Tuesday, May 27, 2003
GRRR! FLOWERS SMASH PUNY HUMANS!
In order to try and justify their continued existence as a professional organisation CILIP (the UK body for Librarians) is very in to it's staff being professionally developed meaning you jump through metaphorical hoops for a few years, write a report, send them money and then they might announce that you can call yourself a Chartered Librarian. This means very little, you don't even get heat vision or telepathy or anything, but you can go for management jobs which, obviously, pay more money.
Do you know that according to CILIP stats, less than fifty percent of library staff in the UK are members of this professional body? I think that's supposed to be a secret.
Anyway, I've been involved in this professional development thing since I started work at the library in 2000. This meant a year of not doing much but calling it experience, and then a year and a half or so of again not doing much but during this time writing a report about that year of experience. Finally finished it in January and sent off with a cheque for forty-five pounds to CILIP. They have a group which mark these reports which meet every two months and basically just go around saying 'yay' or 'nay'ed to the reports. Due to a few administrative problems my report wasn't marked for the meeting in March and they just got round to it at the meeting last week.
And it wasn't passed. On the one hand I'm not fussed because, as you can probably tell from all this I'm less than impressed with CILIP and feel the whole organisation a bit of a sham. On the other hand I'm incredibly annoyed because it means that I can't get a management post without being chartered. I spoke to my 'Careers and Development Officer' at work today and he has said it's a borderline case, so the two people who marked it didn't think it was good enough ('too descriptive' apparently, I knew I shouldn't have written it in the style of Charlotte Bronte) but it was close to the borderline between pass and fail so at the next meeting in two months time the rest of the board will be given copies and it will be a casting vote thing. So I have to wait another two months. And may still fail then. I really don't want the hassle of having to go through the training scheme again and compiling another report. Wasting another two years of my life.
I really wish I was at the university in 'Doonesbury' where they made it mandatory to pass people with flying colours...
In order to try and justify their continued existence as a professional organisation CILIP (the UK body for Librarians) is very in to it's staff being professionally developed meaning you jump through metaphorical hoops for a few years, write a report, send them money and then they might announce that you can call yourself a Chartered Librarian. This means very little, you don't even get heat vision or telepathy or anything, but you can go for management jobs which, obviously, pay more money.
Do you know that according to CILIP stats, less than fifty percent of library staff in the UK are members of this professional body? I think that's supposed to be a secret.
Anyway, I've been involved in this professional development thing since I started work at the library in 2000. This meant a year of not doing much but calling it experience, and then a year and a half or so of again not doing much but during this time writing a report about that year of experience. Finally finished it in January and sent off with a cheque for forty-five pounds to CILIP. They have a group which mark these reports which meet every two months and basically just go around saying 'yay' or 'nay'ed to the reports. Due to a few administrative problems my report wasn't marked for the meeting in March and they just got round to it at the meeting last week.
And it wasn't passed. On the one hand I'm not fussed because, as you can probably tell from all this I'm less than impressed with CILIP and feel the whole organisation a bit of a sham. On the other hand I'm incredibly annoyed because it means that I can't get a management post without being chartered. I spoke to my 'Careers and Development Officer' at work today and he has said it's a borderline case, so the two people who marked it didn't think it was good enough ('too descriptive' apparently, I knew I shouldn't have written it in the style of Charlotte Bronte) but it was close to the borderline between pass and fail so at the next meeting in two months time the rest of the board will be given copies and it will be a casting vote thing. So I have to wait another two months. And may still fail then. I really don't want the hassle of having to go through the training scheme again and compiling another report. Wasting another two years of my life.
I really wish I was at the university in 'Doonesbury' where they made it mandatory to pass people with flying colours...
