Thing 5 - Reflective Practice

Still behind, but I've reached the thing I was most worried about... Reflection. 

I've mentioned previously that starting the Chartership process has made me realise that I need to work smarter and I can see reflection is a vital part of that.  But despite that lip service, I don't think I have truly reflected in any useful way... until CPD23.  From Thing 1 onwards I have been directed to all those 'things' I knew I should be doing, but never got around to; to those things I started using, but never went back to.  Over the last 5 weeks I have started to engage more and lurk less.  I suspect this is due to the idea that there are other librarians out their dipping their toes in as hesitantly as I am - there's safety in numbers!  Each week the CPD23 guidance has very effectively taken a scary unknown and demystified it. 

And our CPD23 gurus have done it again with Thing 5.  They provided a very succinct, not too academic outline of the basics of reflective practice, that even I can understand.  I've even explored some of the further reading???  Katrina Malone's post for Thing 5 (Get Chartered) also gave a very clear outline of the benefits of reflective practice - the key point being that it gives you a better understanding of your work. 

I can see now, that so far my blogging has only really been reflection in a very casual, informal way - I essentially sit in front of a PC and spill my thoughts onto the screen.  However, to make that reflection more effective, I now need to become more structured and apply it to my professional life.  So now I need to put it practice.  Having spent the weekend at the joint SLA/SLG/YLG conference, attending some very interesting workshops and thought-provoking key-note speeches, I have the perfect opportunity to sit back and consider what I got out of the sessions and what I can use 'back at the ranch' to improve upon my service delivery.

As always, the biggest challenge seems to be time.  As I sat and listened to various speakers this weekend share their wisdom and experience, I often came away from the session thinking "Wow, brilliant...but how do they find the time to do all that?" And I know I wasn't alone in that thought.  So surely part of the reflective process has to be having a realistic view of what is managable or relevent for my service or situation.