Npc2010 laura woods_takingchargeofyourcpd

Laura Woods, ‘Taking Charge of your Continuing Professional Development’. Paper delivered at the
CILIP New Professionals Conference, University of Sheffield, 5 July 2010.

Taking Charge of your Continuing Professional Development
What is CPD?
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the “conscious updating of professional knowledge
and the improvement of professional competence...a commitment to being professional, keeping
up-to-date and constantly seeking to improve”1. You’ll notice that I used the word “professional” a
grand total of four times in the preceding sentence – this is important. There has been some debate
over whether or not librarians can really claim to be “professionals”2: I am not going to get into that
debate now, other than to note that I do believe we are professionals, but it is worth noting that the
debate exists. If there is debate within the profession about whether or not we are, in fact,
professionals, then how are we to convince those outside of the profession – those who perhaps
don’t really understand the value of what we do, but are frequently responsible for setting our
budgets? Commitment to CPD is central to demonstrating our professionalism.

Why is CPD important?
Librarianship and information management is a rapidly changing field. My grandmother worked as a
librarian back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but when I talk to her about my current job, it bears
absolutely no relation to what she trained to do 60 years ago. I know that changes in any profession
are inevitable over a stretch of 60 years, but the same point stands when I talk to people who
entered the profession 10 or even 5 years ago. What I studied at university and what I do for a living
now, will likely be utterly irrelevant by the time I retire.

In addition, the nature of information itself is changing. The ease of creating digital information
means that the digital universe is expanding exponentially. In 2009, it was estimated that the total
size of the “digital universe” was 0.8 ZB (Zettabytes, or 1 trillion gigabytes). By 2020, it is predicted
that this will have increased by a factor of 44 to 35 ZB3. Much more information is also now “born
digital”: i.e. it has never existed in a physical format. This is probably a good thing – if all that digital
information were printed out, we’d be drowning in paper – but it does raise challenges when it
comes to storing, organising and finding that information. If we, as librarians, are we to claim any
expertise in the area then we must keep pace with the changes that affect our profession.

CPD is doubly important to new professionals. The main entry route into the profession is via an
academic qualification, but librarianship is a very practical job. It can be very difficult for new
professionals to find their first library job, or to make the transition from a Library/Information
Assistant position to their first professional-level post. It’s all too common for entry-level job seekers

1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_professional_development (Accessed 11 May 2010)
2
http://otherlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/ten-reasons-why-professional-librarian-is-an-oxymoron/
(Accessed 11 May 2010)
3
http://www.emc.com/collateral/demos/microsites/idc-digital-universe/iview.htm (Accessed 11 May 2010)

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to find advert after advert for jobs that sound perfect, but specify that you must have experience of
tasks that wouldn’t necessarily form part of a graduate trainee or library assistant’s job description.
Actively seeking out opportunities to develop your own professional skills outside of your job
description can be an ideal way to build up your experience and give you something to talk about in
job interviews – particularly in these troubled economic times!

Barriers to keeping up with CPD
Of course, it can be difficult to find the time, the money and the opportunities for CPD. Across all
library sectors, money is tight and budgets are shrinking. A global survey4 of libraries – including
academic libraries, public sector and government, and corporate libraries - undertaken in December
2009 found that almost a third of the libraries surveyed expected to have to cut staffing budgets
over the next two years. From personal and anecdotal experience it seems that one of the easiest
targets for budget savings is the staff development and training budget. In my own experience in the
corporate legal sector, I know how difficult it can be to argue for funds. When I started in my current
role, I was told that I could go on any training courses I wanted, as long as “the cost was small
enough to hide in the stationery budget”. In practice, this meant that my employer would only cover
costs of training up to £40-£50. This obviously rules out most “official” training, such as the CILIP
training and development courses. Even with the membership discount, CILIP courses cost from
£250-£450 to attend – I cannot afford to pay that for a one-day course, and that amount would
certainly stand out in the stationery budget!

Reduced budgets can also mean reduced staff and service levels, which can make it difficult to justify
taking time away from work for CPD. I am lucky enough to have a sympathetic manager, who is
happy for me to take time off for training and development, but many workplaces are less flexible
on this. In these cases, it may be necessary to come to a compromise with your line manager – for
example, to take shorter lunch breaks in order to make up the time. It is also worth remembering
that, as of 6 April this year, all staff working in an organisation that employs 250 or more people,
have the statutory right to request “time to train”5. This will apply to employees in organisations of
all sizes from 6 April 2011.

Tips for negotiating funding
It is always worth trying to persuade your employer of the benefits of a certain training course, even
if you officially have no budget. Requesting funding can be daunting, but is always worth a try – even
if you are unsuccessful, your manager is likely to be impressed by your eagerness to learn.

