Well it's the long Jubilee weekend, I am off work for four days, how better to spend a gloomy Monday than building up my Chartership portfolio? The path to Chartership has been rather rocky so far - there always seems to be something else I need (or want) to do...but if I don't get cracking the whole year will have slipped away and my Chartership portfolio will remain nothing more than a blank white page!
I have at least written my PPDP, attended a Chartership workshop at CILIP in February and had a meeting with my mentor at the end of April. I find now I need some kind of structure, something tangible which I can populate with evidence. Unlike some Chartership candidates I have no shortage of evidence - it's just choosing what areas to focus on and selecting the most appropriate evidence to demonstrate my competence. My mentor had the excellent idea of looking at the new CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge and Skills (currently still in draft) and choosing a few of these competences to provide some structure to my portfolio but I have to admit I'm struggling...
I have two excellent example portfolios to hand which my mentor lent me but they are both structured very differently. Both start out with the usual CV, PPDP and Personal Statement but then Portfolio 1 has chosen the section headers "Context of post and service" where she outlines the various organisations relating to her job from the top down, "Service performance and CPD" where she discusses various aspects of her job role and finally "Broader professional activities and interests" listing a number of groups in which she actively participates. Portfolio 1 puts all her supporting evidence at the end of the document and refers to them throughout the sections above.
Portfolio 2 also has a section where he discusses the organisational structures, but this is followed by the headings "Intellectual property and professional ethics", "Information services", "Website development", "Library management system: scoping and implementation" and "Staff training I have developed". The supporting evidence is displayed within these sections. The only other obvious difference is that Portfolio 1 has her mentorship evidence at the beginning while Portfolio 2 has his at the end.
I think I prefer the structure of P1 but would worry about being too descriptive. The structure of P2 is closer to my mentor's BPKS idea but I wouldn't want to feel I had to force various activities into certain 'slots'. Perhaps what I need to do now is gather together all the evidence I want to use and see what categories emerge - if it fits into the BPKS competences all well and good but if not I could maybe refer to the BKPS when reflecting on it. In any case I want to get the structure right from the beginning as it will make the portfolio more 'real' to me, which hopefully should encourage me to keep cracking on!
Showing posts with label CILIP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CILIP. Show all posts
Monday, 4 June 2012
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
The road to chartership
Well I have finally done it - I have filled in my registration form for CILIP Chartership! I haven't actually sent it off yet but am planning to do so this week. It may not seem like such a big deal to most people but I have been ummming and ahhhing about Chartership now for well over a year, trying to decide whether or not it's worth going for. On one hand I can see the value in being reflective about your practice, getting support from a mentor and developing a portfolio of your professional development. But practically will it really change my practice? And will it price me out of the job market at this point in my career? And do I really have the time?
The Chartership question all came to a head this week when I read over the job description for the post I currently hold and found Chartership had been put in the person specification as essential. I should say this job description is a re-vamped one for the consultation we are currently undergoing at the Trust whereby we all have to reapply for our jobs (or jobs very similar to ours). I want to give myself the best possible chance of getting the job as I don't know who I may be up against (possibly my manager - how is that for awkward?) and at least if I don't have chartership yet I can show I am in the process of obtaining it. Anyway it has been on my PDP for this year as well so now will do as well as ever.
One of the main reasons I have been holding off is because I wanted to make sure I have a bit of experience behind me first. I just don't see the point in launching straight into Chartership after qualifying - what can you realistically bring to the exercise? Now I have 2 years of experience I have quite a few examples I can draw on. It might even encourage me to blog more regularly! Watch this space....
The Chartership question all came to a head this week when I read over the job description for the post I currently hold and found Chartership had been put in the person specification as essential. I should say this job description is a re-vamped one for the consultation we are currently undergoing at the Trust whereby we all have to reapply for our jobs (or jobs very similar to ours). I want to give myself the best possible chance of getting the job as I don't know who I may be up against (possibly my manager - how is that for awkward?) and at least if I don't have chartership yet I can show I am in the process of obtaining it. Anyway it has been on my PDP for this year as well so now will do as well as ever.
One of the main reasons I have been holding off is because I wanted to make sure I have a bit of experience behind me first. I just don't see the point in launching straight into Chartership after qualifying - what can you realistically bring to the exercise? Now I have 2 years of experience I have quite a few examples I can draw on. It might even encourage me to blog more regularly! Watch this space....
Saturday, 30 October 2010
A busy October
It has been a very busy few weeks here in the Healthcare Library and I thought I would take a bit of time to reflect on a few things that have happened in the past weeks. My colleague and I did a session at another site hospital last week on critical appraisal, covering both quantitative and qualitative research (she did quan, I did qual) and it went really well! All the participants turned up, which is very unusual, and there was a good mix of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.
I piloted an exercise found on the ever helpful CATNiP wiki called the “Qualitytative Street exercise” which basically used Quality Street chocolates to explain some of the concepts of qualitative research. Basically everyone had to choose their favourite, eat it then describe what they liked about the chocolate. These terms were written up on the whiteboard and then we put them into categories such as ‘taste’, ‘texture’ or ‘appearance’. We then had a discussion on such issues as focus group recruitment (e.g. nobody asked what the study was about before agreeing to participate!), why people might choose not to take part, how the data were “collected”, data saturation, how the data were analysed and the role of the researcher (how might their answers have differed if they knew I was employed by Nestle...or Cadbury’s?!) We got very positive feedback on the session overall and a few people mentioned they found the qualitative session particularly useful as they do not encounter much in their day-to-day work. I personally found listening to the quantitative session very helpful as it gave me ideas for what to add to my training course.
