Bear Bahoochie

Why is it important to advocate what I do? From a basic day-to-day way it’s all about attracting new or lapsed users or being form of communication with user (that being pupils, staff and parents). On a personal level it’s about insuring I have a job tomorrow and making people realise what I do and how I can or do contribute. I firmly believe that you have to stand up and say what you do as otherwise everyone thinks I read books all day or that the library isn’t for them.

It’s the same as any other promotion my aim is to;

• Get a response
• Make users aware of service
• Change user perceptions
• Encourage user to do something

In my case it’s to make them realise I don’t have a bun, I don’t read all day and I don’t insist on silence but I do teach 11+ lessons a week, create web-pages and support 45 or so pupils daily. When I started here the librarian before me was a totally different type of librarian and the library was underused and classes came got a book and left. I’ve totally transformed it during my 6 and half years in post and book issues continue to rise annually.

So what advocacy do I do on a regular basis?

• I do exciting promotions every two weeks
• I tell staff about what I do
• I write a bit for the school newsletter
• I made sure the library was featured on the school web-page
• I do a display for open evenings (and if possible attend)
• I make sure there is access to resources outside of school
• I try to do is when I do post directly on Twitter (work account mainly so I don’t put too much personal stuff on) I try and use the current hashtags #savelibraries (for public libraries) or #SHOUTABOUT (for school library stuff).
• I join school committees and get involved in the wider school
• I have departmental liaisons and share ideas or resources with them
• My email signature has links to the various library online resources
• I am involved with SLA(S) and my local school librarians
• Be as friendly and helpful as possible – positive word of mouth is a wonderful thing.

The most effective have been the talking to people bits – be it as a group or individuals, staff or pupils – showing my passion and enthusiasm is usually an effective way of showing how great the library and having a qualified librarian is.  It sin’t perfect mind you S3/4 pupils (aged 15/16) are like Dementors and will suck the joy from you if you speak to them in a year group setting. Positive word of mouth is also great as you never know who might mention you or talk about your work and what opportunities such conversations might bring. For instance my article over on the Scottish Book Trust Education Blog came as a result of a fellow librarian suggesting me to the editor. Or my blog reader who shared my World Book Day post over on the Scottish Round-up.

As for outside of school I have written letters to MSPs/MPs, had letters/ article printed in CILIP Gazette and contributed to external agencies when given the chance.   Rhona Arthur’s visit is an example of this as CILIP asked if anyone would be happy for someone to shadow and I said yes.   The library twitter feed, Tumblr blog and Library Blog all give me the chance to share what is going on and share tne non-bun wearing vision of school librarianship. Plus my fellow school librarians are pulling a document to show councillors and anyone else what we do together in case the next rounds of council cuts affect us (we are holding off deploying this until we are under review as there is a fear we might give ideas on ways to cut the service if we protest in advance). I also advocate the work the pupils do to help – they just won Team of the Year for pupil/peer support after I nominated them for the Council’s annual awards. Not only was this a nice bit of recognition for all the work they do but it also has my school library as a centre of excellence for this.

I think it is very much as case of saying the words librarian/ library whenever possible and as often as possible.  Clair and I use the same strategy with Lones and our unit has gone from 6 to 18 entirely by word of mouth. Given Lones is only for those who can’t make a local unit, just imagine how many people I can convert to passionate supporters of me and my school library if I just put my voice to it. Even if I have to make a joke about saying it so much – people need to remember and  link exciting and inspirational things to the words library and librarian so they will value these even if they don’t need them at that moment.

Now this Thing from CPD23 is something I can talk about as I have attended, presented and helped organise various things both within the school, local librarians,  SLA(S) and in my Girlguiding life as well.

There are always challenges when we do this but I’ve found that having enthusiastic and experienced people supporting is a big help. So here are my thoughts on attending, presenting and organising.

Attending
Attending any course can be useful even if it’s just to reflect on how not to do it. As I’m sure everyone else has found CPD courses/lectures etc. vary a huge amount. Personally I don’t need a detailed how-to session instead one with ideas and a where to get the how-to works for me. I love coming out of a training or similar full of ideas and inspirations. I have found the in-service at work to be variable, at times interesting, at others an hour+ of my life I’m never getting back. For the most part this is due to the topics rather than the presenters.

