On Friday 27^th July 2018 I headed out to the South Wales Miners’ Library at the Hendrefoelan Campus, Swansea University to attend the CILIP organised professional registration and mentoring workshop.

The workshop was run by CILIP Development Officer (VLE) Juanita Foster-Jones and was broken up into five clear areas:

• Getting started
• The CILIP Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB)
• Developing yourself and collecting evidence
• Assembling your portfolio
• Submitting

Having initially registered to undertake Chartership in the 1990s when submission was paper based and (if I remember correctly) a 5,000 word essay, I did need a refresher.  I had expected those attending to be new professionals just starting out on their professional registration journey but librarians at all stages of their career were present. As a result, advice was given to candidates looking to register at each of the three levels (Certification, Chartership and Fellowship) and for all three you need to complete the following steps:

• Undertake a personal skills audit
• Work with a mentor
• Develop a portfolio of evidence
• Provide a reflective 1000 word statement

I attended the workshop ahead of enrolling for Professional Registration on the CILIP website as being a career break librarian I wasn’t entirely sure which level was right for me. I wasn’t alone. An enrolled Certificate candidate realised they were eligible for Chartership and a possible Chartership registration realised they were probably Fellowship!

I don’t wish to spend lots of time exploring the value of Chartership to career break librarians at this stage. Though carrying out Chartership or Revalidation is certainly a good mechanism to update professional skills. Undertaking the process and achieving a successful outcome should bring confidence and it may be possible to assess your career options. Suffice to say I hope that this may provide me with a decent framework to assess my skill set and reflect on my practice at a rather important step in my personal return journey.  Ahead of the selection process, I welcome the opportunity to have the support of a mentor and look forward to connecting with them and seeing what advice they have. I’m also interested to see if my use of the PKSB will help me identify the skills and knowledge that will sustain a career and not just one job. Finally, the workshop itself provided a networking opportunity with some attendees tweeting about their experiences of the workshop and their hopes for Chartership online (#chartership).

So my advice, try to find out if a professional registration workshop is taking place near you and book your place!