Friday 17 December 2010

First experience giving a talk - UC&R group/University of Leicester

I gave a talk at a Careers Development Day for Library Assistants at the University of Leicester on the 8th December.

Back in the summer in the weeks leading up to starting my first qualified role there was an email on the LIS list asking for thoughts on topics to be covered at a careers development day for library assistants looking to make the transition to professional roles. In a moment of bravery/madness I responded and offered to be a case study whilst pointing out that I can't necessarily claim to have successfully made the transition successfully as I wasn't yet in post! When I was asked if I would speak I was surprised, but pleased.

My talk started with mentioning my background (briefly) and pointing out that I had only recently made the transition. I then spoke about the MSc process: the importance of building a network particularly with those in other sectors, pursuing scholarship money, and what a great opportunity the dissertation is to gain other skills (interviewing etc) and to research something related to your future career.

I went on to speak about how to research roles that would interest you, and to identify gaps in your own experience, skill set or education that are preventing you from being in that role already. I suggested: cataloguing, budget management, staff management and teaching/presentation skills. Once these gaps have been identified, one can look for creative ways to gain these types of skills and experience - I described how I was given the opportunity to develop a Student Volunteer programme which gave me staff management experience and suggested looking for similar projects that benefit your organisation and service users as well as give you the opportunity to develop. I also suggested asking to join committees, steering groups etc and take extra responsibilites such as health and safety or first aid.

I then spoke about the importance of professional networking; being involved with CILIP, UC&R, blogging, tweeting, going to lectures, training courses, conferences, doing professional reading and looking at chartering. All the fun things that you don't have time to do once you get a professional role!

I went on to speak about being ambitious in applying for jobs, and giving it a go even if you don't have all the criteria on the Person Spec. I spoke about the importance of being sure you actually want the job before you apply or interview to save wasting everyone's time, and to think of your USP and reiterate it to yourself. I then spoke briefly about interviews: being honest and saying 'I would..' when asked a question where you can't speak from experience, thinking of good examples from managers that you have had and always being positive. I spoke about the types of experience that you may have at interview: tasks with groups, being with the other candidates all day and doing presentations.

Finally, I gave a few thoughts on when you do find yourself in your first professional role: working on your networks, asking for support both internally and externally, asking questions and showing interest and understanding in other departments, being the manager that got the best out of you and inspiring others.

I think the talk went fairly well. The feedback forms for the whole day were positive. I stayed for the rest of the day to join in with some of the workshop sessions which I feel was productive in terms of getting people talking rather than giving my own opinions/experiences.

On the whole it was a really good experience and I'm glad I did it. I think that having done induction sessions at the start of term I wasn't so phased by speaking to a roomful of people as I would have been a year ago.

Learning Resource Managers meeting for East of England FE colleges

Held at ACER on 19 November 2010

We started by each Learning Resource Centre Manager giving a brief report on what is happening in their college. The common themes were:
  • restructuring/redundancies/doing more with less staff
  • budget freezes
  • increase in delivering/supervising classes
  • promoting e-books and e-resources
  • library refurbishments
  • safeguarding and encouraging student to wear ID cards

It was really useful and reassuring to see that my experiences are mirrored by other LRC Managers and to discuss ideas and strategies both formally as a group and in small groups during tea and lunch.

Elaine Salter from the University of Westminster gave a talk about how they have established roving. It was interesting to hear how roving combats feelings of library anxiety in students. It was also interesting to hear the process of how roving was introduced to staff and how not all staff were required to rove, as some staff are better suited to back room tasks. I'd like to see how roving works in practice. I've heard of there being two seperate teams on the floor - one roving and one behaviour managing - signified by different coloured t-shirts. Unfortunately I don't have anything like the amount of staff to achieve this.

Monday 6 September 2010

First day of term

We've been in the newly refurbished LRC for a week now. We're still ironing out little problems but we are just about there. My new part time member of staff has joined the team now which has allowed me to sort out rotas etc. Thankfully she is lovely and has lots of experience so she's been able to hit the ground running to some extent.

Last week was admin week so I had the chance to meet lots of the teaching staff as they called in to see how the refurb went. I've also been into two team meetings to promote the LRC, discuss the Independent Learning Sessions and the inductions. Speaking to a group of teachers is a bit nerve-wracking (as they are the experts at speaking to a group!) but I'm getting more comfortable with it.

The inductions have been fully planned and discussed with my team. The first sessions will be run tomorrow morning. The Independent Learning Sessions are also starting to take shape which is pleasing. They will begin running next Monday, I'm sure it'll be trial and error but the purpose and real value of them is becoming clearer which makes it easier to get teaching staff on board and to work out how to measure it.

It has all been somewhat overwhelming but exciting. I've had a lot to do but I'm making good progress and forming good relationships with other departments which is helping. That said, things can always be worse. I came in to college last Friday thinking 'my god, I've got so much to do, how will I cope?' and by lunchtime we were informed that Ofsted are coming in three weeks. So I've now got that to anticipate and prepare for.

I've been a bit negligent with Twitter and my RSS feeds while all this has been going on. I went back on today and am so impressed to see that in a week the need for action over the crisis in misrepresentation of public libraries has gone from a discussion to a campaign. I have so much respect for those who have taken the time to put together Voices for the Library. I'd love to get involved once I'm on the other side of Ofsted.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

This week and last I've been following the newspaper articles in defense of public libraries by Lauren Smith in the Guardian and in The Independent. And screaming inside at the amount of commenters pointing out that we don't need libraries as we have Google and that all librarians do is stamp books so surely volunteers can do that. Many of the Library Twitterati have posted succinctly replying to the comments so I shalln't waste my time engaging in this too much.

I do find it ironic that these comments have been made in the weeks of A'Level and GCSE results (and the usual 'standards are slipping' debates) and public outcry over the numbers of students unable to get university places. Public libraries are a place where you can learn for free. They are also a place that will help you with your resits, your job based learning, your job/uni applications, your gap year plans and so on. But then I guess you can do all that on Google. If you have a computer. And internet access. And the skills to find, use and evaluate web based sources. Anyway, I wasn't going to entertain this!

