Thursday 20 October 2011

Thing 22 - volunteering

I have taken on several voluntary roles over the past 10-11 years, sometimes to get a feel for certain roles but mostly as a way of developing my skills & expanding my professional knowledge.  My voluntary roles have included acting as Student Mentor at university, acting as founder/advocate for the LGBT Community project & becoming a strategic driver for the NMSI Diversity Panel Entrypoints Taskforce.
I've also worked on fundraising projects for charities such as the RNIB, Swindon Foggys & others.

I think that volunteering as a professional activity has a lot of benefits at any point of your career. It can help you build up a database of professional & transferable skills which can help you to expand your CV,  get a library position, network & build up your professional knowledge.  In addition to professional support volunteering can also help you to build confidence & social skills. Volunteering can also offer opportunities for building a professional portfolio & gaining experience in public speaking, as well as research & publication opportunities.
My initial voluntary positions were based on gaining work experience while at university & gaining transferrable skills to keep my CV current & marketable. As a student I was also able to use volunteer roles to test out specific career areas without tying yourself fully into that career path. In my case, during my undergraduate degree I was considering opportunities for working in libraries or as a teacher. Both these roles would involve utilising transferrable skills like customer services, as well as specific skills like public speaking & teaching. As a result I took on the role of Student Mentor. This gave me the opportunity to practice negotiation & liaison, communication & organisation skills.  This mentoring role was a good basis for me to build on & use to market myself in the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) market.
Once I became more involved in libraries as a profession through my ILM Master of Research, & particularly after getting my job at SMLA, I began looking into more specific ways of volunteering. In particular I was looking for volunteer roles that would benefit the library service as well as my professional development because I believe that although taking the volunteer service to extremes could be detrimental to the library service as a whole (resulting in loss of qualified staff or cuts in services because by definition volunteers won't be there every day 9-5 & all year round), having a balanced volunteer service that supports existing & qualified staff & is able to relieve some of the pressure on them will allow libraries to focus their time & attention on areas of the service that can only be developed by someone with the proper qualifications, & who is available on a regular daily basis. Suggesting that a volunteer can take on any & all aspects of the librarians role does de-value our profession, & is frankly ridiculous, for one thing most volunteers working in their own paid positions so that they wouldn't be able to cover the service & keep it open in the same way actual employees can but with the best will in the world they wouldn't be able to keep it to the same standards either. I am not knocking volunteers AT ALL - they are absolutely brilliant & we couldn't do without them being their to support us & they can bring a wide range of transferrable skills from their other jobs to the service, but unless their other jobs is in some other library service they wouldn't have the necessary professional skills to follow through in all areas (such as cataloguing) or being able to take on the role of the strategic planner without the serviuce investing in a lot of training for them (with no guarantees about how long they'll be in the service for, how committed they are to developing themselves as librarians or anything else).

I was given the opportunity to volunteer within the NMSI organisation by our professional development & recruitment teams &, as a result of looking at how volunteers could support the library profession & the need for volunteers with service specific skills, I decided to become involved with volunteering for several NMSI strategic panels including acting as a SMEG (Science Museum Executive Group) Observer & then later taking on the role of strategic driver for the NMSI Diversity Panel Entrypoints Taskforce (EPT). These roles gave me the opportunity to learn more about strategy & leadership in the library service while acting as an advocate for different elements of the library audience & stakeholders groups, & contributing to how national policy is set, interpreted & implemented. As part of the EPT role in particular I had the opportunity to feedback to our library service, & hopefully to the wider ILM community, by creating service packs & policies to be circulated thoughout all the NMSI arms.
I also wanted to find the opportunity to have a more direct affect on national policy & procedures for public libraries, whether it involved shaping how they are implemented at a local level or how they are designed at a national level, so I began looking into opportunities in the wider ILM community & looking at what skills or experience I could bring to them. At this point I had already begun volunteering with the local LGBT Community project campaign - the aim of which is to create an 'alternative scene' & offer support to the LGBT community. As part of this community role I made contact with the local council through the LGBT Coalition & the Disability Coalition (later joined together as part of the Single Equality Coalition) & was put in contact with one of the strategic managers for the local libraries who was trying to improve LGBT services in the library. I felt this was something that would enable me to join together the three strands of my professional skills, community skills, & optimising my role as a volunteer to gain the most benefit from it. Being involved in the LGBT in Libraries project not only benefits the local public libraries, it also benefits our LGBT Community project as a whole & allows us to have some say in policy & procedures relating to our services, on the personal side it also allows me to develop a new range of professional skills which in turn helps me to improve the services of our individual library organisation.

