Things I've been up to this month...

Workshops:

Finally the demand for workshops has lessened for the first time this term. However I did run a couple of drop-in sessions for 3rd year dissertation students. I've tweaked the content of these one-to-one meetings since attending a course at CILIP last year. I've now got a set of questions that I run through with the students when they turn up. I quiz them on what their topic is really about, what searching they've done so far, what databases they have used, why they haven't searched using some other tools and why they chose to search like that etc. This has helped to engage them a little more and helped them to realise that I'm not going to do the search for them. Verbal feedback has been positive and the numbers dropping by remains good - it seems that I can promote these sessions on the VLE but then word-of-mouth takes over in terms of advertising.

Many meetings this month:

Disabled services group, programme management committees, team meetings, Quality committee and Faculty Board. Some of these meetings are tedious but you always gain a small nugget of exceedingly useful information so it's worth sitting through everything. The most informative meeting was our team meeting about blended learning where we looked at what it is and how we might engage more with it in the Library. We shared some of the audio PowerPoints/screencasts that we have developed for our subjects.

Meeting people:

I've met a couple of new members of library staff and told them about the work that I do on daily basis.
I've had two student tutorials - one for a dissertation and one for a PhD student. It never ceases to amaze me how little some PhD students know about searching - not the one I met this week as they were very clued up and just needed a few pointers - it just goes to show that you should never assume that someone studying a 'higher' degree knows how to search.
I've been involved in a focus group for the Investors in People quality mark that the Uni is applying for. A diplomatic but frank discussion of management styles etc was had.

Appraisal:

I like appraisals. I find it makes me reflect on what on earth I have been doing all year and it gives me a chance to get some training plans/events in to the diary. I struggled with the question about 'where do you see your career going in the next 5 years' because I'm actually quite happy where I am. I've asked to gain some sort of credit/certificate for all the teaching that I do as this is something that's missing from my portfolio.

Extra-curricular:

I've managed to rack up 4 Christmas parties at work so all in all a successful and sociable month.

Thing 23: Reflection - What next?

I've enjoyed the cpd23 Things course. I got a little behind during September because that's the busiest time of year in my workplace but have managed to get back on track. It felt like there was real community spirit with people posting supportive and friendly comments on each other's blogs. People were prepared to share experiences and knowledge - tentatively at first and then it grew to be the norm.

I like the fact that the course has made me try new tools - not just tried a tool once but encouraged me to reflect on it and to keep trialling something until I'm comfortable with how to use it. I've used some of the tools at work and also at home plus I've passed on the info to others and they now use some of the tools for their own purposes.

Reviewing my previous blog posts has helped me create a personal development plan (pdp). This was a good way to make sure that all the things I said I'd do or would like to do in the blog posts are collated and put into action. Hopefully this will help with my revalidation activities. Writing a pdp is a little like the preliminary forms you fill in for an appraisal - what have I done, did it go well, what do I need to do now, how am I going to achieve the goals - no bad thing to help you focus on the future.