Mentor, Mentee, (CILIP) VLE

Mentor, Mentee 

I spent some time with one of my mentees yesterday - it was great to catch up with each other, and I gave her the Grand Tour of first our Library and then the rest of the Conservatoire.  After that, it was on to visit a neighbouring library - quite a busy few hours for my mentee!

VLE

Having jointly set the world of librarianship to rights yesterday, I decided that I had better set a good personal example too, so this afternoon I logged on to the CILIP website, and started using the e-portfolio to monitor my own professional development too.

CPD 2013

Although  it's based on Mahara like the portfolio side of the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) that we use at work, I am still fumbling around the CILIP one a bit, so I haven't got far yet.  I must look at the screencasts that are there to help!  However, I've noted my key CPD activities for 2013, and it looks as though I was reasonably busy in that regard.  My next challenge is to work out whether I can create a new section for 2014, or just keep adding to the 2013 box and change the name of the box!

CPD 2014 - a Course and 4 Conferences!

I'm looking forward to logging my 2014 CPD, because I'm doing a short credit-rated postgraduate course entitled 'The Teaching Artist' as evening classes at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, from February to May.  I was lucky enough to get a Creative Scotland bursary towards the fees.  Now, I've given countless talks, lectures and seminars, but I've never really gone into the pedagogy behind teaching, so although it's a bit of a sudden gear-shift for me, it's certainly thought-provoking, and it's particularly interesting being in a small class of teaching artists, all of whom bring different backgrounds and performing arts to the discussion table.

The week after next, I'm flying down to Cambridge for part of the IAML(UK and Ireland) Annual Study Weekend, so it'll be nice to catch up with old friends, new trends, and join the Executive as a Committee member for the first time.  In my case, it's because I've agreed to convene a working group to initiate a new corporate website.  (I'm also practising what I preach: volunteer to get more involved in your sector!)  And I'm talking at the Academic Music Librarians' forum on the first afternoon, so I'll be killing two birds with one stone by talking about the Teaching Artist course!

There's a Musica Scotica conference in Aberdeen a couple of Saturdays later; and I'm off to give a paper at the International IAML conference in Antwerp in July - the first time I've 'been abroad' to give a conference paper, apart from one I gave in Dublin.  I know that Dublin is in Eire, still another country, but somehow it still feels more a Celtic neighbour, than truly 'abroad', so I am quite excited about spreading my wings further afield.

Finally, I heard yesterday morning that I'm one of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland delegates to an international conference that's coming to Glasgow in November: ELIA is the European League of Institutes of the Arts, and this will be the biennial international conference.   The conference theme is LOCATION/AESTHETICS, which might not sound like the kind of thing a librarian would be drawn to, but at the moment I am 60% librarian and 40% musicologist researcher, so believe me, I find this a very exciting theme indeed.  I can get very excited about discussions of nationality, nationalism, geographical borders and cultural perceptions of borders, so this conference might get me quite fired up!