As we approch mid-October and a year in my first professional position I am pleased to say that I am not far away from being chartered if all goes well. I have spent the last couple of weeks priniting off eveidence and gathering it together in a presentable way. I will be speaking to my mentor in the next couple of days and if she is happy with my work then will look to submit in the next month or so.

I have found the experience of chartering not as daunting as it may have seemed st first. I think I am lucky in that my first job is a very varied one with service performance, marketing, IT, customer service, training delivery and much more involved alongside my day to day job of being the learning co-ordinator. It has meant that alongside attending training days my general work tasks have fed in well to the chartership model (although only if I pass will I say this for sure). It has kept my mind focussed on being reflective in my approach and also mindful of the importance of gathering performance evidence and this will be useful going forward.

In a work sense I now feel very much at home in my surroundings, I have had some key achievements in my first year; maintaining existing learning providers who looked ready to pull out, finding new partners, becoming a learndirect centre, becoming an ILA provider and starting to delive my own classes being the stand outs. This has now seen me start to come up with new projects and these are likely to focus on creating more in-house classes and programmes for employability and younger people. With so much focus on learning I think chartership has meant I kept a close relationship with the more traditional library work giving me a good amount of all round skills.

As my workload increased over the year my blog posts became less frequent but I hope they still reflect what I have been doing and how I have felt about it. I plan to keep blogging in a new blog shortly!

The last month has been spent mainly organiising the final preperations for our new classes, teaching my own classes and also arranging some projects involving information literacy. In addition my chartership has been gathering place including a visit I paid to the City Chambers Library.

In terms of our new timetable I have been involved in organising the recruitment of students. This requires many marketing initiatives and also phonecalls but it is good to engage with the learners in this way. This has been done to a greater level with my teaching of two classes, one in Basic Computing and one in Internet Skills. This has made me nervous but I feel I did well. I still have to develop my tutoring skills so that I find the best approaches but the learning curves within these classes have been steep and worthwhile. The students have been happy it seems with what they have learned and only a few teething problems have disrupted things. I pln to do more soon.

I also took part in a visit arranged by my chartership mentor. This was good as I saw the workings of a completely different library and one that is largely a legal one. This had many differences and was ultimately a very rewarding day that allowed a detailed write up of another service. I will return this visit in October.

With this complete I know plan to spend the next month completing the last of my eveidence and starting to bring my portfolio together in time to submit in October/November, I have written the first draft of my personal statement and will complete this shortly.

In the past month or so all my work has been focussed on the planning and preparation of September's timetable of classes within the libraries. This has involved a noteable success with the award of ILA provider status meaning that we can now create our own classes and allow people of lower incomes to gain funding to pay for these. This is a real success for the libarary and the challenge now is creating them. As we must start small and build up the recieved funds I have decided to take some initial classes. This will begin with a 4 week class that is free for way of a trial followed by a longer one that is ILA funded. The creation of courses is fun and have enjoyed it although I am nervous about the actual teaching and also whether I know enough!

Thankfully, we have input from local providers meaning we still have a strong timetable, this allows me to gradually reduce this and increase our own learning and I am lucky to have this opportunity. This involved a lot of negotiation and planning meetings and I feel my skills within these are improving.

I have also spent a great deal of time updating the library website, I feel this is an important area of any librray service now and slthough my authorities website isn't aesthetically ideal at least I have some new skills in designing pages etc (although not using html!)

Other than taht this month also saw a rewarding visit to the CILIP Scotland conference in Peebles, among other speakers my favourite talk covered Family History and really inspired me to develop a project when I returned. I am currently looking into a variety of funding initiatives to try and get this arranged.

The last month has continued to be a busy one that has still been focussed on the learning provision from September. As well as holding meeting with learning providers I also arranged the Adult Learners Week Event in order to get names for next years classes.

After a meeting with the local college still left us largely in the dark over exactly what classes we can provide next year the open day had very little in terms of confirmed classe. I have gathered a large amount of back up provision though and we are applying to become an ILA Provider so there was still plenty of reason to gather names. The planning of this event was made a lot easier by the fact I had done something similar in Janaury. The marketing, catering and all round arrangements were a lot more fun because I had learned from experience. the day itself was hectic and stressful with lots of learners to speak to but I realised that I find this very enjoyable and plan to start working with learners directly more as that is one of the best parts of the job.

