging the limelight in a games arcade once my audience refused to believe a librarian could kick all their butts on Dance Dance Revolution – I did though.

What information about Sheffield would you want to tell a visitor?

I always tell them to invest in a good coat if they plan on staying for long. It was also the first thing I was told before moving here.

What’s been your biggest fashion mistake?

Possibly the brown flares I wore in my teens. I thought they were so cool… I should look up whoever it was that put the cigarette burn in them. They did me a favour.

If you had absolute power, what would you change?

I’d just like to suggest that people think a little more about what’s on their plate and how its production impacts our planet. I’m not interested in ramming veganism down people’s throats but if you ask for the truth about your food I’ll tell you.

I’d also totally abolish whaling. Current loopholes continue to permit the Institute of Cetacean Research to harvest up to 1000 whales from the Southern Ocean each year, which inevitably end up on the meat market. The annual whaling season costs the Japanese taxpayers an estimated 1.2 billion yen – think what else could be done with that money!

What irritates you?

Fruit salad. Caterers generally fail at producing any decent alternative desserts to the usual non-vegan rubbish served up at Christmas parties, weddings and other such special occasions. It’s so depressing. Be inspired and challenge yourself to create something other than a fruit salad that’s delicious and diary/egg free.

What qualities do you admire in others?

During the initial aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January I tuned into an interview with Wyclef Jean. He was discussing the relief effort and how he’d spent his day moving dead bodies with his bare hands. Such selflessness to help others going through unimaginable pain and suffering, whether that be people coping with disaster or animals enduring horrific cruelty it doesn’t matter, it’s highly admirable in my opinion. I admire any human/animal rights activist that puts others before themselves and non-violently stands up for what they believe in.

What was your favourite childhood programme?

Round the Twist or Byker Grove.

Tell us something that not many people know about you.

As a kid I auditioned for the Royal Ballet. In another life (had I of taken it more seriously) I may have been a prima ballerina.

Who would you least like to be stuck on the Arts Tower paternoster with?

I’ve thought long and hard about this one and I honestly think I’d rather be stuck in there with anyone rather than no-one. I bore of my own company very easily so solitary confinement would be pure torture for me. If I had my phone though that’s another story.