I’ve been a bit delayed in writing this post – the CDG National Conference took over!
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a careers event organised by Carly Miller, New Professionals Support Officer at the Yorkshire and Humber division of the CILIP Career Development Group, for the current MA Librarianship students (and any other local new professionals who wanted to attend) at the University of Sheffield. It was strange being back in the department and speaking in a room in which I used to sit for lectures, but it was a fantastic experience; it was lovely being back there.
We had a really good turn-out – I’d guess there were about 15 to 20 students there, despite the fact that it was at 4.15pm after a full day of lectures. They were a great audience; attentive and engaged. Carly started by talking about her professional journey throughout the MA (she finished it this year) and afterwards. Carly did loads during her MA; working, volunteering and organising social events and visits to mention but a few activities! She did a great job of encouraging the students to get involved but also warning them not to try to do too much. Carly also had lots of tips on job-hunting, applying for conference bursaries and the like, and what to do if things aren’t going to plan.
Next, I talked about the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN). Some of the attendees had used it, some had heard of it but not used it, and others were not familiar with it at all. This is what I had predicted (hoped for!), so I planned my presentation to both introduce it to those new to it, but also to offer suggestions for other ways in which to use the site i.e. contributing to the blog as well as using the forums, and to hopefully encourage non-frequent users to become more involved. I didn’t see any glazed-over faces during my presentation, so I think I was successful! I also introduced myself in terms of my job, so that anyone interested in working in academic libraries could ask me questions about that too.
The final speaker was Angela Greenwood, who is a librarian at the Information Commons at Sheffield and the National Fairground Archive at Sheffield. Angela told the attendees about her route into librarianship and the work that she does, in the Archive in particular, which looks amazing!
I really enjoyed being a part of this event. It was great to meet some of this year’s MA students, and to be able to give something back to the department from which I took so much. I would really like to be involved in an event like this again, and have offered to help the department out in any way that I can in the future.
This is my presentation if anyone is interested.
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