Most of my face-to-face professional networking happened when I was doing my graduate trainee programme in London a few years ago. We were encouraged to do lots of internal and external training and a number of the events I attended were organised by CILIP and CPD25. These included the 'CILIP Graduate open day', 'CPD25 Applying to study library and information science... and beyond' and a 'CPD25 project planning workshop'. I found all of these events extremely helpful for meeting and talking to other like minded library people, although it wasn't always easy to get the conversation going.
Probably with this in mind, one of the events included a 'Speed Networking' session. Which is pretty much what it says it is. There were 20 or so library professionals and graduates all with different specialties sat at a table each and we were given a few minutes with each person before the bell rang and we moved on to the next!
The idea of this was quite daunting but I found it to be incredibly successful and actually enjoyable. All the uncomfortable introductions and the awkwardness of trying to start a conversation was gone! We knew what we were there for and because of the sheer speed of it you just got to the the point straight away. I took more information and contact details away in an hour than I did in the rest of the days put together.
Our internal LPDP programme included visits to other libraries and archives as well as group sessions to learn about various aspects of library work. Although these sessions weren't specifically designed for their networking purposes, I found that there still were opportunities to meet and talk with others.
Due to my interest in music and audio collections, I was motivated to contact a number of institutions and apply for visits and conferences. The graduate trainee programme supported me in this and as a result I was able to visit the EMI sound archives for a tour and a talk with the manager. I also attended the 'Unlocking Audio 2' conference at the British Library. These two experiences were a particular highlight for me and I made contact with some very interesting people, including a BBC archivist and a developer of an interactive music research interface (co-incidentally from my old university). Through these visits I was offered work experience at the EMI archives and on the music interface.
All of these things showed me just how important face-to-face networking is and it is something I try to keep up with, though it is harder now I am not based in London. I was a member of CILIP whilst a graduate trainee but have not renewed my membership because of the cost. I do frequent the website quite a bit though and keep my eye on potential networking events that are going on.
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