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.

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.

New Job - first week went well

My first week at my new job has been fantastic. It looks like a role where I can get lots of valuable professional-type experience.

My first two days were the usual whirlwind of trying to learn names and tick boxes on induction and training forms. I've already been given some interesting projects to work on. I've been cataloguing new stock, helping students with their homework and we've done a book move.

The college uses the Eclipse LMS which is a bit quirky but easy enough to use. On Eclipse there is a 'Linked' function where similar items can be linked to one another to recommend them to the user. I've been given the ongoing task of linking items - for me it's a dream project! I've been busy on the fiction section.

I've taken over the journals which is fantastic. The college has an interesting set up of having five faculty Study Centres staffed by Learning Mentors as well as the central LRC. Most of the journals are stocked in the Study Centres, so each day I'll be visiting the Study Centres to drop journals off and hopefully learn more about how they work.

I'm doing academic liaison for two of the faculties: Humanities and Business & IT. At first I was a bit disappointed not to have got Creative Arts, but it'll be great getting experience in different areas.

It's really exciting to be in a small institute and a small team where it's possible to make changes. My manager is new to the institute as well and is keen on discussing ideas and trying new things. At her request I've designed and implemented a new spreadsheet and procedure for recording student usage. We have a signing in sheet rather than having an automatic gate counter. She's really nice as well which is always good.

So far, so good! Let's hope it stays this way.

My first post

I've decided to start blogging as I am at a particular point in my career (nearly qualified librarian - handing in my MSc dissertation tomorrow, god willing) at a peculiar time (global recession, cuts in public spending). I'm hoping to keep up the momentum from my MSc, particularly the professional community aspect, by blogging.
At the moment I'm working my notice at a university library before moving to a sixth form college library. I'm excited because New Job is a fully inclusive learning environment with a sizeable proportion of disabled students: disability provision was my dissertation topic. I'm hoping it'll be a good opportunity to put some theory into practice and do some further research.