Cpd25 Task Group 1: Steering Group report for November 2010

Programme for 2010-11 (as of 24^th March 2011)

News update

Group membership

Since the last steering group meeting, the group has gone through a number of personnel changes:

• Libby Homer has moved to a new post at SOAS.  Her new job title is Assistant Director (Operations);
• Sam Halford has also moved to City University.  Her new job title is Subject Librarian for the School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences;
• Jenny Cefai has transferred from TG3 to TG1.  She will be attending her first meeting in June.

Events update

Qualifications programme

We are now over half-way through the programme for 2010/11.  The portfolio forum, the sixth workshop in the programme, took place earlier this month.  Feedback for the programme thus far seems to be uniformly positive.  For 2011/12 a new speaker for the supervisory skills session may need to be found.  Sheron Burton is considering taking up a possible offer of voluntary redundancy.

Career progression day

Following discussions at the previous steering group meeting, it was decided that we would not take up Sue Hill on their offer and go back to a format which we ran successfully a couple of years ago.

A date and a venue have now been set, as listed in the table above, but putting the event together is proving to be problematic.  Helena is the main organiser but is receiving support and ideas from other members of the group.  Nevertheless, it is proving difficult to source speakers.  The local candidate support officers have both said they’re not available, Infomatch is being wound up as part of the CILIP restructuring process, and CILIP’s qualifications team have not responded to Helena’s requests for a member of the quals team to come and talk about the framework. To try and get some movement, I have contacted Michael Martin at CILIP directly and we have identified a candidate support officer based in Cambridge, who Helena has agreed to approach. 

SDO forum 1

This is now definitely going to be run by Nicola Wise on 6^th April.  A number of bookings have already been taken.

SDO forum 2

The original idea to base something around the new work-based learning MA at Middlesex has had to be shelved because we discovered that the course has not yet been given the formal go-ahead at Middlesex.  The other idea was to run something on making the case for keeping a staff dev budget/maintaining staff dev activity in difficult economic times.  A call was put out to the LIS-M25-DIRS jiscmail list, asking for participants, but this has so far only elicited one response.

Visits

The visit to the Royal Geological Society took place on 14^th February and was well received.

A visit to the RNIB headquarters at King’s Cross is planned but no date has been set at present.  This visit will be slightly different as it will not involve a library – that is in Peterborough – but it will be a tour of some of their facilities and it will be a chance to look at some of the assistive technology they use to support their work and their members.

Antony Loveland

March 2011