Because of this, I am now planning to run some tasters with myself as tutor in mid to late summer, this will give me some extra experience befor we hopefully gain ILA status. I am doing some reading to help me do this as well doing an ITALL course which will help me deal with learners with literacy needs. I think tutoring should be a main part of my role and a very interesting way to develop and take it forward in the future.

Been a few weeks since my last post but with so much on it's been hard to take a second! As well as seeing my mentor and reviewing my progress I have also been progressing the learning in my library authority via planning and various training and visits.

As part of the marketing team we visited another authorities new library to see what inspiration or ideas we could pick up. This visit definitely proved how much of an improvement that good lighting and signage makes to a libarary. I felt that in terms of other junior and learning activities they were no better (and worse in some ways) so the visit was mainly useful for a design perspective.

I also went to Glasgow for an Information Literacy day ran by the Scottish Info Lit Project. This was interesting in terms of some of the talks showing ideas for learning opportunities and to get a feel for how other people are dealing with information literacy. I still feel that the area is prone to being ambiguous and this was shown by talks varying from accessibility apps to reports on prison learning.

The main task at the moment in the authority is to create a new learning plan for September. The involvement of the local college still hangs firmly in the balance and this may mean a variety of new provision is required. One key way of doing this is to become an ILA provider allowing us to bring in funding to help run our own courses. To start the ball rolling myself and my colleuge have visited another authority who does this and I have sent out best practice questions to others. This idea sharing has been invaluable and has been extremely interesting in allowing me to see how other authorities operate that are similar. My plan now is to apply to ILA and start looking and the inticacies of putting plans in place.

I have also been looking into other areas as part of my partnership working. As part of the learning sub group I attend I have been looking into the possibility of creating a database that would map learners achievemnets in the local area. This is an area I am definitely a novice in so I have forund it beneficial to have looked into it. Clearly setting up secure multi access databases has clear legal and technical implications and is something I will continue to look into.

I have also had some training this month into online reference services as I felt my hand on experience of these was not as strong as it should be. I realised however that I knew more than I thought and was encouraged by this!

The last two weeks have been taken up with the push for online learning we offer. This has required a lot of press releases being written and guides for th online learning to be printed. I have put the guides all over the libraries and branches to make them more prominent and put some information in the press. I have enjoyed this yet a couple of mistakes/inaccuracies on the guides have meant a couple of reprints and replacements being done but that has made me realise I need to be more careful as I have a habit of getting carried away when my excitement levels rise!

Another significant task has been dealing with an evironmental project that the council pays for in the library. This has been a different type of task as the council are really the clients of myself and the group that make the recycling video. This means we need to spend the 3000 wisely on tutor fees and libarry materials and produce a video they are happy with. My role is to spend the budget which I have found a lot harder than I thought I would! This has been a good lesson though as I am inexperienced with budgets and year ends and this has put the pressure on a little right now as I have still not decided what to spend it on!!

We are now in February and things all seem to be going well. My vent skills were tested to the full with our learndirect day that was designed to promote all our learning and other eductaional library services, the evnt went well with good feedback and around 500 attending. It also gave us a chance to raise the library profile as a whole with local council and press!

I have also held short training sessions on learndirect with the staff, this has been a good develkopment area as I enjoyed it and came across well but it has made me keen to try deleivering longer training sessions and I will get the chance to do this soon.

I have also been trying to develop my work within the wider learning community by agreeing to chair meetings or taking part in marketing or other service development areas in the wider adult learning environment. This is all good oppurtunities to help my chartership and overall development. As part of my chartership my PPDP is now finalised and I have been working towards some of the aims for a while already. I will now try and make sure I have a good amount of evidence to back it all up!

We're now a couple of weeks into the new year and things have certainly gathered pace. Due to the achievement of learndirect branding at the end of 2008 we now have a launch date and all efforts are going into the planning of this. It has been an excellent learning experience dealing with all the factors that are involved and I feel I have handled this pressure well so far. I now have dealt with a 1600 person mail drop, inviting dignatries and arranging who will help out, planning the layout of the day, ordering food for the event and other tasks such as carrying out risk assessments.

