Rudaí23 thing#20: a librarian gets to grips with his glossophobia

There are few things that I dislike more than giving presentations. It combines so many things: dislike of hearing your own voice, verbal ticks etc that are seemingly audible (although they're probably not), the fear that somebody might ask you a question that you aren't sure of the answer.

Presentations are an important skill-set for librarians to know. At their most basic, they are invaluable tools to convey information to a diverse audience, whether that's your colleagues in the library, other people that work closely with the library, or your users. Knowing how to do this in as lively and effective a manner as possible is essential.

As much as possible, I have tried to avoid giving presentations, but this was nearly impossible at times, particularly during the completion of my MLIS in UCD. Many of the presentations that I gave were part of group projects, although there was one presentation that I gave on my own. The basic principle, however, was always the same: trying to convey information to your mentors and classmates about what you were doing. Some were more successful than others, but the methods which we used, and the means, were quite uniform: a mostly prepared speech backed up by some sort of slide presentation, usually PowerPoint, although I used Prezi on one occasion.

What makes a good presentation?

Given my lack of success with presentations, I realise it's somewhat ironic to try and give some hints and tips on delivering a successful presentation, but as is often the case with mistakes, it can help you to realise what you are doing wrong.

Preparation

The most important thing, for me, was to prepare. Make sure that you have your presentation slides in a couple of different formats, and that those different formats take into account the many ways that things can go wrong. It would be an idea to have your slides on a USB stick, somewhere that you can reach them remotely (by emailing them to yourself, or having them in the cloud), as well as where somebody else can get them if all else fails (remember: that person should be somebody who will be attending the presentation).

Focus

Keeping focus means that the presentation you deliver is the one that you want to deliver. What's great about slides is that they can help you achieve this. It's a good idea to have a rough idea of how long you will talk about each slide. This will help you to keep on track in terms of subject matter as well as in terms of time (both specifically about certain points as well as in general).

Everything in moderation

Despite just what I said, the slides should not be something that you hide behind, but something that augment the overall experience. Use of media like videos, gifs, memes and so on can be enhancing, but never use it just for the sake of it. Sometimes it can be a good idea to use something along those lines to lighten the mood, but you have to make sure that you are judging the overall mood correctly, and always use sparingly.

What to do when it's all over

A lot of people recommend leaving the crowd with something tangible at the end of a presentation. Of course, this depends on what you are talking about, and the setting. A tangible item might make sense if your presentation is selling something, but we can still apply the basic idea to presentations in the library world. Are you giving a talk about information literacy? You may have a 'gift pack' with your library's referencing guide and some handy pens, or something like that. Another thing that many people recommend (and is very common in presentations) is making your slides available online.

Rudaí23's task: getting to grips with PowerPoint

Seeing as I have yet to do a presentation in the library world, and the presentations that I did from library school were so long ago, I thought I would try Rudaí23's task, which is design a small presentation and upload it to the site.

We experimented with Prezi a little bit during the MLIS course in UCD, and I was initially very taken with it. It was such a contrast to PowerPoint, which had (and probably still has) a reputation as boring and perfunctory. I was initially going to use this for my slides for this exercise, but decided to go for PowerPoint, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to see whether PowerPoint had improved since I had last used it. We also have full access to Microsoft Office in work, and I am trying to keep up with the new developments especially with Microsoft Office 2013. This is especially relevant as we have lots of students asking questions about different aspects of Office, so it's always good to keep up-to-date with what they're using.

To be honest, I think I found this 'thing' the most difficult task so far. It took a lot of time both in getting to grips with PowerPoint as well as actually preparing my slide show. I found PowerPoint, despite the many upgrades to Microsoft over the years, to be basically similar to how it was previously. It has a lot of features (perhaps too many features) and it can sometimes feel like you need to put in far too much time in order to really understand them and use PowerPoint to its full potential. One feature that I did like was the ease of inserting pictures into a slide, and the ability to intuitively manipulate the picture (and how it corresponds to the text on the slide) was gratifying.

I also found it frustrating to try and keep the slides looking interesting, and not look like the traditional, boring PowerPoint presentations that we are constantly told to avoid. There are so many articles (this is a good example of one) telling us what to avoid, but very few give you practical help and advice on how to achieve visually stimulating slides. I decided to take some advice and try and avoid some of the traps that I had already begun to utilise in my practice slide show for this task: namely too much text and an over-reliance on bullet points.