Recently I've also had the opportunity to look at volunteering from a new angle as part of my paid employment, I have been given the role of Volunteer Supervisor for our trade literature volunteers (who are worth their weight in gold for all the work they've done on the project so far). Part of my role involved liasing with the NMSI volunteer team to actually generate the role descriptions for the trade lit. volunteers, which is where I found out that the organisation has policies in place to protect the volunteers, the service & the paid employees by maintaining the balance bewteen voluntary roles & paid roles. For instance, a volunteers role description is not allowed to include tasks that should be covered by the job description of a paid employee, & which they could reasonably be expected to carry out. on their own. So in our case we are allowed to include indexing/listing the trade lit. in our volunteer roles because there are a few hundred boxes holding several thousand unsorted pieces of trade lit. & there is no way they could expect an paid employee to work their way through that (unles they had been taken on solely for that purpose & were not involved in any other tasks or projects). On the other hand, as project leader it's part of my job description to do the strategic planning for the project so I wouldn't be able to ask the volunteers to do any of the research, or any of the development or marketing tasks. I think this may be the best model of volunteering vs. employment roles, it allows for support from both sides but makes sure the roles are clearly defined so that the volunteers don't have to worry they're being overburdened or given something to do outside their skillset, & the employees don't feel as if their roles are being taken over.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has any experience of different formats for volunteering/employee programmes & how they worked out, or if there's any suggestions for other places to find volunteer experiences beyond asking your university office, your local council or your employer's HR/training departments.



 

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Thing 21: Self-promotion

CVs, interviews & other self-promotion opportunities scare me a lot. I'm never sure how much info to give or how to answer certain questions. I can usually reel off the stuff about qualifications & professional skills fairly easily because the proof is all there in the certificates & job history. But when it comes to answering questions like 'where do you see yourself in 5 years time' I can have a problem, I want to promote myself but I don't want to come across as too cocky, & I obviously want to say something that reflects the job requirements as well. Luckily I don't think I'll be doing the job search rounds any time soon (fingers crossed) but I am looking at ways of becoming more involved in professional groups & getting research published so I think this Things exercise should be very useful, so here goes.
I think question 1 is all about the importance of adding value & turning a negative into a positive, which is a big part of promoting yourself especially when it comes to application forms & interviews. During our ILM course they taught us an exercise for job applications where you write down a strength/weakness statement then add a statement to it that either adds value or turns a - into a +, sometimes it can be difficult to stretch out a statement but I think it's the difficult ones that help to prepare you for the unexpected interview questions.  I mean if you can re-package a love of sci-fi books or heavy metal music into a valuable asset I think  you can pretty much promote anything or anyone.
LIKES (adding value):
I like reading = I have a wide knowledge base covering a range of subjects.
I like quilting = I'm focused on details as well as being creative.
I like strategic planning & writing reports = I am forward thinking & able to see the bigger picture, while at the same time able to act as part of a team.
I like indexing = I'm organised & able to carry out basic library tasks as well as strategic functions.
I like enquiries research = I'm customer focused & have experience in different forms of library research.
I like writing fiction & poetry = I'm creative & have skills that would be useful in marketing & pitching projects.
I like fndraising for Swindon Foggys & socialising = I'm committed to advocacy & inclusion, as well as being able to connect with people with different needs & backgrounds.
I like attending conferences = I'm committed to my continued professional development, & to building a professional support & liaison network.
I like sci-fi & fantasy/crime/horror books, movies, TV = I have an open mind & am able to connect with information in a variety of forms.
I like listening to music - anything from heavy metal to Joan Baez = My interests are varied & give me the opportunity to form connections with a wide range of people.
I like cooking = I can be methodical & creative at the same time, & work to strict deadlines.
I like researching organising trade lit. = I'm interested in collection development,  & in how non-standard collections can be utilised.
I like working on the diversity panel = I like acting as an advovate for social inclusion, & working to ensure our service meets the needs of all its stakeholders & audiences.
I like volunteering on the LGBT Community project = I'm capable of thinking outside the box & I'm interested in how the library service can serve & support the wider community.
I like developing collections = I can look at things from different points of view to meet the needs of various audiences, as well as ensuring compliance with strategic aims.
I like blogging = I'm capable of utilising a wide range of technologies & social networking services in a variety of roles including marketing & collection development.
DISLIKES (+ to -):
I don't like physio = It has helped me to be more patient & learn more about control.
I don't like dealing with/getting through large crowds = It has helped me to develop skills in negotiation, socialisation & self confidence.
I hate call centre work = It helped me to develop my customer service & organisation skills, as well as liaison & financial reporting skills.
I don't like trying to pitch ideas to people/groups/councils who are obviously not interested = It has helped to boost my confidence levels, develop my marketing & negotiation skills, as well as developing inter-personal & networking skills.
I don't like being labelled & assumptions being made about me because of the labels = It has helped me to understand more about social inclusion & to view things from different viewpoints.
I don't like writing job applications/bursary applications = They have helped me develop my self-promotion skills & find new ways of assessing my personal & professional development.
I hate trying to convince my PC to do even the most basic tasks = It has helped me to develop my knowledge of IT & think outside the box to find new ways of accomplishing tasks.
I was very satisfied with the outcome of the LGBT in Libraries project. We were succesful in creating the collection, & launching it as a platform for future development. I've also been responsible for a series of projects & tasks at work , inc. overseeing the trade lit. move & creating a development plan for the collection. As a result of these projects I have continued to develop my professional & networking skills. In particular I have further developed my strategic planning skills, collection development skills & ability to understand issues of social inclusion.
The trade lit. project has involved generating, recruiting & supervising volunteer roles. In addition to standard collection tasks I have had to develop a deeper understanding of cataloguing & indexing, as well as utilising the internet & networking opportunities to market the collection.
I have a wide range of experiences that I can feed into a CV & job application including customer service roles, mentoring & teaching roles, research skills & much more. The problem I have is deciding what is valid experience for individual applications so I have developed a skills charting matrix to help me make these decisions. One side of the matrix will list the skills set out in the job description/person specification & the other lists all the skills I have. I then use the columns-rows to enter specific experiences that match both the matrices. From this I can then highlight which aspects I need to focus on in my CV & application.

