Professional Registration interview with Maria Nagle

In the second of our series of GKIM Professional Registration interviews, we talk to Maria Nagle. Maria became a Chartered Member of CILIP in 2023. She has worked in the Welsh Government for five years, most of these as Library Collections Manager. Her day-to-day work involves leading on cataloguing Welsh Government publications, collections management projects and LMS oversight. She currently lives in Swansea and has previously worked in public, academic and cathedral libraries.

1. Give us the context of your decision to pursue Professional Registration. What were you hoping to get out of the process?

I signed up for Chartership when I was working in the public libraries sector in 2019 but didn’t get properly started until I started working in Welsh Government in 2020. I’d always intended to embark on the Chartership process – it seemed like a natural next step to take following qualification and embarking on a professional role. In all honesty, I think my decision at the time was probably less what I’d get out of the process and more a way of proving my commitment to the library profession and boosting my CV for potential employers.

 2. How did you decide where to start the process of Professional Registration? Was your journey straightforward, or did it take lots of turns or reach dead ends?

Starting Chartership when I began my role in Welsh Government made sense, as it was a useful opportunity to align the development points in my PKSB with my probation objectives. Although I’d attempted to start the process in my previous role, I hadn’t got anywhere with it, and starting a new job seemed like a good time to have another go. 

It was the perfect opportunity for me, as it helped me reflect on my development throughout the first couple of years in my organisation. It led me to ask questions that I might not have if I hadn’t been undertaking Chartership, such as about my organisation’s aims and objectives. This gave me a better understanding of my organisation and led to some fruitful and illuminating conversations with colleagues at an early stage in my role.  

3. What sources of formal and informal support were most useful to you as you went through the process?

I was lucky to have the support of my workplace when I undertook Chartership and I cannot overemphasise how valuable this was. My line manager provided several development opportunities for me that could be used as evidence for my portfolio, and I was allowed some work time to work on my Chartership submission. I think this is so important, but sadly not available to everyone. Support for the Professional Registration process in the workplace is beneficial not only to the person undertaking it, but to their direct team. The reflection and focus on improvement that it prompts will usually have a direct positive impact on the general work of the team, leading to a mutually beneficial result. 

My mentor was also a great source of support; it was helpful to have someone from a completely different sector to bounce ideas off and keep me honest. I knew that I’d need something to update her on every time we met, so our regular meetings provided a much-needed deadline for me to produce some evidence that I could talk about. While mentors aren’t an essential part of the process now, I’d urge anyone undertaking it to make use of them.

The Professional Registration webinars provided by CILIP were essential support that helped me clarify what type of evidence and reflection was suitable for my Chartership submission. I found myself looking over my notes from these time and time again, as they elucidated exactly what an assessor would be looking for and how best to effectively and succinctly communicate my professional development with the right level of detail. 

4. What tools and techniques did you use to ensure you made steady progress with your portfolio and reflections alongside your work and career? Did anyone else help you with this?

My mentor was very nice and I’m sure would never have chased me up on my portfolio, but I did use my 4-6 weekly meetings with her as a soft deadline to ensure I was making progress with my portfolio. I set myself a couple of final deadlines for when I wanted to have completed and submitted my portfolio – one of these came and went, but I managed to make the other one. All in all, the Chartership process took me about eighteen months. 

A tool I found useful for understanding my progress was keeping track via a simple table, like the one below, which listed my evidence against PKSB areas. This helped me visualise my growing body of evidence, highlight blind spots and helped me track my coverage of the three different criteria areas.

I was lucky enough to have spent a lot of time honing my reflection skills during my time on the Librarianship course in the University of Sheffield and applied these to the Chartership process. Reflective techniques such as the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ structure have helped me move away from pure description in my writing, to a more reflective and productive way of analysing my experiences and learning from them. 

5. Did you obtain what you were hoping to get out of Professional Registration? Were there any other benefits to completing it that you weren't expecting?

Although I was promoted while in the middle of the Chartership process, I’ve stayed in my current role since so haven’t really had the opportunity to see if it has enhanced my CV for potential employers. The process has made me more aware of my own professional development and helped me extract the learning points out of my everyday work – there’s always something new to learn! 

I’ve also become a mentor since chartering and it’s been fascinating to see the process from the other side. Professional Registration can feel overwhelming for anyone as it’s left largely to the person undertaking it to motivate themself and put in place the structures needed for them to develop and complete their development portfolio. Because of this, I believe everyone has a different approach that works for them and this becomes clear when you support others through the same process and see how they tackle things. 

6. Are there any other reflections on the experience or advice for current and future candidates you'd like to share?

There’s plenty of information and resources online about the process. It seems obvious, but the handbook for your level of Professional Registration should be consulted regularly – you’ll pick up on different things in it at each stage as you work through your portfolio. I still consult it regularly as a mentor. 

Criteria 3 is your opportunity to demonstrate that you’re aware of what’s going on outside your library sector – use it! There can be a misconception that you can only gain this experience by going out to conferences, but that’s only one way of gaining experience. Read and comment on books, articles, even films about the library world, or reach out to a local library service and ask if you can arrange a visit. We benefit from working in a sector that values knowledge sharing and relationship building; colleagues are usually happy to take you through their service and what their job entails. Even reflections on chats you’ve had with colleagues can provide fruitful material for reflection on topics of current interest.

Don’t be disheartened if you hit bumps in the road, or the process takes longer than you anticipated. Life will take over sometimes, and you may find there are long periods where you don’t make progress. Slow and steady is usually the best way; too much pressure to get lots done quickly may not work anyway, as the process is more about charting your progress over a period of time. Your portfolio is all about you and it’s worth taking the time to make sure that it reflects this.

Thanks to Maria for sharing her experience of and thoughts on the Chartership process as well as her advice for candidates. If you’ve achieved FCLIP, MCLIP or ACLIP, work as an information or knowledge professional in national libraries, government or defence, and would like to share your thoughts on the experience, email Naeem Yar to participate as a Prof Reg interviewee.