Thursday 19 August 2010

Rebranding

As part of our refurbishment that I've spoken about over the last few weeks, we are rebranding the 'Library' into an 'LRC' with me being a 'LRC Manager' whereas my predecessor was the 'College Librarian'.
I've often felt somewhat cynical about this sort of exercise. As noted in Andy Priestner's blog this week, there is a cycle of changing from a Library to an Information Centre/Learning Resource Centre then back again, then back again again! I could see myself in 7-10 years doing a rebrand back to a library, if the HE sector is anything to go by.
On a practical level, there is plenty of work to do. All leaflets, stationery, intranet pages, policies, staff manuals, signs, posters and anything else that I've not thought of yet is being rebranded and rewritten.
In our case there is meaning behind the rebrand, as the space's purpose is changing massively. We are going to have Level 2 and 3 classes timetabled in to the LRC for much of the day, whereas previously the Library was solely a drop in space. The Library Assistants are now LRC Support Tutors and their job description is a hybrid between an LA role and a Learning Mentor with the emphasis on time with classes over traditional LA duties. We are also starting using self issue which is hoped to free up staff from being on the issue desk.
It's a good time for me to start working here during the rebrand as it means that changes can be introduced as part of an overall change which I hope will be easier for users.
I will still use both 'LRC' and 'Library' interchangeably in conversation but will only use LRC in written communication. And will always see myself as a librarian even though I am called an LRC Manager. Personally I see librarianship/information management as being the overarching profession (e.g. medicine) even though my specific role within it is as an LRC Manager (e.g. Consultant Paedeatric Surgeon).

Friday 13 August 2010

Good progress.

That seems to have been my catchphrase this week, I've said it to my LRC Support Tutor (the term we are using for Library Assistants) as we left almost every day. A lot has been sorted out but I still have to do lists long enough to need indexes!

I started the week off meeting with the Finance team to learn their systems. I felt the weight of my new budget holding responsibilities. I spent the rest of the day cataloguing, completing the policy for Independent Learning Sessions (a new initiative where each Level 2 and 3 class will have an hour week in the LRC supported by LRC staff) and creating lists of recommended websites for leaflets.

Tuesday was a dark day. I spent much of it wading through spreadsheets to try to understand my budget codes, and wading through processes and piles of paperwork. I also put in my first book order. Due to the refurb we are installed in a classroom at the moment, so not only am I learning new processes but I'm learning them outside of their natural habitat. To be honest it all got a bit much. Although, I also had a long chat with my former boss/mentor which was lovely, I still went home with the hump.

Wednesday was a new day! To start the day the LRC team were trained on the new printer/photocopier (the same model is already used elsewhere in the college). In the process of this print services reiterated their concern that the new printer won't fit in the space allocated to it in the new LRC. Worrying. Later I got a call that the mobile shelving was completed, so went along to the LRC with the H&S manager, refurb project manager and Head of Estates to have a demo and sign it off. It was the first time I'd been in the LRC since starting work here and it looks fantastic! There was a bit of squealing via the Twitter! In fact other staff saw how excited I was and the words 'sad' and 'geeks' were used. But then they haven't seen the shelves. In the afternoon my predecessor came in to answer my queries on the handover notes and other paperwork which was great and alleviated much of what was troubling me on Tuesday.

On Thursday I got IT to start the process of rebranding the libr.. sorry I mean LRC intranet pages. One of my team is working on typing up the corrections and reformatting the leaflets that need to be ready for induction and for uploading on the webpages. I spent much of the morning sorting out odds and ends that came up out of meeting with my predecessor yesterday. In the afternoon I had my official welcome from The Principal, although she has called in to visit a few times already. She's a big library advocate and has been very involved in the refurb. I then did some more work on our induction material, it's really coming together.

This morning I started by nagging IT a bit about the webpages. met with Print Services to look at the proposed printer space, and we feel confident it should fit, phew! I then met with Health and Safety to discuss risk assessments and potential problems on the horizon with the new shelving. the H&S manager said that he was surprised when he met me as he thought I'd be an older lady! This was partly a librarian stereotype and partly because of the degrees after my name. I was wearing a cardi, what more do people want? This afternoon I finally met with the head of IT who answered my questions. However he did say that there was a potential problem with the new monitors arriving, but we still *should* have them in time for the start of the new term.

As you can see it's been a pretty quiet week! I think I'm starting to get used to the commute too. Next week is our last week before the LRC is put back together so I want to get all the induction materials and leaflets finalised and the intranet pages as complete as possible. I also need to think of names for the bays in the LRC. At the moment they are down as Green 1, Green 2, Grey 1 and Grey 2. As I tweeted, I've been thinking about authors, local birds, or perhaps local well known people, can I get away with a Syd Barrett Bay?!

Friday 6 August 2010

First week in first qualified job!

After the long process of interviews and seemingly endless applications here I am in my first qualified job as the LRC manager of a regional college in Cambridgeshire.

The first week has gone well. I had a hand over session with my predecessor a few weeks before starting, so I had the chance to do (lots of prep) at home of an evening and weekend. I came in on my first day with many pages of to do lists and lists of questions that I've slowly worked my way through.

As well as grappling with the usual new job business of learning names, procedures, a new LMS (AutoLib) these are the major challenges I'm facing at the moment:
  • Refurbishment. We are half way through a refurbishment at the moment. I met with the project manager earlier this week and it's all looking good to get the LRC ready for the start of term. At the moment we are temporarily installed in a classroom.
  • Change of use of LRC within the organisation. The library has been rebranded as an LRC, the major impact of which is that from September level 2 and 3 classes will be timetabled in for one session a fortnight of independent learning supervised by LRC staff. Therefore I need to get a procedure in place to make sure things run smoothly. This also means rebranding all leaflets, webpages etc. As part of this the Library Assistants were given redundancy notices and a new role of LRC Support Tutor was created which leads me to..
  • New staff. I manage 3 LRC Support Tutors, 1 full time, 2 part time. Only 1 of the part timers are existing staff. In a way this is good as it means we can develop the new service together rather than having staff who are stuck in their ways. However, being told on my first day that I have to train new staff immediately when I wasn't expecting them for a month wasn't ideal. Especially when we aren't even in the LRC.
  • Responsibility. I haven't been a budget holder before which is a little daunting, but I have a meeting on Monday to get fully up to speed on it.
  • The commute. I now have a commute of 3 to 3 and a half hours a day round trip whereas my last job was 20 minutes up the road. I'm enjoying having time to get reading done and trying to see it positively. We plan to relocate soon so it's only a temporary situation.
  • Inductions. My predecessor had been in post since 1976, and didn't leave any induction materials as she did it off the top of her head. This leaves me creating induction materials for an LRC that I haven't worked in yet and that is currently gutted.

