Webinar wonderings

 

In recent months I have viewed 4 webinars, which is a fairly new experience for me. I attended a webinar back in 2011, and presented one in 2014, but other than that I’ve never given them much thought. When I changed jobs earlier this year I became a solo librarian, meaning it is not easy for me to attend CPD events in person. I needed to think of alternative activities I could engage with, and this is where webinars have proved useful.


Good and bad.
Image by Carl Carpenter. Used under a CC licence.

HE versus FE: my top 5 observations

Still learning.
Image taken by Chelsea:( Used under a CC license.

Last week I passed the probationary period in my new job. I felt uneasy with the direction FE was heading, so I was glad when changing jobs meant leaving the FE sector and joining the HE sector. I loved working at the college, but had long wanted to try my hand in a university library and was excited at the chance to do so. Now that I have been here almost six months, I have had chance to reflect on the differences between libraries. My initial top 5 ponderings are below:

Evolving CPD needs

Attendees at #hugsm15. Image by @HeritageUsers

Back in June I attended the Heritage User Group (HUG) meeting. These meetings are twice-yearly - this year’s Winter Meeting was held in March and the Summer Meeting held in June. I started attending meetings in 2011 and haven’t missed one until this year. (Previous HUG blog posts are here.) Due to changing jobs, I was unable to attend the March meeting. I was really disappointed by this and was glad to attend the next meeting in June.

Looking back, I can see that over the years the meetings have been of benefit to me in various ways. When I first started using Heritage the meetings were an incredibly useful source of information on how to use the software. I was thirsty for knowledge and the HUG meetings satisfied this need. Over the years, my knowledge of the software increased considerably and as a result my development needs changed also. Last year, I presented at a number of external events for the first time, one of which was a HUG meeting. I felt confident enough to deliver presentations exploring Heritage usage. By accepting the opportunity to present at HUG, the meeting met my development needs but in a slightly different way to how it usually did. I really enjoyed presenting and would like to continue doing this on occasions.