The recent run of online courses my work have asked us to complete are an example of the time filling for no result option. In these modules we get the learn about topics such as Data Protection by answering multiple choice questions (having first had to watch a video). In part the issue is I am already aware of the topics these are on but the other is that it’s like a pop quiz in school where only the stupid can’t see that the correct answer will not involve handing personal data out to penguins. Girlguiding have also tried this with a online mentoring course. It was easy, took no time to do and I’ve got a certificate I can add to my CV but I don’t think it has really made me a better mentor.

These online courses are very much a ‘read, answer and forget’, style of learning for me. To illustrate I got an A in Human Biology at school (a subject which proved to be more about memorising the text book than anything else) but I now can’t get the side of the heart right half the time.  I wouldn’t bet on me being able to pull information on mentoring or data protection out my head anytime soon (just as well I can look it up when I need it).

This online method is becoming more popular these days and I heard that CILIP was thinking down this line (maybe they already offer stuff – memo to me…have a look at their website) and if it’s done like this CPD23 project then I think it could be great as this project has lots of opportunities to share ideas, reflect and read what others have to say. It’s also full of ideas I can use now or in the future to improve the service I offer. If not then I will probably avoid it since I can always waste my time by teaching my Gran to suck eggs.

As for physical events then often the best thing about attending is meeting people and talking to them. Often more ideas or suggestions come over the lunch than in the day. It can be scary to go on your own but I’ve never had a bad experience yet and I find people are friendly and welcoming. Whenever possible I’d rather attend and meet new people.

Presenting
I find speaking in public easy. This means that presenting to the whole school staff about how great the library is, or sharing my latest work with fellow librarians, or running craft sessions for 130 Senior Section members, is something that doesn’t daunt me (now at least – at first I was totally freaked at the massive number idea and counted materials in and out – top tip don’t worry about these things and always have extra pens and sissors). Working out what to say can and while I don’t need every word written down I usually find it takes a couple of weeks to get the presentation pulled together. If it’s a practical session then I get the monitors or others of a similar ability to try it and see how it goes.

Before that though I work out what I (or whoever I’m working for) want people to get from the presentation/session/lesson. Is it ideas, a detailed how-to, or is it a mix of these. I also think about who I’m speaking to and what they know already, or what I might have to recap, or give a basic guide to. For example, giving a talk at the school in-service was a simple awareness raising exercise to get staff to realise what I do.

While at SLA(S) event it was to share ideas and offer some suggestions on making the best use of ever decreasing library budgets. This was done by asking the committee what they thought and then pulling all the ideas and expanding.

There are a few things I would recommend if you are doing a presentation:

• talk about what you know whenever possible as you feel a lot more comfortable about it.
• Use the slides as a overview with keywords/phrases
• handouts should be key points or links not a copy of the speech
• try running through the presentation before hand and mark on speech notes (usually a copy of the slides printed out) when to change slide or extra points to make.
• tie the notes together so I can easily flick through as I talk but they won’t end up out of place.
• run through it out loud two or three times before hand to check how long it will take.

Oh and if you want everyone to make a craft or similar then do that at the end and have clear visuals or a giant version to demonstrate with. I once did giant origami at a Guides’ Own where everyone had a little square I used bits of A2 paper cut into squares to demonstrate.

Organising
I tend not to be the main person in this rather I’m a contributor. I’ve organised delegate badges, sign up and pack or I’ve been involved in the advertising, logos and information booklets. I have two key tips;

1. Advertise at least two months in advance as that gives time for word or mouth etc. to share the event.
2. Never underestimate how long making up packs or info booklets will take!

Seriously give yourself a month to gather and make stuff and if you are done early then you just look super organised. I swear that as soon as there is time pressure my computer can sense it and will move all images three inches to the left and change the font to Bradley Hand ITC.

Finally, burning ideas for such events. I want to see ideas for school libraries and public libraries working together, e-books and getting them into the school library, active learning in the library and how the heck to get evaluation into my lessons. On the up side since I’m in the SLA(S) I’ll get a chance to suggest these topics (as all the members are encouraged to do) so keep an eye on the SLA(S) pages for the June conference maybe we will cover some of these ideas.

At first reading these Things meant nothing to me but as I read the rest of the post it became clear that actually this was a highly usebale thing. From a CPD point of view Thing 14 is a bit late, or maybe early, as I am currently not involved in any large research projects or professional writing – at least not to a level where I can’t remember my sources.

