Amy Finnegan and Helen Monagle: The New Library Professionals Network
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The document outlines the activities and tools used by the Manchester Natural Language Processing Network (ManchesterNLPN), including marketing, evaluation, preparation, and planning as their four key areas. It provides their contact information and links to further information on their website and social media profiles. The document also includes a link to an article about the top 5 things learned this week without additional context.
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Amy Finnegan and Helen Monagle: The New Library Professionals Network
- 1. Amy Finnegan and Helen Monagle
- 4. What do we do?
- 7. Tools we use
- 8. Lessons we have learnt & tips http://rukkle.com/entertainment/top-5-things-we-learned-this-week/
- 9. Get in touch • Manchesternlpn@gmail.com • @ManchesterNLPN • ManchesterNLPN.wordpress.com
Editor's Notes
- Intro: Hello we’re two of the founders of NLPN; I’m Amy and I’m Helen. This presentation will focus on the network we have set up for new professionals and will cover the following: who we are, why we set it up the network, what we do, the tools we use to help us and the lessons we have learnt. We hope this will provide you with a toolkit on how to organise events as individuals or on behalf of an organisation as well as collaboratively. Questions: We’d like to start by asking a few questions – If you could raise your hand if you identify with the question: How many of you have had a training need that was not fulfilled by your institution or within your local area? How many of you have had to travel out of your local area for training? Is there any area you wish to develop?
- why we set up the network? NLPN was founded by four former MMU Library and Information Management students. We were inspired by the CILIP New Professionals Day held in London in 2012 where the key message was to get involved and be proactive about your own professional development. This coupled with the lack of free skill based events held outside of London led to the formation of NLPN. Referring back to the questions we asked at the beginning we all answered yes to these questions and decided to try to rectify this ourselves. We have continued to develop the network as we recognise that the information sector is constantly evolving and that many skills development sessions are often out of reach for most professionals due to costs or travel.
- so what do we do In an nutshell, we tweet, blog and organise events. Our events offer interactive workshops and presentations delivered by speakers from across sectors who draw from their own professional experiences and day-to-day working practices. This background image is from a teachmeet session at our last event where five of our members spoke about their career to attendees and answered any questions they had. This was the first time we had tried this format but as we said we are constantly evolving and looking for development opportunities for our members. The foundation of each event comes from analysing and reflecting on the feedback from attendees and deciding as a team what areas we would like to develop. Once the initial idea has been formed we articulate a plan outlining what role each of us will play in the events e.g. identifying speakers and communicating with them, finding a venue, liaising with the collaborators to ensure the events run smoothly and promotion via our social media platforms.
- Planning – As we have held a number of events we have gained experience in what can go wrong and therefore try to mitigate this by making sure we are planned and prepared for all outcomes. As such we have created a checklist for events which covers the following: Deciding on a theme Suitable dates A list of potential speakers and how many we need for the day A list of potential venues A list of funders Marketing Prep for the event We usually contact venues first followed by the speakers, we then have an idea of cost and contact the potential funders. We normally approach funders that have links to the topic e.g. the Information Literacy Group funded our Information Literacy themed event. Marketing – We aim to get interest in the event prior to releasing tickets, thus marketing is very important. In order to generate this interest we create posters and flyers which we distribute electronically, we create blog posts and use social media to signpost people to the event. We also contact all of the UK Universities that currently run a degree in Library and Information Management and email these groups prior to tickets being released to give them time to circulate the information. Preparation – As mentioned the events checklist we created has a section on preparation for the day and. This covers everything you need, as an organiser, to bring on the day. This can range from material you need to create in advance e.g. slides that will display the running order of the day to any physical items you need to bring e.g. a laptop and stationary. - we create the Evaluation – Decide on the format beforehand. We opt for paper as people complete them on the day. Also, don’t forget to refresh these for each event.
- This is a Vine we created to summarise the process of planning an event: 00.00.69 The co-founders – having four founder helps as work can be spread evenly so it’s not overwhelming and you are there to motivate each other and stay determined. 00.01.61 Planning: meetings, delegating tasks 00.02.48 Promotion: Facebook, Twitter, emails, mailing lists, blog posts, Eventbrite 00.03.29 Tickets: free, released 1 month before event and reminders sent both 2 weeks and a week before the event. 00.04.04 The day: organise the room, greet and registering attendees, chair the day ensuring it is kept to time, disseminating and collected completed evaluation forms and bringing baked goods! 00.04.79 Post event: evaluating feedback - this enables us to focus on what went well and what could be improved on, using suggestions from attendees to think about our next event, creating a storify and producing a blog post evaluating the event. 00.05.42 Repeat!
- The tools we use In order to build awareness and maintain momentum for our network in between events we make sustained use of other networking tools. Our social media output focuses on providing a current awareness service alerting our members to useful resources, training events and developments in the profession. We use the following tools: Primarily Twitter, without it we would have struggled to get our first event of the ground so quickly, and since then it has definitely helped to supplement and provide a good alternative to face-to-face networking in between events. Twitter is free and allows us to reach a wider audience – simply sharing links to resources, alerting members about training events, supporting other networks by sharing their content with others and having other people share your content –is a great way to be involved in a professional community and for your own CPD. We use Twitter as a news alert service and to promote our events. Twitter enables us to participate in organised chats focused on professional topics (including Outreach and Inclusion, Open Access etc.) such as those organised by #UKLIBCHAT. Within NLPN, we have a system of allocated Twitter weeks, where one of us is assigned to tweet daily - this keeps us proactive and professionally aware because we are always on the lookout for something that will be useful to other new profs that we can flag up. You don’t have to emulate our use of Twitter but we have found a presence on Twitter has been very useful to us. Twitter is also very valuable to our other main tool – our blog, Twitter is one of the best ways to direct traffic there. This is where all the hard work of following the right people and cultivating followers yourself can pay off – mention lists. Our blog allows us to express more fully, and demonstrate our expertise and the expertise of our members. The content ranges from reflective reviews of training events, member interviews where we asked other professionals to share their insights, advice and journeys with us, lots of current awareness posts – e.g. Sieghartt report. We strongly encourage other people to have a presence on our blog, because the network isn’t the four of us – it’s our professional contemporaries. We have a Facebook page, which has been a good way to connect with other existing Facebook groups, e.g. the CILIP graduate trainee page where attendees have gone to spread the word about us. This is also useful for targeting those who may have missed out Twitter posts about new blog posts or events. We don’t use this tool as much as the previous tool but have found that it is useful as it is a space where our members can contribute and reach out to each other. As mentioned we use Eventbrite to “sell our tickets” and Gmail for our email account.
- Lessons learnt & tips: When we first started out we had no real idea of what starting and running a network involved – a lot of it we have learnt by trial and error. We’ve learnt a lot, made countless professional contacts, and are continuing developing plans for future events and collaboration. Don’t be afraid to ask people for help – it is a sharing profession and we haven’t been turned down by anyone! Funding – think about relevant funding bodies and make a good case showing how your event benefits the funder. Have backups! Timing of the event is important – you can’t please everyone but see what else is happening e.g. conferences, essay deadlines etc. as this will impact turnout at your event. You can repeat the same concept if it works – we have found that our audience is constantly evolving and we are asked to repeat events for the newer audience. Learn from your mistakes – room booking, items you need e.g. laptops, stationery, wifi etc. Try out different things to see what suits you and don’t be afraid to stop using them if they don’t suit e.g. Google +, wikis.