Plenty to keep me out of trouble then! Exciting times ahead.

Thursday 29 July 2010

Child Protection workshop

I recently went to a child protection and safeguarding workshop. I work in a sixth form so up to the age of 18 students are covered by child protection legislation, we also have a large number of disabled students who when they turn 18 would be classified as vulnerable adults. We discussed a variety of issues relating to what to do if a student approaches us to disclose something or if we overhear something which concerns us.

Part of the training covered protecting ourselves as professionals. Most of it is common sense but it doesn't hurt to hear it again, especially as budget cuts increase the potential for lone working. It is important to avoid being alone with a student, and if you have to be then to keep the door open or sit in a part of the room where you are visible.

The workshop covered recommending websites to students. There was an example given of a teacher who recommended a site to a student, the student viewed it at home without the web restrictions on school computers and clicked through an advert, another click, another click and hit porn. The teacher was suspended, then reinstated but the parent went to the local paper. The teacher left the profession. I spoke to the workshop leader afterwards and explained that as librarians we recommend websites and e-resources, and we can't be help accountable for the fact that any web user is always only a few clicks from something inappropriate! She suggested that we cover ourselves by recommending websites through leaflets or letters with the college logo on them and include a disclaimer along the lines of 'The content of external sites is not the responsibility of the college. Please report any bad links to LRC staff.' We do this already, so that was reassuring. Personally I'm planning on taking the extra precaution of checking all websites at home before recommending them to students.

We also discussed the need for caution in communicating with students, avoiding ever calling, texting students or emailing them personally as messages could be misconstrued. This is pertinent for those coming from other sectors, where for example calling a user to say their reservation had arrived would be seen as fantastic customer service.

Sunday 18 July 2010

Higher education blueprint

Last week's higher education blueprint proposes higher earning graduates paying a graduate tax to replace tuition fees and fund degrees, the privitisation of some universities and allowing failing universities to fail.

The idea of paying a higher tax seems punitive and a possible barrier to social mobility. Higher earners pay higher taxes anyway. Also, it is unclear whether this system will only be for home students, I presume that international students will still pay fees as they won't necessarily be in the UK to pay the taxes, but how will it work for students who emigrate once they've completed their courses? There is already a problem of talent in fields such as science leaving the UK for better research grants and jobs. Would there be seperate taxes for undergrad, postgrad etc?

It is positive that there is talk of forgetting the New Labour target of half the country being graduates. I have spent the last 4 years working in sixth forms and universities. I have often felt uncomfortable with the drive to get students into university regardless of whether it is the right thing for them. I worry about the students who don't have GCSEs, are heavily supported throughout a BTEC and get into university. Do they access the support they need, rise to the challenge and complete their courses or do they struggle and leave with debts and a negative experience of education? Going to university is seen as the norm, and that if you can go then you should. I have had frequent discussions with a Learning Mentor colleague of mine about how pushing students to university seems to be a misinterpretation of the Every Child Matters goal of having ambition for every child. For some students an ambitious target is to get to a working level of literacy or to make positive personal choices around safe sex or gangs, and those achievements should be acknowledged as being as valuble to the individual as another student's place at Cambridge is to them.

I'm aware of my own position in discussing this. I've completed three degrees and am passionate about lifelong learning. I'm not suggesting that people should be prevented from furthering their education. I simply feel that we should make sure that people are making the right choices and have the right skills so that they are able to get the most out of it.


Anyway, enough of my recurring ideological struggle! I'll be interested to see the detail in these proposals and follow what happens next.

Saturday 17 July 2010

Changing standards and the future of cataloguing in UK HE libraries

This week I went to this event put on jointly by the University College & Research group (UC&R) and the Cataloguing & Indexing group (C&I) at CILIP Headquarters.

Firstly, the food was fantastic. CILIP have really stepped things up: parma ham, mozzerella and tomato salad, lovely. Sadly this was the only tweet I sent from the event because my mobile's IE was being lame.

The first talk was 'DDC23 Standard on the horizon' by Caroline Kent from the British Library and Chair of the DDC Editorial Policy Committee. The CILIP DDC committee is a group of volunteers who reread the editors' new DDC schedules which are published every 7 years to reflect the significant changes in the world of knowledge. With the increasing use of WebDewey this work cycle may change, as it allows for more regular updates. There is debate as to how often WebDewey should be updated, to ensure that users get regular updates without disrupting their work (for example if you half catalogued an item and returned to it the following day to find the schedule changed!) Caroline suggested that beyond DDC23 the print edition may be viewed as being in support of WebDewey, although the printed schedule will always be important as WebDewey is expensive and not all libraries who use Dewey have consistent access to computers.

Caroline spoke about the international use of Dewey (Dewey is used in 130 countries, there are 20 official translations). Translations give the opportunity to enrich areas of the schedule, for example expanding areas of local history and geography although we would be unlikely to need them in the UK (unless we were working in a very specialised collection on, say, Swedish History). An area of discussion within the translations has been archaeology and ancient history (930 and 940), as it reflects the world known to the Romans, so it doesn't include for example Poland as the Romans never went to Poland. The translations aren't identical but they do match which allows a user to find their relevant section in an unfamilar collection or a foreign land. I experienced this myself when I was visiting libraries in Australia.

I have used Dewey for years in various workplaces and really enjoy the discussions around its use and how the schedule changes. Caroline spoke about how old knowledge is removed, for example how within Home and Family Management they have recently removed children's games that no longer exist. They are always careful to use generic terms rather than trademarks which can be difficult for example around computing. A hot debate in the production of DDC23 was around changes to Table 1 from 'Kinds Of Persons' to 'Groups of People', as sociologically speaking a group is seen as self selecting.

