Just a short post today as it’s Friday evening and I have a friend coming to visit. I’ll just give a brief overview of today’s tasks:

• Worked on the Emerging Leaders project (gave feedback on survey and added liaison details into our contacts spreadsheet)
• Updated the contact list of JUSP libraries in Surveymonkey (new libraries are joining all the time and I add them into the contact list monthly) and scheduled a feedback survey to go out to them next month 
• Had a catch up call with my manager (we don’t usually have these daily but have a lot of little bits we’re working together on at the moment and this is the easiest way to update progress)
• Had a Skype call for the m-libraries community support project with the programme manager at JISC – this was really useful and we discussed future activities such as a community event, the community website, and the m-libraries conference in September
• Produced a document outlining our ideas for the m-library community event 
• Updated the Twitter guidelines for JUSP based on feedback from the project team
• Wrote a blog post for the Evidence Base blog reporting on the LIS DREaM event I went to on Monday

Hope you have found this insight into my week interesting. My work varies every single day depending on the projects we’re working on. It’s a nice mix at the moment – two external projects and some internal research for the library. 

Today I was working from home which usually means I can get a lot more done, but today my brain seemed to be on slow mode. I did get things done in the end but I worked into the evening to get everything done, which I’m really trying to get out of the habit of doing. My to-do list also seemed to grow rather than shrink today – I’d get one task done and need to add another two or three! So what did I actually do today?

My day began with some sorting and planning – prepping for a couple of calls, organising my tasks, and keeping project documentation up-to-date. Then I had a call with my manager where we discussed things we’re up to at the moment – project progress for the m-library community support project and JUSP, and some focus groups we’ve been asked to do on e-books for our library (based on the results of a library survey we ran at the end of last year). We started planning these and I suggested using Eventbrite to organise the booking. Last time we did focus groups the administration was a nightmare – we have two part-time support staff but this doesn’t cover the full week so I was also responding to some of the messages. It got very confusing with three of us trying to organise the participants and the sessions they could attend (and especially when we had to cancel one of the sessions), so I’m hoping Eventbrite might make things simpler. 

Lunch next, which I always enjoy at home because I can have something other than a jacket potato (today I had gluten free pasta with tomato and mozzarella sauce) and watch some TV (today I watched a very emotional episode of One Born Every Minute). 

This afternoon started well – one of the senior managers noticed my news in the recent library newsletter about being an ALA Emerging Leader and wants to feature it in the wider University newsletter. Could be useful for the Chartership portfolio!

We’re currently finalising some use cases for the JUSP project to demonstrate how libraries are using the service. We visited a number of libraries last year, and interviewed more over the phone/Skype. After writing up each library’s interview as a case study, we decided that they would best be presented as use cases. They are now written up and we’re getting approval for use of quotes from the libraries involved. I made some amendments based on one library’s feedback today. 

Then it was time to make the edits to the report write up of the m-library support project fact-finding survey. Some grammatical and formatting changes, and some additional quotes added in to demonstrate some of the examples of current m-library initiatives. 

I also tidied up my Chartership evidence submission form. I’m using a Google spreadsheet so that I can add things easily from anywhere with web access (I have a copy of the form starred in my inbox and can also access the form through my browser on iPhone or iPad). I had columns for what area of my PPDP and what marking criteria each piece of evidence supports, but this was a free entry text box. I’ve now added each option as a checkbox so I can just tick the box and easily check what information I have for specific areas. It’s working well for me so far (I’d be happy to share or give more details if anyone is interested). 

Tomorrow I have a couple more calls (are you noticing a theme here?!) and hopefully some work-related blog posts as I’m falling behind (it’s unfortunately something that always slips to the bottom of the to-do list as it’s not as essential as other tasks, but I still need to make time for it).

