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!

My portable device workstation set up on the train to London

Today I was down at the British Library in London for the second Library and Information Science Developing Research Excellence and Methods workshop (see http://lisresearch.org/dream-project/). The workshops are funded by the UK;s Arts and Humanities Research Council and aim to create a network of researchers (in both academia and practice) to spread knowledge of research methods throughout the library and information community.

It makes quite a nice activity to record for Library Day in the Life: it’s quite different from what people seem to think I do, but using evidence to develop practice and developing services is pretty everyday in my role. However, elements were also quite different to what I normally do: the workshop crosses different library sectors (public, academic, health libraries etc.) and there’s some blue skies thinking that’s beyond my usual ‘how can we do this better?’ remit.

However, the question I get asked most by non-librarians is how (and even if!) library services are responding to changes in society and technology, and this workshop a good way to illustrate that development is something that gets a lot of attention.

You can find out more about the LIS DREaM Workshop contents on my dedicated post at http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/2012/01/dream-2.html.

LIS DREaM pack

This was the second of the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Methods and Excellence) workshops, this time held at the British Library in London.  As with the previous workshop, I’ll be focusing on my thoughts on applying the methods, as the workshops are so well documented. For those wanting to read more slides these (where available) are already up on the Workshop 2 webpage on via the individual talks linked below. Videos of the talks will be available in about a week.

User involvement in research – Professor Peter Beresford
Peter discussed the implications of doing user involvement in research (from commissioning it, all the way to designing studies). He didn’t strictly present this as a method, more focusing upon the ethical, methodological and pragmatic challenges of the approach, no matter what method it was used alongside.

In academic libraries I’ve found that involvement of users in research is increasingly popular: for example, with user involvement in design research in library design literature. However, Peter’s discussion of the origin of service user involvement in research among marginalised communities made me question how this research is targeted. Very often the users libraries involve in research are habitual library users: could encouraging less frequent users to conduct their own research into the library’s potential expand our user base and relevance?

Techniques from History – Dr Thomas Haigh
I appreciated that Tom split up historical research into several approaches which might be relevant to LIS research: intellectual history, social history, cultural history, institutional history & history of practice / labour. Although I’ve never been a real history fan, I’ve often found accounts of the intellectual history of a concept fascinating. A recent example was reading about the history of bibliometrics, which I found really illuminating with respect to where practice is today.

I’ll admit I was surprised how much of a social scientist I felt when listening to Tom’s talk! My research needs focus on developing services and making recommendations, and I think this is usually best served by talking to current service users, so I’m keeping this approach on the back burner for the time being. Still, it was good to learn about a method that’s entirely new to me.

Introduction to Webometrics – Professor Mike Thelwall
Mike talked about webometrics: specifically examples of using analysis of web links, the sentiment of comments on Twitter, and patterns of interaction on YouTube, and what could be learnt from gathering data on these ongoing interactions. This was the talk where I could most easily see the applications possible to my own work.

It would be interesting to look at patterns of linking to library sites and resources an academic library within its own institution using web links. However, you’d need to go beyond the public web data Mike studies: for example, looking within the virtual learning environment. Perhaps appropriately anonymised data could be negotiated to get access? Twitter commentary seemed potentially promising, but would allow limited conclusions regarding a single institution (too few comments to get much data). I wonder if you could get illuminating data by narrowing down to academic libraries via Twitter users posting @ university library accounts?

Making the bullets for others to fire (research and policy) - Professor Nick Moore
Lastly, Nick spoke about doing research which informs policy. While government policy on education and information affect academic libraries, the kind of research that I want to do is more aimed at institutional and sectoral policies. However, many of his suggestions about conducting research seemed relevant regardless, and his advice to be passionate, ahead of the curve (but not too far ahead!) and to build networks & relationships were universally applicable.

The techniques covered in this workshop were a little further out of my comfort zone than the first, so expanded my research understanding further, but left me struggling a little more to think of applications! As I’m moving jobs this week, I’m going to think quite carefully about how the methods from both workshops could be used in my new workplace. You never know how a new environment might provoke new questions!