The second talk was by Alan Danskin, the British Library's Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator and the chair of the C&I group. His talk was on 'Changing standards: from AACR2 to RDA'. RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the successor to AACR2 as of June 2010. RDA was designed for the digital world, and as such handles a variety of media and offers a less cluttered display. It handles granularity well and maps to other schemes (Dublin Core, MARC21 etc).


It was a great evening and reminded me of one of my favourite library quotes:
"Librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession." (Kephart 1890).

As always, it was great to meet with other professionals and network, although I had to verbally tender my resignation from the UC&R London chapter committee as I am relocating for my new job. When I am settled I hope to get involved with special interest groups, although CoFHE might be more appropriate than UC&R, we'll see who'll have me! In the meanwhile I will continue to follow UC&R's work and to keep in touch with the colleagues I have met through it.

Friday 25 June 2010

First Professional Role and A Good Week

I have good news to share. After three job interviews over the last two months since returning from Australia, I have now accepted my first professional role as LRC manager at an FE college in Cambridgeshire! I will be starting in early August. I'm not sure how this will impact my Chartership as my proposed hand in date is now looking a bit ambitious, especially as I'll have a bit of a commute until we are able to move house.
The college I'm moving to is going through a major library refurb this summer, in order to put in a lot more computers. From September there will be classes in the library at all times which will be supervised and motivated by LRC staff. This will be great in terms of promoting Information Skills by stealth! The pay off is that they've decided to put all of their books into rolling stacks to make space for these computers. I'm a little concerned that this may marginalise the use of the books, so I'm going to have to work hard and get creative to promote them. They have a very well developed VLE and e-book collection which is part of the reason they are doing this.
I'm really going to miss my current workplace. I really like the students and couldn't be happier with my manager. She's been a real mentor to me and I'll definitely be keeping in touch. But unfortunately the downside of working in a small school is that there are less opportunities for progression which is why I'm moving on.

The job interviews I had were really fun actually. I've delivered classes, done presentations and roleplays, and been interviewed by a student council who wanted to know what piece of cutlery I'd be and who I would be in Stars in their Eyes! (A spoon and Edith Piaf, for those curious).
All of the interviews were whole day events, where you spend a lot of time with the other candidates. This was interesting. At best I was meeting other professionals (I ended swapped email addresses with someone I was meant to be competing with!), at worst I saw the lousy side of human nature (another candidate trying to psyche me out with 'gosh aren't you young to be here?' comments).

This week I delivered two Information Skills lessons to AS English Literature classes as part of their progression to A2. It was for the module War and the Individual which was ideal as I read a lot of history and war fiction. It went really well and I'm pretty pleased with myself as my new job will involve a lot more working with classes than my current role. However, it made me realise how much I'm really going to miss some of the teachers and the strong links I've made with departments.

Today is BTEC hand in day, and I've spent quite a bit of time one-on-one with students helping them finish their work. The amount of cut and pasting is worrying. I wish there was more uptake from the departments for Information Skills sessions during the year. I feel like what I'm doing today is just making sure that they don't get done for plagiarism rather than giving them skills.

In other good news, my colleague that I've been tutoring who is doing the same MSc that I did has passed her second semester. I'm really happy for her as I know she was worried, and I hope that my efforts have helped. I'm quite jealous of her at the moment because her dissertation is really interesting.

Friday 18 June 2010

CILIP Professional Futures and Newsnight

It's rubbish being so busy because I keep drafting blog posts and not finishing them and by the time I get back to them the 'latest debate' is a bit stale! Anyway, here's a few things that have been on my mind the last few weeks...

Last week I finally completed the CILIP Defining Our Professional Future Survey. I was a bit late doing it because I've been busy out and about defining my personal professional future (more of that soon).


What will the knowledge and information sector look like in 2020?I agree with most of what has already been blogged on the subject, specifically from Joeyanne and Bethan. I agree with Bethan's thoughts on increased convergence. As information professionals we are already converged, for example the convergence between subject specific knowledge and information skills. In my sector I am seeing more job descriptions that require not only a library qualification but also a teaching qualification, and ideally a careers guidance qualification. In terms of my professional development I look both at library organisations and education organisations (such as Institute for Learning), my professional reading reflects both of these things as does where I look at job vacancies.

On the whole I don't feel too convinced with CILIP's advocacy and representation of the profession and that really was my conclusion to the Big Conversation. The Newsnight business was concerning, especially when I read on Ned Potter's blog that CILIP were unable to send someone on to Newsnight at short notice. For me a big part of The Big Conversation, my chartership and my professional future is focussed around developing teaching and presentation skills, something that is daunting but I know that I must be able to get up and speak to a group of people. Going up against Paxman is nothing compared to putting yourself in front of a classful of disinterested 17 year olds! Anyway, I've come to the debate late so I won't say anymore but I hope that lessons have been learnt from it.

My own experiences of CILIP have been very positive. I loved Umbrella and feel quite passionate about being part of a professional body. That said, my colleague who is currently at library school is very negative about joining, as are much of her cohort. Maybe CILIP is getting a bit complacent about attracting members who are joining the profession especially as job descriptions get wider and they face steeper competition from other organisations (IFL, SLA, BCS etc).

Wednesday 2 June 2010

A rather reticent reflection on my current job situation

I have been encouraged by both my Chartership mentor and my manager to reflect and blog about my current job title/description situation. I am somewhat reluctant about doing this.

I completed my MSc in September 2009 and began looking for qualified jobs a few months before completing the course. The job market was pretty flat at the time. I interviewed for a Library Manager role but didn't get it as I didn't have enough experience. However, they offered me an LRC Assistant role which I accepted.

I've been extremely lucky in this role because my manager has been a mentor to me. She always looks for ways to expand my role, allows me to develop my own ideas and champions CPD. I'm so grateful for this as it's allowed me to improve my skills and to learn about effective management styles. My day to day work resembles that of an Assistant Librarian/Deputy Manager. In a lot of respects I am very happy in my role. Our students are great, the organisation as a whole is great, my manager is great, I feel appreciated and valued... thus my reticence to blog about this as I certainly don't want to seem ungrateful!

