Building your portfolio – Representatives from the Career Development Group

This session was a little like the Chartership and Beyond session that I attended in Lewisham a few months ago. It reinforced the importance of quality over quantity when assembling your portfolio and emphasized the need for evaluation in the written statement (what did you gain?, what did you enjoy?, what will you do differently?, what benefit was there for you and for your employer?)

In addition, there were some handy tips:

• use the application as a checklist to ensure that all elements of the application are ready and included
• use the CV as much as you can as it doesn’t have a word restriction
• be constructively critical in the written statement – it needs interpretation and analysis, must show awareness of wider community, and demonstrate CPD
• get a proof-reader
• bind it securely (e.g. comb binding)

This was a useful session as I find the whole gauntlet that we are running a little confusing at times – it served to reassure me that I am aware of all of the aspects of this submission.

What’s the worst curse or expletive you can think of? No, that doesn’t quite capture it...

I came up with quite a few colourful ones this weekend. I have been squirreling away bits and pieces of evidence for my portfolio in a cardboard box in the garage. It squats happily with the other things 'in storage' towards the back of the garage. It has some suitcases, ski and camping equipment, Christmas decorations, an old TV and our kitchen table (which is currently not in the kitchen while we get ready to do some work in there) for company. Every once in a while, I take a few more bits and pieces out to add to it and make a note of them on an evidence grid.

This weekend, I went into the garage to get my bike out for a bit of a ride and what did I discover? That for the past who-knows-how-long, our bathtub has been draining onto the ceiling of the garage and that sometime in the last week, that ceiling finally gave way. The result? A large hole in the ceiling of the garage, a lot of standing water on the floor, very wet suitcases / ski and camping equipment / Christmas decorations / TV (now junk) / kitchen table (now badly damaged)...and a portfolio box, once full of evidence, now full of near-pulp.

Library + Information Show 2007

Yesterday, I went to the Library + Information Show (opens in new window) in Birmingham (at the NEC). It's on today as well but I have found that usually one day is enough at these sorts of things. I find that these shows can be useful and interesting but that it is essential to have an objective for the day (to which I shall return in a moment).

I attended a couple of the seminars and picked up some useful bits:

1. Panning for Gold - Maximising the Value of Your CV (presented by Suzanne Wheatley, Sue Hill Recruitment)
   
   Suzanne presented a few excellent suggestions that weren't new to me (like using action verbs and quanitfying things) but she also had some suggestions that I hadn't considered or found interesting:
   • 'Career History' is a more positive term than common alternatives such as 'Employment History'
   • If you're going to claim to be a high-level user of MSWord, for example, then make sure your CV (if it's in MSWord) makes full use of the software features (e.g. use Styles to format the content rather than modifying the 'Normal' style for the headings, using Tab instead of five spaces)
   • I have never included an 'Interests' section but if you're going to, be specific - if you like to travel, what kind of travel and where?
   • she also had a handy list of 'dos' and don'ts' but rather than list them all here, I will link to her presentation as soon as it is made available on the L+I Show website.


2. Blogs, Wikis, and RSS: Key Technologies for Information Provision and Gathering (presented by Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services)
   
   Karen's session was also interesting but I felt as though it was targeted at an audience with less knowledge and experience of blogs, wikis and RSS than I have. However, I learned about a few different services that I hadn't come across before (so it was still time well spent) including:
   • Omea (opens in new window) - a desktop RSS reader
   • RapidFeeds.com (opens in new window) - lets you embed RSS feeds in web pages
   • Karen had a list of links to library blogs and to blog search engines that I would like to have captured as well but was too busy listening! I will have a look at her presentation slides (and link to them from here) when they are made available on the L+I Show website

My objective for the day was to find someone who could talk knowledgeably about metadata and engage them in a conversation around the management of document- vs content-level metadata (opens in new window). Although I found a few exhibitors who understood what I was talking about, none of them had encountered the siutation before and generally, they had a CMS that used document-level metadata and then relied on content keyword searching.

On the whole, it was an interesting day and I met some interesting people, some of whom may prove to be useful contacts in the future (and one who has already suggested someone I ought to speak to at BT about their use of metadata). I don't think that I needed more than one day and to be henest, rather than doing a 10-5 day, I probably could have accomplished the same amount in an 11-4 day...but I'd have missed out meeting a few people (and on my glass of cava - thanks Bennett Software)!

