Blogging professionally is hard!

Although I have been blogging sporadically for about 3 years on a variety of topics I still struggle with finding appropriate topics to blog about.

This blog was created when I concluded that my blog had got too confused, it was a mixture of personal and work related topics. I decided that it’s better to keep the two completely separate and so this blog was born for professional posts (I really should copy over the work posts from my original blog to bulk this one up!) and the other has become for random personal musings.

Mistakenly I thought it would be easy to blog about library related topics. After all I love libraries and have done since I can remember and I’ve worked in them since I was 18.  I spend more awake time in a library than anywhere else, so why the difficulty in finding topics?

I think there are many reasons I am having problems, it’s not the lack of ideas but often when I think of something that it would be interesting to explore further I decide it’s not appropriate to do so for a variety of reasons.

Although I don’t say on this blog where I work or what my full name is I have linked to it from my LinkedIn profile and from my page on the work intranet so some readers (do I have any?) do know who I am and where I work.  As a corporate law firm librarian I must respect the confidentiality of our clients so that makes blogging about any enquiry work we receive in the library impossible. I also need to respect the confidentiality of the firm itself so there are other topics related to work that I would never discuss publicly. And the library team is very small, just me and a part-time library assistant, this often makes blogging about the day-to-day work in the library inappropriate as it’s too easy to work out the specifics of who or what I am referring to.

A professional blog not only represents me, it could also reflect well or badly on the firm I work for.  I feel it is important to present a professional and positive face to the world.  In the present financial climate this can be difficult, it would be too easy to blog a series of moans, it’s much more challenging to write a positive and helpful post. This is something I need to think about further for future posts; I know I get useful tips from reading about how others overcame challenges so I’d like to share and help others where I am able.

So far I have found the easiest posts to write to be those following a training event or a review of something I have read.  I am attending a KM networking event next week, it looks like it will be really interesting so I am hoping that will spark off some ideas for a post.

I would be very interested to hear from other law firm librarians on their experiences of addressing these issues.

Book Review – Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently

I have now forgotten where I saw the reference to “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect” by John Maxwell, but it intrigued me enough that I downloaded a copy to my Kindle and I read it over a number of weeks in tiny bite sized chunks on the bus to work in the morning.

I hated reading this book, every chapter was a real struggle to get through.  If I had read the Amazon reviews first I probably wouldn’t have bought it, but that’s the downside of buying straight from the Kindle and not checking out a book properly before clicking on the Buy button.

So why do I dislike this book so much?  It’s the style of writing, which is far too American for my taste.  An Amazon reviewer sums it up far better than I can with “way too much unnecessary verbiage, name dropping and the authors self serving “aren’t I clever” prose and anecdotes masked by occassional and thinly veiled self deprecation” (full review).  I also thought this was going to be a business book and was therefore put off by nearly all the anecdotes being in relation to the author’s work as a pastor, for someone who is not religious it was too much.

However I persevered with the book because it does contain some useful material buried within it.  I don’t think there was anything in Part – Connecting Principles that I didn’t already know. That’s not being big-headed, just because I know doesn’t mean I am putting it into practice, however simple things such as body language being important was not news to me.  Part 2 on Connecting Practice is probably more interesting.  The chapter on connecting through common ground is interesting, reminding us not to take for granted what we think others know and feel.  Also the chapter on making connecting an enjoyable experience made me think, there is a lot of work for me to put in to make legal research training more enjoyable!

One aspect of this book I really do like is the summary at the end of each chapter, there are each split into connecting with an individual, connecting with a group and connecting with an audience. These summaries are probably the most useful part of the book.

My dislike of this book is a purely personal reaction to its”self-help” style, if it suits you then don’t be put off and give it a go but maybe borrow it from the library or buy second-hand as I am not convinced it’s worth the price.

Law at the Open University LearningSpace

These days the enquiries that come to the library from fee-earners are the really tricky ones that they can’t answer with a quick dip into Westlaw or PLC and an up to date knowledge of law and business is really helpful for library staff are to tackle these.  It’s a long while since I studied law (an HNC in legal studies at Glasgow College of Commerce in 2002) so I felt in need of a refresher, but without the time commitment or cost of a law degree.

I remembered reading something in an Open University alumini magazine about free course from the OU so went digging around on their website and found the OpenLearn LearningSpace which is crammed full of interesting looking courses, all free and online.

So far I have restricted myself to the Law section and started with “An Introduction to Law in Contemporary Scotland“; I read through this unit very quickly in a lot less than the recommended 10 hours. I don’t think I learnt anything new from this unit but it was certainly a useful reminder.  Next I looked at “Europe and the Law“; again I have studied this before but things have changed since then with new countries joining up and all the hoo ha over the Constitution.  I found this unit to be a useful refresher on the legislative procedure in the European Union and also ordered the recent developments in my mind.

My intention is to work through all the Law units which have relevance to the work my firm does. I then plan to study some of the units in the Business and Management and Computing and ICT sections which should be useful for soft skills and also some new knowledge on the financial sector.

I have asked the assistant librarian to also take a little time each week to study the relevant units and brush up her knowledge too.

And as for me, well I’m addicted to studying. I’ve had a wee break since the last time I was with the OU so who knows where this may lead ….