Day in the office today – which ironically usually means I get much less done (too many interruptions and errands). It took me longer than expected to get in this morning (had forgotten what traffic was like during peak times!) but I travel by public transport and always have my iPad with me so I can work on the way in. I finished drafting comments for the report I’ve been reviewing during the journey, and caught up with news on Twitter.

When I arrived at work I found a lovely surprise parcel of goodies from Lisa Jeskins who is part of the LILAC Conference organising committee. I’d been telling lots of people how much I love the LILAC conference whilst I was at ALA Midwinter last week so had joked that I should be on commission. Lisa clearly thought I should be so sent me these:

I’d also had some new stationery delivered so I had quite an exciting start to the day (I know I’m sad but I love getting new stationery!). After a quick catch up with my colleagues, we decided to bring forward a discussion we were planning for next week (it’s rare that we are all together). We’re getting our communication in order and have devised a new system to help share news from our department with the rest of the library and with those external who are interested in our work (most of our work is external). Internally, we’re using the library newsletter whilst externally we have an Evidence Base blog (and may later set up a MailChimp mailing list once our new website is sorted). My colleagues aren’t very familiar with blogging so I agreed to help them get started and provide some informal training for them. Unfortunately we had many hurdles (it seemed to take ages to get their accounts sorted!) and then we got interrupted by an IT guy so we didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked.

I went out for lunch with Damyanti, but we went slightly later than expected and lost track of time whilst we were there so I returned back to work later than expected. Oops! Time for lots of grovelling to manager and quickly preparing for a project Skype call – I’d done my own preparation but hadn’t had chance to discuss with my manager. The call was for the JISC m-library community support project, and we’re at the point now where we know broadly want people want from an m-library community and we need to make decisions on how we can best deliver that. It was a productive call and I certainly feel a lot clearer about our activities for the short term at least. I’ve been interested in investigating how libraries can utilise mobile technologies for a long time, and I’m really enjoying working on a project I’m so interested in. There’s lots of really innovative work out there and we’re hoping to be able to share this with the wider community to prevent duplication and help drive developments further forward.

After the call (and after adding actions to my to-do list and tidying up project documents), I did a bit of work on the Twitter account for another project, the Journal Usage Statistics Project (JUSP). We’ve had a Twitter account (@JUSPSTATS) for a few months now but we haven’t been using it often, partly as it didn’t really have clear ownership or purpose. I’ve worked with some of my colleagues on the project to discuss our intended use and have developed some guidelines. Today I shared them with the rest of the project team, answered some questions about Twitter use to a colleague who is new to it, and set up some saved searches on Twitter to keep an eye on. The Twitter search interface is a lot better than it used to be and seems to work well – I didn’t know it was so easy to set limits such as language and geography in addition to keyword and phrase searches.

That took me to almost the end of the afternoon – there was just time for a few emails and actions to be added to my to-do list regarding the JUSP project, then I visited the library general office to return the travel insurance card (I took it to Dallas for ALA Midwinter) and headed home. Thursday and Friday I’ll be working at home so hopefully able to get some real work done!

Today was another continuing professional development event for me, again in London. This time it was a joint event organised by CILIP in London and Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) on Writing for Publication (which I will share the notes from later). It was only a 3hr workshop but the style of learning really suited me – there was lots of discussion time and it was fairly informal with questions welcomed throughout. I didn’t necessarily learn anything ground breaking (although knowing the publication process from the journal editor perspective was useful), but it reinforced a lot of things I should know but seem to forget when I have a writing task and a barrier stopping me doing it.

The workshop finished at 1pm, so after lunch at my favourite place in London for gluten free food (Planet Organic), I got a train home. During the afternoon I worked on the train – mainly catching up on and organising emails, thinking about my writing homework (there is a follow up session in a couple of weeks), catching up with my boss, and reviewing the m-library report we need to get finalised soon.

