My pigeon hole on Tuesday morning: just a few Chemistry books to check

As part of preparing to leave, I’ve been updating the books in some of the subjects I support, and the new copies have just started arriving. Although I select and order a lot of the books, I rarely see them when they arrive, with one exception: when new editions of textbooks turn up, and I need to decide how many copies of the old editions to keep on the shelves. A constant stream of arriving Chemistry textbooks made editions checking a bit of a theme for these two days.

Tuesday had a couple of packed meetings. First up was a meeting between myself, my line manger, and the other Science and Engineering librarian. Lots to catch up on: notes from the College Academic committee meeting, handover documents for my post, online resources for a new course and potential licence issues, and book provision for the University’s only problem-based learning course. The second meeting was with staff from that problem-based learning course, really thrashing out the issues, and planning a pilot of a new book provision plan for the rest of this academic year.

End of Tuesday was spent finishing my preparations for a teaching session which took up Wednesday morning. This was my annual session with second year Geology students, giving them guidance in searching for literature to support their report on a type of ore (which they study at first hand) and the mine it came from. It’s a nice size of group to run a hands-on PC session with, and there’s lots of specific tricks they can use in the search, so it was quite a fun session to teach.

I finished early, as using up a part-day of annual leave, so just had time to catch up with email queries, chase a few ongoing issues, and meet and greet a new member of academic staff before I left. There’s a lot still to do before I go, and the clock’s ticking!

A gateway to new opportunities?

This blog is part of 23 Things for Professional Development, a course encouraging information professionals to explore online tools.

Thing 21 covers promoting yourself in job applications and at interview. As I recently went through a job application and interview process I’ve was thinking about this quite a lot recently. Thing 21 starts off by asking me to answer some questions:

What do you like to do?
I actually like most of my job, particularly working with staff and students directly on their research, but also some of the less direct stuff: for example, improving the resources available within the library by optimising our collections.

What do you dislike?
Checking reading lists! Anything where I feel like I’m not having to engage my brain, really.

Do you remember the last time you felt that feeling of deep satisfaction after creating, building, completing something? What was it about?
I do get this a lot from my work. The most recent was probably working out a different way of updating book collections in a particular area and applying it successfully.

What skills do you need to do the things you like?
My example was quite specific, but the generic version of this is that I tend to enjoy anything that involves analysing my work and coming up with ways of improving it. To do this I need reflective skills, research skills and technological skills.

The next suggestion is to make a kind of database of my interests and achievements. I don’t have anything as structured as this, but I have naturally kept a record of these things through job applications, CV updates and appraisal activities, and I’m actually a little reluctant to structure them too much, as I tend to package the same achievement differently for each job application. However, I have made sure I’ve organised and backed up all the relevant materials.

Lastly, I’ve been asked to share interview tips that I’ve found useful in my career. It’s not exactly an obscure tip, but I think the thing I’ve found most useful is finding out about the organisation. As information professionals we’re one step ahead on this, and I really think that doing your research (looking at websites, and making use of contacts) is one of the most productive things you can do before an interview. Also, don’t think that this stops once you’ve crossed the threshold of the organisation: you’ll probably be given quite a few clues as to the organisation’s priorities on the interview day itself (in a tour, in a discussion, or even in the questions you’re asked) and can benefit hugely from awareness of these.

New Year Fireworks

Happy new year! This new year represents a new start for me, or at least, it will soon! In February I am starting a new job at De Montfort University. I’ll still be in a liaison librarian role, but I’ll be looking after various applied social science departments including criminology, social work, housing, health studies, public policy and politics. Readers of this blog may recall that my first professional post was a temporary role at DMU in late 2009 to early 2010; I’m pleased that I’m going back to work with a team that I liked immensely.

