Keeping up-to-date - what have I missed?
information literacy, professional development October 10th. 2008, 12:04am
I am presenting at NLS4 and are in the process of writing the paper for it. My topic is keeping-up-to-date. Below is a quick review of what I am planning to cover.
Why keep-up-to-date? Why it is important that we as librarians stay current.
Taking responsibility for your professional development. In conjunction with your employer and in your own time.
What area(s) should you cover? Be selective about which areas you want to stay ahead on. But also have an awareness in other sectors. May be quite different depending on the sort of library you work in and your role within it. Also will depend on your personal interests.
How much time should it take and whose time should it be?
Where you will find the content to keep you up-to-date. This is a long list, but far from complete and in no particular order: journals, ejournals, books, elists, blogs, screencasts, vidcasts, podcasts, forums, rss feeds, wikis, seminars, webinars, training, conferences, conference papers, further education, professional associations, continuing professional development programs, library tours, networking - both online and in person, instant messaging/microblogging, learning 2.0 programs, library training.
How do you find the right content? Finding about out it and then accessing it.
Dealing with information overload. Practices to ensure you can still find time for a life. Continually reviewing and revising your information flow.
Is there anything that you find vital to your own professional development, that is not covered here? I don’t have a lot of time for presenting, but I want to overload the readers of the paper with as much information as possible. 
Your wise words, great ideas and overall expertise are sought in this endeavour - proper attribution given of course!
Thanks!
October 10th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Tap into human filters…and reciprocate. Subscribe to people not content = find a few gurus, and follow them on all their methods of output, strike up conversations, build trust, drop them info-gifts. Friendfeed is excellent as a starting point.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I can’t wait to hear your talk at the NLS4. I think keeping up to date is VITAL, and is definitely a mindset of the next gen librarian, ie learning to learn, open to learning new things - especially if you work in an environment that is not interested in these things. Therefore keeping informed via your above mentioned list can often be the only encouragment,conversations, learning, professinal development one may receive.
October 14th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Don’t forget the tea room table/meeting or training break, you hear all kinds of interesting things over a cuppa and lots of stuff that might be off your radar. We have a couple of dedicated festival goers where I work and I find out all kinds of interesting and useful things listening to them.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I really like Kathryn’s suggestion about human filters - made me realise I am subscribed to a fair few of these (yourself included, Michelle), and they are indeed invaluable sources of information, ideas, and encouragement.
I really like your point about taking responsibility for your own professional development. It’s not enough to just sit back and expect to be provided with the opportunities: you need to be actively thinking about what you need, and in some cases you need to create opportunities for yourself. In my personal experience professional development is an ongoing process - it’s not enough to just attend a course or a conference here and there - it’s something you need to work on regularly or there’s no way you can keep up with the pace of change!
October 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hello,
This is a great post and an issue I still struggle with. I was showing RSS, blogs, Netvibes (I love Netvibes!) to a library colleague the other day and she said “there’s too much” and I tried to say - “Yep- there’s a lot out there, but you don’t have to know it all- just set up connections and RSS and all those other things and scan, be aware, and know that you can always go back to things of interest”
I don’t read everything- but scan headlines, the stuff that interests me and a few (growing) key blogs etc.
A great topic for a paper- good luck.
The other, slightly hippish note, don’t let it control you…if you don’t get to *things* for a day or so or a week or so- it’s OK, not a sign of failure - life gets in the way!
cheersKate
October 17th, 2008 at 1:54 am
I am a new librarian (really new I qualified in May 08 and graduated last Friday 10 Oct 08) and for me personally working in an academic library and knowing that in order to keep up with technology and information is a daunting thought. Technology puts information at the tip of our fingers, the hard part is trying to find the good information and the human filters. Luckily I have a excellent mentor who has guided me to some excellent human filter”s (yourself included) and given me a starting point to expand my knowledge, because in the library industry you can never stop learning and evolving because that’s the nature of information.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is any information or light you can shed from your own personal experience is valuable and one of the reasons I will be coming to listen to you talk at NLS4.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Love the post - I think that the make-or-break factor in PD is a willingness to pursue it “in your own time”.
And an important part of that is prioritising, and make sensible time-management choices. And it’s going to be different for each person - it’s a case of finding what works best for you, and ditching the things that don’t strike a chord.
November 1st, 2008 at 5:28 am
Most of the blogs and discussion about Librarianship is American centric so truthfully I find the best way of keeping up is to read all the articles you, Peta, Kathryn and everyone else write at http://librariesinteract.info aka LINT
I hope to chip in with some useful articles on LINT every now and then but its difficult juggling all the other responsibilities I have running my business, studying at UTS and working as a casual ref desk librarian at UTS Library