However I do teach bibliographies to the S5 and support staff with their CPD (though with the scrapping of the Chartered Teacher degree this might not be quite such an academic level). So for these groups this is something that knowing more about will be really useful for.

The download element is an issue as pupils/staff can’t download stuff to thier school PCs unless the council do it for us. Given that most people would be using home computers this maybe isn’t such an issue. So I’ve added a page to the library blog on Bibilography Tools and I’ll point this out in my S5 lecture and hopefully add a bit in to the handouts the pupils get.

I like CiteULike best of the bunch here but given it’s limitations I’ve a feeling if I was actually doing a academic paper I’d want to use one of the others.

See I told you I hadn’t forgotten about this whole CPD23 thing. So first up today is Thing 13 – Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox.

I can see ways I can use all of these features though in the school set up the Google Docs idea is not needed as we can use Glow to share documents or the school server. Having said that I can see where being able to access work simply via an internet connection and allow others to access it is very useful. I’ve had limited success using it to work on the Lones newsletter – possibly due to the need for it to change format which gives me more work as the images etc. end up all over the place. We have used it at SLA(S) to share documents across the group and it does work really well and it saves the whole email document issues and format chaos.

As for Dropbox already use it – in a limited way I admit – but it’s a great way to share files and make them available to others. My Dad got me using it and my Hubby is also a keen user transferring large documents between collaborators or home/ work PC. It does require the person at the other end to have the software to read the files but so does sending an email.

The thing about all of these is sharing and multiple people working on the same document. I can see me using all of these outside of school to exchange and collaborate on stuff for SLA(S), Girlguiding or the local community centre. What I can’t see is how this is better than Glow (the Scottish School’s Network) or the internal servers for sharing within school. Perhaps the fact that we already use these tools to do these tasks means that right now professionally they have limited use.

I love a wiki and I have pondered using them in school but opted for the blog option instead. This is closely linked to a time factor. I feel for a wiki to work it needs content but creating content is time consuming and I don’t have the time (don’t have the time to do this CPD23 lark either mind you). If it was a pupil collaboration thing then I would need time with classes to encourage them to use it and I don’t really have access to pupils for that kind of project. There is talk of using a wiki across a few schools for a writing project but again time, enthusiasm and pupil engagement is required, plus this really comes under the English department remit rather than mine (of course I can encourage them to use the tool). If I had the right project then this could be a great way to gets lots of people involved but for now I’ll enjoy reading such useful wiki’s as Muppet Wiki and My Little Pony: Frinedship is Magic Wiki.

The internal server at work is being tweeked – they didn’t tell me in advance. I discovered this exciting development when I tried to access my saved files to continue to develop an S5 Study skills lesson and couldn’t. This would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m expected to do work for a certain number of hours today and the work I need to do is stored on our internal servers.

My other options are – decorate for hallowe’en (which I was going to do on Monday afternoon), catalogue those books I’ve been avoiding (but then what will I get the pupil who helps me for two hours every morning to do) or work on CPD23…

…so here are my thoughts on Things 11 and 12.

Thing 11 – Mentoring
All for mentoring. I even volunteered to do it for SLA(S) but apparently no-one near me wants/needs mentoring so I’ve not been called in. I have been mentoring Clair for her GirlguidingUK Adult Leadership Qualification but she just finished that (whooo hooo!). Professionally I’d say that my mentor just now is an English teacher (Mrs. Wells) who give me loads of great advice and tips on my lessons.

Sometimes the mentoring relationships I have are very brief (focused on one project or aspect) other times it’s longer lasting (like the year for Chartership or some of my Girlguiding mentors like Alison Irving or Elizabeth Higton). I tend to find that while I haven’t set out to find a mentor I’ve picked one up along the way when I needed support. I think the trick is not to be scared to look stupid and ask for support when you need it. Those who have mentored me have inspired me, kept me on track and more importantly given me the confidence that what I’m doing is good (even if sometimes it needs a few tweeks).

Thing 12 – Putting the Social into Social Media
Right so the task was to add at least one person to the socail media tools I use. I’m going to go crazy and try and do it for Tumblr and Twitter.

