Event review by Samantha Hughes: Open Day for New Professionals With SLA Europe, BIALL and CLSIG

SLA Europe DigiComms

Our thanks to Samantha Hughes, who kindly accepted to offer a review of the event “Open Day for New Professionals With SLA Europe, BIALL and CLSIG”, which took place in the middle of April in London. Samantha is a graduate trainee librarian at the Bodleian law Library having made a career change from teaching. She is going to start a distance learning MA in Library and Information Management at the University of Northunmbria in September while staying on at the Law Library.

 

 

Wednesday 15th April saw enthusiastic graduate trainee and early career librarians converge on the CILIP headquarters for the BIALL, CLSIG and SLA Europe Graduate Open Day to hear from a wide range of information professionals and to take the opportunity to network. They were well rewarded with the added bonus that this year’s event sponsored by Progility companies Sue Hill Recruitment and TFPL was free to attendees.

The morning started with Hanna Shearring from NERA Economic Consulting, who shared her experiences of working as part of a truly global team in an international business and described the very diverse range of research questions that she can be asked to deal with. Hanna emphasised the benefits of working closely with fee-earning colleagues to ensure that optimum use is made of the library research services.

Next our eyes were opened to the idea of self-employment (not something I would have previously associated with information management). Jane List described the joys and challenges of setting up her own consultancy company built on her extensive experience in the information industry specialising in intellectual property. Jane led us through some of the choices to be made when setting up a business and the aspects of business management that Information professionals might not usually deal with such as setting up a limited company and preparing accounts.

Sandra Smythe of the law firm Mishcon de Reya explained the range of responsibilities of an information professional within a law firm library, from legal research and library management to training legal professionals in research skills. Sandra, like Hanna, emphasised the importance of working proactively with fee-earning colleagues to ensure that best use is made of the services that the information professionals can provide and ensuring that they are an integral part of the business rather than an overlooked function in the office basement. We learnt that it is not necessary to have a law degree to work in a law library but the BIALL online legal foundations course is useful.

After coffee, Daniel Rees from the Wellcome Library shared some examples from their unique collections including HIV/Aids campaign posters and some intriguing early documents describing medical uses of drugs. He explained how the Wellcome library had changed during his time there noting that they no longer had to manage large boxes while precariously climbing ladders and that the modern design now included exciting interactive displays such as virtual surgery. Other highlights of life at the Wellcome Library included the quiz team’s winning TV appearance and painting visitors’ hands, arms, legs or even feet to show what they look like under the skin! Who knew that working in a library could be so varied!

Attendees chose between 3 different library tours: The British Library’s Business and IP Centre, The Wellcome Library or The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) Library. I joined the IALS tour and was interested to learn that Betty Moys, author of the Moys Classification Scheme for Legal Materials, had been a library assistant at the IALS library early in her career. It is thought that the IALS library’s classification scheme provided the inspiration for her own scheme, which is now in its 5th edition and used in law libraries around the world. The IALS library houses law resources over several floors and provides international document delivery services as well as lending and reference services to students. David Gee, our host, was keen to point out the advantages of experience of working in a law library with its particular research skills not only for those wishing to pursue careers in law libraries but also for would be academic librarians.

After the opportunity to network with our fellow attendees over lunch, Suzanne Wheatley of Sue Hill Recruitment made sure that we really got to know our neighbours; she stated the importance of first impressions at an interview and we were encouraged to first practise shaking hands and then, to help us develop confident eye contact, we were invited to maintain eye contact with our neighbour in silence for a whole minute. Try it; it’s much more awkward than it sounds and it’s really hard not to talk!

Very different career paths were described by Susan Ryan and Karen Tulett from Morgan Stanley leading to their current management roles in information services in the investment banking industry. For Susan one of the highlights of her career to date was involvement in a pioneering venture to set up the outsourcing of the information research function in India which included going out to train the new team.

Maria Bell from LSE Library talked about the changing role of the academic librarian and the enjoyment in being involved in teaching research skills to students and the opportunities to speak at conferences around the world.

Having a job title that is not self-explanatory presents challenge for Laura Williams, a media manager at the BBC. She and her colleagues address this by actively market their services to potential internal customers including the use of printed products such as mugs. She describes her role as librarian or archivist (depending on the audience) and supports production staff with both information research, archive research and the archiving of materials. One colleague provided so much archive material for a production that her name was included in the credits and she was included in an award ceremony dinner!

The day ended with a panel discussion. It was interesting that in answer to the question: ‘Which aspects of your job do you like best?’ the panel answered almost unanimously – research. The graduate open day was extremely informative; opening our eyes to the very different roles available to information professional in different settings but with some similarities in the skills required namely research, training and marketing.

Thank you to the BAILL, CLSIG and SLA Europe and all the presenters for such a valuable insight into the profession.

About the author

Pretium lorem primis senectus habitasse lectus donec ultricies tortor adipiscing fusce morbi volutpat pellentesque consectetur risus molestie curae malesuada. Dignissim lacus convallis massa mauris enim mattis magnis senectus montes mollis phasellus.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.