Naomi's Noesis

Thing 7 - Real life networking!

2011-07-21T12:34:00.000+01:00

I went to a real life meet-up in Birmingham this week, and it was lots of fun!

This link goes to the blog post that I wrote for the CILIP West Midlands blog:
http://communities.cilip.org.uk/blogs/cilipwestmidlands/archive/2011/07/20/event-report-informal-networking-evening.aspx

More thoughts regarding things 6 and 7 to follow...

Thing Five - Reflective Practice

2011-07-14T11:22:00.000+01:00

I am very excited about this 'Thing'. Simply because, I LOVE reflective practice. I think that it is wonderfully beautiful, supremely interesting and extraordinarily useful. OK, calming down now. But it's true, I really do love reflecting on things, and it is something that I feel that I am good at, and something that I try and do as much as possible. I am a Reflectophile.

I first started reflecting properly when I was studying for my Masters at university. On this Masters course there was a whole module that was about reflecting, and we had to put together a portfolio of our attempts at different ways of doing it. The whole course really struck a chord with me and I really started to appreciate the benefits of being a reflective person, both personally and professionally. I read once that there was a study done that showed that a group of people demonstrated a greater improvement in mood when they wrote about their problems compared to if they told someone else about them using traditional 'talking therapy' methods. In a bit I might find the reference for that because I thought that it was extremely interesting.

So, here are some of my favourite methods of reflecting:

Free writing. This is when you just sit and write your thoughts as they come to you. You don’t worry about spelling, or punctuation, or finishing off sentences or trains of thought. You just write. It was suggested to us that we do this by hand, but I found typing much more helpful. I’m a reasonably good touch-typer so I sit in front of a computer, close my eyes, and type as the words come into my head. After a bit the need to open my eyes and peep at it wins out, so I’ll do that, but then I’ll start again on a new paragraph. I find this very useful to get thoughts out of my head. Once I’ve finished I may go through it again, pick out the key points and expand on them, finishing off with a ‘properly written’ piece that I can refer back to later. But sometimes just the act of writing itself does all that is needed.
SWOT analyses. I have to confess, the first time that I was presented with one of these I thought it was a complete waste of time. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats – other brands are available) allows you to take an issue, an aspect of your personality, a skill, an aim, anything really, and break your thoughts down into four nice convenient categories. Like all reflective methods, I think you have to really engage in this for it to work. There’s no use looking at the paper, laughing to yourself, thinking what a waste of time it all is and then writing down things that you think look good. Once I started to actually concentrate on what I was doing and engage with the process I found that I got a lot more out of it.
Forms I’ve made up myself. I have a longer form that I designed myself that I use for longer reflections. I think I adapted one that was given to me at some time, but I’ve made the questions my own, which I think gives me a greater feeling of ownership over the process. These forms follow the usual pattern – description of what happened, how did you feel about this, what was good, what was bad, how can this be applied to the future.
I have one form that I use on an ad-hoc basis when I want to reflect at length on something, and one that is designed to be used on a regular basis. When I first started at my current job I completed one of these a week for the first ten weeks as I settled in, and I still do them regularly, though not quite so often.

I could go on, and in fact this is something I might come back to later on. I will also post soon with my reflections on the CPD23 process so far. For the moment however, I will leave you with four points to ponder on:

Reflective practice is awesome
Everyone should give it a go
You need to really commit to it. Remember, no-one else need read what you write if you don’t want them to, and what you get out of it will be affected by what you put in to it
Reflection has made me a happier person, both in and out of work J

Thing Four

2011-07-07T19:51:00.000+01:00

Well, I have to say that this keeping a blog idea is more difficult than it seems. Life has got in the way lately. The irony of this is of course that there has been an awful lot that I could blog about, but because it has all been happening there has been no time to sit down at a computer.

I have missed out Thing Three, but I will come back to it in one of the break weeks! I did think about it a lot over the week though, so there are interesting things for me to say (well, interesting to me), but you're all going to have to wait for them. I am very definately a person who ponders - I need time to formulate my thoughts before I set them down. I've recently acquired a nice new snazzy mobile phone, and I am using this to keep a note of the thoughts that occur to me so that they are not forgotton. I have found this incredibly useful in all aspects of life (I now have a 'real time' shopping list for whenever I'm in a supermarket). I've noticed with other people's blogs that they are writing about the 'things' on the day or they day after they are posted. I just don't think I could do that, I need time to ruminate on them.

