Networking sociably pt 2 - Thing 7

Thing 7 was all about the face-to-face networking. I kind of missed the boat with activities last week in relation to in-person networking. I kept seeing mentions of it on Twitter, but just didn't have the time to look into it. I really liked the sound of the online 'meet-up' for those who didn't live near anywhere that had something organized, so will keep a look out for another one of those. 

But in general, I enjoy the face-to-face aspects of networking, although I have realized that I don't do it very much! 'Events' used to terrify me when I was starting out, through fear of having nothing intelligent to say about the subject of a presentation/meeting, but as I have progressed, I've found it's sometimes easier to just chat rather than having an agenda of points to be made, and that getting to know faces and people is the biggest benefit. I've found the Cataloguing and Classification Group Cilip events/visits I've attended both interesting for their subject and very useful for meeting others, and have developed contacts in this way.

This has also made me think about my local Cilip group, the South East Branch. Many of the cataloguing events of Cilip are either London based or at least not in my neck of the woods. So, one way to increase my networking might be to get a bit more involved in my local group. Having taken a look at their website, they seem to have a lot going on, so I may investigate further.

The CPD blog has a huge list of professional organizations that can be used for networking. I didn't get chance to look at most of them, but one that I liked was the Library Society of the World, who are 'a world-spanning group of library professionals and library advocates, dedicated to furthering the role of librarians, archivists, information professionals, and information educators through communication and collaboration'. Their most recent posting is the LSW colouring competition, which makes me think that I must join this group immediately.

Thinking about networking as a whole, both on- and offline, these tasks have definitely reminded me of the importance of getting and keeping in touch with people both within my profession and outside of it, who are interested in similar issues to myself. I suppose as with most things, the more you put into this, the more you get out of it, so my mid-year resolution is going to have to be more effort on this front, I think.