The most important thing to remember when making a case for funding is that your employer will
need to know what the benefit is to them. Saying that you’d like to go on a course because you think

4
Charleston Observatory (2009), Libraries and the economic downturn. University College London. Available
from: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/charleston-survey.pdf (Accessed 20 May 2010)
5
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_183635 (Accessed 21 May
2010)

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it’ll be interesting is unlikely to impress whoever is holding the purse strings – far better to explain
exactly what you plan to get out of it and, crucially, how it will benefit the organisation. Don’t
assume that the training need you’ve identified is self-evident, especially if the person in charge of
the budget is not a librarian. Try and use examples of how the training will improve your job
performance that are tangible and measurable.

Giving examples of measurable outcomes can also help to remind your line managers of the benefits
of the training after it is completed. After you have completed the training, make a note of any
occasions in your day-to-day work when the knowledge and skills you gained have helped you
complete a task faster and more effectively than you would have done without the training. This
kind of evidence can make it easier to request funding next time round, and is also useful material
for annual appraisals.

If you are taking part in on-going training, then keeping evidence of how it is benefitting you can also
help to justify the cost/time taken, particularly if you did not have much support from your employer
at the start. I recently signed up for an evening course on the English legal system, run by BIALL6. I
was initially told that if I wanted to attend I would have to pay for it myself, which I planned to do. A
couple of weeks into the course, after a few conversations with the library manager in which I gave
several examples of how the legal knowledge I’d gained had helped me solve some specific
enquiries, he suggested that the firm contribute part of the costs towards the course.

Finally, once you have finished the training make sure to share your new knowledge with your
colleagues. Employers will be far more likely to consider funding training if they know that your
colleagues will also benefit – they’ll still only have to pay for one course, after all! This can be done
informally, such as discussing some of the new ideas you’ve picked up in the staff room, or formally,
such as giving a five-minute presentation during a staff meeting.

CPD on a budget
If your requests for funding are unsuccessful, you may need to foot the bill yourself. I would
encourage anyone to consider paying for courses etc. themselves – I paid for my own Masters
course, as well as several other training courses since graduating, and I’ve never regretted anything
I’ve spent money on. It does mean that you need to be more selective about what CPD you pursue,
but I would argue that that’s a good thing.

Obviously if you are paying for yourself, you will be limited by your own budget. Particularly if you
are a student or recent graduate money is likely to be tight, which will rule out a lot of the high-end
professional courses. However, there are still plenty of low-cost, and even free, options available for
CPD. How you choose to approach managing your own CPD is down to what learning styles suit you
and what resources are available in your area, but I am going to share some of the approaches that I
have found most useful.
6
British and Irish Association of Law Librarians

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Professional literature
One of the easiest ways to keep your professional knowledge up-to-date is by reading the
professional literature. By “professional literature”, I mean both the professional journals – such as
CILIP Gazette and Update, and sector-specific titles such as BIALL’s Legal Information Management –
and ‘unofficial’ professional writing such as library and librarian blogs.

This is something that can easily be done in your spare time. I commute to work on the London
Underground, and use this time to catch up with my professional reading. I also use (occasional)
quiet enquiry desk shifts for this purpose. How and when you do you reading, and what format you
use, is entirely down to personal preference. I tend to use a mix of paper and online reading
materials, and most journals will provide both. Obviously if you read a lot of blogs then you are
restricted to online-only content, although I do know someone who goes through their favourite
blogs once a week and prints off interesting-looking posts to read, so if you really can’t bring yourself
to read on screen then there are ways around it.

If you’re bewildered by the sheer amount of information published, and aren’t sure what you should
be reading, there are a number of resources that can point you in the right direction. The UK Library
Blogs Wiki7 is a useful listing of blogs written by individual librarians and institutions/groups based in
the UK. It’s a really useful starting point if you’re new to the ‘biblioblogosphere’. There is also a
regular column in the CILIP Gazette, written by Danielle Worster, highlighting interesting and/or
useful blogs in various sectors.

For professional journals, the obvious starting place would be with the publications of your own
professional body – CILIP or any others relevant to your sector. If you are a member of CILIP, then
you also have access to several databases through the CILIP website, such as Information Research
Watch International (IRWI) and Proquest Library Science (including 145 full text journals)8.

Involvement with professional bodies
“If you put five librarians in a room, within three hours you'll get at least three
associations, five committees, six meetings, and one manifesto” – Stephen Abram, May
20099

CILIP is obviously the main body for UK library and information professionals, but there are many
other sector- and location-specific groups available. For example, as well as being a member of CILIP,
I am a member of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, the Special Libraries Association
(European chapter), and the City Legal Information Group, which is aimed at information
professionals working in the City of London. Obviously, not everyone can afford to join that many
groups – I’ve managed to join so many through a combination of student subscription rates,

7
http://uklibraryblogs.pbworks.com/ (Accessed 20 May 2010)
8
http://www.cilip.org.uk/membership/benefits/informed/online-databases/Pages/default.aspx (Accessed 20
May 2010)
9
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2009/05/18/what-is-a-group-of-librarians/ (Accessed 26 Jun 2010)

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membership as part of an award, and my employer paying for some of them – but it’s worth seeing
what other groups outside of CILIP may be useful to you.

