CILIP Chartership event

Our CILIP event this month was focused around Chartership. We had five speakers, talking about all different areas of the process. First up was Franko Kowlaczuk, who is the candidate support officer for the South East. Franko spoke about the role of the CSO and how they can help anyone undertaking Chartership; whether it’s advice on what to include in your portfolio, or more general information about the qualification itself. From 1 November, there‘ll be some changes to professional registration. For one, the new VLE will offer online submission and assessment, and new assessment criteria have been written up for certification, Chartership, and revalidation. 

Next up was Natalie Guest, who is fully chartered and also works as a mentor for others. Natalie mentioned that it may seem hard to collate evidence needed for your portfolio, but chances are you have plenty of material to use in your everyday working life. Perhaps you tweet regularly (about libraries and library work, not so much cat videos on YouTube), have improved an aspect of the library service at work, or attended a local CILIP branch meeting. All of these can be used in your portfolio! In regards to choosing a mentor, both Franko and Natalie agreed that it was ideal to pick a mentor who wasn’t closely linked to you. A line manager as a mentor could be offended if you’ve been critical of particular practises at work, and it can really help having someone from a different library sector to work with– that way are you are given a certain level of objectivity when the mentor is looking through your work.

Last up was Anna Richards, Ruth Jenkins and Erika Delbecque, who are doing their Chartership as a group! They noted that undertaking the Chartership process alongside other people can really help motivation, plus their place of work allows them time to study together. They encouraged anyone going through professional registration to speak to people who are doing it too – whether it’s at work, on Twitter, or local groups. 

To get more information on the new changes to Chartership, there are details up on the CILIP website: http://www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/jobs-and-careers/qualifications-and-professional-development/cilip-qualifications

Thanks to all our speakers for a fun and informative evening!

That's just what we do

This is the first post of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the Thames Valley (happily shortened to CILIPTV!) sub-branch blog. This opening post is just by way of an introduction to who we are and what we do. As a sub-branch of CILIP South East, which is in turn a regional branch of CILIP, we represent librarians and information professionals on a very local level, hopefully providing members with networking opportunities regularly and on their doorstep.  

The Great Expectations pub in Reading
where we hold our monthly events

We hold monthly meetings (so far usually in Reading, but our first in Oxford will be June 6^th) where there tends to a core crowd of very friendly faces working and/or trained in all branches of the information profession. At these meeting we have talks by professionals with varied experiences and specialities so that members benefit from a wealth of knowledge from across the profession. For those of you working towards a CILIP qualification we even provide a handy-dandy certificate to go in those portfolios!

We hope to post reports on our monthly events so that those who can’t make it know what they missed and also serve as a basis for discussion - CILIP members are welcome to comment! Perhaps after the event thoughts may occur to those present which they want to share with other info people rather than boring the socks off their loved ones.  Guest posts from info professionals around the Thames Valley about their work are also welcome so if you feel the urge to shout about what you do then please be in touch. Contact details and further information on events and the committee can be found on the website. We are also on Twitter and Facebook. Watch this space for the low-down on the 5th May event when Mark Taylor from CILIP HQ spoke to us about staff experiences when they went 'back to the floor'.