However, the cold hard fact remains that on my CV I am in effectively the same role (LRC Assistant) that I have been in since 2005. Almost a year after qualifying this is not ideal for me.

Regrading me in my current role would be difficult. Firstly the climate of cutbacks at the moment has affected our institute, secondly it would leave a top heavy team structure of Manager - Assistant Manager - LRC Assistant. Also, I'm not sure if regrading would be just to improve my own situation rather than reflect what the organisation needs which is why I'm not keen to ask for it as I don't want to be selfish!

Speaking to other librarians, some have said that it doesn't really matter what you are called rather it is what you do and that this shouldn't affect my chances of getting a professional role in the future. The fact that I am chartering at the moment also supports the fact that I am doing professional work in a para-professional role. Having completed the MSc there is certainly a pressure to find a qualified job to justify the time, sweat and expense of the course. But that said, we all see management jobs that don't require a LIS qualification anyway and wonder if this is the future?

Friday 14 May 2010

My week

I've been feeling a bit down the last few days. On Wednesday I had a job interview for a School Librarian position that I didn't get.
The interview itself was really interesting as it involved a student panel and running an activity with a group of Year 7 and 8 students. The aim of the activity was to get them talking about books, so I set a task of matching up a paragraph from inside a book with the synopsis on the back of the book, working in groups of 3. This worked well as it got them talking about why we have the back of book text, how representative it is of the book etc. However, I could see at 4 mins into the 15 mins time slot that they were almost finished. I thought on my feet and asked them to then decide on a book in their groups that they have all read and write a 'back of book' for it. We then fed back to the group and discussed whether it sold the book, whether it gave too much info, who else had read the book etc. I'm really pleased that the task went well, as a year ago I wouldn't have had the confidence to do it. I wouldn't describe myself as a natural in front of a class but with practise I'm getting better. On reflection, the interview was definitely a good experience and has given me the confidence to keep applying.

This week we've been short staffed so I'm still working on the Careers Books cataloguing. The Careers Advisor brought me a second crate this week that I wasn't expecting. I've been working on my Chartership PPDP this week as I wanted to submit a draft of it to my mentor by the middle of May.
I also had a big meeting about the Ghana links project with Senior Management and Teachers Without Borders, and I managed to attend our in-house British Sign Language course for the first time in a few months. We learnt countries this week, which I have studied before, so I had a strange moment of doing a Nazi salute in the workplace as we discussed the positive effects of political correctness on BSL!

Saturday 8 May 2010

Library Tourism Down Under

Last month we went to Australia on holiday. As a good librarian and tourist my first port of call in each location was the major libraries.

In Melbourne we visited the State Library of Victoria reference library on Swanston Street.



The La Trobe reading room







Redmond Barry Reading Room



After Melbourne, and a day on the beach, we arrived in Canberra and visited the National Library of Australia.



The Reading Room



They had a really interesting exhibition about The Dunera Boys.

We then had a bit more beach time before we got to Sydney. Sydney's major library is the State Library of New South Wales. It was undergoing some building work while we were there so wasn't quite as impressive as I'm sure it usually is.



The Mitchell Library Reading Room is being restored at the moment which was a shame, this is the reading room that is open at current.



We were stranded in Sydney for an extra week due to the ash cloud. A few days before we flew we were told we'd be stuck for months so I was planning on seeing if I could do some volunteering at the library. Fortunately it didn't come to that.

Each of these libraries had fantastic shops that made me wish I had a greater baggage allowance. I stocked up on novels while I was there as I'm finding Australian fiction poorly represented on the London Libraries Consortium Catalogue. I like to read about a destination before and after visiting to make the holiday feeling last longer. I particularly like Tim Winton and Helen Garner.

Australia has a real reading culture, in there are book shops and libraries everywhere. For example, in Canberra we went to use a laundrette in a suburb precinct and there were 4 places to buy books out of about 40 retail units. I really miss that about England, or more specifically London. and have particularly felt the lack of bookshops since Borders closed.

Thursday 6 May 2010

Careers books cataloguing

I've got quite a nice project this week: cataloguing a delivery of new books for our Careers Adviser. It's nice to have the opportunity to engage with other departments and is always good to show willing and show the LRC's worth!
In doing this I've been looking at the Connexions Resource Centre Index which our Careers Department use. It is a fairly basic system made up of symbols which are stuck on the spine of the book (we have decided not to use Dewey as the collection is fairly small). The General Information section of the index includes 11 headings such as Travel and Transport, Relationships, Health and Work and Training. The Work and Training section is broken into 23 main job families which each have their own sticker. The way that they have classified jobs into each family is quite interesting. In case you're wondering, us librarians are under 'Languages, Information and Culture'.

In other cross-department collaborations, last week I was invited to see the BTEC Business Studies students market research presentations as some students had done their projects on the LRC. It was really interesting to hear their take on things and one student in particular had some useful points. As she is one of our Student Assistants she may have had inside information but I still told her teacher how impressed I was. On the plus side, the main finding was that we need more computers, which we had already ordered.

P.S. I know it's been a while since my last post. I've not been slacking, I've been stuck in Australia due to the volcanic ash. More about that later..

Friday 26 March 2010

Cataloguing donated Granta magazines

This week we were lucky enough to receive some donated Granta magazines. Due to the value of these items we want to make them issuable like books rather than Reference only magazines.

Classifying these has been interesting as they could fit in several shelf marks. For example Issue 101 could fit under: 828 (English miscellaneous writings) or 320 (Politics) or 070 (Journalism)or at a push under 770 (Photography) as they includes photo essays, or even under Fiction, although I am loathe to put anything with factual content under Fiction.

Considering our collection and user group (and knowledge of where our heaving shelves have space!) I've decided to put most of them under 808 (Rhetoric & collections of literature), although some issues have been put into subject areas (Issue 97 is solely fiction, issue 94 is solely travel writing).

Friday 12 March 2010

Crazy Keywords continued

This week I've managed to correct 17 pages worth of crazy keywords, which I'm rather pleased with. I've been prioritising particularly messy sections rather than going through alphabetically.
Much of it is dealing with capitalisation, name conventions and rationalising (do we really need 'Geology' and 'Geology & Earth Sciences' when each only occur once?).