Our journal survey finished at the beginning of October but between one thing and another I didn’t get a chance to look through the results properly until Friday, when I had to send the results to my manager and the manager on our other site for a meeting on Tuesday about journal selection for the coming year. We had 151 responses in the end and it was very interesting going through the results. We received a lot of useful suggestions for how we could improve the service as well as a huge list of recommended journal titles. I do not envy the managers trying to decide which ones to take and which ones to discard! One very positive result was seeing how well the NHS resources are used – the majority of respondents said they used library.nhs.uk, HILO or MyAthens to access e-journals. The next favourite access point is Google which is not surprising really. Another interesting result was that only half of the respondents prefer electronic access to journals over print. 18% prefer print and 27% have no preference. The respondents seemed fairly satisfied with the provision of e-journals and print journals, ease of access and promotion and the top titles read at the Trust are BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nursing Standard, British Journal of Midwifery and Stroke. Some of the suggestions for improvement were a bit outrageous, such as having print copies of all journals at all three sites (exactly what we are trying to avoid!) and “electronic access via British Library services” (which if left to the devices of our users would wipe out our entire budget in a week) but others were very helpful such as targeted email services for specific subjects and coming to speak at team meetings and inductions. The survey certainly identified areas where further training is needed.
Finally I have been working away on my very first book review! An email went round a few weeks ago asking for volunteers to review a couple of books for the HLG newsletter. My manager forwarded it on to me and one of the books “Technology Training in Libraries” caught my attention so I got in touch with the person offering and volunteered to do the review. The book is part of the Facet ‘Tech Set’ series and was a very interesting read. I enjoyed the experience of writing up about it and will put the link to my review when it is published in the newsletter, hopefully next month.
I have been very busy with one-to-one sessions, especially as degree courses are starting up again. I had an Orthopaedics registrar in the other morning who wanted a very comprehensive literature search for his dissertation and I was grateful once again that a Masters degree is required for becoming a qualified librarian as the first thing he asked was whether I had experience in carrying out research. If I hadn’t done a Masters and gone through the experience of carrying out my research project I probably would have felt quite intimidated but as it was I could answer in the affirmative and he seemed quite impressed that a postgrad qualification was required for being a librarian!
I piloted an exercise found on the ever helpful CATNiP wiki called the “Qualitytative Street exercise” which basically used Quality Street chocolates to explain some of the concepts of qualitative research. Basically everyone had to choose their favourite, eat it then describe what they liked about the chocolate. These terms were written up on the whiteboard and then we put them into categories such as ‘taste’, ‘texture’ or ‘appearance’. We then had a discussion on such issues as focus group recruitment (e.g. nobody asked what the study was about before agreeing to participate!), why people might choose not to take part, how the data were “collected”, data saturation, how the data were analysed and the role of the researcher (how might their answers have differed if they knew I was employed by Nestle...or Cadbury’s?!) We got very positive feedback on the session overall and a few people mentioned they found the qualitative session particularly useful as they do not encounter much in their day-to-day work. I personally found listening to the quantitative session very helpful as it gave me ideas for what to add to my training course.
Our journal survey finished at the beginning of October but between one thing and another I didn’t get a chance to look through the results properly until Friday, when I had to send the results to my manager and the manager on our other site for a meeting on Tuesday about journal selection for the coming year. We had 151 responses in the end and it was very interesting going through the results. We received a lot of useful suggestions for how we could improve the service as well as a huge list of recommended journal titles. I do not envy the managers trying to decide which ones to take and which ones to discard! One very positive result was seeing how well the NHS resources are used – the majority of respondents said they used library.nhs.uk, HILO or MyAthens to access e-journals. The next favourite access point is Google which is not surprising really. Another interesting result was that only half of the respondents prefer electronic access to journals over print. 18% prefer print and 27% have no preference. The respondents seemed fairly satisfied with the provision of e-journals and print journals, ease of access and promotion and the top titles read at the Trust are BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nursing Standard, British Journal of Midwifery and Stroke. Some of the suggestions for improvement were a bit outrageous, such as having print copies of all journals at all three sites (exactly what we are trying to avoid!) and “electronic access via British Library services” (which if left to the devices of our users would wipe out our entire budget in a week) but others were very helpful such as targeted email services for specific subjects and coming to speak at team meetings and inductions. The survey certainly identified areas where further training is needed.
Finally I have been working away on my very first book review! An email went round a few weeks ago asking for volunteers to review a couple of books for the HLG newsletter. My manager forwarded it on to me and one of the books “Technology Training in Libraries” caught my attention so I got in touch with the person offering and volunteered to do the review. The book is part of the Facet ‘Tech Set’ series and was a very interesting read. I enjoyed the experience of writing up about it and will put the link to my review when it is published in the newsletter, hopefully next month.
I have been very busy with one-to-one sessions, especially as degree courses are starting up again. I had an Orthopaedics registrar in the other morning who wanted a very comprehensive literature search for his dissertation and I was grateful once again that a Masters degree is required for becoming a qualified librarian as the first thing he asked was whether I had experience in carrying out research. If I hadn’t done a Masters and gone through the experience of carrying out my research project I probably would have felt quite intimidated but as it was I could answer in the affirmative and he seemed quite impressed that a postgrad qualification was required for being a librarian!
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