Reflection in the lake

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

My last task in CPD23 is to reflect on what’s next. For me, CPD23 has been split quite clearly into its two areas of focus: online tools and general professional development. I’ll admit that I mainly got involved out of interest in the tools. It’s been good to have a push to look at some tools I hadn’t had the chance to look at, and also to review and consider the tools I’m already using.

Mendeley is the tool I’ve really picked up and ran with out of the ones I tried in the programme. However, I’ll also admit that I’ve been back to and started using Evernote since I purchased an Apple-branded tablet device in the autumn: the synchronisation has suddenly become a lot more valuable to me.

I’ve also enjoyed thinking about the wider CPD themes covered, and it’s those I mostly focused upon in the personal development plan I completed for this task. I was actually surprised how many concrete ideas I already had for what I wanted to achieve this year: writing them down has pointed out just how many goals I’ve been secretly setting myself! Having this record will definitely help me review what I’ve achieved. I think it’s quite nice to have a PDP outside my formal institutional development plan, as some of my personal goals don’t really tend to fit within that structure. Maybe it’s something I’ll do next year as well.

Many thanks to the organisers of CPD23 for arranging all these fun times.

Event programme: the mince pies were lovely.

This post is a copy of the original, hosted at the University of Leicester institutional blog at http://uollibraryblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/information-literacy-graduate-attribute/. It is replicated here to preserve this blog as a central record of my professional development.

This event was a University of West London (UWL) event focusing on information literacy and its relationship to graduate attributes. Graduate attributes are qualities that a university aims for graduates to obtain (many universities have explicit lists of these expected qualities) and tend to be linked explicitly to the employability of students. With employability high on the agenda at universities I think most university libraries are keen to make sure that the value of information literate graduates is reflected in such discussions, so we were all eager to find out more.

Transport issues meant that I missed the introductory talks from the University of West London, but arrived in time for Ruth Stubbings’ talk. She got us all thinking about both the small and big picture of information literacy: what it meant to us personally, and then how it should be seen more globally. In the context of this event her broad perspective seemed very relevant, particularly her discussion of who ‘owns’ information literacy: practically I felt this was currently librarians, but the consensus was that this should be much wider, with discussion focusing on how information literacy could be ‘quality assured’ at governmental level.

Next up was Marc Forster, discussing information literacy as a graduate attribute in the context of nursing. Nursing is a profession with a heavy focus on evidence-based practice, with nurses needing to find up-to-date information on health. He had worked on a standalone module in UWL’s virtual learning environment, which is supported by nursing tutors (as first point of help) with Marc advising those tutors. Marc will be evaluating the course as part of his PhD on the experience of information literacy by nurses, the results of which I’m sure will be interesting reading.

Jason Eyre then discussed a project he’d been doing with information literacy in social work (another discipline with a focus on evidence-based practice). Jason had worked with key stakeholders in De Montfort University’s social work course to establish a mediated discussion board, intending to facilitate conversation between students (on placements and thus crossing student and practitioner boundaries), practitioners, the department, and the library. Although the discussion board received limited use, it’s development and evaluation allowed him to gather a whole range of data students’ experience of information behaviours. A particularly interesting finding was that while the academic environment encouraged written, formal and critical information seeking, the practitioner environment used verbal, informal information seeking, with a strong respect for authority. Jason concluded that ‘authentic’ tasks were needed, and that students needed to be supported in developing criticality as a verbal skill, to allow transition of evidence-based practice from the academic to practitioner environment.

The last talk was from Jo Lozinska from the University of West London’s Careers section spoke about trying to help students articulate and communicate the skills that they gained at university. She went through some application forms for graduate jobs, picking out areas where they had to demonstrate information skills, particularly problem solving and decision making skills. It was very interesting to see information literacy discussed in this context and to see someone from the ‘other side’ making these connections.

Finally, we split into groups to discuss whether we needed to reassess our information literacy teaching to make them relevant when students became graduates (short answer: yes!) and some of the issues around this. Key needs identified included making sure that the library, student development and careers gave out a consistent message.

This was a timely session with some highly thought-provoking presentations. I think my strongest resolution is to make more of an effort to think about the employment context that students will be (or, for professional courses, are) experiencing: how the information literacy support I provide will translate into that context, and how I can improve the likelihood of that translation.

Day-to-day book shelves in an academic library: are these candidates for preservation?

