Editorial
This is the first issue from a new editorial team, and as such we thought it fitting to give thanks to the outgoing team first of all. The role of Honorary Editor is a demanding one, involving a wide range of skills including manipulation of electronic documents, liaison with contributors and printers, and control of style and layout. Whereas other
National Officers usually have a little flexibility with their deadlines, the publication date of Impact is fixed well in advance and editors must have excellent time management skills to juggle their role with work and other commitments. The previous editors, Isabel Hood and Christopher Cipkin have both been studying for part-time degrees during their editorship, but every issue has been published on time and to a consistently high quality. Impact is a journal of which the Group is rightly very proud, and Isabel and Christopher have done a remarkable job in maintaining the high standard of contributions and ensuring that it fulfils its role of
communicating with members, attracting
articles from both grass-roots level and from established influential figures in the profession. We would like to give thanks to them both, and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
We have devoted the majority of this issue of Impact to the theme of sectoral diversity. Information work is such a varied career and there are many paths to choose from, both when starting out and also as one's career develops. It is now as commonplace for information professionals to work in various sectors over the years, as it is to work in one sector. And yet there still remain perceptions that it is difficult to change sectors, particularly the further up the career ladder one goes. Carol Dye's article should go some way to countering this, as she reviews a varied and challenging career history of moving between sectors.
Many of you will just be starting out in your information careers and may have experience of only one sector, or may have yet to choose the sector in which you would like to work. With this in mind, we have put together a series of short articles on various different sectors in which information professionals work, written by individuals working in those sectors. this feature grew out of one of the talks at the Career Development Groups's highly successful annual Student Conference held this year at Birmingham's Aston University in March. This issue also includes a review of that conference from Ros Best, a
current LIS student who attended, and a feature by Alex Wilson-Campbell from Sue Hill Recruitment, who delivered a talk on selling yourself on paper and in person.
Finally, Tom Relph, the outgoing Honorary Learning Co-ordinator (and current Vice President of the Group) looks at the Qualifications Consultation which CILIP recently undertook, and outlines the Group response to this review, one of the most fundamental changes in recent years to continuing professional development in the information world.
We hope you enjoy this first issue from the new editorial team, and remember - as a member of the Career Development Group, this is your journal - if you would like to contribute an article for publication, please contact us at
editor@careerdevelopmentgroup.co.uk.
Alana Macmillan
Joanne Kilgannon
Joint Honorary Editors
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