Yesterday, Charlotte and I were guest speakers on NCompass Live, a free online webinar hosted by the Nebraska Library Commission. The video of the webinar is now available on their website and embedded below.
One of the really interesting things from the discussion was the fact that we've been using some terms that make sense here but don't necessarily translate in other countries. Some examples include CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and Chartership (a qualification award by CILIP, the professional body for librarians and information professionals in the UK). If there are any other terms we use that don't make sense outside of the UK, let us know and we'll pull them together in a blog post.
Thanks for explaining these terms...being from the US, I had been wondering what cpd stood for. I enjoy learning more about what kinds of library organizations exist in other countries, so this program has already been interesting for me!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the webinar, Niamh and Charlotte. Staying on the subject of terminology I did smile when Charlotte mentioned her holiday. I'm employed by a multinational company where US terminology is the norm, and am fond of saying that until I started working here, I had never taken a vacation...
ReplyDeleteI was actually thinking about writing a blog post about these little language barriers, mostly focusing on how cool it is to be part of such a global project. I'm coming across all sorts of fun expressions I can only assume are common in the UK, and I'm sure the UK folks can poke fun at us Americans, too!
ReplyDeleteMay I refer you to the excellent http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/ though as far as I know @lynneguist (her name's Lynne and she's Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Sussex...one of the great punning Twitter usernames) has never covered librarianship vocabulary
ReplyDeleteIn the comments on my own blog for "Thing 2", I was musing about the fact that this is something being followed by librarians/information professionals/library staff (whatever you want to call us) around the world. I hope that I can actually make contact with staff around the world in this profession. It's something (apart from learning about the "things" which I hope to get out of the development.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I know already, a lot of people outside the UK call a LMS an ILS. And don't forget there's not just Americans and English registered with this, there are people in countries where English isn't the primary language...
I'm looking forward to communicating with people outside the UK to gain an understanding of the library world they work in.
Ooh, what does ILS stand for? (I imagine the S is for 'system'?)
ReplyDeleteK.
ILS is Integrated Library System. And LMS is Library Management System? (we use ILS).
ReplyDelete