I got home at about 5pm and worked a bit more during the evening. Because I’ve been travelling a lot over the last couple of weeks, I’m not as up-to-date as I like to be with responding to emails, reading RSS feeds (I’m way behind and might have to hit mark all as read even for my favourites folder) and managing my to do list. As a mobile worker, I do sometimes find it difficult to switch off from work. I can’t just leave my office/workplace and stop work for the evening, and I like to leave it in as tidy a state as I can before the next day (no half finished tasks). After yet more emails, I spent some time sorting out my mailing lists and filters so that my inbox doesn’t get overloaded (this is a particular pain at the moment as many I subscribe to are US based so they fill up in the evening due to the time difference).

I also did a bit of work on my ALA Emerging Leaders project – my team and I need to finalise the questions for our survey soon and start sending it out to people. We’re using ALA Connect to share documents and hold discussions (including our virtual meetings). This way our project mentor and our ALA staff contact can also see our progress and help us when we need it. This evening I added a couple of new documents onto the wiki style software so that we can all work together on finalising the survey.

Tomorrow I’m actually going into the office at the university. Looking forward to seeing some colleagues

Just a brief post – today I attended the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) workshop 2, this time held in London. It was an early start (left home at around 6.40am – too dark!), but it still amazes me that I can be in London by 9.30am and at an event before 10am.

On the train journey I worked on a draft of one of our reports (for the m-libs support project), and sorted through work emails.

The event itself was 10.30am until 4.15pm at the British Library.

I have to be honest; it wasn’t my favourite research event as the topics weren’t very relevant to my interests or current research areas and I struggled to see how some of it could apply in practice in libraries/LIS research. I did find some of it useful – I enjoyed the session on webometrics and might do some further investigation into what can be done with sentiment analysis from online social media (e.g. using tweets), and I enjoyed hearing about other attendee’s research/ideas in the unconference half hour. I’ll write a full review of the workshop later this week.

Having coeliac disease means its always a bit of a gamble with conference food (I have to follow a gluten free diet), and the lunch was, as is often the case, pretty disappointing but in the afternoon I got my own special gluten free cake!

Once the event finished I checked into my hotel (staying over as I’m attending a writing for publication workshop on Tuesday), and after a quick catchup of work stuff via email I headed out to catch up with some lovely librarian friends from London and enjoyed a nice meal followed by some cocktails. Great end to the day!

