Tales of a Librarian

Well folks, I’m back again. I thought I’d just write a little more to update you on the progress that I have made over the past couple of years in my post and compiling my chartership submission has really given me cause to think about all that I have learned and what I still have to learn!

Looking back over the posts that I have made over the years since joining my present employment, I can definitely say that I have become a lot more confident in pretty much all of the areas of my work that I do on a regular basis. For example, there was a post on search skills, and how I felt that I had a long way to go before I was able to undertake complex searches for people. I now feel that I am more able to do these, and do not need to rely on the advice of my colleagues and/or manager to undertake the vast majority of searches, even those that often involve fairly complex search terms/concepts. Of course, there are still going to be a few times when advice is needed, as users have a habit of always surprising us in this regard! But it’s good to be kept on your toes, and learning new places to search and finding the information for users is very rewarding, particularly if it is hard to locate somewhere. I think that is one of the main benefits of the service for users.

Even searching the planning appeals, which often involve very specific terms or legislation, has become a lot easier, and I’m far more confident in doing this than I was even a year ago. I think my subject knowledge in all of the areas that we cover has improved greatly, through the process of reading/scanning the journals and websites, and through abstracting documents. It’s amazing the amount of information that you can pick up. Obviously we’ll never be specialists in all areas, but you get the general feel for what is happening in each area, pick up trends and buzz words that are in use, and get to know and understand the various terms and concepts relating to each subject.

Becoming involved with the journals collection has been great for me, it is very motivational to have my own responsibility for their management and to make the improvements that are sorely needed to ensure that the process is as efficient as possible. One complaint that could be made is that the process is very ‘bitty’, there are always things cropping up, such as overdues or unpaid subscriptions through our subscription agent, but identifying new journals to add to stock, and liaising with suppliers and publishers is very interesting. It definitely keeps me on my toes! I also enjoy working with the two ladies who deal with the check-ins and trying to ensure that everything is up to date and running as smoothly as possible. There are a few changes I would like to make, such as rejigging the database in which our subscription details are kept, as I feel this is quite outdated and would benefit from having more information on it, such as the format of journals. A lot of journals are now both print and electronic, and there are also an increasing number of electronic subscriptions. Being able to record this in the database along with the rest of the information would be a great help, and adding username and password details would be fantastic. I will have to look into this as I’m not sure at present whether the database can be changed to incorporate this. I’m also in the process of updating our e-journals access information, which is currently held in a seperate spreadsheet, no doubt left over from when there was only a small collection of ejournals to manage. Given the increasing number of journals available online, I think it would be sensible to have all of this information in the one place, as it would increase accessibility and make it easier to keep up to date.

As I am now fairly confident in the basic duties of my work as an Information Officer (abstracting, literature searching, stock selection etc) I feel that the area that I am developing most at the moment is in project work, which we are commissioned to carry out by various agencies, both on short-term and long-term projects. Generally, these involve identifying suitable material for inclusion on electronic databases/libraries, abstracting said material according to the various house standards employed by the contracting organisation, and publishing the material to the web. As well as improving my skills in a variety of abstracting formats, I have also been given experience in managing projects, through my role as deputy for two current projects that we are doing for government agencies. I will slowly learn how it is done and will hopefully be able to take on more responsibility as my skills develop.

In terms of my own CPD, I have a couple of courses lined up (which I mentioned briefly in my previous blog). The first is ‘Copyright for Information Professionals‘, run by CILIPS. After discussion with my mentor we agreed that this course would be useful not only for letting me understand the wider copyright context as it relates to libraries, but will also be of use with my work as journals manager. Our situation as a private subscription-based library with remote users means that our copyright situation is complex, and involves a couple of different licenses with the CLA. Any extra information I can gather on this front will be put to good use!

The second course that I have applied for is the ‘Introduction to first line management‘ course, also run by CILIPS. After looking at my PPDP and my development over the past couple of years, it became clear to me that I had not had much experience in directly managing others, so this course will be a good introduction to the basic principles involved in this.

I am also going to attend a ‘roadshow’ run by Dawsons (a bookseller, from who we buy pretty much all our hard copy books), where they will be demonstrating their new e-book platform, dawsonera. As you might be able to tell from previous blog posts, I am very interested in the development of electronic sources of information and their usage, so I am looking forward to see how it works and whether it will be of relevance to our service. We will need to ask a variety of questions relating to the copyright situation of the ebooks available, whether users will need separate usernames and passwords, whether we could incorporate it into our online database in anyway, and the amount and subject matter of the books that would be available online. Our service has seen a notable decline in the number of hard copy books that are sent out on loan, with users tending to prefer information that can be downloaded directly from our online database. If we could provide a number of books in electronic format, this may help to increase the number of ‘loans’ that we receive for these titles. It will all of course, depend on whether it can be integrated with the service as it currently is without too much inconvenience for users. For example, asking them to use a seperate site and username and password would probably be too complicated. Also, the search facility would not be integrated across the two platforms, unless there was some way to amalgamate them. There are also a variety of copyright issues to consider, given that our users would not be accessing the material from our building, but from their own, giving rise to the need for access from multiple locations, which may not be allowed by the terms and conditions.

