13 September 2012

Thing 16: Advocacy for the profession and Getting Published

This thing makes me feel a little uncomfortable, as I know I haven't been as active as I should in advocacy and activism. I know a little about Voices for Libraries - enough to know I agree with it wholeheartedly - but  I do other stuff (Amnesty) in the very small amount of time I devote to such things. I think you have to find your own balance in life with these things and I'm not going to get stressed about it.

I work in an academic library and I do try to push and promote our services whenever I can, but this is usually only on a one-to-one basis. I think we seriously need to be bigging ourselves up on campus but there's only so much a pleb like me can do - it really needs a strategic lead & message. Demonstrating value / impact is key to this and I am desperate for time to catch up with all the research on this that's been going on. There must be a good message we can distil from it and use.

Getting published is a real ambition of mine and something I need to focus my efforts on in the next few years. This isn't just a vanity thing - I'd love to know I'd done something interesting enough to write about! I feel a real barrier of not knowing where to start or what to do - a publishing mentor would be very useful at this point I guess. When I think about publishing, I'm thinking of an academic journal - part of the point for me is to go through the process and get the research experience.


5 comments:

  1. Sconul Focus is a good place to start. Lots of visibility, and not too restrictive about content and presentation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the tip - I shall go and leaf through a few to get a better idea of what they publish. I remember your ebooks piece! That was real good.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Sam, it seems to me that you are doing exciting things that would definitely warrant publication. The Swansea team have always been good at writing up their work, and presenting at conferences. I hope that you will use this Thing as an encouragement to write that article! Ymlaen, the CDG Wales Newsletter, also welcome contributions!! Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  4. CyMAL magazine??? Not so much an academic journal, but still an article? Am trying to focus more on articles that show how libraries (or musuems, archives) have made a difference to people's lives.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CyMAL magazine sounds great but changing people's lives seems a far cry from a lecture on EndNote Web (today)...

    ReplyDelete