Paul Tovell

I am an enthusiastic and highly motivated chartered librarian with experience in public, academic and health libraries. I am interested in the reader experience in libraries, the use of social networking to market libraries, information retrieval, libraries and learning especially through mobile technology, managing teams of people and resources to create a highly efficient and popular library service, promoting reader development to all, mentoring and training people to develop their careers.

Key Achievements

- I am the recipient of the CILIP First-Timer grant to attend IFLA's World Library and Information Congress in Singapore in August 2013.
See http://www.cilip.org.uk/news-media/Pages/news130501b.aspx

- I have created a strong reading culture at Burton Library through developing events like the Reading Cafe, a series of successful author visits, and a newsletter about reading.

- I have mentored three chartership candidates and one certification candidate to successful completion of their qualifications first time, and organised two Managing Your Career conferences in the region.

- I lead on Facebook and social media across Staffordshire Libraries, and regularly deliver presentations to a wide range of client groups about our libraries' offer.

- In previous roles, I contributed to the success of Nottinghamshire's National Year of Reading by creating reader development sessions for children which increased boys' loans by 30% on the previous year. I came up with the idea for promoting reading on the local train line which made local TV news and for which I won a local award. I edited and published a local studies book in just 13 months with a specially-formed local history group.