......the portfolio has been checked, printed and is sitting in the out tray.
Phew, it feels strange. I am getting withdrawal syndromes already, perhaps I should open the sealed envelope again and just read it though again, just in case I forgot something ........ worst thing would be if the appendix and page number doesn't match! ............. amazing how little things can matter so much!
I've heard CILIP has stopped advertising the new MCLIP in the national newspapers, great! Just when I needed some support to show the value of my CPD at work.......
Anyway, so the portfolio should reach CILIP next week and hopefully I will hear some news in six months time, good news I hope.
Friday 17 December 2010
Thursday 16 December 2010
Selection!
So, the CILIP Chartership Handbook has been updated. It is good timing, because I am one day away from sending in my portfolio, so have just been reading it just in case anything has changed since I have been away.
I did notice this bit:
"You will be demonstrating your professional judgment in the selection and organisation of your evidence. The emphasis is on the relevance of the material; quality is more important than quantity! You may include examples of personal reflective writing (not necessarily intended for publication) where they provide evidence of professional development. Your portfolio should be reflective and evaluative."
The past couple of days I have been trying to reduce the number of evidence in my portfolio, such a difficult task! All that effort that has gone in to the evidence that I have now excluded, it is painful!
Not that numbers matter, but I have reduced the number of evidence from 29 different documents, to 21, this includes the CV, the PPDP and so on.
I am scared that I have removed too much now, what if they think I have not included enough evidence?
I did notice this bit:
"You will be demonstrating your professional judgment in the selection and organisation of your evidence. The emphasis is on the relevance of the material; quality is more important than quantity! You may include examples of personal reflective writing (not necessarily intended for publication) where they provide evidence of professional development. Your portfolio should be reflective and evaluative."
The past couple of days I have been trying to reduce the number of evidence in my portfolio, such a difficult task! All that effort that has gone in to the evidence that I have now excluded, it is painful!
Not that numbers matter, but I have reduced the number of evidence from 29 different documents, to 21, this includes the CV, the PPDP and so on.
I am scared that I have removed too much now, what if they think I have not included enough evidence?
Tuesday 7 December 2010
Online Information 2010
Although I am finished with my Chartership portfolio (door closed, just waiting for lift off) I am going to keep posting my CPD experiences on my blog. This way I will stay in the routine of looking at outcomes and reflecting on my experiences at work. Perhaps using it for my revalidation in the future, who knows.
So I attended the Online Information 2010 at Olympica Conference Centre in London (www.online-information.co.uk) after a years break (blame it on the baby!).
I had prepared myself for the exiting rushing around from seminar to seminar and stall to stall. My manager gave me some of her input for things to look out for and I was hoping get updated on the latest happenings, tools, websites and information sources I had missed out on while on maternity.
As usual there were free seminars on different topics. I tend to select the ones I find interesting and create a timetable for myself so I don’t miss any of the seminars. But this year I was a bit disappointed with the seminar selection, they didn’t have much on career development or new tools, no Phil Bradley or Karen Blakeman or anybody else going through the latest LIS stuff. I attended 4 out of 5 seminars on my list, and they were nothing exiting to be honest. Other people must have felt the same, because a lot of people were walking out after the first 15minutes, and even I was tempted to do so to avoid falling asleep.
I felt very disappointed, as the seminars are what I look forward to and I bring back lots of new ideas and a lists of things to do and websites to visit etc. Whoever selected the speakers for the free seminars this year must have been very desperate! Or maybe all the good ones were kept for the expensive masterclasses??
I also noticed that there were fewer students attending this year and also fever CPD or career related seminars. It seems to have become more commercially focused this year. The conference seemed to suit buyers or managers more, rather than students or graduates. Obviously, I didn’t attend with the intention of purchasing anything, which is why I felt a bit out of the target.
Another thing I noticed was the low attendance and also several empty exhibitor stalls. Many of the usual exhibitors were not present, for example Mintel, KeyNote, Oracle, Datamonitor and so on. And I wonder why?
So what did I get up to?
Well, I had a good long chat with Michael Martin from CILIP at the stand (where they also had the Wii bowling set up!) about my Chartership, what doors it opens up for me and I learned that when I finish my Chartership I could get enrolled at a distance learning university and possibly go straight to the dissertation. THAT makes me feel my Chartership gives value! He also spoke about how an unnecessary long portfolio be a negative thing, so I will need to look at the portfolio with fresh eyes and reduce and only keep what is relevant to the criteria, perhaps using a chartership criteria matrix.
At the Ebsco stand, I asked if our contact person was around, which she wasn’t so instead I asked what new is happening at Ebsco, and the lady said “oh not much”…… so I just walked to the next stand.
I spoke to CLA about the new Print Disability Licence, but I was told that it all depends on the licence we have at the moment (e.g. business licence) and I was told that the best thing would be to speak to the person dealing with it at CLA, which is what my manager and I had in mind anyway.
I noticed the Direct Marketing Association’s stand, and asked them what they were there to promote, and it seemed they were there just to recruit members! Not sure how though…..
Then I spoke to a gentleman at the Eurostat stand, we started talking about the European Commission’s database first which had some useful data I could use for my enquiries, but then he told me he was Scottish, which he didn’t look because he was originally Italian, but he studied somewhere else and now lives in Switzerland with his Danish wife from Randers! It is nice to know there are lots of people out there like me with a complicated story to tell.
As I was walking around I tried to find some databases that would hold some technical/technological statistics, as I have been asked so many times why we don’t include market data on the hard core subjects in our collection, along with retail/leisure and so on. I really tried, but at the fair I only found database providers who offered article databases for scientists, not really useful for marketers! I think I will try and check the British Library's Business and IP section to see what they have on this.....