Cilip Event: Chartership and Beyond

Yesterday, I attended an afternoon seminar/workshop that looked at Chartership and specifically, at the portfolio element. Basically, there were two parts to the afternoon.

Part 1
The first was a presentation from a Cilip representative (his presentation slides are available on the Cilip website – http://www.cilip.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/337A6104-A074-4A13-B4E7-433C36F5DCE4/0/charter05i.ppt. He looked at portfolios from three perspectives:

• Why do we need them?
• What should they contain?
• How should they be organised?

Why do we need them?

The long and the short of this section was that it was a means of presenting evidence from the individual's potentially multiple jobs against the assessment criteria. He went on to present additional situations where it could be useful to have this portfolio (e.g. appraisals at work and job interviews).

What should they contain?
I was reassured to see that what we were told our application should contain matched very closely my diagram below in my entry from 16 March. Rather than list those components again, here are the additional remarks that I felt were worth capturing:

• The contents table is really important and must be easily navigable
• Your CV can be up to 4 sides of A4 and is a good opportunity to present those things that have had to be culled from the portfolio
• The PPDP is submitted both early on in the process and as part of the application as it is a living document and things may have changed; it can be backdated and it might be worth carrying out a lifeline exercise to help highlight the key events and themes
• The evaluative statement discusses the criteria and directs the evaluator to the relevant pieces of evidence in the portfolio; it should be evaluative and NOT descriptive

We then looked at what goes into the portfolio itself:

• Certificates
• Staff reviews
• Articles you've written / published
• Project briefs / reports (include your contribution only if it‘s a particularly large document)
• Personal reports on contribution (e.g. meetings, events, visits)
• Training (and evaluation of it's effectiveness)
• Evidence of work-based learning (e.g. enquiry replies, publicity done, letters/memos, guidance notes, testimonies)
• Relevant our of work experiences
• Webpages
• A/V materials
• Skills audit
  • www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/ILS/recordingilsskills.html
  • http://ltssolweb1.open.ac.uk/safari_guests/start.htm?s01t01p01

How should it be organised?

This section didn't take long to cover and was really a reminder of how they would like it to be presented. The key points that I picked out were:

• Divided into clearly marked sections
• Comb binding is preferred
• Write in 12pt font
• Submission must be in triplicate but one copy can be electronic (I'm not too sure how that would work without scanning in quite a few things and even then, sorting out the pagination would be quite a challenge)

The presentation concluded with a few "words to the wise", the most useful of which I felt was to "think evidence" and be ruthless keeping it in relation to the criteria.

Part 2
The second part of the session was a more interactive session where we were asked to think about a few different questions, discuss them with our colleagues and then share them with the rest of the group (your good old "think / pair / share" format). I won't record my responses because it was just meant to be a session to get you thinking about the process and how you would proceed in the short, medium and long terms:

• What do I need to do right now to progress my application?
• List 3 or 4 items to be used as evidence and how they meet the assessment criteria.
• Consider the gaps in your skills and outline the plan for addressing them.
• What areas does your work fall into? Consider whether these could be used as a structure for your application that could be x-referred to the criteria.

Assessment

So that is about it. I had a mixed response to the session. Much of what was discussed in the first part covered aspects of the process that would apply to someone just starting out and as I'm 6 months into it and have submitted my PPDP already, those bits weren't very helpful (e.g. how to register and how to get a mentor). I attended a Starting out on Chartership event about 2 or 3 years ago when I originally registered for Chartership but then had to put it to one side for a while. It is recommended (in fact, I think it used to be required) that candidates attend one of these sessions and that one 2 or 3 years ago counted so I didn't look for another one. I wish that I had gone to a session like this when I picked it back up again, though, as a reminder – it would have saved me quite a lot of stress.

On the other hand, some of the sections made me feel a better about what I was doing (e.g. the contents of the application, as I mentioned above) but more importantly, when it came to discussing what goes into the portfolio, two things really sank in as being important and relevant to me:

1. It's a lot of work and I need to get on with some of the aspects, like library visits.
2. I need to focus on being more reflective in my different documents and less descriptive.

So on the whole, I guess those two lessons being pretty valuable ones made it a good use of my time and I now need to show that I have learned from them.

March mentoring meeting

Last night we had our monthly mentoring meeting. This was a bit of a regrouping and reassessing meeting having been focussed on finishing and submitting my PPDP.