For the images, I tried to use some playful (and instantly recognisable) memes for the earlier slides against a light background colour. This was an attempt to give some animation to what would be primarily background information about the project. When it came to looking at the results of this project, I ditched these, and focused on images of our new website, and used white background. As I mentioned before, I chose not to use bullet points, but instead had a series of slides with the same heading but different points on each page. This gave the impression of bullet points, but utilised a much clearer, easier to understand message.

Looking at the different options

During the period of frustration with PowerPoint, I began to think that I should probably investigate different ways of presenting my slide show. I looked again at Prezi, and remain impressed with the ability to elevate presentations beyond the normal presumption of something to be endured. There's the feeling of being immersed in the talk, although sometimes it can take this to the opposite level and feel a bit showy and gimmicky. I also looked at Slideshare. It's an interesting option, and definitely great to have another choice in terms of which way you can present your slides. I thought its use of stock images and different ways to display text was very innovative, although there were many occasions that I was quite frustrated with displaying images in the way that I wanted them displayed. In the end, I decided to stick with PowerPoint and hope for the best.

Uploading your slides to Blogger: not as easy as you might think!

The final problem was trying to get my presentation uploaded to my blog. Although PowerPoint has a share option, any of the guidelines available online to show you how to do this suggested options that were not available to me (despite having the most up-to-date version of Microsoft). There were many other options, however, so it seemed like this wouldn't be a huge issue. Slideshare allows you to upload any of your PowerPoint presentations to its service, as does Google Docs. With both of these options, it should be relatively straightforward. Of course, it wasn't. Uploading my presentation to either of these two services resulted in slight alterations with either the text or the background of the slides, meaning that occasionally they would look like I had made mistakes. I investigated the possibility of using Scribd, which allows you to upload documents and share on blogging sites, but there didn't seem to be a free option, just a 14 day trial. What I have ended up doing was taking advantage of Microsoft's option of converting the slide show to a video with ten seconds between each slide. Although the whole experience was somewhat frustrating, it really brought home what I mentioned earlier about making sure that you have your slides available in as many different places as possible.

A review of the experience

As I mentioned before, I tried to rely on text as little as possible and use the slides more as prompts than conveying the information. The idea would be that I would control when a slide was shown, supplying all the particular information relevant to each point that the slide was highlighting. Obviously, this means that when giving the presentation, I would have to really know my stuff and be able to present it in an engaging and enthusiastic manner.

I think in general I learned a couple of valuable lessons from this task. Firstly, that it's important to devote a lot of time to really determining what you want to put in your slides, and alter it once you settle on the 'story' that you want to tell. Also, style is important. It's a presentation, after all! You need to balance the style with the substance. And remember: keep that text to the basics. You don't want to overload your presentation with text-heavy slides.

Rudaí23 thing#13: Professional institutions

When Irish librarians think of professional associations, we often thing of the main one, the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) as well as some of the bigger UK ones, in particular the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). The Rudaí post for thing 13 was eye-opening with regards to the amount of professional organisations around. My twitter feed definitely needs an update.

Going that one step further

I was a Committee member of the LAICDG for approximately two years and would definitely encourage people to seek out groups that are looking for Committee members. Membership of professional organisations like the LAI are wonderful, and contain many benefits, but becoming a
Committee member takes these advantages and brings them to another level. You learn skills like organising events, working with others as part of a professional group, as well as gaining knowledge of how sub-committees interact and work together with other sub-committees. It also serves as an excellent way of getting to know people in the library world.

The basics

If you’re not quite ready for that step, the first thing to do is join the LAI, which is easier than ever to do and gives you lots of benefits which might be particularly relevant if you’re just starting off as a library professional, or even still in university. Attend as many events as possible (see my previous post about the benefits of attending events) and get to know some of your peers. If there’s a particular area you think you might be interested (and chances are, there’s a LAI group for that!) then get involved. You may not even be working in that particular field, but it could possibly help for you in the future.

The other thing to do is keep in touch with professional bodies further afield. This is most easily done through Twitter. It can keep you in touch with new developments abroad, but also give you ideas as to how professional organisations here in Ireland might develop.

A problem with terms

 

One final point is not to get too hung up on terms like 'professional' when looking at library organisations. A perfect example of this is the wonderful group New Professionals Day Ireland (NPD Ireland) which aims to appeal to both professional and non-professional people alike, whether you're somebody who thinks they may like to work in an information professional role, whether you're studying in the field, or whether you're working in a traditional or non-traditional library or information professional role. It's a great way to 'dip your toe' into the field and see if it's for you, or if you've already made that leap, to attend some wonderfully innovative conferences and talk to your peers as well as people that you wouldn't normally interact with at similar conferences.