Friday 14 October 2011

Thing 20 - careers

I've just been looking over some of the links on the Library Roots page & it struck me that there seem to be a lot of us librarians who went through a period of not knowing what exactly we wanted to do, & doing lots of other jobs before ending up almost as an accidental librarian or as Jennie puts it in her Dumpling in a Hanky blog 'it all started off a bit randomly'. All of which just adds more proof to my theory that many librarians are born with some kind of underlying almost genetic predisposition to be a librarian & will end up finding their way into the profession somehow, everything in between is just a valuable information & experience gathering exercise allowing us to develop transferrable skills to support our new roles in libraries or archives. My main piece of advice for people starting out in their careers or thinking about becoming a librarian is that you shouldn't be afraid to take on other jobs in the meantime or worry that all the experience on your CV absolutely has to be library related or it's going to be harrder to get a job in the field. As long as the experience proves your commitment to basic principles such as customer service & you have had at least some experience in a library-related field, either paid or voluntarily & you can demonstrate you have the skills they are looking for like customer service, organisation, etc then you WILL find a job somewhere in the field. Just don't permanently shut any doors along the way.

Thing 18 - JING & Turtles

I started looking at these a few weeks back but as was said in the blog-guide they take up a lot of time so I haven't really done much with them yet. I'm hoping to figure out a way of using them as part of the trade lit. tutorials for volunteers, & possibly even creating a series of captured "instructions" for trade literature users as well to run online alongside a set of reader guides explaining what's in the collection & how it can be used by different audience groups, but that's something that will have to wait until further into the TLC project when I've got a bit more free time. I would also have to discuss it with our IT department first to see if they would allow us to download the necessary software.
As practice I thought I would to try & use Jing to create a film explaining about how to use email functions, etc so in theory I would be able to avoid banging my head on the desk in frustration when I have to explain for the billionth time how to minimise (not close) the window or where the email address goes. I got about halfway through before I realised even if it came out ok it would still be a 'chicken & Egg' excercise in futility - if they need to be walked step by step through even a basic function like writing an email, they probably won't be able to download/set up the necessary software to allow them to follow the film, so you would have to write a film explaining how to do that, & then one explaining how to access that film, & on & on (William James was wrong, it really is 'Turtles all the way down! - sorry old American Lit. joke). Whe nI get the film finished I will probably test it out on family members before even thinking of inflicting it on the public or on our volunteers to get some feedback on just how far down the instructions need to go, at what point do we assume a certain level of pre-knowledge.

