Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

OK... as I need to channel off the excess energy from Wales beating the Irish someplace I thought I'd try catching up with my blog, at least a little bit!


Attending
I've attended a couple of things since starting at the National Library of Wales. I've probably attended more training days than anything else, though most of these have been internal, I did attend one external CILIP training day last November 'Moving into Management' but in general all my training has been internal. This has given me the chance to get to know people from other departments who I probably wouldn't have much, if anything to do with during my day to day work. It's also given the library the chance to ensure that I have the skills that they want when it comes to things like managing staff.

I have also attended a couple of NEWSPLAN Wales conferences, that is the ones that have been held in the National Library as my line manager thinks this is important to me. These events have been really interesting to see how things are being handled all over Wales. While I didn't really get the chance to socialise with people as much as I would've liked due mostly to shyness, I was lucky enough to get to talk to Ed King who had come to Aber for the event! And was very kind in beginning a conversation with the lonely shy person in the corner! :)

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attend the Gregynog Colloquium which I've spoken about in an earlier blog. And I've also been to a cpd23 meet up in Cardiff which was great fun! These two events are probably the best I've attended for giving me contacts. Though it probably helps that some of the people were the same.

Presenting
Again this isn't something I've done much of. I had the opportunity to talk about the importance of digitising newspapers to NEWSPLAN Wales early last year, and did a presentation about the content of the volumes the library are digitising to the Chapters members of the National Library. I particularly enjoyed this one as the contents of the newspapers really fascinate me and it was interesting to see what other people were interested in. There was one lady who speaking about her Grandmother had experienced an earthquake back in the early 1900s which I'd happened to talk about, apparently the family had always though she must be mistaken!

I was also lucky enough to speak at the Gregynog Conference. Again see the Gregynog Conference blog or for the presentation itself see Thing 10.

My main problems with these was the actual Presenting as I'm rather shy and the idea of standing up in front of a bunch of strangers (even friendly librarian strangers) terrifies me more than you could ever believe. However I've a feeling that the more I do the better I'll come at doing it. I also like to make sure my hints to myself are actually a part of the slide. That way I just can't forget something or mix up any cards I'm holding or something dreadful like that. Maybe with time I'll become a confident public speaker but I have the oddest feeling that that is just not going to happen somehow.

Organising
I've never organised an event. And so I'm not going to comment on this. If the day ever comes when it happens I'll probably blog about it.

Thing 10 - Graduate traineeships. Masters Degrees, Chartership and Accreditation

Hmm... So this Thing explores how I got to where I am (I'm currently working on a Digitisation Project at the National Library of Wales) and what made me decide on the librarianship route. As this is what I talked about during the New Professionals slot at the Gregynog Colloquium this year I decided the best thing to do was to put the presentation here as it explains the various options I took.

Gregynog 2011 Becoming an Information Professional

View more presentations from Nia Williams

These options included my "unofficial" Graduate Trainee year which I put together myself, and included working in a Public Library (for free until they offered me a job) and a couple of months at Swansea University Library (again for free). And what my options are for the future. Which includes Chartership, which I'll do as soon as I find a mentor (finding a Welsh speaking Mentor is more difficult than I imagined considering that I live and work in Wales). I don't suppose anybody wants to mentor me do they? Please?

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! :)