My main plans for the year therefore emerge from the transition between the job I’m leaving and the job I’m starting. I’ve got lots of loose ends to wrap up at the University of Leicester. I’ve been increasingly happy with the relationship I’ve built up with the physical science departments at UoL, and I want to make sure I pass-on lots of information about the departments’ ongoing activities and needs so that they get all the support they need once I’m gone. I also intend to take advantage of my last ‘proper’ part-time month in January (in February I am working part-time at UoL and part-time at DMU) to break the back of writing up my dissertation into a paper. Then once February starts there’ll be lots to learn about the changes that have happened at DMU since I was there before, and about the new subjects and departments I’ll be supporting.

In addition, there’s a lot of blogging on my to-do list. I was following the CPD23 programme last year, but stalled on Week 16 ‘Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview’, as it was rather close to the bone for me to reflect on in a public space! Obviously, I did do some of the activities suggested in this exercise as part of applying for my new job, so I plan to return to CPD23 and document some of that process soon. I have several other events and activities I want to blog about from last year, and the next DREaM workshop is at the end of the month, so I’ll need to blog that, and consider how my desired outcomes from the workshop are going to change with my change of job.

It’s been a hectic few months, and will continue to be, with completely different working patterns in December (full-time at UoL), January (part-time at UoL), February (part-time at UoL and DMU) and March (full-time at DMU). However, I’m delighted that I’ve achieved my goal of finding a full-time academic librarian post, and really looking forward to the challenges 2012 will bring.

Victoria Park, Leicester, of which I have been seeing twice as much.

It’s November already? How did that happen? Well, the answer is that I have been working non-stop since the start of October, doing literally twice as much as usual. At the end of the last academic year one of my colleagues at Leicester left us for pastures new, and I have taken on some extra work, covering her post. I’m working full-time on a temporary contract until the end of this calendar year, (we’re currently in the process of recruiting her replacement).

The start of the academic year is notoriously the busiest time for academic librarians, so it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. As well as the usual departments I support (Chemistry, Geography, Geology and Physics and Astronomy) I’ve added on Criminology, Education and Lifelong Learning to give a total of 7 departments. It’s been good to try my hand at social science support again (I used to support Business, and have kept my eye in with Human Geography) but I doubt anyone could to sustain the combination of posts long-term: it’s just too wide a spread of disciplines!

Because the majority of teaching we do is loaded into the first semester, October was packed with sessions. Including one-to-one appointments with students and staff, I taught (or at least talked) for 39 hours 45 minutes. That’s over one week of working hours! Repeated exposure has been a good way of reducing the nerves I have about standing in front of a class, and also has allowed me to experiment a little with how I approach concepts by slightly varying what I cover over several similar repeated sessions. However, I’ve missed the luxury of ‘properly’ planning a session and reflecting back on it!

Things are just starting to calm down in terms of numbers of hours of teaching per week, and I no longer fear losing my voice. But what do I do with myself now? Well, catch up with everything else, of course!

Photograph of Chinese New Year fireworks at University Park, University of Nottingham, 2010.

Since I last posted a lot of things have changed. I’ve started my new job and finished my old one, in that order, as I was asked to carry on working part-time in my old maternity leave cover post while I started my new (permanent) part-time post. I’ve submitted my personal development plan for chartership, moved from subject support for Business to Science, and had to adjust to a whole new institution.

I’ve also just (before Easter) returned from LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference) 2010 where I ended up presenting a workshop solo, due to last minute changes of plan. I’m not surprised I haven’t updated for a while, although as my chartership plan involved updating this blog (and as blogging LILAC seems to be becoming an annual activity for me!), I’ve been feeling bad about it. I’ve also been involved in meetings and work on the renamed Big Conversation and spent yesterday evaluating consultants’ bids: more on that soon.

The good news is that I have a backlog of blogs waiting to be written on my new job, LILAC, and various bits and pieces. I’ve also migrated my blog to WordPress, as Blogger was suspending support for FTP and I’m still not convinced enough by the cloud to stop hedging my bets. Plus, I’ve got all this webspace, may as well use it! The particularly observant may notice a few small changes in the layout, and I’ll continue to fiddle with it for a while until I’m completely happy, but both blog themes were based on the styles from my main site, so things mostly look the same (except perhaps in Chrome, where the background seems to be broken – working on it).