Here this week's top fifteen, the ones that have made me want to hit my head against something not soft:
1.Ethnic tourist attractions
2.Famous trains
3.Etc
4.explains how key skills are asessed
5.exercises on using numbers in everyday life
6.Fiction dealing with specific issues
7.Fighting back
8.facts, worksheet quiz
9.Internet links for different subjects
10. Forced entertainment
11. Future of Champagne Wines
12. Social dimension of wine
13. Sound Story (meaning 'talking book')
14. Disctionaries (on FOUR records?!?)
15. Dodgy deals

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!

I did however have a little moment where I googled 'gases' to see if it was an artist's surname..

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Reflecting on the Student Assistants Programme

Back story: I am a Learning Resource Centre Assistant in a sixth form of approx 900 students in north east London, in a team of 4: my boss, myself and two part time LRC Assistants. Approx half of our students are vocational and half are doing A’ Levels. At least 50 of our students are moderately to profoundly disabled and undertake Level 1 courses and classes in life skills.


Back in October 2009 during my first few weeks in my job we had a request from a student to become a helper in the LRC. As there wasn't such a scheme in place, we sent an All Students email to see if anyone else was interested. We were contacted by several students, who left their names with staff at the Circulation Desk. At this point my manager suggested that I take the project on as it would be good management experience for me.
I emailed the students who had expressed an interest and asked them to send me a paragraph within a week about why they wanted to be student assistants. About half sent me something by the deadline. Many students don’t check their college email account, and some thought that simply by showing an interest that they could just show up whenever they fancied to work! I felt a little guilty turning people away, but I wanted to make it clear that this was a proper work experience with a proper result (a certificate after 10 hours of volunteering). I emailed the successful applicants (7 in total) a training pack that I had created which included descriptions of the tasks they would be doing and exercises. The exercises included putting shelfmarks in the correct order and reflecting on customer service issues.
The tasks I assigned for the students were: shelving, strict shelf checking in the LRC and in the Study Centres, filling printers with paper, weeding newspapers over one month old, shredding one month old signing in sheets, labelling new items, helping put up or take down displays and other tasks as they came up.
I was very aware of Data Protection in assigning tasks. Our LMS system includes tabs with borrower information such as address and date of birth as well as loan history etc so I felt it was inappropriate to have students using the circulation system, although they did shadow us doing the basics but didn't see the full borrower record. I have a tendency to err on the side of caution, much more so than the rest of my team. I felt it was prudent not to have students working behind the Circulation Desk to make a clear line between the role of an LRC assistant and a student volunteer. This is for two reasons: firstly to keep the respect of the staff and students and secondly to ensure that higher powers don’t get the impression that the library could be run partly by volunteers and that we are expendable!
Setting tasks was challenging. I wanted to ensure that the students got some relevant experience and actually did some work that was of value to us. I wanted to make sure that students were safe and felt comfortable in what they were doing. I think I erred on the side of caution too much with this, at one point a student was strict shelf checking in an unsupervised study centre that I felt was becoming a bit raucous. I stuck my head in twice to check on her and she probably thought why is this batty librarian worrying about me?! I repeatedly told the student assistants that we really appreciate their hard work and that if for any reason they felt unsafe or uncomfortable with a task to let me know. I hope that I made them feel comfortable enough to have done so if they needed to. I was also aware of the health and safety of the overall space, and ensuring that my time spent with the student assistants wasn’t detracting from the overall service. There were also individual considerations, for example one student volunteer is a really pretty girl and I noticed that boys would come in to the library when they knew she was working!
For the first two weeks the student assistant scheme took up a lot of my time as I was training each of them individually. It was a challenge for me to communicate successfully with sixth form students who have never worked in a library before. Each library I've worked in has its own local terminology (e.g. shelfmark/pressmark/classmark) but a person with experience in a library will understand broadly what is required. I learnt never to say ‘Do you understand?’ as they will say ‘Yes’, but rather to ask a question to confirm their understanding such as ‘Which book out of these two goes next on the shelf?’ I learnt how important it was to explain not only what literally had to take place (e.g. explaining the physical act of a book move) but also to explain the context and motivation behind the book move (e.g. we’ve got lots of new books around 300-330 so we’ve added a bay of shelves here and need to move the whole collection round etc). I learnt by making mistakes: at one point my lack of clarity in explaining a book move ended up costing me half an hour as I corrected the mistake. At some points in these early stages of training and supervising the students I wondered if it was worth the time: whether it would be easier just to do these tasks myself than explain them to other people to do. I also had to get over my own slight feeling of embarrassment about telling people to do things as I had little management experience.
By week five I realised that my system of writing a rota for the assistants simply wasn’t working. It was too difficult to predict what exactly would need doing. Instead I created a chart of what tasks I would like completed over the week and as each student arrived I assigned tasks and ticked them off. This way I could respond to a particular request – such as if we’d had a complaint that one study centre was particularly messy then I could prioritise it. By this stage I was also becoming aware of individual preferences and abilities and worked with that as much as possible. I juggled my lunch breaks so that I would always be available.
A problem came in around this point: one of the part time LRC Assistants started to complain about the Student Assistants. She felt that they were strict shelf checking too quickly and thus couldn’t be doing it properly but didn’t have examples of the shelves being in the wrong order. I feel unwilling to go behind each student and check the shelves: if I’m going to do that then we might as well not bother having them! I did spot checks and couldn’t find any problems. I also had a little briefing with the student assistants on their first shift back after Christmas to check they could remember how to do all the tasks and give a little refresher. My colleague also complained that she didn’t have as much to do. This was a shame and I explained to her that being released from the ‘housekeeping’ tasks allowed us more time for engaging in more challenging projects. This slight tension has remained but I feel I have reassured the staff that the students aren’t taking their jobs and frankly I don’t know what more I can do. I also advised the staff that the student assistants can help them when they are particularly busy. They are hopefully now being seen as a help not a threat! At times I had to be a little bit creative in finding tasks for the students to do, especially as they were very speedy so a pile of labelling that I would expect to take them half an hour would be done in ten minutes. This was all a learning curve for me.
Around week seven I set a schedule to recruit the next round of student assistants. Firstly I spoke to all of the current assistants to ask if they wanted to continue beyond week ten. I got a positive response from all of them, but advised them to go away and think about their work load and let me know the following week. Two came back to me saying that they weren’t going to continue but the other four will carry on which is really nice. I must be doing something right!
I recruited two more student assistants by the same method of putting up posters and sending an All Students and asking students to contact me with a paragraph detailing why they want to work in the LRC and why they think they will be good at it. I was happy to recruit a student who had expressed interest in the first round but hadn’t sent in her paragraph and a student who had worked in her previous school’s library.
Training for the second round of student assistants was much easier and didn’t take up as much of my time. I think this was due to a combination of me being more confident and experienced and the fact that one student had library experience and the other’s best friend already was a student assistant so she would have explained a lot of it already.
The student assistants from the first round are now getting more challenging tasks where possible.