Thing Four is keeping up to date. I had already joined Twitter (see post below), but I was very interested to read about RSS feeds. I've seen them a lot and always wondered... and now I know! I'm very excited with my 'Google Reader' account, again I think it will make things alot easier. Twitter I'm getting the hang of, I now have two tweets, and a reply from my Brother-in-Law (BiL) to the second. In case you don't have twitter and are wondering, the tweet was about the bruise on my foot caused by a pile of falling library books. I was using a label remover spray to take the 'One Week Loan' sticker of a trolley of books. Each book was sprayed with the remover, and then placed in a pile on the counter to allow it time to work. Apparently this pile was not 100% stable on the counter, as suddenly, with no warning or provocation, they all fell off the counter and onto my foot. Hence the bruise. Brownie points for Naomi, the four letter word that immediately came to my lips was not allowed to pass, as I was sat on the loans counter at the time.

And that right there is why I'm not convinced about Twitter. How to get all that information, the emotion and the drama into a tweet, with however many charecters you are allowed to use?! A related problem is that I refuse to start with the 'txt spk'. Im not gona decend 2 dat level! Lolz+rofl. I suppose that Twitter serves a different purpose to a blog, but I've never been one to confine myself to just the one sentence when telling a story...

Twitter

2011-06-29T13:54:00.000+01:00

I snuck ahead on the 23 things...

I joined Twitter last week - @naomisnoesis - however, don't all rush to look at it because I have since found absolutely nothing to say! I have found lots of interesting people to follow, and I am being followed by two people including my sister (for all you cataloguers out there, she is @metadatamonkey . The fact that both my sister and myself work in university libraries shows how similar we are in many ways. The fact that I have only a vague idea of what metadata is shows how different from each other we really are.)

So, I have managed a single tweet. How is one supposed to find things to declare to the world?! It is a very different thing from blogging like this. Here, the main purpose is really for me to organise my thoughts and present them in a cohesive manner. If other people are reading then that is lovely, and I like to think that they might also find a benefit from reading. However, with Twitter, all you are doing is making a statement. You are saying "look world, this is what I have to say" with no consideration whether or not the world wants to hear. Now, I suppose that the only people that are really going to see it are people that are following you, or people that have specifically looked you up. It is reasonable to assume that these people do want to hear what you have to say. But I'm still not comfortable with it!

I think I am going to leave the Twitter account for the moment, and make myself be patient and wait for it to come along in the 'Things'.

postscript - I don't want all you library and information professionals thinking badly of me because I don't know what metadata is. I am open to the concept of metadata. I am willing to learn what metadata is. However right now my job does not call for either the knowlege or use of metadata. As far as I know. Having admitted that I don't know what it is, would I recognise it if I saw it? The parts of my job that I enjoy are the parts involving people. Are people metadata? What is the nature of a person? Are they more than the sum of their parts, or are they just a combination of data, mixed together into a human form? More things to think about... :p

CPD - Thing Two

2011-06-26T17:47:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I have a confession to make.

About half an hour ago I made a post to this blog from my mobile phone. The post was short, fairly negative, and lacked my usual natural enthusiasm. I have been away from a computer for the past few days, I was very aware that I had not blogged for 'Thing Two' and I thought I ought to fire off anything, no matter how curt, in order to keep up with the program. Immediately that I sent it, I regretted it, so the post was deleted, I jumped in the car and came to a friends house to use the internet on a proper computer. Enthusiasm now back to normal levels, I shall start again.

The lack of a computer has made this 'Thing' difficult to complete, but what I have seen of other people's blogs has been very interesting. There were some initial hicups - I tried to leave some comments and thought that I had succeeded, but when I came back the next day they were not there. Having explored further, I think that I may well have been pressing the 'preview' button by accident... rookie mistake. Overall, however, I have enjoyed my time spent with 'Thing Two'.

There is clearly a wide spectrum of blogs out there and each one does come accross very differently. I think that a person's purpose in blogging has a big effect on this. Is it a personal blog that they are using for professional things as well. Are they interested in other people reading their blog, or do they just want to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking, of course).