Agreement review
The first thing we did was to review the mentoring agreement. As per our originally submitted agreement, we reviewed it at the six-month mark and agreed that it still reflected the way we were working and that we were both happy with the way it was going. This whole conversation took about 10 minutes but it was useful as a prompt to make sure that the relationship is working out from both perspectives.

PPDP submission acknowledgement
We then had a little chat about acknowledgement from CILIP on receipt of the PPDP. Not too long after Karen sent in the PPDP, I received a letter from CILIP acknowledging the PPDP and the mentoring agreement (which had been submitted some months earlier – I was a little surprised to see that in the same letter, but there you are!).

Library visits
With those two items on the agenda ticked off, it was on to the library visits that we had discussed. This was a slightly embarrassing topic for me as of all the actions agreed around these visits (identifying libraries, actually arranging and attending the visits) that remain outstanding are mine – [awkward/guilty feeling]. Reminded by Karen (and still feeling guilty), I committed to getting those all at least arranged by the next meeting.

Action: D – arrange library visits by 19/04/2007

Portfolio
Our final item was one that we both had put onto the agenda – the portfolio. I was keen to run through the different components of the portfolio and talk about formats. Karen was keen to discuss the contents and find out how I was doing with assembling materials. This one is a lightly less embarrassing topic for me as I have actually made some, albeit tentative, steps towards pulling things together. I have created a table of the different sections of the portfolio (which match the different sections of the PPDP) and started to record evidence items against each. The idea is to help me identify gaps early-on. I have created a file of course certificates and have set aside copies of relevant documents that I have created in my current role that I will include. Where I am overdue is on the review of materials from previous jobs. I have always kept copies of pieces of work that I was particularly proud so will be able to pull a few things together but there are some pretty minor things that might be a little more difficult.

There are a few items that I might have to go through archived emails from previous jobs to find (not entirely sure that I should have copies of these archives but let’s just move on!). For example, in my current role, I don’t take meeting minutes. In my previous role, I used to have my team rotate chair and minute-taker at our meetings and so had plenty of examples. Another is personnel reviews to show line management experience. At the moment, the one position that reports to me is filled by a temp so no personnel reviews. In my last role, I had five direct reports so had many personnel reviews to write. Hopefully, a deep trawl of the files that I do have from previous roles will turn up some good samples!

In terms of components to the portfolio, I wanted to be clear in my mind what they were so here is the list with which we came up:

• Portfolio Table of Contents
• Evaluative statement (<1000 words, check formatting requirements)
• Detailed CV
• Organisational charts from all previous jobs
• Personal Professional Development Plan
• Personal Professional Development Log
• Weblog
• Portfolio evidence:
• from first job (1999 to 2003)
• from second job (2003 to 2006)
• from third/current job (2006 to present)
• Evidence of participation in mentoring scheme
• x-references to blog entries
• copy of mentoring agreement
• copy of scheme evaluation

I will also need to submit alongside my portfolio:

• An application form (must request this from CILIP in late August)
• Mentoring scheme evaluation form

I think that what I will do is base the submission on the sections identified in the PPDP and for each of these, provide the PPDP parts, the PPDL parts and the evidence. At the beginning of this ‘book’, I will have a ToC, followed by the evaluative statement, the CV and the org charts and at the end, I will have the evidence of participation in a mentoring scheme section.

So that’s it. For the sake of a challenge, I’m going to try to create a diagram to represent the contents and see if I can upload it to the blog…hopefully there is a diagram below!



Hmm - having some trouble with that...I think that worked...did that work? It would seem so!

Bruce, David. "Using Metadata to organise an online collection." Update Magazine 12 2006: 36-37.

Looking through my RSS (opens in new window) feeds this morning, I came across an article by someone with the same name as me. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be an article by me! I had been told that the article that I had submitted sometime ago (September or so) would be published either as part of the December or January issue of Update Magazine (opens in new window), CILIP’s monthly magazine for members. Okay, so it isn’t the Guardian but I’m pretty pleased all the same.

The December issue is currently featured as part of the main Update page: http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine (opens in new window)

As a more future-proof link to the article, though, here is its home in the archives:
http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive2006/december/Bruce.htm (opens in new window)

PPDP-specific notes from November mentoring meeting

Coming out of my recent meeting with Karen, there are a few PPDP-specific things that I need to do / remember.