Conclusion
The sum total of all of this is that the LRC has benefitted from over 60 hours of shelving, strict shelf checking etc. Our entire collection and all four of the study centre are now strict shelf checked on a weekly basis which certainly wasn’t happening before. This in theory has freed up LRC Assistants to do over 60 hours stock promotion, displays and other projects to further our role within the college. The students have benefitted from work experience which should have been engaging and will look good on their UCAS form or on job applications.
The benefits for me have been immense in terms of my communication and management skills. I hope that learning from the mistakes I’ve made with this project will make me a great manager when the time comes.
Having the students assistants programme and my management experience from it in place allowed us to take on two work experience students at the very last minute which I have already blogged on.
Next steps: find out more about how other schools/colleges do their student assistant programmes and read up on management skills.

Monday 15 February 2010

Keyword chaos: things that make you go hmm

It is half term and we don't have any students in so I am finally getting to spend some time cleaning up the keyword chaos taking place all over our catalogue.


The back story:
I work in a sixth form college in North East London. The students have a high prevalence of English as a Second Language and literacy problems. The college has existed for just seven terms and the library has under 5000 items.
The previous manager delegated all the cataloguing to the LRC assistants. During the college's short life they have had a high turnover of LRC assistants - estimates stand at around 10 different LRC assistants. The majority of these had no previous library experience. We still have an LRC assistant working here who has been here since the college opened and she can't recall having any training or being shown any guidance notes. About a month ago I found a notebook containing hand written cataloguing notes so some efforts were made to give guidance.
When I first arrived here in October I thought the problems were on the minor of inconsistencies with commas and capitalising, and unnecessary detail such as putting the title or author into the keywords. Slowly it dawned on me quite what a mess the catalogue. This was particularly resonant when we had training from the makers of the LMS and I felt embarrassed at being linked to it professionally.
My goal is that during my legacy from this role will be cleaning up the catalogue and preventing these problems in the future. I have already created and disseminated clear cataloguing training notes and put them in the staff shared drive (which I created when I realised that no such thing existed!). My manager only became aware of the depth of problems a few weeks ago and has prioritised the task of cleaning the catalogue up. She has also put a ban on paraprofessional staff cataloguing.

One of the most frustrating things is where people have followed someone elses mistake - so we had about nine Shakespearean texts all catalogued as 'Shekespeare'. Often staff have followed book publishers suggestions of keywords without questioning if it is is excessively detailed for our collection - leading to keyword such as 'Cooking With Meat and Game' in a collection with only about 40 cookery books.There are a lot of time period problems in terms of consistency of format (C1900 / 18th Century, 17C, 1600S, 1500s) and expressing accurately the item's content: '16th to 18th Centuries' is not an adequate keyword. And people creating a new keyword when an existing one would be appropriate (e.g. Business Presentation and Communications / Business Communications / Business Communication.)

Having run a report and reviewed the keywords used, the most glaring thing is that most keywords have only been used once. I'm now looking at this 112 page document and deciding where to start. My original plan was to go through from A to Z. Now I feel it would be better to focus on specific areas such as going through by each nation to cure problems such as one or two hit keyword entries for: British Army, British Artists, British Cinema, British Film, and so on by turning them into two keywords e.g. 'British' and 'Army'.

As I'm doing this I thought that I would share some of the things that make me feel like hitting my head on the wall. These are keywords that have honestly been inputted in our catalogue (they appear in this list in the format in which they were inputted):

The bizarre...

Being pursued

Being Yourself

History of Champagne

Moral Status of Animals

Contacting the Dead

The excessively detailed...bearing in mind our user group and size of collection

American History of Food

AIDS: social aspects (we only have 2 hits under AIDS at all)

18th century India

18th Century painters

African American poems

Biographies of notable atheletes

Obama's speeches

Advice on Careers & Achieving Success

Literature of Special Lesbian Interest

American Supermarkets

The vague...

Answers

Approaches

Arguments

Spelling mistakes...

Growing Ou

Shekespeare

Aging

Three different spellings of Al-Qaeda

19th c china

Ciminals

Contemorary Art

Disctionaries


Much of the problem is using one keyword entry where two are appropriate...
A Level / AS / GCSE + subject

Nation + anything you can think of!

To multiple keywords to express the same principle..

World War 2, World War II, World War Two, Second World War, 2nd World War, World War 1939-45, European History: Second World War

Friday 12 February 2010

Half term starts in 30 minutes

And I can't wait to get stuck in to a few days solid catalogue cleaning up! And I can listen to ska and drink tea while I'm doing it as the students won't be in. Lately whenever I try to work on it something else comes up and becomes a priority.
This week I went on a UC&R group visit to the Freemason's Museum and Library which was very interesting, and I went to a CILIP Chartership and Beyond event. The Chartership event was great, it has reassured me that I am ready to charter and that I will have enough experience. The following day I contacted my first potential mentor from the database who recommended I try someone else as her roster is full, so fingers crossed.
Right, I'd better start getting these students out and leave!

Monday 1 February 2010

Library Day In The Life - Day 4 and 5

Only just had time to do this between life and work and being ill....

