I've been a CILIP member since being press ganged into it during a presentation while I was studying for my Masters (not really... but almost...) and found membership really useful attending all manner of training sessions at CILIP HQ and the increasing awareness I gained from Update and Gazette as a fledgling librarian. More recently, as I mentioned in Thing 6, I've used more of the online material available from CILIP and think, for me, being a member of CILIP is an important part of keeping up with the profession.
Since February this year, I've also been on the committee of one of CILIP's special interest groups - CoFHE LASEC. I joined the committee as one half of the Liaison Officer post and have found it has raised my awareness of the wider information world and been a great networking opportunity. I've really enjoyed getting to know the rest of the committee at our meetings and finding out more about their institutions and roles.
The first event I was involved with after joining was an open meeting in March called Making Enrichment Work for your Library/LRC. At this, the committee all spoke about different aspects of enrichment we'd been involved in in our organisations. I enjoyed talking to the group about the reader development enrichment I've worked on (though found it was surprisingly nerve-wracking to talk to a room of librarians rather than students!) and hearing others' experiences and views.
In May, we organised the Continuing Professional Development Day jointly with ILG where the theme of the day was Information Literacy + TeachMeet. My colleague, and fellow committee member, Sarah blogged about the day on the CoFHE LASEC blog here. It was a great experience to be involved in putting on an event like this and I found it a really thought provoking day with lots of practical suggestions (thanks to the speakers and everyone who got involved in the TeachMeet section).
I feel I've got a lot out of being involved in a special interest group and hope to stay involved in the future. I'd recommend to anyone interested in the information world getting out and getting involved with groups and networks.
I'm going to be away from the internet for couple of weeks but will be catching up with Cpd23 when I'm back. ArrivederLa!
CoFHE - Colleges of Further and Higher Education
LASEC - London and South East Circle
ILG - Info Lit Group
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