• It really is all about the connections you make and the experiences you have at a conference. Yes, I attended some interesting sessions, but I took the most from the ad hoc conversations I had, often at the social occasions or just when a group of us happened to meet up over drinks/dinner. It will be interesting to see how this might change in future if the trend for shrinking numbers of attendees at conferences continues.
• Don’t let finances be the only reason not to do something. I almost didn’t apply for Emerging Leaders in case I couldn’t get funding, but I decided to apply anyway to see what happened and I’m so glad I did. I was fortunate enough to have been awarded an EBSCO Scholarship to support my attendance, which really helped. I’d strongly recommend applying for funding opportunities, there are many options out there and they really do want to help support people who want to attend professional development events but may not have the funds to do so. 
• The ALA Emerging Leaders program really is as good as everyone told me, if not better. Not only do you get excellent leadership training and an insight into the way ALA works, you also get to be part of an incredibly exciting and dynamic cohort of librarians. I’m so looking forward to both my group project (which I’ll blog about separately some time) and communicating with the wider group of Emerging Leaders. It also opens a number of doors for you – people are interested in hearing more about your project, and current leaders are interested to hear your ideas. I have also heard about a similar model being used at a regional level, and it’s something I am hoping we might be able to adopt in the UK (adding yet another thing to my ‘I want to make this happen’ list).
• Plan your expected schedule ahead of the conference, but don’t be too rigid – have some backup sessions and don’t worry about sticking to your planned schedule. If you’re having a great conversation or someone invites you to something outside your schedule which you think would be interesting, then go for it (except for sessions you have paid to attend, you are speaking at/organising, or are required to attend of course!). 
• Attend some sessions outside your immediate area of work, or just things that sound interesting. I went to Susan Cain’s auditorium session which was fantastic (and even went to the book signing afterwards), and really enjoyed Lisa Loeb at the wrap up party. 
• Schedule some down time for yourself, especially if you’re an introvert and need to recharge away from other people. Head back to your hotel for a while or just take a walk outside, you’ll feel so much better afterwards. This time I learnt from my mistakes at ALA Annual 2011 and made sure that every day I took a break, usually between the daytime activities and the evening activities. I also spent quite a bit of time in the Networking Uncommons area in the conference – I learnt how to play Apples to Apples (an ALA version even!) and really enjoyed CraftCon which I helped organise. 
• This one is specific to ALA conferences (or maybe US conferences, I’m not sure), but don’t worry if you aren’t at the *whole* session. Be kind and courteous to others at the session (sit near the back and keep quiet when arriving/leaving), but people really don’t mind as they understand there are numerous clashes and so much to fit in. Also sometimes something isn’t what you hoped it would be – if that’s the case, go somewhere else. The conference experience is what you make it and it’s a waste of your time to attend a session you’re not enjoying. 
• Find out if anyone you know is staying at the same hotel as you and attending any of the same sessions/events, especially in the evening. I don’t like to walk on my own in cities I am unfamiliar with, but cab rides can be expensive, so it’s useful for me to find someone I can walk with. This is one I need to get better at!
• Use the conference shuttle buses. Not only does this save some of your energy (and your feet!) but you also meet some really interesting people on the bus. I need to get better at this more informal networking – I tended to wait until people spoke to me. 
• Don’t be afraid to speak to people you consider role models or ‘library superstars’. They’re usually very nice and will be glad you made the effort to say hello. I still need to work on this as am often too starstruck and kick myself afterwards for missing the opportunity to speak to them. 
• Take things to last you at least 36hrs or more in your carry on luggage when flying. One friend this year didn’t get her luggage for a couple of days, and I’m currently sitting in DFW airport for goodness knows how long (they keep delaying my flight further – in fact this sentence was interrupted with news of yet another delay!). Fortunately I packed an international charger in my carry on and have found a socket so I have plenty of power for keeping my occupied on my iPad, and have lots of gluten free snacks with me (though they are rapidly depleting, I’m hungry!). I don’t have spare clothes but seeing as I’m flying home that’s not too much of an issue. I have some toiletries with me to freshen up too so shouldn’t be too smelly!

ALA Midwinter was really enjoyable – it seemed much more manageable in terms of size and organisation of my schedule, partly I think due to the smaller scale compared to ALA Annual, and partly I think (well, I hope!) because I’m getting better at organising myself before and during a conference. ALA conferences are so tiring, and because they are over a weekend it essentially means you pretty much work for two weeks with no breaks. I’m really looking forward to this coming weekend when I am planning to sleep and very little else! Having said that, I am also feeling invigorated – I have lots of actions to follow up and ideas to pursue thanks to some awesome library colleagues. Roll on ALA Annual in June! 

*We were discussing the quota of drinks, showers and meals – I think I may have had more showers than meals, though I had problems with having no hot water in my room at times so the scale may be tilted towards drinks! If you are wondering, the frozen mango tequila cocktail on my final night was my favourite.

Here’s highlights of what I’ll be up to during the conference (my full conference schedule is available here though it doesn’t include all the social meetups).

• Wednesday 18th – arrive in DFW airport, find way from airport to Dallas (fortunately I should have a kind helper in the form of @daveyp to assist with this!), find hotel, eat, drink, sleep.
• Thursday 19th – sleep, register for conference (hopefully – not sure when registration opens), attend Emerging Leaders pre-social in evening.
• Friday 20th – Emerging Leaders all day session to kick off the program, followed by a leadership talk, LITA happy hour, and Emerging Leaders meetup and social
• Saturday 21st – Library Boing Boing brainstorming, Susan Cain auditorium session (writer on introverts), games and gaming forum, CraftCon. NMRT social and tweet up in evening.
• Sunday 22nd – EBSCO scholarship breakfast, NMRT/LLAMA new leaders discussion, CraftCon. Hacklibschool/Library Boing Boing social or ASCLA reception in evening.
• Monday 23rd – Exhibition browsing, Midwinter Camp.
• Tuesday 24th – collapse with exhaustion and head home.

