The other news is that the conference report myself and the other sponsored students at LILAC put together has been published in the Journal of Information Literacy. The report centres around the key themes of the conference, and you can see my handiwork under the ‘Supporting Research’ theme, one of my favourite topics. The report also features a photo of me in party frock. I’m obviously having a photogenic month!

Never content with doing one thing at a time, this has also been my last week for finishing my PhD… or at least I really hope it is! I’ve corrected and reprinted, and I’m not in Sheffield again until Monday afternoon, so the plan is to get it all bound and submitted on Monday morning, and then concentrate on the MA. I’m nervous about it, and really hoping it’s what the external was looking for when she asked for the corrections. Fingers crossed!

The AGM itself was reasonably brief, but it was good to go and hear about the kind of events they’d run during the year, most of which I was sad I’d missed out on (but unable to attend during my trainee post anyway). Then we hit the library for the tour.

The library has been built using the shell of the old library – the extension was added, then the library moved into the extension, then they renovated the old section, and joined the two, fairly seamlessly. It was a £35m job, and boy, did it show. Everything looks and smells new: especially the leather seating. There are fabulous facilities, like large and well equipped group rooms, and it has another of the exciting book sorting RFID machines I saw at UEA, only this time with the books going directly onto the trolleys!

Everywhere we went there seemed to be something new and exciting to see, from the graduate study lounge, available only with card access (oh, how I want one!) to the chair sponsored in honour of Engelbert Humperdinck! The only bit that isn’t super-sparkling, beautifully ventilated and light, and glamorously furnished is, of course, the staff area, but still, a lot better than most.

Do I actually think that this was money well spent? Well, the summertime is always a quiet time for libraries, but over above this the quality of the experience of using the library made the students appear extra-studious in their activities. Of course, it’s not possible to rebuild every 5 years, but I think a lot of libraries could benefit from a face lift every once in a while, to avoid a slide into mild grottiness. Also, it seems a rather mundane point, but as someone who’s worked in rather old library buildings, I can’t even imagine how great it would be to work in somewhere well-ventilated and temperature controlled. What a sad statement about librarianship! The downside? Well, of course, the staff offices were where the air conditioning didn’t work, but at least units were being installed! Lastly, the benefits of having enough space for all the books – a rarer luxury than I was aware before I entered the library world – can’t be underestimated.

I guess I’ve come away with library envy.

Time perhaps, for some reflections on the past year? Well, I have no regrets about taking the traineeship. It’s been a long year to be away from home, but I’ve learnt a lot about librarianship and libraries. Certainly, I’ve got a much wider range of practical skills and experience than a year ago. In addition, the traineeship has raised as many questions as it’s answered, but they’ve been valuable questions to ask myself: ‘what kind of research librarian do I want to be?’, ‘what kind of research library do I want to work in?’, ‘how do we justify the expense of technological innovations?’ and ‘how can a library market itself to its patrons and paymasters?’. The job market may well aid me in answering questions about my ambitions, but they’re all useful questions to drive my activities in library school.

When it comes to my PhD, it’s exciting to see the end looming, but scary to think that it’s all down to the line now: even thinking pessimistically, it’ll soon be over one way or another! I’ve provisionally passed my ECDL (official confirmation still due), so at least I’ll be well qualified to launch myself back into the world of word processing to finish the thesis! Here’s hoping it’s finished before library school launches another academic load at me!

The good news is that I’m pretty good at driving a computer already. Since I was a child I’ve been confident in my ability to pick up new technologies – I’m a digital native, if you will, although I’m slightly too old to be one according to some definitions! Heck, a large part of my PhD took place within a computer science department. However, taking the ECDL is a good way of proving my competence with standard packages: I worked out it’s around 12 years since I touched Microsoft Access, and using Firefox and webmail has put me out of touch with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. It’s also the kind of qualification that seems to tick boxes for library employers, and shows a commitment to professional development. Lastly, I am picking up some stuff that I didn’t know by browsing through our training software. My learning point of today was that Powerpoint can create a folder with a presentation and a Powerpoint viewer to transfer presentations to a computer without the necessary software. I never knew this before, and given its somewhat bewildering name – Package to CD – wasn’t likely to find it in a hurry.

So far I’ve taken three modules (for which feedback from the examiner was positive) and I’ve got four more to go: communication and presentation software tomorrow; spreadsheets and databases on Thursday. At the moment I’m just hoping I don’t have to retake any exams – there’s only so many ECDL papers I can take before I’m going cross-eyed!

In other news, it’s looking like my PhD comments from my supervisors might turn up soon, and the reading list for my librarianship course has arrived. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’m taking the ECDL exams so quickly… only four weeks to go in the traineeship, and only seven weeks to go until the start of my new course!

It seems a little strange that I had to get an in-depth form filled out by my undergraduate department with comments on my performance as a student. This involved the departmental administration running round trying to find seven year old information, and it was lucky that my old personal tutor was still at the department, although he was only my personal tutor for my last year of study, so I’m not sure what depth of information he was able to provide! I imagine that a huge amount of weight is not going to be placed upon my undergraduate details, given that I have an MSc, and nearly a PhD, but the AHRC does say that the undergraduate information will be used as a primary weighting for candidates, so who knows…

Still on the agenda is to finish the PhD; the main chapter I had to rewrite is mostly there in terms of content, though I’ve still got to get the okay from my elusive supervisors on it, and rewrite the rest of the thesis to fit. It’s still a case of weeks, but watch this space!

My viva wasn’t bad as an experience, but the outcome wasn’t great, in that I’ve been given major corrections. The PhD viva (or defense, as it’s known in the US) has a number of different possible outcomes in the UK. The best known are (i) an outright pass, which is fairly rare, (ii) minor corrections, which require about 3 months to fix, (iii) major corrections, which require about a year to fix, (iv) fail. There’s a number of different variations and additional categories, depending on where you study.

My outcome was major corrections, which, before the viva, I’d described as ‘the worst possible outcome’ only because if you fail, at least you get to stop. I still find it pretty depressing that I got this outcome although I count my blessings regularly: I don’t have too significant a rewrite of the whole thing to do, they’re not that ‘major’ for major corrections, I don’t have to retake the viva. Still, minor corrections are the most common outcome, and when your peers all get minor corrections, it makes it tempting to look on the grey side. What is more, no one talks about major corrections. You’re really supposed, I think, to keep your head down, make the corrections, pass and then never speak of them again. They are a secret PhD shame. At least if you fail you can make all kinds of rude allegations about your examiners, rather than feeling like they wanted you to pass, and are trying to help you do it. Consider this post an attempt to make sure anyone else looking for fellow sufferers by search engine knows they’re not the only one. Back to the thesis, then…