I guess you can but ask though! I will be able to chat with a representative about our needs and feed this back to the rest of the staff for consideration. I’m quite excited about it!

And finally, I stumbled across this online through the CILIP mailing lists, the Hollywood Librarian! It looks fantastic, and I would really like to see it. I mentioned it to a couple of colleagues, and one of them who is involved with the Career Development Group is looking into arranging a viewing of it at some point in the near future. I hope they manage, as it looks like a really great film!

Howdy! Why, it has been a while, hasn’t it? I’m afraid the daily grind of work and life in general has caused me to let this blog slide over recent months, however, I thought it would be worth posting to say that I am now back on track with my chartership with renewed vigour!

Indeed, there is in fact a light on the horizon, shining away and beckoning me towards the finish line. I have been rather distracted along the way, a little detour which probably could have been avoided, but now that I am back on track and will hopefully submit before the end of March 2008, I feel a lot less stressed about it and also really motivated. It’s like the final burst of energy to get to the end of the race!

When I first started out on my chartership, I was determined to get it within a year. I had my PPDP all sorted out and kept detailed notes of everything I was getting up to. I actively sought out training courses which were either relevant to my work or which filled training needs that I had identified. After so long in the job though, various time pressures piled themselves on and the chartership was unfortunately pushed to the back of the pile for a while. I suppose this happens with a lot of people, the demands put upon them to get the actual job done has to come first, but it is so important to not forget about your CPD, as I have realised, and I regret letting this happen over the past year.

I feel that attending training courses, thinking about your development, and knowing how you want to improve gives you something to focus on, something to work towards, that gives you direction when you may feel like you are just trundling (is that even a word?) from one week to the next doing pretty much the same thing. So I feel really motivated at the moment, have taken on extra responsibilities at work, and sorted out a few training courses for myself in the not to distant future.

And more to the point, I have started to draw together my portfolio for submission. It’s amazing how many pieces of evidence you gather over the process of just doing your job! I guess that’s the point of the chartership really, actual work experience, but combining this with reflection about how you have progressed, the performance of the organisation, and of yourself, and how you intend to develop in the future.

The process of chartership can be daunting, but for anyone in a library/information related job, the pieces of evidence seem to come together fairly easily, even though it may seem like an impossible task at the moment.

So hopefully I will have mine together soon, there are a few really good examples on the CILIP website which have given me guidance about how to structure it etc so I’m feeling more confident about that now as well. Just need to get all the extra documentation, finalise what is to be included and finish writing up my evaluative statement and then create a contents page! Sounds simple when you say it like that, but it can be quite fiddly and will no doubt take a fair bit of time.

But you heard it here first, my deadline is set and I intend to stick to it - the end of March people. It will be submitted. Or I’ll buy you all a drink. Maybe.

Hey folks, it seems like a long time since I actually wrote anything for this blog (probably because it has been a long time since I wrote anything for this blog). So i thought i should fill you in about what i have been getting up to library-wise over the past month (or two)…

Well, I have recently taken over responsibility for the journals administration within my organisation, which i am really enjoying. I’ve made up a couple of spreadsheets to keep track of things, and have had the annual renewal form in from the subscription agent that we use to supply many of our journals, so i have had lots to keep me amused. The person who previously did the journals has now left the organisation, and the journals supervisor is on maternity leave, so its really just down to me and the two lovely women who deal with the check-ins, invoices etc.

We have been thinking a lot about cancelling journals in order to save both money and time. In our organisation, people will probably be shocked to hear that there is no real budget for books/journals which is set for the year, but even so it has become important for us to consider journals which are not representing value for money and are wasting the time of the Information Officers, and not really benefiting our members.

This has really been my first experience of weeding out stock, and making judgements about which items to continue stocking and which to cancel. We are currently seeking everyone’s opinions on this, based upon data which the deputy manager has compiled from the database. We are looking at journals which cost a lot of money, those which we have not abstracted much from, those which no one has really requested, those which have not contributed to the weekly bulletin that we produce, as well as those which are increasing in price this year.

A few recommendations have been made already, but it remains to be seen what will stay and what will go. It is remarkably difficult sometimes to decide what is most important, when all the journals have such different articles, quality, number of issues, costs, subject matters etc.