First up Twitter. I’ve looked around and people seem to peak at following around 250. I’m only at 147 so I can clearly follow more people. I’ve added @NathanFillion (though that might vere towards stalking, maybe won’t tell Tom, he’s only mock me). Wait – they ment professional contacts and he doesn’t count? But Mr.Fillion plays a guy who writes best selling crime books in ‘Castle’ is that not close enough to being involved in the library world? Seriously!?! He’s a cult hero amongst geeks! Fine…I’ll choose someone else as well…

I’m going to make my choice based on that classic technique of seeing who is recommended to me by Twitter. After all they track my every move anyway, why not let them help me make friends. I clicked on ‘Who to Follow’ the first few in the list seemed rather off topic as they worryingly it included Wayne Rooney and CNN. Thankfully there were some better suggetsions including:

• Anne-Marie Tarter who’s a school librarian so I sent a request.
• dewey027 is a apparently another school librarian again who asks you to request the chance to follow so I sent her a request as well.

Mmm.. I wonder why they asked me to request permission to follow. It could be that they tweet about the pupils or the school library or maybe they slam it to the man or do they just not want everyone to know they’re off down the shops.

I looked at the other options suggested that weren’t music, movie or football related but they are either public libraries, writers or US publishers. The writers I did recognise but when looking at their tweets it’s a more personal than professional and I’m back to the I don’t actually want to know if they bought cucumbers (though I would be interested in their opinion on Dragon Fruit – I felt it was like a less tasty kiwi) – unless it’s Stephen Fry, Nathan Fillion or Wil Wheaton in which case maybe I should buy cucumbers (the power of Ffry compells me). I did discover that Carrie Fischer has a new book ‘Wishful Drinking’ out and her own blog but I didn’t think her tweets were going to help professionally. I did add the book to my Amazon Wish List though.

I had a glance at the browse by topic but it seemed to be a similar miss-mash albeit now it was a list of book loving Tweeters I didn’t want to follow. So I opted for looking at who I do follow follow.

At least I wanted to but twitter went all no-loading on me, guess I’ll save that for another day. Instead I went and read today’s paper.li and caught up on what those I do follow were recommending.

Next I looked at Tumblr. I only follow 28 people on that so clearly I can follow more. First line of serching was to see who follows me.

• shhh! no running in the library! is now being followed. An American School librarian though the Tumblr feed is more personal than mine it still had a few thing on the inital page that I wanted to reblog.
• ARK Libraries only has a few posts but I liked what I saw.
• I’m reading just as breathing… pretty book images and related stuff
• Argyle Destruction – more geeky things but still visually lovely.
• Bibliophibious – books, reading and geek fun

Even better when I reblogged an image from there blog I looked at who else had reblogged it and had a look at them and found;

• boon-n-roll who have some lovely book related stuff
• It happend in the library  yet more book realted stuff

So now I follow them all and I’ve got a couple of display ideas including the fact that Bram Stoker died 100 years ago in April 2012 so i’m thinking a ‘Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle’ display would be fun for then.

The final part of this Thing was to reflect on Social Networking. The good points are listed in the original CPD23 post but the disadvantages as I see them are simply that it is easy to get sidetracked and ‘waste’ time (though as Bertrand Russell said “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”). It is also too easy to share too much about yourself or learn too much about others (if you were physically following a stranger that closely it would be a criminal act). There is also the danger of misinformation being shared – I’m a big fan of the maxim ‘Google before you Tweet.’

Having said that social networking can be really useful. Tom would have about two friends if it wasn’t for Facebook or Google+ helping him keep in touch. We both use online forum archery interchange to chat with people about archery we’ve made actual friends through it as well thanks to meeting people at competitions.

As for the CPD23 project helping me make actual friends – it has sort of. As a result of this I’m now in touch with a couple of other librarians I’d probably never have met. Plus from a bear making side I’ve even been asked to make a dragon for a library patron who’s local librarian told her about me! You can’t tell me social networking doesn’t work.

Since I used social networking before CPD23 it’s likely I’ll keep using it and discovering other ways to use it personally, professionally and promotionally – thinking a library competition where clues are given out on the blog (and thereby Facebook and Twitter).

How I’ll use it depends a lot on how my interests develop and my time available but like all things the more you put in, the more you get out. So perhaps I need to spend more time building relationships with the follow social networkers I already communicate with rather than looking for new people to follow.

As the Guide song says;

“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver, the other gold.”