The start of the year has also seen most of our new classes starting and this has involved a lot of planning to make sure the classes don't lose numbers early on as this can cause them to be pulled.

All in all, it has been an exciting start and definitely not the quiet January people expect!

Although the countdown to xmas has firmly begun, the work still continues. This week has been a week of many meetings and at times, slight frustration, at getting things done. I sometimes feel that I could do more or work harder but when you interact through meeting I feel that you see how much harder it is to get things moving when working with other organisations. It's something I enjoy and is a challenge but sometimes I think a little action rather than the never ending talk that happens in meetings may be better. This weeks adult learning meeting was left with a range of promises from that team in connection with our community learning classes that we are still awaiting while learndirect was a meeting with a lot of defiance at the system but the end results will have to be reviewed at a later date! On the plus side our senior staff meeting gave me more of an understanding of the authorities library service as a whole, my thoughts at the end of this week are that when things get bogged down in politics and meetings I need to remember that this role has a three main priorities really and everything must come under them. What the local community WANTS from learning, what it NEEDS from learning and finally what can improve the library service, it's number of users and it's reputation as a whole.

This week saw things quieten down a little due to the approaching festive period but there was still some interesting moments! At the start of the week I attended the ABC meeting, this is a project running in the library to help users with disabilities, this is an area I feel that I can learn more about in terms of my understanding of library users and learners needs. This made me aware of concerns with the IT difficulties of giving people with disabilities a pre set computer profile to help them work without a support worker. I have tried to further this issue but the IT problem will be 'looked at'. This type of situation is something I will need to work on in how I deal with in order to meet all needs and how I get a speedy resolution when dealing with external departments.

I also expanded the network of partnerships we have and this is something I enjoy doing and find pleasing. With employability a key agenda going forward I have managed to get a refferal arangement put in place with the Salvation Army and SamH (mental health charity) this should mean we get more of the learners that these courses are for rather than filling them with people they aren't specifically meant for just to tick some boxes. This is a challenge in many areas these days and a problem I would love to tackle.

This week felt like a real breakthrough in many ways as the variety of threads started to come together. The week was subject to a variety of important meetings and also an ongoing hmie inspection. The week started with a very positive meeting with the Scottish Information Literacy Project. A lot of positive ideas came out of this and one key thing was that it was a very new project for the libraries to be looking at which made me feel like I had done something innovative. It will be difficult to incorporate but I see this as an interesting challenge going forward. Tuesday saw our learndirect branding visit, this went very smoothly and left me feeling like we had a good chance, this was proved right a couple of days later. I felt the evidence that we held as a team was excellent and the rewards this branding should bring in the future will be great. A CLD was also held, I still feel a little inhibited to talk at these meetings and part of that is not being oinvolved in some ongoing projects previously and also not being confident enough just yet, this is an area where I know I can develop however. With worries about the college also ongoing we held a very positive meeting at the end of the week that meant we felt more confident, this showed me that my ability to work at buiding parterships is improving. Friday saw a visit to the chartership conference and this made me realise I am on the right track, although I need to find a mentor! My draft PPDP will be finished in this next week however.

This was a shorter week due to being off on Monday and Tuesday on annual leave but no less productive. I feel the final parts of jigsaw have been getting put into place now for me to feel settled and that I can make an impact. Meetings have now been arranged or have taken place with all partners and I have taken ownership of our computer drives in order to set out a clear working structure that I feel completely in control of.

The main issue to arise this week has been the dramatic restructuring in the college meaning many of our contacts are dissapearing and doubts are being cast over the classes we run (even the January ones). I'm sure the January ones will go ahead and if the partnership starts to break down after this I feel strangely oprtomistic about the silver lining it may produce. Th chance to have a real impact and bring in a new partner (s) would be excellent and with learndirect possible as well then a whole new delivery pattern could be in place. The college to me seem to be in dire straits and it may be the best time for all to look at acontingency plan.