It would probably be really useful to draw up some kind of ’score sheet’ to assess journals by, which could then be used as a basis for cancellations. I guess people looking at the data produced by our manager are doing something similar mentally though, as I know I was.

I wonder how other libraries etc. decide upon what stays and what goes within their organisation? It would be quite interesting to find out, as this is something which I have very little experience of, as like I said, we don’t really have a budget, and are currently not too affected by space contraints which might merit such weeding of stock.

Hi folks, i’m just in the process of conducting a SWOT analysis of my skills and development so far in my current employment, as part of the my CILIP chartership. Hopefully, this will go someway towards my portfolio, as the plan is to conduct another one in six months time before i submit my application for chartership.

It’s really hard to think objectively about yourself! I found that looking at my original PPDP helped, as I could simply assess each item and place it in the appropriate place on the SWOT analysis. It is really helping me to stand back from my everyday work and assess just how much i have done towards acheiving everything that I set out to on my PPDP, and just what I still have to do. I think that I am doing okay in most areas, although, i could improve more. As always! But i feel that I have come a long way in the six months I have been here - although it just does not feel as long as six months! - particularly in the everyday type skills of the library - such as my abstracting and enquiry work. My subject knowledge also seems to be improving to a certain extent, although i do feel as if i have much to learn in this respect - the topics we cover are so broad and detailed that i guess i can’t expect to know everything in just six months, but i do feel as if it is becoming easier to choose what is relevant for inclusion and what is not, and what subjects things should come under and so forth. Again, i think the best way for learning about this is through reading the material that comes in to stock when selecting items for inclusion, newspaper scanning in the mornings and abstracting. I have also noticed having a more general awareness of relevant things occuring in the news, such as on the bbc website, which also increases my knowledge and understanding.

Areas in which I am lacking seem to be management skills - there just isn’t any requirement for me to ‘manage’ someone in the traditional sense in this role - so i will have to make up for that through readings and training. You would think that a degree in HRM would also help to some extent, but I think that it was so long ago now (or at least, it seems to be!) and so theoretical that it doesn’t really provide me with any really practical guidance. Oh well, better keep an eye out for those courses then!

One thing that is in my favour is that the company have a very good stance towards training etc. and are very supportive of this. So, there shouldn’t be a problem in that area.

I will forward my SWOT on to my manager as it may also be useful to get some objective feedback about it, in case i have misjudged anything or left anything out!

Hi guys, since it’s Friday again (yahoo!) I thought I’d post another entry, updating what i’ve been getting up to of late. I caught up over dinner with a few of the girls from my library course, which was really great fun. Everyone seems to be getting on really well in their jobs, and progressing as they would like. There is even a couple of job-changes happening, where people have managed to land themselves even better jobs, based upon the experience they have gained in posts they originally took up straight out of university. It’s really nice to see everyone content - especially after the stresses of the course, when everyone was worried that there simply was not enough jobs around this area to sustain us all. There are even a few home buyers and engagements! It’s funny to think that the course had such a large impact on us all.

I am also planning on attending the CILIPS Guide to Chartership event at the end of May, so I will report back to you on that after it has occurred. I haven’t been to one of these before, and mentioned it to a few of the girls over dinner so I think some may also be attending. As far as I am aware, the event just gives lots of advice about preparing your portfolio, gaining the appropriate experience, examples of things to do, how to solve any problems that might be faced. It might also be a good chance to ask any questions i need to about the chartership process, one in particular being about my mentor, who is retiring shortly, and so I will need to find another mentor - which I am not really looking forward to because I heard that quite a few people have had trouble finding people to take them under their wing. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens with regards to that.

I am also becoming involved in various projects at work, which is quite good because they are all very varied. I think that I will be involved in one project (if we win it) in report writing, which is good because I have not really had a chance to write anything substantial since I left university. I wonder if i will be starting all my sentences like abstracting, e.g. includes, details, describes… or if it will all come flooding back.

I also have to compile the bulletin myself next week, which should keep me busy! I have been shown how to do it and have all the instructions at hand, so hopefully I will manage this without too many hiccups. Think I will have a quick read over the procedure again this afternoon, just to make sure, however! Again, I will let you know how things go with that!

Technorati Tags: chartership, cilip, event, librarians, jobs

I had my first performance review with my manager yesterday to discuss how I was getting along with all of my new tasks that I had picked up since starting to work here. I think that I am getting along okay, and she seemed to agree, which is great news. I also mentioned that I would like to take on a bit more work if possible because I seem to have the time for it at the minute, and so I hopefully will be getting to try my hand at a few other areas of the information service, which is all good news for my chartership and experience!