I've also had a quick look at the podcasting software available but I don't think it's anything we can use at this stage, as our various projects move on particularly once we get things like the INTL (International Network of Trade Lit.) up & running it might be something we would want to revisit as a way of sharing information between the various organisations, giving people the opportunity to speak on their specialist subject & most importantly creating a connected or group atmosphere despite their being hundreds or thousands of miles between the members. 

Thing 17: LGBT in Libraries or Adding Value to a Collection in Credit Crunch Britain

Example of a basic Prezi presentation

View Adding Value to a Collection in Credit Crunch Britain by CJ Crennell on Prezi.com or click the link below:
http://prezi.com/yya-pppznt2p/adding-value-to-a-collection-in-credit-crunch-britain/?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=shareprezi&utm_medium=email

Thing 17: Trade Literature: A Tool For All

I've been trying to use Prezi for a couple of presentations, 1 a very brief presentation on the benefits of LGBT in Libraries & the other one trying to condensed a collection level description into a very short period of time. I think as far as animation goes & being able to move around the screen definitely beats ppt but I do wish when you resize a box or shape or something everything else would automatically retain their proportions & resize themselves. The only other issues I have are a slight technical glitch with downloading the presentations to work on offline but that's not to big of a deal, & the speed which the finished presentation 'swoops' across the screen (I could see someone suffering from seasickness watching it, but I'm sure that with a bit more investigation I'll find a way to tweak the speed). Next time we're putting together a presentation for the library I'm definitely going to recommend using Prezi I just wish it had been around while I was at uni. Being able to expand my 'slides' to whatever size I wanted would have made it a lot easier to fit the right images & text in at the right size for people to read them.
View Trade Literature: A Tool For All by CJ Crennell on Prezi.com or click the link below:
http://prezi.com/tpza9z4rrh1q/trade-literature-a-tool-for-all/?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=shareprezi&utm_medium=email

One of the areas I'm considering using it in is to create a series of tutorials to show trade lit. volunteers what's happening & what they'll be doing at each stage of the project. So I will be spending the next few months looking at developing my Prezi skills to accomplish this. I'm also planning on taking part in some more group visits, talks & library forums as part of my PDP, & now that I have more time because I have (touch wood) finished my Portfolio (just the spell check & page numbers to go) so I'm hoping I'll get to use it a lot more in 'practice' situations. If anyone has any feedback on how they've found using it on talks outside their own service, where they've had to access it from a machine that doesn't have Prezi on it, I'd be interested in any tips for avoiding glitches - particularly after my last big presentation bombed completely due to Powerpoint going nuts.

Thursday 13 October 2011

Thing 16 - Advocacy & Publishing

Recently I've been working as an advocate for the LGBT community, particularly as represented in our public libraries. A small group of us have started building a project to create an 'alternative scene' for the LGBT community & we have been successful in convincing the local libraries of the importance of the library role in this type of project. The aim of the project is to make the LGBT scene more inclusive in itself as well as making public services more socially inclusive as a whole, to create cultural & community partnerships, to raise awareness of the Community's issues & needs within the "straight" community. Public libraries are therefore a vital element of this project, & it is just as important to the libraries to be involved. The public library is supposed to be one of our social & community hubs that can act as a base point or link for everyone, particularly those belonging to disenrachised or minority groups, through to a wide range of communities or information without bias or prejudice. It is also just as important for libraries, particluarly in the current climate of cuts, to be able to maintain their social inclusion infrastructure & enable themselves to build relationships with different audiences & generations.
Which is why we thought a library project might be the best place to start as it would offer us the chance to make contact with a wider audience as well as having the opportunity to take the project in a number of different directions.
So at the beginning of the library stage of the project we conducted a survey of the LGBT services & stock available - sadly I could've counted on 1 hand the number of gay/trans books/DVDs availble & as for lesbian literature (zero). Our first job therefore was to lobby the library to raise awareness of the lack of support & representation of the LGBT community & get them on-board to begin building our community project. So far we have created a whole new LGBT collection, inc. books & DVDs for all elements of the community, which was launched last Thursday with a film screening & drop-in session. As part of the project, & as a result of my being able to develop my blogging skills through this course, I was given the opportunity to be responsible for some of the marketing, including creating an LGBT in Libraries blog (http://lgbtinlibraries.blogspot.com/ ). Now that the collection is up & running the library part of the project will, hopefully, continue to develop to include new services such as LGBT reading groups that will not only bring more people into the library but will also (fingers crossed) bring more people to join the LGBT Community Project. Greater public support is going to be a big issue for the next stage of the project as it will involve working in partnership with the whole LGBT community to find out what they want in an alternative scene, as well as lobbying the local Single Equality Coalition & various council departments to help us begin to set it up & keep it running (gulp!). If there's anyone out there who has had any experience of convincing local councils to support community projects, any advice on how to persuade them to at least hear us out & hopefully come on-board gratefully received. Thanks.