I’m really looking forward to meeting my fellow Emerging Leaders and getting started on my Emerging Leaders project for NMRT, which I’ll be sure to blog about if I can. Hope to see some of you there!

I thought it would be useful to reflect on my experiences of presenting a webinar – I’m noticing more and more webinars set up to enable more people to attend virtually across different time zones and without the expense of travelling, so I imagine presenting at webinars is something we’ll be seeing a lot more of in future.This is my setup – home office with laptop for webinar software, headset for listening/speaking, iPhone for timing, and iPad and notepad for presentation prompts (and all important glass of Ribena!):

Webinar setup

Here are some tips for presenting a webinar which I have learnt from this experience:

1. Invest in a decent microphone/headset and practice using it. I didn’t realise how distorted my microphone can be when it’s too close to my mouth.
2. Mute your microphone when you’re not talking. Otherwise people can hear you breathing, typing, shuffling papers, etc. and this interferes with the speaker at the time. Also remember to mute your external speakers otherwise this creates an echo in the webinar audio.
3. Check the functionality of the webinar system before creating your presentation. I created the presentation in Keynote for iPad and exported as PDF but this wouldn’t load into the webinar software so I had to share my screen and present that way instead – not really a problem but not ideal and I’ve noticed on the recording that for other presentations you can skip to a certain slide which is useful. If you’re planning to use the chat window or other features for audience participation, make sure the software has them. 
4. Try to keep an eye on the chat window if there is one – aim to glance through as you pause between slides. Whilst you’re pausing between slides it’s a good opportunity to take a look at the chat comments in case there are sound/video problems or in case there is a quick question asking for clarification of a point you made.
5. Time yourself. It’s more difficult for the chair to notify you when you have a few minutes left in a virtual setting, so I found it useful to have my phone next to me monitor with a timer running to make sure I didn’t go over my allotted timeslot. It’s useful to know at all stages how much time you have left so you don’t end up rushing the later sections.
6. Don’t be afraid to use a script or prompts. This is something I don’t tend to use often as I usually prefer to speak ad hoc – I have an idea of what I’m going to say but prefer to keep it natural. Whenever I have written a script for physical presentations, I find that I get to the end of the presentation and I haven’t even looked at it. Virtual is different as you have no audience to make eye contact with, and you might find it useful to use prompts or a script to make sure you cover everything you want to.
7. Remember to pause to take a drink if you need one. I found this easier to do in a webinar than in person as no one can see you (I’m often too self conscious to do this when presenting). It’s good practice to pause after each slide to let the audience take in the information you’re sharing and for you to compose yourself.
8. Give your details at beginning and end so people can continue discussion or ask you private questions. This is particularly useful now many people tweet during your presentation – if you share your username at the beginning, they can mention your username in tweets and virtual followers will gain more context and can contact you with questions.
9. Find out if the session is being recorded or not. This is useful to know to pass on to people who might be interested but cannot make the webinar live, though is of course also useful for you as a presenter to know. You might want to plan what you say a little more carefully if people will be able to access it after the event.
10. Check, double check, and triple check your technology set up. This is a really important one! This webinar was actually the second time I should have given a webinar – the first time a couple of years ago I couldn’t get the technology working on the day so had to type it all out instead of speak! Take advantage of practice sessions if you have the opportunity, and join the webinar early to familiarise yourself with all the controls and do your final checks.

*I think that sentence may win the award for most consecutive acronyms!

