Reflections on the first half term

It's been a hectic half term. We've done about 60 inductions. We tailor our inductions by level and subject, in terms of introducing specific online resources and the way that we communicate. For example, for an Access to HE or Foundation degree group (who are typically mature students) we wouldn't labour the LRC rules (no eating, phones, two warnings then you have to leave and all that good stuff), we'd ask them to let us know if other students were distracting them by misbehaving. Our inductions are very hands on, with students searching and using the online resources and e-books. This engages the students and helps them learn how to find the resources at a later date. I believe the hands on use of e-books at induction embedded the use of e-books and led to us being #7 in the UK for use of the JISC e-books for FE package (in the stats that came out up to March 2011, weighted by size of college). On the feedback from the inductions 97% of students found them to be very or quite useful. So now the plan is to work on the other 3%!

We've also done Information Skills sessions for the first time this year. Session 1 covers effective web searching and evaluating web sources, Session 2 covers referencing, plagiarism adn bibliographies. These were delivered mostly through Xerte e-tutorials with LRC Support Tutors introducing the session and supporting students throughout. For next year I will modify this: the Second session was too advanced for Level 2 learners while some groups felt that they had nothing to learn on web searching. They do, but the question is how do you show students that they do? In the LRC survey in June I asked students about their level of confidence around study and information skills then asked staff about student ability in these areas. The results show that student confidence grossly outstripped the staff evaluation of their ability. This is a challenge to overcome for all FE and HE institutions - how do you make someone learn something that they believe they already know?

We've had quite a few procedural changes that began in September; we installed the MyPC computer booking system, started overdue charges and stopped teachers bringing classes in without booking. This has led to a few quarrels with those who haven't understood the new system (despite thorough communication and advertising) but it appears as if people are getting the hang of it now.

Previously we sent overdue reminder letters but there was no real sanction for not returning books on time, which meant that items were taken out at the start of the year and never seen again. This was very frustrating for other people who wanted to use the items. Now we charge 5- per day per item, and the MyPC system blocks students with overdue books from logging on to computers, unless they are in a booked class. This has led to much greater circulation of resources and less complaints about unfulfilled reservations.

Noise levels are a lot better which means less staff time managing behaviour. This means happier staff and more achieved in terms of stock promotion and tightening up things on the admin side of things. Things feel a lot more managed and contained which I thank MyPC for.

Day 5 of #libday6

I arrived at 8.45, having caught up on a few bits on the train.

At 9.30am Maryse and Malcolm from JISC RSC Eastern met with myself and the IT manager. They demonstrated a variety of their resources and discussed how to promote them to staff. They stayed for just over 2 and a half hours.

I then had 30 minutes to answer emails, deal with anything immediate and grab some lunch before heading over to my second meeting of the day. I had my first Freedom of Information related query so dealt with it immediately. I grabbed a sandwich to eat in the taxi.

I spent the afternoon at a local college with my counter-part. He had previously visited our LRC so it was my turn for a return visit. They are planning on starting to run Independent Learning Sessions as we do and are soon starting a trial. I spent quite a bit of my visit discussing how we run them, I am keen to be as supportive and helpful as I can so they can learn from what we have done. I really enjoy visiting other libraries and talking with other librarians.

Day 4 of #libday6

Got into work at the usual 8.45 to deal with any problems or queries before heading over to Curriculum Team Meeting at 9am. This is my big weekly meeting with the Vice Principal Curriculum, the Faculty Directors, the Director of Student Services, the Marketing Executive and the Quality Manager.

The meeting ended at 11am, at which point it was straight onto the Issue Desk for two hours where I organised the upcoming week's bay and equipment bookings and staff rota inbetween serving customers and patrolling the LRC. As it is Holocaust Memorial Day we've been playing the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust film on our Information Screen today which has been getting some good responses.

At 1pm I went out for lunch with the Estates Manager which is a real treat as we only manage to do this about every 3 weeks. She has been a great friend to me since I started in post 6 months ago.

When I returned to the LRC I covered the counter for an hour then had a one to one with one of the LRC Support Tutors. I like to do this with each of them each week. Sometimes there isn't anything to say from either side, but I think it's important to make that time for dialogue as we spend a lot of the day rushing around. I also spent some time chasing the Reading Agency for the second time to try to order more Six Book Challenge diaries as we've run out. I left promptly at 4.30, exhausted after doing two late nights already this week as I normally only do one.

Day 3 of #libday6

Came in hoping for a more tranquil day than yesterday. Spent most of the morning chasing up some laptop trolley and equipment queries, and dealing with emails and other queries. Visited HR with a few suggestions for the upcoming staff development day. The HR Manager is always really nice and helpful. Covered the issue desk and patrolled over the lunch period as we have classes in. Wednesdays are always very busy days so I spend a lot of my day out on the floor.