Finally, I had a long chat with Graham from Soutron who is almost like a relative of the Library. He has designed a new product called Solo which is an upgraded version of Textworks.
Textworks is like the backbone of the Library. Solo is much more contemporary with its databases linked with urls and it has all the technological features you tend to see with the library databases these days. Inspired by the internet, it is much quicker and avoids the walls between the different sections of the catalogue. I actually forgot to ask him to show me the enquiry logging bit, which is a bit silly of me as that is what I would have like to know about.
It is not a revolutionary product by any means, but it would make many daily tasks quicker and it just means a lot to have the latest software when you use it day in and day out! So thumbs up for Soutron Solo! Let’s hope we buy it soon!
If I had to rate the overall conference experience, I would give it 3 out of 10, while in the past it has been a 8 out of 10. But I wouldn’t have known that unless I had been there, amirite?
I didn’t bring back much on the latest trends in information retrieval, the only CPD related inspiration I got was by speaking to Michal Martin and the buzz was just not there.
Oh and next time, if I go, I will bring my own sandwich, I found £5 for a cheese and tomato Panini so crazy that I didn’t bother getting a drink with it!
So I attended the Online Information 2010 at Olympica Conference Centre in London (www.online-information.co.uk) after a years break (blame it on the baby!).
I had prepared myself for the exiting rushing around from seminar to seminar and stall to stall. My manager gave me some of her input for things to look out for and I was hoping get updated on the latest happenings, tools, websites and information sources I had missed out on while on maternity.
As usual there were free seminars on different topics. I tend to select the ones I find interesting and create a timetable for myself so I don’t miss any of the seminars. But this year I was a bit disappointed with the seminar selection, they didn’t have much on career development or new tools, no Phil Bradley or Karen Blakeman or anybody else going through the latest LIS stuff. I attended 4 out of 5 seminars on my list, and they were nothing exiting to be honest. Other people must have felt the same, because a lot of people were walking out after the first 15minutes, and even I was tempted to do so to avoid falling asleep.
I felt very disappointed, as the seminars are what I look forward to and I bring back lots of new ideas and a lists of things to do and websites to visit etc. Whoever selected the speakers for the free seminars this year must have been very desperate! Or maybe all the good ones were kept for the expensive masterclasses??
I also noticed that there were fewer students attending this year and also fever CPD or career related seminars. It seems to have become more commercially focused this year. The conference seemed to suit buyers or managers more, rather than students or graduates. Obviously, I didn’t attend with the intention of purchasing anything, which is why I felt a bit out of the target.
Another thing I noticed was the low attendance and also several empty exhibitor stalls. Many of the usual exhibitors were not present, for example Mintel, KeyNote, Oracle, Datamonitor and so on. And I wonder why?
So what did I get up to?
Well, I had a good long chat with Michael Martin from CILIP at the stand (where they also had the Wii bowling set up!) about my Chartership, what doors it opens up for me and I learned that when I finish my Chartership I could get enrolled at a distance learning university and possibly go straight to the dissertation. THAT makes me feel my Chartership gives value! He also spoke about how an unnecessary long portfolio be a negative thing, so I will need to look at the portfolio with fresh eyes and reduce and only keep what is relevant to the criteria, perhaps using a chartership criteria matrix.
At the Ebsco stand, I asked if our contact person was around, which she wasn’t so instead I asked what new is happening at Ebsco, and the lady said “oh not much”…… so I just walked to the next stand.
I spoke to CLA about the new Print Disability Licence, but I was told that it all depends on the licence we have at the moment (e.g. business licence) and I was told that the best thing would be to speak to the person dealing with it at CLA, which is what my manager and I had in mind anyway.
I noticed the Direct Marketing Association’s stand, and asked them what they were there to promote, and it seemed they were there just to recruit members! Not sure how though…..
Then I spoke to a gentleman at the Eurostat stand, we started talking about the European Commission’s database first which had some useful data I could use for my enquiries, but then he told me he was Scottish, which he didn’t look because he was originally Italian, but he studied somewhere else and now lives in Switzerland with his Danish wife from Randers! It is nice to know there are lots of people out there like me with a complicated story to tell.
As I was walking around I tried to find some databases that would hold some technical/technological statistics, as I have been asked so many times why we don’t include market data on the hard core subjects in our collection, along with retail/leisure and so on. I really tried, but at the fair I only found database providers who offered article databases for scientists, not really useful for marketers! I think I will try and check the British Library's Business and IP section to see what they have on this.....
Finally, I had a long chat with Graham from Soutron who is almost like a relative of the Library. He has designed a new product called Solo which is an upgraded version of Textworks.
Textworks is like the backbone of the Library. Solo is much more contemporary with its databases linked with urls and it has all the technological features you tend to see with the library databases these days. Inspired by the internet, it is much quicker and avoids the walls between the different sections of the catalogue. I actually forgot to ask him to show me the enquiry logging bit, which is a bit silly of me as that is what I would have like to know about.
It is not a revolutionary product by any means, but it would make many daily tasks quicker and it just means a lot to have the latest software when you use it day in and day out! So thumbs up for Soutron Solo! Let’s hope we buy it soon!
If I had to rate the overall conference experience, I would give it 3 out of 10, while in the past it has been a 8 out of 10. But I wouldn’t have known that unless I had been there, amirite?
I didn’t bring back much on the latest trends in information retrieval, the only CPD related inspiration I got was by speaking to Michal Martin and the buzz was just not there.
Oh and next time, if I go, I will bring my own sandwich, I found £5 for a cheese and tomato Panini so crazy that I didn’t bother getting a drink with it!
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