Rudaí23, thing #3: The Branded Librarian

Getting started on branding

The task for Rudaí23 (and, of course, the topic of this post) is your online brand. How visible am I online and am I happy with what is available? I followed Rudai23's helpful guide to viewing yourself 'incognito' online (it sounds more sleuthy than it is) and was happy enough with the photo of myself and how it ranked on Google Images (it is my LinkedIn photo - the same as the one for this blog - and it came up second, behind my namesake who is an MBA candidate in the University of Oxford) but there is little in terms of actual web presence. There is a LinkedIn option where if you follow the click, you will be presented with all the people on the site that share my name. This is not ideal, so I am currently looking at Rudai23's other suggestions (specifically aboutme, which I had never heard of before).

LinkedIn: more than just your online CV

The suggestions regarding LinkedIn were the most revealing. I am generally ambivalent regarding LinkedIn: I occasionally tidy up my page (usually when I see a profile of somebody else that is particularly well done) but as I'm not actively seeking a job at the moment, it's low down on my list of priorities. Rudai23 reminded me that LinkedIn isn't (just) a place for you to have your CV available to potential employers, but (yet another) place where you can interact with your peers in the library world. And if you're interacting with your peers, you should probably have an up-to-date CV with all the relevant information and details. Two points which really struck home with me: I need to have a summary and a headline (interestingly, this article suggests that your summary is the most important part of your LinkedIn profile). That's what I'm going to be doing for the next hour or so on a Saturday afternoon (although I do have Radio 6 to keep me company). For the future, I aim to connect in a more substantial way on LinkedIn.

Discovering my brand

So, what's my brand? Bar my photo, I don't really have one. While that may be seen as a negative, I guess you could look at it in a more positive light, in that it could be seen as a blank slate. I have been told by a certain person that I need to find my 'niche' in the library world, and it might just be that my niche and my brand might be the same thing. One of my interests in my professional life is how libraries reach out to users and how users interact with their library. I guess my niche will be to get experience in this, and my brand will be to market this as something that is associated with me.

Rudaí23, thing #2: On becoming a librarian*

The non-direct route to becoming a librarian

Why did I become a librarian? I would love to be able to say that I had a lifelong interest in books, that I visited libraries whenever I could, and that there was a librarian in my local library that was a huge influence in my formative years, but none of that would be true. I spent most of my teens and early twenties with no clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. By the time I thought that becoming a librarian was something that I wanted to do, I had already done a Masters (not a good idea if you are still unsure of your career path), was working in a bookshop and couldn't afford to do the second Masters that I would need to gain the qualifications to become a librarian.

Fortune (in the form of misfortune) allowed me to complete the MLIS in UCD. But why libraries? I know people say that if books is your only interest, then it's not a good reason to become a librarian, and while they're probably right, it was a start for me. Libraries represented an opportunity to focus on the elements of bookselling that I loved (the power of information, interacting with the public, and helping people to find whatever it was that they were looking for) within an industry that I saw as vibrant and one that was preparing to meet the challenges of the future. 

That all-important qualification

A qualification was absolutely necessary, and there were two options open to me. I could study for the MLIS in UCD, a pretty intensive course or do a long distance option in one of the universities in the UK. I chose the UCD course because it had the courses that I believed would be of use to me in my future possible career, and within an environment that would suit the way I studied (I don't think long distance learning would be my thing). The MLIS in UCD offered courses on social media, teaching librarianship, web design, digital libraries as well as more traditional choices like cataloguing and information services.

And what is it exactly that you do?

I am currently working as a library assistant in a relatively small college library in Dublin (not the one pictured above, which would require a time machine). The day-to-day activities include everything you would think a librarian does: checking in books, helping students find whatever they're looking for, but I've also managed to get some experience doing more specific tasks including looking after different aspects of journal management as well as dipping my toe into user testing.

Am I happy with my choice? Absolutely! It has been a tough few years, and there were times when I wondered whether I had made the right choice, but I genuinely love working in a library. There is a fantastic network of librarians in Ireland and there are so many opportunities to get involved in interesting areas of the library world. There are also some fascinating developments happening in the industry, whether your 'thing' is tech, information literacy, cataloguing, or non-traditional roles. And what's even better is that there are so many people working in the industry willing to help or get involved in discussions. 

*Librarian/library assistant. It's all a work-in-progress.