Anyway, this really constitutes a) a shout out to say I’m still here, b) a brief update of what I’m doing and c) a way to remind me to make the updates that aren’t here yet!

I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after my undergrad, but after a year of trying the world of work decided I’d return and study an area of my degree I’d particularly enjoyed, Occupational Psychology. My MSc dissertation focused on a centre in Sheffield offering work-related IT courses and I became interested in learning and technology. Looking for work afterwards, I discovered that the University of Nottingham were offering studentships at their new Learning Sciences Research Institute, so I applied. My topic ended up being homework: specifically I focused on how technologies could be embedded in the home, given family’s views on privacy, their interactions around homework technologies, and various other criteria. However, as I worked on my PhD I developed an interest in how the theories I was studying applied to my student / research role. How I and those around me used technologies to learn and search for information became a larger and larger interest.

With my PhD it would have been quite easy to move within fields to study this academically, but I was reluctant to continue an academic career path. I don’t know when I suddenly realised that librarianship contained people-focused and applied roles which encompassed many of my interests, but I do remember increasingly thinking about librarianship as a career. However, given previous multiple changes in direction, I wanted to try a spell in libraries to decide if they were right for me, so I applied for and got a part-time maternity cover job in the George Green Library at the University of Nottingham while I was writing up my PhD thesis.

The job at George Green gave me a broad experience of libraries, as I worked half of my shift alongside a librarian or library assistant, and got to hear all about their work, and was in sole charge of the service for the second half of the night. I liked the job. I could have applied for library school at this stage, but instead I decided to take the opportunity to get a broader background in librarianship, and applied for a number of graduate trainee posts. It was as I started the traineeship that I looked around for others who had blogged their experiences as trainees, and, unable to find anything, started this blog. The rest of the story is quite well documented here: from my traineeship to my MA and then my current academic librarian job supporting students and researchers at De Montfort, just like I wanted to do as a student and researcher. And my Occupational Psychology degree, the starting point of it all, helped me get a job as a subject librarian in Business.

Nice story, isn’t it? However, one of the theories I learnt in my MSc Occupational Psychology is that the ‘career’ as we understand it, can be seen as just a story, reflecting back on how we got to where we are, and editing out all the awkward bits that don’t fit. For those about to start on a librarianship career, I think it’s important to mention some of these roots, which weren’t part of my route, to show that we’re not all perfect, inevitable fits for a librarianship career, that stops and starts are involved.

For example, I did a week’s work experience in a public library as a 16 year old and in my National Record of Achievement it says “I am not sure I would like to continue to work in this field when I am older”. When I finished my undergraduate degree I was a day too late to apply for a graduate trainee post in the university library. And I also have a traditional ‘I was a bookish child’ story to tell, but was nearly put off librarianship because I was worried it was more about the quiet anti-social child I had been, than the more extroverted lover of knowledge I’ve become. It’s fascinating to look back on our routes and our roots, but I’ve learnt not to be too defined by what I’ve done. Who know where I’ll end up next?

My impression of the job so far is positive. My colleagues have all been friendly and helpful in getting me settled in, and the training programme has mostly consisted of shadowing other people in tasks and being walked through procedures, which suits me quite well. I tend to pick up things quite quickly but also generate and need to ask lots of questions, so prefer this approach to receiving teaching materials without much context.

I’m enjoying making decisions for myself, as well. This week a lecturer emailed me to ask for extra copies of two textbooks. One we already had 14 copies, the other we only had 4. Previous usage stats suggested that 14 copies was sufficient and this was about right for the course size so I decided to email the lecturer back and say I coudn’t really justify many more copies of the 14 copy text, but if the 4 copy text was a core text could happily get some more of this. The lecturer emailed back to say this was a good point, and that, as the 4 copy text was a lot more up-to-date, made sense to just increase stock of this one. It wasn’t much, but I was pleased that it was the first piece of liaison I’d done where I’d not just said ‘okay’ and done something, but looked into something and found a better course of action. Liaison success!

