When I saw Thing 7, I immediately thought, “well that’s OK for the ones in London!” but no, there was actually a CPD23 meet up in Newcastle last night thanks to Shannon Robalino. We played “spot the librarian” heading towards the Billards Room of the Town Wall pub (no actual billards table thank goodness – there really wasn’t room…) and ended up with a group of about 12. Pretty good going for a Thursday night I thought.
It was nice to catch up with some old coursemates from Northumbria from 2006, and meet some new faces as well as putting faces to Twitter names. We had some interesting conversations, some were even library/CPD23 related! A good suggestion was a Mining Institute blog with a Twitter feed, as well as my own, highlighting interesting items that come up. I tried to argue the time factor but Jennifer Clark (e-librarian from Newcastle Libraries) was very persuasive so I think I will give it a go. I may even be able to get volunteers to write some of the posts…
I do meet up through CILIP events with people fairly regularly. Even if it’s a topic I’m not initially very interested in, if there’s an NECILIP event then I will go regardless if only for the networking. And I usually still learn something new and interesting. Going along to the events meant that I quickly ended up on the committee, but that’s a fairly light workload and was excellent for my Chartership application. I do enjoy being involved in the discussion stage and arranging events. I think I will stay a member of CILIP (despite the membership fees) but largely because of the opportunities through branches and groups. I have to say, that if they close the branches and groups then I would certainly reconsider that decision!
mininglibrarian 