I've been a CILIP member for a fair few years now however it's no longer a conscious decision as my company pays for my membership. If they didn't I'm not so sure I'd still be a member. I'm aware that I've developed a rather negative attitude towards CILIP, feeling that they don't really cater for the commercial librarian. Working in a property firm, in Bristol, with only one other Librarian has made me feel isolated from the profession, which doesn't help.
I've never really engaged with CILIP, my local branch or any of the special interest groups so have no basis to complain and am really hoping over the coming months I will be proved wrong. I've just registered for Chartership, am looking to get involved with either the South West branch or the CLSIG special interest group (Commercial, Legal and Scientific Information Group) and am keeping an eye on upcoming training events. I'm sure it's just a case of you reap what you sow. With this in mind things can only get better.
The beauty of an informal organisation such as LISNPN is that you have no expectations of what it should offer. There are some great resources and members really do seem to shape the content of the website.
A Bristol meet up is planned for August which I'm really looking forward to. It will be good to meet some new people and hear about what's going on in different sectors.
LIKE stands for London Information and Knowledge Exchange and is a free to join organisation that I hadn't come across before. I know I'm not based in London, but many of the people who work in similar roles are, as well as my company's head office and research team.
It looks as if they've held some really interesting events in the past so will be keeping an eye on their website.
I'm sure I've come across the Association for Information Management before but had quite forgotten about it. Some of the upcoming training courses look really interesting and relevant to the work I do, so again I'll be keeping an eye on their website.
So why CILIP?
This exercise has made me wonder why I want to become involved with CILIP; after all there are some organisations out there that would probably suit me better. This is why:
- CILIP is my professional body
- They accredited the course I completed at university which allowed me to apply for my current job
- I am interested in the profession as a whole and CILIP is good at providing broad coverage of what's going
- I've just started the Chartership process and frankly it just seems disloyal to go elsewhere
So I'll see where things go with CILIP, if things don't work out at least I know there are other opportunities.
I definitely agree that you need to spend some time investing in your CILIP membership - you definitely get more from it that way. Being involved in a committee is a great way to do this as you get to meet a variety of different people on a relatively regular basis, and you can develop skills that you wouldn't ordinarily have the scope to do within your regular job.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with Chartership - I'm hoping to start mine next year :)