Full version of my Masters thesis online!

A year ago when I was writing up my MSc Information and Library Management dissertation, covering the situation in academic library blogging in the UK, I relied heavily on a PhD thesis by the American library studies professor, Michael Stephens. I remember being very grateful and somewhat impressed that he had made the full document available online. It saved me a lot of hassle finding it, quoting it and referring to it later!

In the spirit of the thesis, which dealt with the role of the modern librarian and his/her relationship with new technologies, I decided to share my findings as Stephens had done, using the blog I wrote as a research journal, and once it was done, the thesis itself (as long as it turned out to be a success).

Well, now I have the Masters certificate safely filed away, and another little certificate showing that my thesis won the Harry Galloway award for the highest mark in the UWE Library and Information Management course – effectively the highest mark in the South West of England! – I feel confident in posting the thing on my new blog and “closing that chapter”, as it were.

So here it is, click here to open the documents page. Enjoy!

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Other news? I’m ready to take a well-earned break with my friends. We’re off to Caernarfon for a week. I can’t wait!

I’ve learned a lot over the last six months about librarianship in action.

I’ve catalogue a lot of books, done a few hundred hours of enquiry desk work, dealt with a lot of routine enquiries and some more interesting and memorable ones, and overseen some sections of a complex collection management project. Plus I’ve worked on reviewing instructional and policy documentation for metadata, and started building some wiki pages!

I’ve taken part in a “Twitter conference”, I’ve started working on my Chartership, and more-or-less begun to produce reflective writing on my work and personal/professional development. I’ve attended 3 or 4 training courses (apart from the excellent ones provided at work) and a conference.

No wonder I need a break! It’s been an action-packed six months. I shall return to blogging in August and I wish you all a happy summer

Twittering #CILIP2

That incomprehensible title refers to a rather unique professional event I “attended” 2 weeks ago.

CILIP held a council session on the merits of using Web 2.0 techniques (such as this blog) to reach out to its membership and to librarians who are not currently members. In fact it was partly due to Web2.0-loving non-members’ enthusiasm that this session was held (at Katherine Widdows’ blog is a summary and links to the pertinent “historical” documents!).

The session was rather dificult to follow – watching a succession of hundreds tweets and blog posts appear over a couple of hours was pretty confusing and tiring (perhaps because I tried to combine it with enquiry desk duty!!!).

From my perspective, a few interesting points did come out though:

• Twitter is a format, or protocol, more than an application – it was futile trying to use the bare Twitter interface to follow the free-for-all; many, if not all participants used Tweetdeck or Twitterfall to collate and respond to the comments and links as they appeared. This made it clear to me that although we are dealing with a new piece of web-delivered software here, it is very much a question of information literacy competence that makes it effective in practice.
• CILIP is, as I have long thought, and commented during the session, already a good user of Web 2.0 technologies. The CILIP Communities forums and blog landscape are an under-used and under-valued resource for the library and information community. They are rightly somewhat protected, in my opinion. Going beyond the mistakes and misunderstandings that sparked the conversation on #CILIP2, the real problem here is a simple need to have that conversation and more of the same. There needs to be a much broader, ongoing engagement of professionals both in and outside of CILIP on these issues (which is why I set up the unofficial #CILIP2 wiki to capture some of the ideas and conversations that began there).
• The job of a professional institute is to provide continuity and coherence across a varied and changing sea of people and ideas. There’s nothing wrong with being a little cautious about change; since change has begun to happen clearly and explicitly, we can begin to move forward to a new position. I, for one, am pretty positive about the whole affair, since it reinforces the stance I took in my MSc dissertation; we need to be intelligent users and educators in the technologies available, while making the content our professional focus.

By the way, in another nice piece of news, I was awarded the Harry Galloway award for said Masters – it recognises that I achieved the highest grades in the South West for a library and information Masters!