I've had quite an interesting day today.  I volunteered my services to sit on a focus group on Improving our Planning and Performance with my service of Education, Learning and Leisure. Libraries fall into the learning and leisure part and when it comes to planning we don't have a huge amount of dealings with the other departments within our service.  As soon as I signed up for it panic set in as I wondered what I'd done!

So today we had our first meeting today and must say it went very well.  It was great to work with colleagues from other departments and realise when it comes to planning and performance there is quite a lot of common ground.  The tools we use to measure performance and to carry out self evaluation are different but we all have the same problem of being measured by book issues/exam results/bums on seats which really doesn't begin to reflect the service we provide, whether that be in libraries or schools.

The most important thing is the impact we have on peoples lifes.  If we can make a significant difference to 1 person and improve their life for the better then surely we are doing something right and our job is worthwhile.  We need to be concentrating on gathering this evidence as well as the stats than can be generated from our LMS.  In my opinion this type of feedback is far more valuable in justifying our existance and showing just how important libraries are to so many people.

Well Thing #3 is proving to be quite thought provoking.  I have spent a wee bit of time putting in a background and 'playing' with colours but really need to put in longer to get it just how I would like it.  How I brand myself online is not something I have really given much thought to until just now and it's very important.  It's how people will perceive me and how I make my first impression on them, something that I would like to be lasting but for the right reasons!! I'm quite surprised (and worried) this hasn't occured to me before

Over the week I'll spend more time on this and see what I can do, a bit more research is in order I think. 

Right 2nd part of Thing #2 for todays CPD23 is look at other peoples blogs and findout what's out there.  My main discovery has been that my blog looks sooo boring.  Honestly if I wasn't writing it I certainly wouldn't be interested in reading it!

I really need to go find some pictures, add a background and make it look a bit more interesting.  Think this could become my mission for the weekend.  Hopefully the next time you check back my blog may have improved drastically but give me a bit of time, I'm new to this so it could be a struggle!

Ok here goes, my first attempt at blogging!

I'm an Outreach Librarian based in Aberdeenshire and think this might be a good way of reaching those out there to let them know all about library services in rural areas.

I've signed up for CPD23 and this is Thing #1, say why I've signed up.
Well like I said I've never blogged before and reckon its about time I learned.  Bit nervous about the whole thing if I'm honest.  Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll become a bit more confident about it and my blogs will be a bit more interesting than this attempt :)