I believe that membership of a professional body is a vital aspect of CPD. Your professional body can
provide resources (such as the professional journals available through CILIP) and opportunities for
networking. Attending seminars, presentations and tours organised by your professional body (or
their local branch) can be a fantastic, low-cost way to improve your knowledge of current
information issues in your own and other sectors, as well as getting to know other information
professionals outside of your workplace.

Volunteering on professional body committees is also a perfect way to build up your experience
outside of your job description. I volunteer on committees for BIALL and SLA Europe, which has
given me the chance to learn new skills that I wouldn’t have picked up in my current job. These have
ranged from simple tasks like organising a meeting and writing an agenda, to more complex ones
such as collaborating on redesigning a website.

Job shadowing and visits to other libraries
Observing how other people work and how other libraries are organised is a really useful way of
getting ideas that can feed back into your own work. If you work in a large organisation, such as an
academic library, it can be useful to arrange to shadow someone from a different department for a
few hours, or a day – this can help to provide a better understanding of how the library as a whole
functions. If, like me, you work in a very small team, this sort of formal job shadowing isn’t really
practical, but it can still be useful to make time to talk with each of the other members of the library
team about their roles.

Visits to other libraries within your sector can provide ideas about how your own service could be
improved. This is another area where membership of a professional body can be useful – contacts
you’ve made within your sector through your professional body are an ideal starting place for finding
other library services to visit. It can also be illuminating to visit libraries in other sectors – practices
will obviously differ depending on the nature of the information service, but it can be interesting to
see what different issues present themselves in another sector, and how common issues across
sectors are handled.

Attending events virtually
There are always plenty of interesting meetings, talks, conferences etc. going on in the world – and
chances are, most of them will be miles away from where you live. In this day and age, that really
shouldn’t be a problem (although it still is in some cases). Many events are now filmed and streamed
live online, or made available as recordings after the event. For example, the “Mashed Libraries” 10
conferences have posted the presentations11 and videos of the talks12 online after the events have
taken place.

10
http://mashedlibrary.ning.com/ (Accessed 20 May 2010)
11
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/middlemash (Accessed 20 May 2010)

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Obviously, not all events organisers make it easy for you to attend events online. I think the
Americans tend to do this better than we do – probably because it’s a much larger country, so they
have more of a need to allow people who can’t travel to the venue in person to view the event
online. As mentioned, I’m a member of the Special Libraries Association, which is based in the
States. They provide free webinars for members, on library and information topics and general
topics (for example, I watched a webinar in preparation for the New Professionals Conference on
“Pain Free Public Speaking”), which can be attended live or watched online at a later date. They also
provided a Virtual Conference13 this to run alongside this year’s Annual Conference, for people who
were unable to attend in person.

If the event you’re interested in is not being filmed for a webinar or streamed live, there are other
ways to attend virtually. By far the simplest is to pay attention to services like Twitter. Twitter has
become very useful for bringing together people attending events in person, and people who are
interested but cannot attend. The idea is that people attending the event in person send short
messages – Tweets – about the talk/presentation they are listening to. Anyone who is following
them on Twitter can see these. If the event attendees use a hashtag (the # symbol followed by a
word or acronym that represents the event. For example, the hashtag for the New Professionals
Conference is #npc2010) then people can use this as a quick way to see all tweets from this one
event. Live tweeting isn’t designed to give a comprehensive account of an event, but it’s a good way
to get a feel for the ideas discussed and people’s reactions to them. Following an event hashtag is
something you can do easily from your desktop at work – assuming your employer doesn’t block
Twitter.

Awards and bursaries
The final resource for free and low cost CPD that I wanted to draw attention to was the myriad
awards, bursaries and sponsorships available to information professionals. This is particularly true
for students and new professionals. There are sponsorship opportunities available for all the main
UK conferences, and several for overseas conferences, available to students and new entrants to the
profession. These are advertised in various places, but probably the most useful way to keep up with
them all is to sign up to the LIS-Awards email list. Opportunities for sponsored attendance to
conferences and seminars are advertised on this list regularly.

Even if there are no sponsored places advertised for an event you are interested in attending, it is
worth contacting the event organisers to find out if they can offer any free or subsidised places.
Most people are willing to help out students, so take advantage of this while you can. It is also often
possible to attend events for free or for low cost if you volunteer to help out at the event. This can
be a really good way to get to events you wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend, as well as seeing
more of how these events are run.

12
http://mashlib09.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/mash-oop-north-videos/ (Accessed 20 May 2010)
13
http://s36.a2zinc.net/clients/sla/sla2010/public/Content.aspx?ID=99&sortMenu=101001 (Accessed 23 May
2010)

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Conclusion
There are certain to be more opportunities for low cost CPD than I’ve mentioned here. I hope the
examples I have described have provided some ideas to work with. Above all, taking charge of your
CPD means taking the initiative. Ask around, talk to other professionals within and outside of your
workplace, and find opportunities that work for you. No one is going to do this for you: but there are
many ways to develop your skills on a shoestring if you are willing to look for them.

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