Who done it murder mystery

What happened to poor George Hargraves? He was found strangled in his bedroom. Who committed this terrible crime? This is ladies and gentlemen, a sombre occasion.

Not a real mystery, but one concocted by crime writer, Martin Edwards. A mystery with four possible suspects for the audience to play detective and work out who is the killer.

 The four suspects were very abley played by library staff of our local public library, who read out their statements. Finally, the possible solutions on paper were collected from the audience and after an interval, 3 winners emerged, each winning 3 copies of Martin Edwards’ crime novels.

 This Victorian murder mystery evening was a lively event taking place in the local public library as part of the National Year of Reading. This iniative aims to encourage people of all ages and abilities to read more. Such an event illustrates how public libraries are not always ’stuffy’ places but they can engage people in fun and brain-teasing activities and encourage reading at the same time.

Career Development Group talk

I attended a Career Development Group (CDG) AGM and talk last week. The event kicked off with a brief summary of the centenary of the CDG.

 The main speaker, Rowena Macrae – Gibson, current CDG President, wasn’t able to come as the high winds and delayed trains had meant she had had to return to London. Thankfully, she had passed the presentation slides to 2 members of our CDG, who made an excellent job of presenting her 10 top tips for CDG.

There was plenty of ideas here and covered a range of topics such as further professional reading; networking and even volunteering. Volunteering is a good way of gaining experience in library and information work, in particular after qualifying, before getting that elusive first job. One point that came across very strongly was the need to go outside your comfort zone and try out new skills; an example of this could be looking for an opportunity to be a treasurer of a committee, if you are currently lacking budgeting and financial skills.

 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is also about giving something back to the profession and one way of doing this could be to mentor someone, once you have chartered. One of the most useful slides I found was skills for all which covered anything from time management to design and marketing skills – I must make sure I get a copy of this!

Afterwards there was ample opportunity to circulate and network with other people attending the event. One person I spoke to works for a local mining insitute and talking to her, I learnt about the varied stock she manages of rare books and other old material. One of the challenges she faces is how to learn more about copyright when dealing with some of this material. I suggested that she contact the lis-link discussion list about copyright as sometimes there are very knowledgeable people on copyright, who contribute to this list.

 Overall, a useful training day with plenty of ideas to ponder over and some to implement. All I need to do now is get cracking!