Tuesday 27 September 2011

CPD23 Thing 16

Thing 16: Advocacy
The main reason I enjoyed working in a school library is because I felt a large part of my role was to be a library advocate to teenagers. They are the library users of the future and I really believed I had the chance to impart upon them the value of libraries. I worked hard to make sure the library played an active role in the school and had a high profile amongst staff. I also tried to make sure that library initiatives were in the local press at least once every six months.

Image taken by Blpgirl
 Here in the college library, things are a little different as I am no longer a head of department. We have a marketing group within the library team, which produces posters and newsletters etc, and I am not involved with this (other than contributing pieces to the newsletter).
I don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough to be able to present at a conference, but I have had a few ‘bits & bobs’ published in Cilip’s Update and Gazette magazines. Nothing major, I just reply when they ask for contributions to particular columns. I’ve also had a few letters published too. I like seeing my name in print, and it gave me something to talk about in interviews when I was job hunting after my redundancy earlier this year.

On the whole, library advocacy is a topic I am becoming more enthusiastic about as time goes by. Last week I had an interview to take part in the publicity campaign for the new Library of Birmingham. I was so excited at the chance of being able to stand up publicly and speak out for libraries, but unfortunately I left the interview feeling as though I wasn’t quite what they were looking for. They said it’d be at least 2 weeks before I’d hear anything back, so I’ll keep you posted. On the same day (coincidentally!), I attended my first ever meeting of the local Cilip branch. I was quite nervous, but it was on a small scale and pretty informal. The position of branch Secretary was vacant so I offered my services. Many moons ago I was once Secretary for a history society and enjoyed feeling as though I was doing something valuable with my spare time. I could see the branch was in desperate need of a Secretary and it’s a challenge I’m willing to tackle! At the moment, the Chair is going to gather together the files in order to ‘hand over the secretarial archive’. Exciting!

2 comments:

  1. Glad you're willing to take on the challenge - really looking forward to working with you on CILIP WM branch committee :)

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  2. Thanks Jo :) Not exactly sure I'll revolutionise things, but any secretary is better than no secretary, right?!

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