Yesterday I went to see Professor Graham Matthews inaugural lecture at Loughborough University, titled ‘Why do you always keep your records in the basement?’ Library preservation and disaster management. It’s a topic I know very little about, and when a friend from library school suggested attending, seemed like an excellent way to expand my knowledge. I’ll put together a brief summary here, and collect some of the resources he recommended at the end of the post.

After a bit about his entry into the area, Graham talked about the different ways that damage to library stock occurs. His list included handling, storage, heat & humidity, lighting, pollution, pests, fire, flood, theft, vandalism. For me, the most interesting observation was that some of the most common ways for damage to occur to books are among the most mundane: rough handling and poor storage can cause just as many problems to an individual book as a large-scale disaster.

Graham held that all members of library staff needed to know something about preservation, from management down to staff based in the building who might first spot a leak. He held that librarians have a duty to preserve heritage for future generations, but acknowledged that selection of what to preserve, was a complex question. Selection criteria could include:

1. usage levels
2. risk of losing an artefact
3. value and / or significance (at national or local levels)
4. access and availability

As an academic librarian, I’m more than aware how unpredictable usage levels can be, with a simple change in a reading list completely redefining the desirability of a text for students!

I was surprised to hear that until quite recently, preservation-quality microfilm was still considered the best ‘preservation surrogate’ in the absence of an original artefact. Graham indicated that there are still many issues to be considered about the use of digitisation as a preservation method, and it’s still not fully understood how long-term a solution our current digitisation methods may be.

Graham also discussed disasters, and how these affected libraries. He emphasised that in large-scale disasters, the focus of emergency services will rightly be on life and safety. Preservation of library materials will often come down to the individual, and there can be some quite difficult decisions to be made about personal danger. He felt that the most important thing was to have a plan: and an active one, with procedures and drills, rather than a passive document.

Graham’s final thoughts were largely focused on collaboration and mutual concerns between libraries, archives and museums. However, he concluded by encouraging us to think about our own collections, in the home rather than in our libraries, and what we’d preserve in those in case of a disaster. Maybe it’s time to start making a list!

Resources to Read

1. Ratcliffe, F. W. et al. (1984).  Preservation policies and conservation in British libraries. Report of the Cambridge University Library conservation project http://hdl.handle.net/10068/562494 – Seminal report, commenting on the state of preservation in libraries and its disappearance from the library school curriculum.
2. National Preservation Office (2006). Knowing the Need: A report on the emerging picture of preservation need in libraries and archives in the UK http://www.bl.uk/blpac/pdf/knowing.pdf - Survey of preservation in UK Libraries. Due to be updated in 2012, with a new report published in the Spring http://www.bl.uk/blpac/ktn2012.html.
3. Digital Preservation Coalition (2006). Mind the Gap: Assessing digital preservation needs in the UK http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/mind-the-gap – Report looking at the preservation needs of digital information: both born digital and digitised material.
4. Matthews, G. et al. (2009). Disaster Management in Archives, Libraries and Museums. Ashgate: UK – Graham and colleagues’ book, introducing disaster management and giving advice on planning.
5. National Computing Centre (2011). Managing data risk in the enterprise and the Cloud – Event Summary. http://www.ncc.co.uk/article/?articleid=16720 – Report on an event covering the digital preservation implications of cloud computing.

Videos to Watch

1. Preserving the British Library’s C19 Newspaper Collection http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6NnFcSpAh8 – Interviews about this major digitisation project.
2. National Library of Haïti http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oSmqqJUfcc – Alarming video of a library in the midst of a natural disaster, with mystifying soundtrack.

Thing 22, volunteering to get experience,  is going to be a fairly short one for me. I haven’t really done any volunteering in the traditional sense, but I have committed parts of my ‘spare’ time to things like working on CILIP committees, my stint as a Project Board Member on CILIP’s Defining Our Professional Future, and various other professional activities. The main benefits I’ve had from such activities have been in extending my professional network and allowing me to get involved in the profession outside my part-time hours while I looked for full-time work.

I don’t think that volunteering endangers our profession, except in the most obvious way: where volunteers are used to substitute for posts that have been or should be paid ones. However, it’s pretty subjective when this is the case, so I think we have to be quite careful where we’re led on that front.

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!