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) have organised an Alternative Careers webinar to help introduce some of the more alternative jobs out there in the information profession. Bethan Ruddock, who is the webinar host, asked me if I’d be able to answer some questions about my job to help her research for the webinar (Bethan also has a pretty unique job but wants to get some other examples to share). I was happy to oblige and am reproducing what I sent her. So if you’re not sure what I actually do, this might give you more of an idea…

What’s your job?

Evidence Based Researcher at Evidence Base, Birmingham City University.

What does it involve?

Research, evaluation and consultancy for library and information services. Our work is solely project based so it varies depending on the projects I’m working on. At the moment our main projects are:

• Journal Usage Statistics Portal (where we are working with libraries to get feedback via surveys, interviews and case studies to feed into future development of the service)
• JISC m-libraries support project (where we are gathering existing evidence of work using mobile devices in libraries to share across the sector to reduce duplication of effort, and building a community to support development in the area)
• Internal library feedback survey for students (using Surveymonkey – this was live until the end of the Dec and we will be analysing this in the next few weeks to feed back to library management)

Although we are part of the university, the majority of our work is external and we are self-funded so I’m also involved in looking for funding opportunities for relevant work and putting together bids and proposals.

What skills are valued?

Research skills (e.g. designing surveys, facilitating focus groups and interviews), flexibility (we often travel and work on the go), time management (to balance multiple projects with varying timescales), organisational skills, communication skills (report writing, designing and delivering presentations).

Have you had to learn any new skills on the job?  If so, what are they?

Yes – project management and some research skills I hadn’t previously used (e.g. facilitating focus groups).

What technological skills do you need?

Social media (e.g. blogging, tweeting), email, advanced use of office and research software (desktop and online software).

Did you have them, or learn as you went along?

Mainly skills I already had, though some of the more advanced use of software I learned on the job (e.g. formatting reports, SurveyMonkey administration).

How did you find/apply for the job?

It was advertised in CILIP Update.

Were they looking for someone with a degree in librarianship/info management?

Not specifically – a postgraduate degree was required though not necessarily in librarianship/information management. Knowledge of library/information management is definitely an advantage though and my research colleagues both also have library/information management degrees.

Do you have any tips for people looking for similar roles?

Library and information management skills are transferable to many different types of job so think outside the box when looking for work and don’t take the job on its title alone. I previously thought of researchers as spending the majority their time in an academic office doing desk research, but I travel a lot in this job (and really enjoy it). In addition, skills and interests from outside the profession can also be useful for library/information management roles. For example, I was a research assistant for a short period of time after my undergraduate degree, and the skills I learnt then and during my statistics A level have helped greatly in my current job.

So there you go – that’s a bit of an insight into what I do in my day job. It’s a really fascinating job which I love, but I appreciate it wouldn’t suit everyone.

If you’re interested in learning more about alternative options within the information profession, I’d strongly recommend registering for the SLA webinar. I’m sure with Bethan hosting it will be really interesting.

• Complete my MSc dissertation – finished in July
• Attend more conferences – I attended lots of great conferences and events in 2011
• Implement the Getting Things Done system at home and work – I seem to have this sorted for electronic information, though need to work on physical organisation of paperwork and notes
• Participate in Library Day in the Life – I took part in both rounds of Library Day in the Life in 2011
• Continue to blog – I posted 44 times on this blog in 2011, and also blogged for Evidence Base and for projects I’m involved in

As it was a useful exercise for helping me focus last year, so I’ve decided to set myself more resolutions/goals for this year. In common with Erin, these are general aims so cover all areas of my life.

1. To work on CILIP Chartership (reflecting on achievements and updating wiki on at least a monthly basis)
2. To improve physical organisation, particularly in home office – notes and paperwork etc.
3. To achieve a more productive balance between different parts of my life ensuring I make time for professional, personal, and social activities
4. To continue to blog about professional issues and ideas as well as reflection on activities
5. To publish at least one paper (preferably peer-reviewed)

Bring it on!