Our new principal joined our team meeting at 3pm which was a great chance for us to get to know her better and vice versa. We decided to hold the meeting in the way we always do - with the LRC open and one member of the team on look out for customers at the counter. There is only an hour a week that all three LRC Support Tutors are in so we have to have our meeting in that hour even though it is a busy time. Afterwards I went straight to my fortnightly one to one with my line manager, the Vice Principal Curriculum.

The college Open Evening for prospective students started at 4pm, so we spent plenty of the day tidying up and making sure we looked presentable. I stayed until 7pm for the Open Evening. As it was fairly quiet it was a good chance to catch up on ordering resources and doing a bit of cataloguing.

Day 2 #libday6

What an absolutely appalling day. I had a headache by 10am.
The ALS department moved into the rooms in the back of the LRC. There are problems with keys that I am getting sorted out - the Estates Manager here is fantastic. As predicted, having an area containing 8 PCs shut off on our busiest day of the week meant that it was more or less bedlam in here so I spent most of the day on behaviour management, finding people computers and generally trying to make sure that the place is still running approximately how it should while dealing with a whole series of complaints and people getting upset about lack of resources. Also, I'm trying to reassure the LRC staff that the ALS department moving in won't be a problem, but I can understand their concerns. We have spent 6 months establishing the LRC and just as things start to settle down we've had another big change. Of course, with all of this going on everything of a mangement persuasion that I should be doing was sidelined.
On Tuesday afternoons I supervise two Independent Learning Session - one from Fashion and one from Art. Both groups worked well as usual.
Here's hoping that tomorrow will be a better day!

Day 1 of #libday6

Woke at 5.30am anxious about the week ahead. As always, left the house at 7.10 to get the train. Spent the first half of my train journey catching up on emails, Twitter and Facebook. The Curriculum Manager for Fashion joins the train half way to work and we always have a good chat. The college has a minibus that collects staff and students from the station which is fantastic.

Arrived at work at 8.40, to find the LRC Support Tutors locked out of their workroom which also contains the keys to classrooms that we issue to staff. I left the caretaker breaking into the workroom, and went to have a conversation that I had been dreading which went better than expected! Tweeted and got a nice reply from @SmilyLibrarian. As my workplace's only qualified librarian and the head of the service I often feel out on a limb and isolated, so such kindnesses from the LIS community Twitterati is much appreciated!

Came back to find that staff had access to the workroom, but that the lock would need repairing. At least we can get to the kettle now. Made some tea.

Spent the morning making amendments to the week's rota, replying to emails, chasing up a few odds and ends from last week (registers, Finance, HR, filling in staff development forms for upcoming events etc), checked through last month's finance report and caught up with one of my staff who works part time that I haven't seen since Wednesday. I was on desk and patrol duty from 10-11. We have to combine these two things as we are tight on staffing. It was a busy morning lots of students; in Independent Learning Sessions, in classes that have come in with teachers and drop in students. We've had lots more students sign up for the Six Book Challenge and staff are asking me to buy another set of diaries. It's the first time that the college has run it so I'm pleased that we've had such great buy in from ESOL and Functional Skills staff. Almost all the students that have signed up are usually not LRC users which is also great as reaching out to non-users was one of my challenges for the year.

I had lunch at noon. My new year resolution was to eat at lunchtime and I've been really good at sticking to it. I went up to the canteen (which I love!) and got ratatouille quiche, chips and beans.

At 1pm I went back on the counter, dealing with the unchtime rush: helping students find books, moving along students who aren't working, resetting passwords, triage on the laptops (we can reestablish the wifi connection to save taking them up to IT). One of the Faculty Directors called in and we had a chat about problems with the timetable which puts pressure on resources and rooms. The Networks Manager called over to fix something on my computer. Apologised for smell of chips and vinegar in my office but he said he likes it. At 2pm we had the combination of a large class of Public Services students and a large class of Motor Vehicle students - two of our livelier cohorts! - so spent some time on behaviour management. Our students aren't cheeky or malicious, they are just high spirited and can get noisy. Returned to my office at about half two and phoned the British Library about some Inter Library loans. Gave a new teacher an e-books tutorial over the telephone. Ordered the new Quick Reads that are coming out for World Book Day in March. Dealt with some emails: mainly laptop and room bookings.

At 5pm the LRC Support Tutors went home and I stayed on for evening duty. I put out the reservation notices in the bays for tomorrow, and prepared for the Additional Learning Support (ALS) department moving in to three rooms that have historically been part of the library. The front of the college is being remodelled so ALS are being relocated, possibly temporarily, possibly permanently. In order to make space for this we have closed down our AV and off air recording service and lost the breakout room that was created for us in the summer 2010 refurb. To make tomorrow's move (hopefully) smooth and safe I have shut off the back of the LRC so that they can bring things in through the fire doors. To do this we will lose 8 PCs for the day, and as Tuesdays are our busiest day I suspect that we'll spend half the day stopping the student going in the 'out of bounds' area. I'm anticipating a visit from an ESOL class at 7pm who are signing up for the 6 Book Challenge, and will be out of here at 7.30pm which will get me home just after 9. Mondays are long days!

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?!

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.

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.