The blog of www.chuukaku.com

From the 22nd to 24th October I attended the Research Libraries UK (RLUK) Conference, thanks to a competition for places set by my department. Over the next few days I plan to write a little about what were the major topics of the conference for me, influenced by my choice of parallel sessions. These were funding, digitisation and the future of librarianship, with the idea of collaboration running through all of these.

As my major ambition is to link together my background in research and technology with my new librarian skills, this was an ideal conference for me to attend. I found thinking of my participation in terms of Lave and Wenger (1991)'s concept of 'legitimate peripheral participation' was particularly illuminating - it's a concept I referred to in my PhD, so it was at the top of my mind!

Lave and Wenger used the term legitimate peripheral participation to describe an apprentice learner's participation at the edge of a community of practice he or she has entered - in this case librarianship. As part of my legitimised participation in the conference I was not only able to learn a lot about its major themes, but also to start placing myself in relation to the community I am entering.

Legitimate peripheral participation in the conference allowed me to learn more about being a librarian within the world of research libraries as a whole. It highlighted the topics that are of importance in the field today, the way librarians view the problems facing them (us!), and the behaviours of those who have been successful in the field. Furthermore, it allowed me to think about how my own skills might be of benefit to the community - for example, my interview, questionnaire and HCI / CSCW / design background and its use in understanding the needs of users, something highlighted as a particular concern throughout the conference. Finally, I was able to think about the range of careers that are open to me in the world of research / librarianship. There were representatives from research libraries in HE, in institutions, and also from organisations supporting librarians, such as JISC, Mimas and the Research Information Network, all of which seemed to have close links with my skill set.

Myself and my co-winner were the only students at the conference, but it seemed like a trial run for including more students next year - I hope a successful one! We were certainly grateful for the opportunity, and my thanks go to Sheila Corrall, our Head of Department, and RLUK for organising our participation. We appreciated that everyone went out of their way to make us feel welcome, particularly the RLUK team. It was also great to meet some of the librarians from Sheffield, who we haven't had the chance to meet on the course, and some of my ex-colleagues from Nottingham too!

Labels: career, conferences, professional development, research libraries, RLUK Conference

Okay, so I'm not actually in the job market at the moment, but I suppose I'm job market curious. As a librarian-to-be I read a lot about emerging careers, and as my workplace was holding interview yesterday for a post that was 'suitable for' a recent library school graduate it's been at the top of my mind.

In this game you hear a lot about the difficulty of entering the job market. Not to undermine the experiences of those who have difficulty in this area, it's not a story that's new to me since I entered the library and information world. It's hard to get a job as an Occupational Psychologist (my previous vocational training at MSc level), it's hard to get funding to do a PhD (something I managed), it's hard to get a post as an academic (something I thankfully never tried) and it's hard to get a graduate trainee post. A graduate trainee post is an interesting one to use as a potential comparison point for future me's job market as in the future I don't imagine I'll be as willing to move around the country as I was for a one-year position. Alright, so I've got a traineeship now, but let's just say that my application to interview ratio was not 100%, and that I was turned down for more traineeships than I was offered at interview, despite my previous library experience.

The question is: is it more difficult to get a job in libraries than in any other sector? The job market is hardly super welcoming at the best of time, and as I recently commented on the CILIP forum, the you-need-experience-to-get-a-job-to-get-experience conundrum is hardly of recent pedigree. Maybe there's a study in here somewhere, unless anyone knows of any readily available statistics for recruitment by sector?

Labels: career, jobs, librarianship

So, I'm over two thirds of the way through my traineeship, and back in the cataloguing department. This means waving goodbye to the cosy little office that is interlibrary loans, and back to the wide open spaces that are cataloguing. I'm picking up stuff again reasonably quickly - as I was assured, cataloguing is rather like riding a bicycle, except I can't ride a bicycle, and I can, to some degree, catalogue, as I hope I've been proving this week!

So, having experienced my fill of the library's departments (at least the ones we get to actively experience) I suppose I ought to jot down a few thoughts. The first is something that has come up a couple of times in this blog before, and that's the idea of circulation. The great thing about switching between departments is that you get to see the links between those departments. I've never worked in acquisitions, but as soon as books are ordered and received, they come straight through to be catalogued. They get labelled - okay, so I miss this step! - then I get to shelve them, issue them on my circulation desk shifts in the evenings and weekends, and then they come back to me to shelve again. In addition, having worked in interlibrary loans, I now know what it's like when other libraries want our books, and how we deal with researchers with wider needs than we can serve through our books and journals alone, which is pretty central to my interest in supporting research. I've got a much wider appreciation for the system of libraries than I had before I worked here, even though I was behind the desk in a library before.

In addition, I think I've picked up some pretty cool skills here. Not a lot of graduate trainees get to catalogue, and while I'm not sure that's terribly heartbreaking (and although cataloguing's not my dream job) it's illuminating to understand cataloguing at a certain level, and I'm sure it'll stand me in good stead in library school and future job interviews. Getting enquiry desk experience has given me oodles to think about in terms of how to interact with library users, and again is something really important to have on my CV. I keep on saying that this post has been a great preparation for library school. I've still got 4 months before I'll find out how true that is!

Labels: career, cataloguing, circulation, department, interlibrary loans, traineeship

Easter break has meant a more relaxed time at the library, and to celebrate this (or at least, as a consequence of this) we went on some trips to other libraries as the region as part of our training scheme. This involved Colchester Institute Library - the local vocational college - Essex Public Library Headquarters and Chelmsford Public Library. This was a pretty mixed bag of places to go, but here's my initial thoughts.

Colchester Institute, while it's broadly in the same game of academic librarianship, is quite a different cup of tea to a university library. The staff were keen to talk about making their library as welcome as possible for their students, and one of the ways they did this was to make their library as appealing and welcoming as possible - along the lines, in fact, of a public library. It feels weird to admit that the place you work at isn't that welcoming, but I guess it makes sense for a university to have a more weighty academy-of-learning feeling to it than a place that offers vocational courses. Interestingly, Colchester Institute does have a staff with a large proportion of subject librarians (although on a much smaller scale than here), and it certainly made me think more about the range of academic library posts that were on offer to see it.

Essex Public Library Headquarters made me think in a different way about public libraries. On one hand it was fairly inspirational to see the range of activities supported across the county. The number of books that were passing through were simply phenomenal, and there were lots of interesting projects underway, such as one to provide picture books to nursery schools across the county, various tie-ins with the Essex Book Festival and Year of Reading, and it was staggering to see the sheer number of books that pass through its system. On the other hand, it felt a little under-funded and under-staffed: leavers did not seem to have been replaced, and it really highlighted the budget crunches that this sector has faced.

Chelmsford Public Library on the other hand seemed to be thriving on the changing world of librarianship. It housed a number of services which tied into the library ethos, such as a Learn Direct centre promoting skills acquisition and the county's Answers Direct service, a phone service which answered complex library queries from across Essex. The Answers Direct offices also included a homework help instant messaging service, which was particularly interesting for me, given my PhD topic of homework technologies.

All in all, then, these were valuable experiences, and a great way to get a picture of the range of library careers that are available to me. However, I'm yet to be convinced away from a career in university libraries: I think they're where I'm most useful and where I feel most at home.

Labels: career, library visits, traineeship

Labels: academia, career, librarianship