Thursday was a bit saner. I opened the library at 8.30 and did my usual morning tasks (stats, journals etc). One of the work experience students was half an hour late so I started his day by telling him off. I then had to explain to them why the labelling they'd done yesterday needed to be redone. In fact I spent much of the day supervising and motivating them. I had created a rota for the them which I adjusted several times throughout the day. As the level of their abilities became clearer I became more able to anticipate how long tasks would take and what they would be able to do. As with the usual student assistants this is also a test of my communication skills... and my patience!

I made some headway on the keywords and on compiling a list of recommended websites for the faculties that I am responsible for academic liaison for (Humanities and Business & ICT). The keywords are going to take a lot longer than I originally thought - I had ambitiously thought I'd get them done by Easter ha!

Thursday night I went out for dinner with my friend in Soho. Looks like this was a mistake as I spent half the night being sick.

Managed to pull myself together to get into work an hour or so late on Friday and leave an hour or so early. I didn't take a lunch break because there was no way I could eat.

I didn't achieve any of the things I had intended upon achieving today but I did fulfill my job description - serving on the circ desk, supervising the space etc - and at least I was able to cover lunchbreaks. In our library we only ever have three members of staff working leaving us with at least a half hour window in the busiest time of the day where we only have one member of staff working.
Fortunately I'd already planned for the work experience students to spend the day with a member of LRC staff who was putting up a display for LGBT History month so I didn't have to supervise them.
I was also keen to go in to see a publishers rep who didn't turn up!

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Library Day In The Life - Day 3

What a day! On the way in to work I was thinking 'wow I've got a lot to do today' and by 9.15am it was quadrupled.

A teacher came in to see us first thing because two of her Level 1 students had a really awful experience on their work placement and she wondered if we could take them on for the next week and a half. Their placement was at a well known stationers/book vendors often found in train stations, I shalln't say the name. As I run the Student Volunteer programme I'm going to supervise them. So I spent until 10am drawing up a rota of tasks they can do up to the end of the week and printing ff the training notes and leaflets I give to the student volunteers. My entire morning was occupied with supervising them, inducting them, rotaing them etc. At about noon the teacher returned and mentioned that one of the students is dyspraxic - this obviously has a massive effect on what I can ask them to do (he also has a problem with one of his arms which minimises the amount of shelving I can ask him to do) and to be honest I feel quite annoyed that she didn't see fit to mention it at 9am.

In the midst of this we had a student setting up a powerpoint for Holocaust Memorial Day based on a trip to Auschwitz that he had made with another student. He phoned first thing suggesting I set it up for him or else he'll do it tomorrow! I was surprised by his attitude as he's one of our student assistants and usually works really hard. I advised him to come in and do it today or else it won't happen. So he came in and sorted it out.

Lunch was a working lunch at the bistro run by the catering students. It was cross-faculty meeting about maintaining connections with our link school in Ghana. My manager and I are the International Coordinators for the centre. In the course of the meeting the headmistress suggested I lead the team to push the Ghana link which I have agreed to do. Feel quite honoured that the headmistress asked me, but also aware that probably no one else wanted to do it! The food in the bistro was fantastic as ever, I had kedgeree from their special menu in honour of Burns Night.

After lunch I supervised the work experience students and made a little bit of headway on the keywords, but not very much at all disappointingly. I was grateful that I'd sorted out the lists of genre fiction yesterday as it's given them a labelling task to do. The library closes at 4pm on a Wednesday which has given me the chance to blog and catch up on yesterdays - I'll put it down as CPD!

Tonight I'm going to a talk at the Imperial War Museum with a friend.

Library Day in the Life - Day 2

Arrived at work at 9am. Spent most of the morning on the Circulation Desk. Started by doing my routine tasks - statistics and journals - then moved onto keywords tidy up task (inbetween serving students, dealing with enquiries and dealing with problems with the printer). I believed I'd completed the As yesterday but hadn't. Made a list of the keywords beginning with numbers then started amending the Bs. Sorting out the entire catalogue is going to take a lot longer than I originally thought! Off the counter at 11.30 so visited study centres to drop new journals off and tidy up a bit.

Lunch at 12.

Spent most of the afternoon on the Circ Desk. Decided to spend some time working on a task for our Student Assistants. We want to label fiction books with stickers indicating their genre (romance, crime, science fiction etc) to help users choose fiction books. So have spent the afternoon playing with the flagging and advanced search functions to print off lists of books of each genre and adding keywords to items (such as adding 'Romance' to books that already have the keyword 'Love' so that the all come up as one set).

In the evening watching the film Milk, it was really good. Had an early night as we've got a lot on tomorrow.

Monday 25 January 2010

Library Day In The Life - Day 1

Ha! I've just realised that the last time I blogged was my unofficial day in the life! Still, here we are...





Arrived at 8am to open up the library for 8.30am: turning on PCs and printer, filling printer with paper, putting money in the till, restocking the stationery shop, checking for bookings in the diary and new notes in the Circ Desk Message Book.


Stayed on Circ Desk til 11.30am (apart from my tea break). As usual on a Monday morning we have an entire BTEC sports class in taking up about 13 of our 18 PCs. I collated last week's statistics and checked to see if anything had been added to the 6 Book Challenge website. I then worked on cleaning up our catalogue's keywords - the bane of my life and a situation worthy of its own post. Massive problems with the printer (again - it's absolutely constant) so spent a lot of my morning explaining that to students. Also the internet was off or patchy until 10 ish which didn't help.


At 12 had lunch in our office because I couldn't be bothered to go up to staff room. I ran into the facilities manager who reassured me that the second recycling bin that we have requested over a week ago is on its way.





Back on the desk from 1-2. Students are complaining that it is taking 20-30 mins to log onto computers. I assure them that IT are aware of the problem and that we are as frustrated as they are. Processed the day's journals.


At 2pm went into the office. I don't like working in the office, I like to be on the floor. However, our other staff PC has had it's mouse ball stolen rendering it useless and IT have taken over a week to replace it. I could log onto a student computer but with the log on problems it seems like a waste of time. Finished cleaning up the keywords beginning with A.


At 3pm I distributed the days journals to study centres and had a little tidy up. At 3.30pm I was back on the Circ desk where I worked on creating the list of keywords I will clean up tomorrow (the Bs).


Left work at 5pm. Spent the evening working on the presentation.