Gregynog 2011

This year I attended the Gregynog Colloquium. Here's some information about the event which was hosted by the University of Glamorgan this year. It's the first time I've attended an event of this kind and certainly the first time I've taken part in one. From what I could gather over the few days I attended the event it gives Academic Librarians from across Wales the chance to come together and put the world to rights, the library world that is. I have to say I enjoyed every minute and hope I'll have the chance to attend again in the future. (Also IT folk though the week seems to be split into a Librarians part and an IT part).

The seminars which I attended were incredibly informative and gave me a good overview of what's been going on in the Academic Librarian's world since I graduated from Loughborough with my Information and Library Management MA in 2009. Something I'm hoping will help me in the future while applying for jobs. I'm going to have to re-read my notes at some point and have another look at the Presentation's which will be available at this link eventually. Through the Programme tab apparently.

I attended the event as a "New Professional" and gave my own presentation. I saw that they were looking for people to fill the "New Professionals" slot months and months ago and thought it would be a good boost for my CV. The problem being that the closer to the time it got the more scared I became. I am no public speaker and add to that the fact that I'm chronically shy I was getting worried. I've done one or two presentations before, always within the National Library and always about a theme I know plenty about e.g. the content of Nineteenth Century Newspapers. And no I'm not quite crazy enough to go trawling through piles of newspapers for no reason. These are just things I've noticed while doing my work, which involves going through a pile of newspapers for an actual reason. Anyhow, as I was saying worry was setting in. As there wasn't any clear guidelines as to what kind of presentation they wanted to fill this slot I didn't really have a clue what to talk about. However after consulting some colleagues I decided that my best course of action would be to put something together about my own professional development and to say something about the Project I'm currently working on which intends to digitise 2 million pages of Nineteenth Century Periodicals and Newpapers published in Wales.

I think that the Presentation went well from what people have told me afterwards although they may have just been trying to be nice! Myself I've more or less blanked it from my memory. My consolation is that my Power Point looked good, though after seeing some of the Presentations made this week I really, really want to try Prezi. It looks really impressive.

I've just read through this blog and have realised it's a bit meandering. I may come back to it at some point to tidy it up a bit and make it clearer. Also to translate.

P.S. I learnt that Librarians are really good at singing along to The Twelve Days of Christmas acting out each number as they go along. This was hilarious! :)