Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

I like a good conference - tea, biscuits, freebies, meeting old friends, time away from work - but seriously I can't think of one library-related event that I have attended where I came away empty handed. When I was a graduate trainee I attended the Serials conference, whilst working towards Chartership I attended the CILIP Umbrella conference and in the last 18 months I've managed to get to the Health Libraries Group and LILAC conferences. All gave me food for thought, tips for things I was doing or trying to do at work and allowed me to network face-to-face with library professionals.

In terms of engaging properly, I confess, I have never asked a question at the end of a presentation/workshop. I always think that it will show me up as an ill-informed idiot and yet I spend a good amount of time telling my students that there's no such thing as a silly question. Obviously I need to take my own advice and pluck up the courage. At LILAC this year I managed to do a bit of tweeting although this does take your attention away from the presentation which felt a bit disrespectful, so I won't be doing this again - I'll leave my tweeting until the tea break.

Sometimes I think I'd like to present something but I've no idea what - maybe a day in the life of  a subject librarian, tales from faculty liaison - how to keep those academics in line.... Actually that last one sounds quite good.

Many years ago all my school reports included the phrase "Kate is a quiet girl". I did not ask questions in class, I hated anything like school plays, drama studies or presentations. I did not like public speaking. Now in 2011, I am happy to stand up and speak to 200 people for an hour. In fact in the past two weeks I have spoken in front of 200 people on 5 occasions. I gradually built up to this over a number of years without really noticing. The odd library tour for a group of 10, a brief library induction talk to a group of 20, going in to a classroom of 30 and running a small workshop, giving an hour long lecture about 'finding information' to a group of 200 then taking a deep breath whilst another 200 walk in and then repeating the same talk to them.

I saw a pro-presenter in action earlier this year. The Archbishop of Canterbury - not one 'umm' or 'err'. He spoke as if he were reading elegant prose. He was clear, concise and had no slides, pictures, handouts.... When he finished talking I realised that he had done it with no notes, no prompt cards, no autocue and it certainly didn't sound rehearsed. Obviously he's done a fair bit of public speaking over the years and it's paid off because he nailed it.

The first time I spoke to 200 people I was nervous but as soon as I was standing in front of them I realised it was better to say something rather than nothing. I liked Phil Bradley's tip about trying to enjoy the presentation and I wholly agree - if it's dull or stressful for you, the audience will be the same. The following are my tips about presenting:

1. Use the tools available to you - I once forgot to dim the lights in the lecture theatre and when I got to the end I realised they had probably found it hard to read the screen. I now take a little note with me to remind me to dim the lights. Sometimes these little things get forgotten when you're trying to get the USB stick to work or the projector to switch on.

2. Run through your presentation but don't over rehearse. This is known at work as 'winging it' but it makes me feel more relaxed to know that I can ad lib a little, throw in the odd joke and take a question mid-flow. I like to connect with the audience as me, as well as a professional talking to them.  A little laugh along the way brightens it up for everyone.

3. When the internet goes slow or disappears, when the video doesn't play etc have a back up plan. Use screen shots, online tutorials that you can access from your files, show them another resource rather than struggling with one that is having problems. Sometimes it is best to abandon the show - struggling on can be painful for you and your audience.

4. Don't be frightened of your audience. I once presented a little seminar about systematic reviews to a group of health professionals. When I stood up to speak I realised that all their name badges said something like Dr or Professor. Nerves struck until I thought that if they knew everything about this topic then they wouldn't be here listening to me. Feeling like you know something and are going to impart that knowledge to someone else is a powerful feeling and boosts your confidence.

5. Enjoy it. Your audience are sitting there thinking "I wish I could do that", "She knows a lot", "I like her style".... and you're the one they are talking about.

6. Persevere. No, not every presentation will go to plan and yes, some will feel 'flatter' than others. You tend to know when it's gone well. If you attend a presentation and you really enjoy it - let the presenter know. They'll be pleased and flattery gets you everywhere!

So what do I need to do,  firstly try presenting something about 'how to to keep your academics in line', secondly keep speaking in public - the more you do it the easier it gets, and finally keep attending conferences to see others in action. Maybe one day I'll be as good as the Archbishop.

Thing 14: Zotero / Mendeley / citeulike

I've chosen to look at Mendeley. It was easy to download on to my desktop at home (yet, to do battle with the Administrator Password at work). I like the fact that you can save your reference details direct from the pdf file and then make notes on the pdf document. This all seems much easier than the RefWorks tool we have at work. I don't mind the act of referencing but I'm not keen on teaching students how to use referencing software. It always seems too complicated for most of them to comprehend and I'm not convinced that I know enough about it to use it properly. I never show the students RefWorks in their first year. We don't hide it from them we just don't run courses on it. I and many of the academic staff think they need to learn why it's important to reference and how to reference the basic stuff before moving on to referencing software which will just do it all for them. Otherwise how do they know what RefWorks is doing or whether it has produced a bibliography in the correct format. How would they spot mistakes made by the software?

Mendeley looks like it might be more useful to students/academic staff who have a big stash of pdfs that they store on their computer. I can see it being good for all those lecturers who publish a lot of papers and want to keep their references and pdf documents in the one place that they can access from home and work.  It would be better if Mendeley were web-based like RefWorks so that you didn't have to download it and could access it from wherever you could connect to the internet. All in all a good tool but I'll be sticking to RefWorks as I have to use this at work.