Thing 13 - Google docs, Wikis & Dropbox

thingthing1CPI think the Dropbox is one I might suggest to our organisation - we're always having a problem with file sharing between people on different sites, often documents are too big to be sent by email, or they arrive & take ages to open. We do have a swap area on our hard drive, but more often than not the person who needs to have access to a shared document hasn't been given access permissions to the specific swap folders/documents so they have to go through the hassle of contacting IT to get them to change the settings, etc. The Dropbox could cut down on a lot of this & make joint projects a lot easier to oversee.
On the other hand, I'm not too sure about the wiki idea, probably partly because of wikipedia's complete open door editor policy - anyone can write change/update an entry even if their info is wrong & there's no real provenance for the "facts" on their, you just have to take things on trust & trust that people won't access your entries & write something completely horrific. As a result even without looking into the course links in too much detail I've kind of decided it's probably not for me. But I'm willing to have an open mind enough to at least look at the info on the CPD23 page & see if wiki's are possibly more secure & useful than I think.


mSuggestions for your Thing 13 blog postYou could write about your first impressions of any or all of these tools, or you could explore their potential uses within your library. If you are already using one or more of them, you could write about the kinds of projects for which they have been useful. If you wish, you could also compare and contrast the value of each of these different tools and consider how they could be used to further your own professional development.

Don’t forget to visit other CPD23 blogs and share your insights with other CPD23 participants!

Friday 7 October 2011

Thing 15 - Events - attending, speaking, & organising

I've had some experience of public speaking mostly at university or in my previous role as a TEFL teacher (I think teaching is the most terrifying form of public speaking - standing up in a classroom full of teenagers, most of whom would rather be off doing something else especially in summer school!). Mostly though I've made presentations to other students either as part of assessed coursework projects or as part of student projects like Student Mentoring. For instance, while studying in America I had to summarise & present a series of ACLU law reviews to our American Civil Liberties class on a regular basis. I've also given assessed presentations on topics ranging from 'Native American schooling in the C18th & its cultural effect' to 'Thematic analysis in LIS research methods'. The discussion caused be the latter presentation was particularly helpful when it came time to create the research methods for my dissertation & arrange research events, including focus groups & market research surveys. Despite these scary, but ultimate good, experiences of speaking at & organising events I haven't had a lot of experience of actual 'professional' public speaking apart from a few talks given at forums such as the Oxford TeachMeet or the LGBT in Libraries launch which went off yesterday without a hitch, & with lots of interest. I have been involved in arranging various group visits at our library & talking to them about our collections & services but I am trying to gain more experience of arranging or speaking at professional events, in order to continue to expand my skills in advocacy & professional networking. As part of this I have been applying to attend various conferences & other events through bursary/grant applications, which not only give the opportunity to attend the conference but usually offer the opportunity to have an article published or give a talk about your conference experience. For instance, I applied for the recent CILIP Aspire Award as well as the last 2 SLA-ECCA conference awards, but so far I haven't had much luck. I am putting together a list of conferences, such as next year's Umbrella conference, & various workshops to investigate ways of finding support to attend them or saving up for them. I'm particularly interested in these areas:
Trade Literature
Marketing
Web Writing
Digitisation projects
Advocacy
National Policy
Diversity, Disability & LGBT
If anyone hears of any events in these areas please let me know so that I can investigate the possibility of attending.