I really think that I need to start looking for some training courses to go on but there are just so many of them to choose from. I will have to have a really good think about what training I can realistically get from practical experience on the job and reading, and identify any gaps in my skills that I need to fill and base it upon that. I think that one thing that I may need to attend courses on is general management as I am not really getting the chance to learn things like that here (particularly managing people) due to the organisational structure of the information service (i.e. there ain’t really any library assistants that I am responsible for). So perhaps that’s an area that would do well to be covered by something like a training course. The other problem is that they all seem to be in London!! Hardly anything ever seems to be up in Scotland, so I will need to plan a little ahead if I am going to go to anything like that. I wonder what kind of training everyone else in my position is getting to do? I should count myself lucky however, that I am in the position to go to these if I wish, and that my employer will pay for it. I guess many people don’t have that kind of priviledge.

Finally, just wanted to say (again, think I may have mentioned it before but not sure) how great the LIS-CILIP-REG mailing list is (it’s for chartering librarians to keep in touch with each other/ask questions/compare experience etc.). I submitted a quick query about whether I should have received notification of my registration for chartership from CILIP (as i had not heard back from them) and within a couple of minutes I had at least five responses and an email from CILIP apologising for not getting back to me and saying that they would send something out once my application had been processed. Magic!

And how cute is the picture????

Technorati Tags: performance review, training courses, chartership, cilip, librarian, skills, development, mailing list

I feel like I have been fairly busy in work over the past week or so, and I have noticed that I have been able to do more enquiry work. I enjoy searching the databases for relevant information for members of our information service, but I sometimes struggle with the key words etc. as some areas that we cover I am not overly familiar with.

For example, one enquiry this week asked for a detailed answer to a specific planning query, which I just had absolutely no idea about. Discussions with other members of staff, however, made me feel a bit better about this as it turns out it was a very awkward question and despite searching a number of resources there wasn’t really anything that provided a straight answer.

I feel as if I am becoming better at enquiries though, and quicker with them too. The more I do the more confident i become with them, as I become more familiar with the contents of our database and the key words etc used. There are also a number of other resources that we can use/access and I am gradually beginning to pick up on these as well, as they are of particular use for more difficult enquiries.

I was also given training in SPADS (scottish planning appeal database) yesterday, which operates pretty much the same as our other database, but has slightly different command languages and abstracts. It was quite confusing at first, and there are a lot of different elements that make up the appeal abstracts that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I will be getting to see how others’ conduct SPADS enquiries next week so hopefully that will help me to remember and become more familiar with their layout etc. It is quite interesting to search for appeals that have occurred in areas you know! I will keep you updated on my progress with this.

Technorati Tags: search skills, work, training, enquiries, library

Well, today I finalised my PPDP (personal professional development plan - if i remember correctly) which has to be sent off to CILIP so that I can register as a chartership candidate and work towards this over the next year. It is all quite exciting and I am lucky to be able to do this so quickly after graduation. My manager is my mentor, and she has been helping me put together a whole range of activities which I can do over the next year or so in order to develop my skills as an information professional. I’ll try to use this blog to discuss what I have been getting up to as well as the usual commentry and discussion on current events/research/news that I have been doing so far.

We have a placement student with us from the ILS course at the moment - i can hardly believe that it has been a whole year since that was me!!! How time flies…

I am also waiting to hear whether or not my dissertation will be published. It’s looking hopeful so far, and I am really excited about seeing my name in print (okay, so it’s not lights, but it’s still exciting!!!). I’ll let you know as soon as I do about that one!

I thought that I might take some time to talk about the Spoken Word Project that I was involved with for five weeks at the beginning of 2005. The are a JISC funded project set up to digitise relevant items from the BBC’s archives (relevant at present being political and economic based materials). This material is being integrated into undergraduate teaching and a number of software applications have been developed to enhance this. It really is a very interesting project, and in a number of ways transgresses from the typical debates surrounding electronic resources in the library and teaching environment (which typically focus on electonic access to text or image based material) and opens up a whole new way of teaching undergraduates (and in theory, absolutely anyone…).

There is also a strong focus within the project upon social software and encouraging students to collaborate and use the resources provided by the internet (e.g. blogs, collaborative software etc.) to enhance their learning. Indeed, it also allows students to study just about anywhere as audio clips can be downloaded onto mp3 players such as the iPod. The access granted to them by the BBC is ground-breaking as this has never been allowed to an outside party before. I recall also that the BBC have recently provided access to their archives of news footage.

If you are interested in reading about my experiences of working with the Spoken Word team during my project placement from Strathclyde University Information and Library Studies Masters course, you can visit my blog that I kept whilst there.

Indeed, I do believe that it was back then when I was first learned about blogging, rss feeds and a whole range of other technological developments which are of relevance to the library and information profession. I have to admit that this was not mentioned in any of my university teachings, so it was a real bonus to me. Indeed, they have become a virtually indispensable part of my continued professional development as an information professional (albeit, a fledgling one ).