I have had blogs in the past, but they have been exclusively personal ones. In the end, I got frustrated with the fact that everyone could read them and made all of the posts private. I used the blog as a personal diary with the convenience that I could access it easily from any computer. I am approaching this blog very differently. I want to improve my professional performance, and I want to become a part of the wider LIS community. I also now have a lot more confidence in myself, and feel able to make a blog post without immediately regretting it (note the irony of this statement with regard to the first paragraph of this blog).

I think that 'Thing Two' is one that needs to continue throughout the course, as that is the only way that a real community spirit will be created. I look forward to continuing to read other people's blogs as the 'Things' progress.

In the meantime, I have a new rule - never try and post to the blog from a mobile phone. The process was far too frustrating, and there really isnt the same flow of ideas that can come from typing on a proper keyboard. During my degree we were taught to do 'free writing' - an unending stream of conciousness written down as the words came into our heads. I hope that this blog will be slightly more organised than my 'free writing' attempts were, but I think the underlying priciple is the same, and this just cannot be done on a teeny tiny keyboard.

Noesis

2011-06-20T21:32:00.000+01:00

This is my new word for the day - Noesis.

I was looking for a good word begining with the letter N, because there is nothing like a good alliteration to catch people's attention. I wanted something professional, but not boring and orginal, but not too out there. Unfortunately all of the words that I could think of had negative connotations - nutty, naughty etc. Fortunately, google came to my rescue, and a quick search for 'good words begining with N' furnished me with a whole list of possible words, some more suitable than others (all from http://phrontistery.info/n.html). Rejected words included 'narcomania' - an uncontrollable craving for narcotics; 'nebbich' - a colourless, inconsequential person; and 'natiform' - you can google that one yourself.

However, Noesis seemed to fit the bill entirely - the definition (from http://www.dictionary.com/) being:

1. (in Greek philosophy) the exercise of reason.

2. Psychology . cognition; the functioning of the intellect.

I hope that this blog will be the embodiment of these terms, although I don't make any promises! I will welcome all coments, now and in the future, to point out when I fall short of an excercise of reason, or when my intellect is not functioning as completely as one would hope.

CPD23 - Thing One

2011-06-20T20:53:00.000+01:00

This post will be my first professional blog entry, and will be part of 'thing 1' on the CPD23 course. I am fairly new to the library and information profession, and fairly new to my career generally. I have been out in the world of work for almost three years now and I am just coming up to the end of my first year working in a library.

I am currently working as a library assistant in a Higher Education library. My job consists of a mix of frontline customer service and basic administrative tasks, and I have resposnsibility for inter library loans at one of our smaller library sites. In addition to the requirements of my job, I try and stretch myself as much as possible and take every opportunity that comes my way. I love volunteering for open days, for freshers fair, and for introductary library tours. I think they are all brilliant opportunities to share with people just how much the library can offer them. I don't like the idea that people wouldn't access our services simply because they don't know that we provide them!

I feel very passionate about CPD generally, and am feeling extremely positive about the CPD23 course - I am very greatful for the opportunity to participate. I hate to stand still, and always like to be working towards something. In fact, I often try and work towards too much at a time, so I have to be careful how much I set my mind to! Current projects are to go to the gym regularly, commit to and stick to veganism, as well as work on my professional life. I have recently started working towards CILIP's certification, something that I am also very excited about. I hope that the CPD23 will help me with this and provide a structure to some of the other things that I want to do.

I hope that this blog will allow me to maintain a record of my thoughts and my thought processes - I always think it is interesting to look back and check the reasons why I did something. What were the considerations that went into a decision? Why did I choose plan A instead of plan B? What were my initial thoughts? What do I think now, and how does this differ? I am hoping that this blog will help me to answer some of these questsions. Of course the answers will then help me when thinking about the next step, and I hope that this will be a very positive process.

I also hope that the blog will allow me to keep track of everything that I have done, considered, and thought. I try and engage as much as possible with the review system at work, and I hope that this will really help me to organise my thoughts regarding that. Finally, I do want to progress with my career, and I hope that the processes of the CPD23, of blogging, of the CILIP certification, and even the veganism, will all help me to advance my career, fulfil my potential, and really make a difference to the people that really matter - the students and borrowers of the library.