Next week all the students start to come back. I’m looking forward to not being the person who knows the least on campus, and have learnt the location of all the library toilets: plus which ones have Dyson Airblade handdryers! That’s all I’ll get asked for the first week, right?

Note: The photo pictures the still-in-progress new Business and Law Building, where the staff who I support will eventually all be based. I love that the finish is the same as the Information Commons at Sheffield: architectural continuity!

On top of that, next week I’m starting my new job! It’s a temporary post at De Montfort University, and I’m going to be an assistant librarian, working with the Business School. I have an MSc in Occupational Psychology, which is the study of business from a psychological perspective, which should give me a good start in the topic. I’m looking forward to starting, although a little nervous! This week has been a semi-break between course and job, although I’ve been tying up some loose ends and preparing for the presentations next week, so it’s not all been holiday.

Obtaining my first professional post has made me reflect on this blog a little. I’m really happy I’ve kept it going throughout my graduate traineeship and my library course to my first job. I started the blog because I couldn’t find any which documented that journey, and I hope it proves useful to people about to start librarian training. At the very least it’s entertaining to me to look back at what I’ve been doing for the last two years, and a great record of all the things I’ve done. I’d recommend the process to anyone else too!

Note: Photograph is a view from the Information Commons, with the infamous comfy seating.

The Information Commons is a beautiful building, if relentlessly modern. I’ve posted pictures of the outside before, but here’s one of the interior, which I used as a probe in the student interviews. I might go round and take some pictures myself soon, as empty out-of-term building means no consent forms. The varying levels of use of the IC have impacted on my project in several ways. I had to conduct my student interviews during my coursework period, as exams were approaching, and getting students to give me a tour of the IC would have been unworkable at its peak use. Still, it put me ahead of the game, which I’m not complaining about that now.

When I first started this project I was more focused on the student part of my project than the staff aspect, but over the last week I’ve really loved doing the staff interviews and finding out about how the IC was put together. I was astonished to find out that it was in planning back in 1998 when I first came to the university as an undergraduate! My favourite bit is seeing how staff use some of the ideas and interests I’ve had in the MA in their jobs at senior levels. The opportunity to get involved in projects like the IC is something I’d love, and it’s made me even more enthusiastic about a career in academic libraries. I just need to find a job now!

Note: Photo was taken by Flickr user paolomargari and used here under Creative Commons licence.

I also got some good feedback on one of my essays: one looking at Virtual Research Environments and the role of the library. I don’t know yet what mark I’ve got for it, but my head of department contacted me to say she’d really like what I’d written, to ask if she could pass it on to some potentially interested people, and to discuss the possibility of writing it up for publication. Will have to see what comes of this, but it’s great feedback, and a great opportunity. We’ve got a meeting next week to discuss publication ideas. It’s this kind of attitude I really like at Sheffield, they seem to be very proactive. In addition, this week I’ve got a job interview on Wednesday. Should be interesting stuff, will wait and see what happens.

Final good news: my vision problems have been inspected by an ophthalmologist, and apparently the visual distortions I’ve been having are very likely due to my very dry eyes. I’m awaiting a prescription for some better drops, and in the meantime taking the ones I’ve got whenever I like. I was pleased to hear that the ophthalmologist was related to a librarian so knew all about the importance of text to our profession! My digestive problems are still ongoing: nothing conclusive learnt from my elimination diet so far, watch this space!

Today’s picture comes from Nottingham University campus: I live right nearby and went for a walk to get some library-related shots recently. I always liked the fact there’s a whole road named after the library. It sounds like all the libraries should be along this one road, but in fact it’s only the original Hallward Library.