One of the main issues I have found relating to attending events as a Swindonian or even setting them up is the affect of geography (we don't quite fall into any of the geographical categories of West, East, South or Central). Most professional events that are already in place are either in London or Bristol, or even further afield, & you have to factor in at least a couple of hours travel time. When it comes to setting up our own events the issue is finding like minded people, who are willing to travel all the way to Swindon. For instance, we launched our LGBT in Libraries project yesterday & in the run up we were trying to circulate information & invites to as wide a community group as possible - particularly as opportunities for networking with the LGBT Community in Swindon are slim, there is one club & one pub & that is about it, just one of the many reasons we've been trying to get groups like LGBT in Libraries off the ground. As part of the marketing we tried making contact with 'local'-ish community groups that are already in existence & while they were all happy to pass on details to their members on the day of the launch we were pretty much limited to interest from Swindon librarians & Swindon community members. Although the wider professional/social community might support a project in principle it can be incredibly difficult to actually get them to actually physically support it by attending events outside of their own geographical community. One of the areas we're currently looking at is linking our local events into national events/campaigns, such as the Green Carnation book award, not just to raise our profile but to hopefully forge links with other community groups across the country. As a result we will be looking at the possibility of setting up a new LGBT reading group in our local libraries to make use of our brand new collection. We're also looking at other ways we can get our local council or local equality coalition involved in supporting us to provide other community groups & services but there's a long way to go before we're anywhere close to arranging anything in that area.

As well as the LGBT community group work I'm also interested in looking at setting up a professional library network in Swindon & the surrounding area. I'm not sure what format it would take, whether it would just be a regular social meeting in a cafe or pub (perhaps even getting involved in regular events - pub quizzes, film nights, or anything else in the Swindon area) or a more structured series of events where we could invite guest speakers, or some combination of the two. At the moment I'm trying to find out whether there is anyone in the area who would be interested in anything like this but I've hit a bit of a brick wall in that as there is no existing networking group or local professional newsletter for the Swindon area it is very difficult to make information available or get feedback with colleagues from other sectors. I'm trying to figure out a way of getting the information out to more people on a local level, obviously I will at some point be making contact with CILIP's newsletter as a possible way of sending out information but there's no guarantees that all librarians in Swindon are members so I would like to find a way to make contact at the local level. Any advice at all on how to set up a local group, particularly making 1st contact with people would be very gratefully received.

For my part, the main piece of advice I would give to anyone who is planning on speaking at or organising an event may seem an obvious one given the topic - you must practise COMMUNICATING, with your team leader, line manager, colleagues, stakeholders & audience & anyone else you can think of. You can write the best speech of your life but if you've fall down when it comes to communicate with your audience & marketing your event nobody will be there to hear it. It's also very important that you don't assume that just because you wrote it or organised it it is automatically brilliant & doesn't need to be changed at all there is ALWAYS room for feedback & improvement.
The other thing that is helped by practising communicating, or even just proactising your presentation in front of your colleagues & getting their feedback, is your sense of self-confidence & your belief in the project which will be a massive boost when it comes time to actually get up & start talking particularly if you're trying to get other professionals to sign up to your project.

Thing 14b - Mendeley

I had a bit of a problem getting either of these set up - kiosk software strikes again. I managed to download Mendeley to my home computer but as a lot of the research I'm doing is  work-based I haven't been able to use it as much as I want. I think it is going to be a big help to me when it comes to organising my evidence, appendices & bibliography for my Chartership portfolio & also for future projects.

One of the things I like most about it is the "one-stop-shop" aspect - if I find an article or something online I can make notes on it straight away (& be able to access them later from a different computer WITHOUT cluttering up my email or trying not to lose fiddly little usb sticks), I can download the article itself, plus find the correct citation & other information without have to dig around even more.
I'm hoping that this tool will help me to create a more professional portfolio & to be able to illustrate the breadth of my professional knowledge on a wider scale. I'm also hoping that as I become more involved in specific research projects at work or as part of my studies it will help me to remain organised & better manage my time so that I can work more effectively & share my findings with my colleagues & the wider LIS audience.
In terms of actually directly supporting our library users however, I will be limited by the fact that it cannot be accessed on any of our work computers because of the Kiosk software settings. I can, however, use it as an illustrative example for students/academics who may need help in organising their research, referencing their work or sharing findings. I can also point them in the direction of other similar online tools & research management software. Our users tend to be split between the very academic & obscure research projects (Masters/PhD research/Professors/etc) & the general public working on specific research tasks, usually family history related - for many of the latter this can often be their first real 'research' project & the former may have experience of researching their very specific field but will need help in finding their way around the more general research options & tools available. I think that Mendeley would be a great way of signposting the research path for both groups.