By Sue Lee, Secretary for CILIP South West Members Network Committee
Maximising the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB)
This session delivered by CILIP SW Professional Registration Support Officers, Nicki Forgham-Healey in person and Donna Gundry online. Nicki and Donna gave an overview of how to navigate the PKSB and ways to use it. They explained that the PKSB was not only a tool for professional registration but was useful for appraisals and job applications. In addition to rating yourself now and a target rating you wish to aim for, there is also a comment section next to the ratings that you can use as an aide memoir for examples of where you have evidenced that skill eg customer service. They demonstrated how to access the PKSB from your quick links, what the different headings on the home page led to, the importance of saving your ratings and the different types of reports. One of the other links from your quick links is eLearning & Webinars. This can be filtered by PKSB headings or by sector such as school libraries or health libraries. The session expanded my understanding of the PKSB and the ways it can be useful in my professional development in my current post and beyond.
Social Justice – isn’t that political?
John Vincent presented this session and emphasized that social justice was a fundamental part of the library and information profession. Social justice is about fairness so that everyone has access to resources and opportunities. It is about giving people what they need in order to have fair access rather than all being given the same resources. Libraries are not neutral there will be obstacles such as funding levels, views of the organisation and staff commitment/time. However, targeted and sustainable services, working in partnerships, support and training are successful in improving our support of individuals and communities. John talked about Libraries of Sanctuary and is very involved in the Peninsula of Sanctuary Project. Peninsula of Sanctuary is a cross-sector of libraries based in Devon and Cornwall working together to make a difference by embedding the concepts of welcome, safety and inclusion to all new arrivals in our region.
Librarian’s Question Time
The panel included Sonia Llewellyn – Devon and Exeter Institute, an Independent Library, Hannah Wood – NHS Library, Callum Elliott-Archer – Public Library, Helene Russel – Knowledge Manager and James Anthony-Edwards – University of Exeter. The panel outlined their career routes and answered questions on their current roles. They discussed how to get into library roles, though some had Masters they understood that this was cost prohibitive to many and volunteering was a good route. They also gave tips for interviews including use the PKSB to find out what the employer is looking for, read up about the position and organisation, always ring the recruiter to find out what they are looking for and show keenness and willingness to learn. Another was – if you do use the strategy of applying for a post as a practice interview to get feedback you may accidently change your career path by successfully achieving the post. This session underlined that I need to evaluate my transferable skills and do research to achieve my personal development and career goals.
Using Social Media
This online session was presented by Gemma Wood, Head of Sales and Marketing at CILIP. To use social media in your work she explained that you need to ask yourself some very necessary questions: why are you using social media, who are your audience, what do you want to achieve and how are you going to measure it. Also, importantly, what do you have the capacity to use easily and regularly. She used a doughnut to illustrate the different channels. Once you have decided the channels, she advised creating a social media calendar and assigning responsibility. As a rule of thumb 70% of posts should be information and self-serving and 30% should be reposting information from others.
I came away from the event with a better understanding of how plan my personal development and increased confidence to be more innovative and improve my library offer. It was great to meet up with people from such a diverse range of library and information sectors and discuss the differences and similarities of our work.
CILIP South West Member Network 