First, I need to add a few things under Training and Development Need:

• negotiation skills
• marketing skills
• industry-specific familiarisation course that I’m due to attend later this month

Second, I need to be open-minded about what my proposed actions can be. They can include:

• courses (the obvious starting point)
  
• gaining experience in a particular skill
  
• reading about a particular discipline or skill set
  
• having conversations with people on specific topics
  

Finally, I need to set up my training log. If the PPDP is the theory, the training log is the practice. There isn’t really a great deal of format exerted on this log by the Chartership committee but it needs to complement the PPDP. I think that I will record my entries in this blog and tag them appropriately to identify them as being a Training Log entry. Each entry will be in response to a particular activity specified in the PPDP (some activities are longer-term ones and will end up with multiple entries against them, others (like courses) will be fixed-term activities and only have one entry against them. My proposed structure for each entry is:

• Activity Objectives
• Outcomes
• Benefits Derived
• Reflection and Analysis

I think that’s it for now. Next week I hope to spend a bit of time on my draft PPDP and given that one of the activities that will be on it is a course that I’m doing later next week, I guess I’ll be starting that Training Log not long after!

My blogroll

As I mentioned in my posting "Bye bye Bloglines, hello Blogger (beta)", I still rate Bloglines as a RSS aggregator.

The people there are working on improving things and have added various features including the ability to make your personal blogroll public.

Ideally, I’d like to have my blogroll integrated into this Chartership blog but until I figure out someway of doing that (without entering each one manually), I’ll just have to be content with a link to it: http://www.bloglines.com/public/djlbruce

Bye bye Bloglines, hello Blogger (beta)

Hooray! After a little research, I found that Blogger's beta version not only let's me update posts without altering their posting date but it will:

• let me set the posting date (so I can restore the original posting order and dates)
  
• allow me to create, assign and alter labels for individual postings
  
• let me restrict the readership of the blog to a list of invited guests
  

This is a big improvement and I have already started playing around with the labels function. It also lets me set a template for my postings so that I can make sure that they all follow the same standards without having to remember the settings.

So much better...

Having said that, I still rate Bloglines as an RSS aggregator - it just isn't as functional as I would like on the Blog front.

Bloglines software

So that's a pain in the backside. In my meeting with my mentor yesterday, we talked about assigning categories to these entries. I have just been through all of my previous entries to give them a category only to discover that it updates the original posting date to today's

I had to go back through all of the entries and add a tag for the original posting date and do so in chronological order (I had to guess at the date for one of the entries - Project Plan - and I guessed wrong so it appears to be out of order but in reality, isn't. Grr... too frustrated to go back and fix it.

The fact that I'm kind of making up the categories as I go along (folksonomy style!) and will almost certainly want to alter them at some point in the future means that I will have to go through each entry and update it even if I have no changes to make to it, just to maintain the chronological order. This is quickly becoming unsustainable. I think that I'm going to look into an alternative platform for this blog. This one is just too limited in its functionality.

Metadata Schema

One of the objectives that I have agreed with my line manager is to identify, or if necessary, to develop a metadata schema that our department, organisation and possibly even our industry, could use to organise our publications and documents.

Having had a look around, there doesn't seem to be any industry-wide schema in use and having spoken to a few key people in the organisation, there doesn't seem to be a understanding of what I'm on about let along something in use. So...

Today I have completed a draft version of our metadata schema and sent it around my team for their comments / questions / suggestions. The schema is based on the Dublin Core, DC Terms and the e-Government Metadata Standard. I'm quite pleased with it, though it still needs some work. For starters, there are at least two controlled vocabularies that I need to sort out. I might even have to create them. Hmm...although that's going to delay things a little, I suppose that, along with the final standard, it will provide me with more amunition for my portfolio!

Publication in Library and Information Update

At my last job as Senior Information Manager for the Networked Learning Group at NCSL, I carried out a pretty hefty project of archiving some 10,000 documents. At the suggestion of one of the consultants that I employed to help with the job, I wrote a little article about the work and how we went about ‘putting theory in practise’, as they say.

The editor of Library and Information Update has agreed to publish it probably in the December issue but possible in the January/February one. I’m pleased:

• it is something that I can add to my CV (academic institutions love seeing that you’ve published)
• it raises my profile in the profession
• it will contribute to my Chartership application

It may also help me get more articles published. This is something that I enjoy doing but haven’t really spent the time or made the effort to do since I was working on my MLIS.

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for “Using metadata to organise an online collection for the education sector” in Update. Not the most pithy of titles...suggestions (you shouldn't need to read the article after reading that title to know what it's about)?