This week started with my attendance at the WW1 Remembrance event in the library, this was good experience as I saw what might be involved in running one myself! I also had to use my information skills to the full in order to find out information for one woman regarding her ancestor, not quite my job but happy to go the extra mile (though I'm still trying to find the answer). This week also saw two important meetings, the first was with the BBC where I got some information on what programmes they have coming up fopr literacy and numeracy and these are something I will look at. My other meeting was with a co-ordinator from the University of the West of Scotland, this was very productive and looks to be a partnership I can build on if it goes as well as promised. I realised in both metings that they went by quickly and this is possibly something I should work on. But if i'm being honest, I always feel meeting can be filled with too much waffle, I like to get to the point and come to the resolutions quickly. This week also saw me really see where I could make a difference. Too many of our courses are filled with older learners, I really feel that lifelong learning and employability are far more important in the present climate (or any climate) and many of our partnerships can be used to develop this. This can be somewhere I can make a real difference and hope to do that as I move forward.

This week I role definitely started to pick up pace! After a relatively easy going first two weeks that saw me begin to think there may be some really quiet periods within this job I was proved wrong! After starting the week at my graduation I spent the start of the week gathering evidence for the learndirect proposal, this was interesting adn brought into play a number of information seeking skills and helped me become more familiar with the location of everything. I then had to go to a SLIC conference with my new manager, this was a very interesting day and I saw some instances of projects that could be adapted such as National Entitlement Cards and also Stirling's methods for providing classes. This made me feel my role started to fit better into the whole framework and I liked that. The end of the week saw things speed up, with the idea of taster classes being mooted since my first day a meeting with the tutor saw these come to life. With my Assistant off I had to handle this myself by producing marketing, sending out press releases and organising all the classes, I feel I have handled this well but with one week to fill six classes we'll see next week how well it all goes.....

After two weeks things are starting to progress, I definitely still have some to go to be fully familiar with my job but I can see definite signs of progress. This week has seen me go round all the branches in the authority and this was enjoyable and made me feel more part of the overall structure. We are also aiming to achieve learndirect branding in the near future, this is a chance for me to make a real mark and my task has begun by listing all the evidence I'll need for it for collection this week. Having an assistant has also meant I will need to develop my management skills, this has begun with me settling into my position and holding constructive conversations with my assistant to define our rolls fully and I think we have managed this. I have also spent this week e mailing a lot of people to arrange meetings to develop projects and learning. This has been good although I realise as these meeting arrive my idea generating will have to go up and this will be an enjoyable challenge.

Started new job on Tuesday so I am now a Librarian for Lifelong Learning. I work within the main library within an authority that has 6 libraries varying in size. My first week has been a vast introduction to people, places and tasks. Initially I have been advised to look through the main drive and also the piles of docs left by my predecessor. There seems to be a huge amount to do and a real variation in tasks from meeting partners who supply courses to dealing with funding and coming up with new initiatives. Within my first week my objective was to absorb what is going on around me and try to get a handle on as much as possible and my assistant has helped massively with that. I have also compiled a list of all the tasks I aim to work through so the real work begins in earnest on Monday after I have visited libraries and done more reading tomorrow.

What I have taken from this is that one of the key challenges for me will being pro-active in creating my own ideas and tasks. This will be a real oppurtunity as I haven't been given such freedom and responsibilty before and my university training will really come in to play. All the info for the job seems like a giant puzzle that can be solved in a variety of ways and I can't wait to get stuck in!

A beginning

I will be using this blog to record my journey towards chartership in the library profession. I have recently completed my post graduate degree and, in the next week will start my role as People's Network Librarian for a Scottish Council. I will use this blog to record my progress and ideas as I go on.

I am a dedicated and enthusiastic Information and Library Studies graduate, with professional experience within academic libraries, public libraries and with learndirect Scotland, and also a member of CILIP.

I have also written and edited for a variety of magazines, including The List, Skinny Mag, Clash Magazine and Mixmag, plus editing and cataloguing the online pages for the Skinny Mag online site.

I have experience of cataloguing, archiving, reference services, database searching and all other day to day library tasks in public libraries. I have also carried out systems testing within a digital library and built resource lists for a digital library within an academic library. At a key government learning provider I worked in the field of information literacy and e-learning resources and specialised in this within my studies. I also created courses material that could be used within Public Libraries.

I plan to transfer these skills and learn new ones in my new role and I aim to keep this blog updated with all I do.