Thing 7: Face-to-face networks and professional organisations

I'm a member of CILIP and the British Computer Society (BCS). I get more out of CILIP than the BCS, that is my choice though. I am first and foremost a librarian, I do however have an interest in computers and keeping up with technology. For this post I will concentrate on my CILIP membership and the library groups I'm involved with the most.


When I originally joined the Library Association, as it was then, I found that the LA Record was a useful publication for me, as I was doing my library degree at the time. After I finished it and was working in an FE College library and a prison library, I found that it was less useful because all the articles seemed to be aimed at public libraries. I kept up my subscription as I thought that being a member of a professional body still had its benefits. Gradually the LA Record and it's successor, CILIP Gazette become more useful to me again as the articles started to be about a wider library sector.

As part of my CILIP membership, I joined CoFHE and UC&R as my specialist interest groups. It is through CoFHE I do most of my networking. I have been able to attend the CoFHE Conference for the last few years and have found this very useful. My first conference, I was very nervous as I'm not very good at talking to strangers - the introvert in me, so what originally I thought of as a good idea, I changed my mind about on the train to the Conference. Everyone was really nice though and I quickly acquainted myself with some attendees through a shared taxi journey. I very much enjoyed my first conference and decided that it was something I'd like to do again. This in a way is where I have got stuck, I now go to the Conferences certain that there will be someone there I know and don't network as much as I should, as I stick around the familiar faces, although this year I met some new people and hope to see them again at some point - probably next year's conference in Newcastle (25 - 27 June I think, sorry Samantha, I know I should know!)


My local CoFHE circle is the North East and I would like to think that I'm quite a pro active member of that. I find the meetings very useful as a place to share good practice and discuss new and hot topics. As this takes in the whole of the North East, I meet a wide selection of people. I also have close ties with the local Chair Helen and the CoFHE Bulletin editor, who is the aforementioned Samantha.


The Higher Education Business Partners (HEBP) Librarians group that I am a member of is a group comprised of Teesside University librarians and it's partner College librarians (mainly in the Tees Valley). It serves as an arena to share good practice, keep up to date with developments in each others libraries and most importantly allows us to try to give parity of service to the students studying on the partner courses.
My library is also a member of CoLRiC and this year for the first time I went to one of their events. Whilst I enjoyed the day itself, I'm not sure how much I get out of CoLRiC.  This year my library became a member of the Mixed Economy Libraries Group (MEG Lib), so far other than a few e-mails I haven't had much to do with this group. I am hoping that next year I will be able to go to their annual conference.


I do see the positive side to networking and I have as a result benefited through having more contacts. I am though an introvert and find it difficult to do, so having read Thing 7 and the Jo Alcock blog post it mentions, I am now reading Networking for people who hate networking to improve my techniques.