Thing 11 - Mentoring

23 Things for Professional Development's eleventh 'thing' is mentoring. Since I'm a rookie and not out of school yet, I am going to focus on being a mentee.

Again, I will praise my college for providing me with excellent instructors who genuinely care about the success of their students. I can think of two in particular! If you are a student, I hope there is an instructor like this you can talk to. This is also a good reason to take your studies seriously and not slack off. If you're just going to class to get by, you will not be one of the people your instructors go to for special projects or opportunities. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is, particularly to younger students. Your professional life doesn't start when you take your first library position; it begins in school. Being a student provides you with opportunities you may not necessarily get once you graduate. It is important to work hard. CPD23's post says as much:

As a mentee, your role is not to accept the advice and assistance of a mentor passively, but to try to give back in terms of gratitude, professional sharing, and enthusiasm. You should be quite clear about your strengths and weaknesses and be honest about what sort of assistance you would like your mentor to provide. Such clarity and straightforwardness will lead to a much more productive and successful relationship.

Thing 10 - Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, Accreditation

CPD23's tenth 'thing' is all about schoolin' and various pieces of paper you can get to prove you would make a good library worker. It's written from a UK standpoint, which means it is not so much of use to me.

Henceforth, here is some Canadian information:

There are two routes: you can study at school to get a Master's degree in Library and Information Science, more commonly known as an MLIS, or you can get a Library and Information Technician diploma. I went with the second route, as I was under the impression it would take less time and due to various vagaries of life, I wanted to get a move on.

I've heard a lot of conflicting reports about which is 'better', the degree or the diploma, and as far as I can tell it boils down to whether or not you want to be in management or not. That road is easier to take with an MLIS, but occasionally a tech will manage to rise through the ranks. An MLIS will probably net you more pay than a technician. On the other hand, if two people have the same skills and one can be hired for less money in these unstable times in the field, they're probably going to go with the technician.

As I understand it, there's some friction between the degree and diploma holders. One group might think the other doesn't know what it's doing or lacks the proper skills to fill a position. I'm not entirely clear, but I vaguely expect to be lightly sneered at by someone with an MLIS at some point in my career. My idea was that I could go and get a degree should I need one in the future. Money, possible debt, and time were factors in my decision. As I have mentioned before, my classes have been extremely useful in actual practice. I feel I am being trained very well.

The Canadian Library Association's Info Nation page is a good place to start looking for technician and Master's programs. You will notice there are more places to get a technician's diploma than there are to get a degree.

Thing 9 - Evernote

23 Things for Professional Development's ninth 'thing' is Evernote. From the looks of it, it seems like a combination of bookmark-type managing and note taking that can be accessed anywhere on the web. That sounds like a pretty good idea, though I think it would be hard to break out of the habit of bookmarking things.

I will admit things get a bit fuddled via bookmarks. Sometimes I'll tiredly bookmark a page, shove it into my 'library/articles' folder, and then forget what the heck it is when I'm scrabbling through the bookmarks in search of a post topic. And then I have to click through every single one and skim it to remember why it piqued my interest. Boo!

Evernote sounds useful and I'm installing it as I write this with the intent to play around with it. I would like to see if the clipping is good for, say, saving content that might later be taken down. Again, I would like to caution that you do make sure you save items of importance in multiple areas in the case of service failure.

Thing 8 - Google Calendar and Eggs in Baskets

It's a civic holiday today, and you know what that means! It means I go to my grandmother's and help move stuff around. It also means I can catch up on my neglected little blog.

Thing 8 for CPD23: Google Calendars! They seem pretty useful. I'll admit I've tried to use them now and again but they never stick. Google Calendars do remind me a little of the shared calendars I use at work now. I have to put any meetings or training seminars I'm going to into said shared calendar. It's not the most intuitive name to look up, either, but it'll do. It also flashes little warnings when meetings are coming up, which would probably be more useful if I was actually at my computer and not in a file room.

And now for a cautionary tale: do not put all your eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is Google.

You may have heard that Google+ has been deleting accounts. There are a few reasons, but some people are being locked out for not using their real name, or at least what Google thinks is their real name. This is not so good news for people with screen identities, but the greater problem is losing access to your entire Google account if you have been storing all your data there. DON'T DO THIS.

Keeping all your stuff in one online 'cloud' is an interesting idea. Access it from anywhere, blah blah blah, but always keep backups. Actually, make the cloud your backup. Think of all the things Google can manage: calendars, correspondence, contacts, documents. Now think about what would happen if you suddenly lost access to that data.

On July 15 2011 you turned off my entire Google account. You had absolutely no reason to do this, despite your automated message telling me your system “perceived a violation.” I did not violate any Terms of Service, either Google’s or account specific ToS, and your refusal to provide me with any proof otherwise makes me absolutely certain of this. And I would like to bring to your attention how much damage your carelessness has done.

My Google account was tied to nearly every product Google has developed, meaning that I lost everything in those accounts as well. I was also in the process of consolidating everything into my one Google account. (…)

While the long post the article quotes the paragraphs above from has been taken down, there are other examples of this happening.

I would like to introduce you to something. That black box to the left is an external hard drive. Anyone who's ever had a computer meltdown and lost their data can tell you how much that stinks. This external hard drive allows me to back up all the files I would very much mind losing. It is small, portable, and has a lot of space. This is where you put the kinds of things you don't want to lose.

To the right is something called a day planner. They are also small, portable, and come in a delightful array of styles and colours. You write down your appointments and notes in them. These are both very useful tools.

Please remember, if you hand all your data to Google (or any other one 'place'), you may rue the day.