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Decided to merge my last three days of Day in the Life together, as I did too much miscellaneous stuff, and not enough sitting down and writing. Consider this edited highlights!

Wednesday morning I spent looking for some new DVDs providing training in team building, meetings, and other workplace communication skills. Unfortunately the only materials I could source which seemed good enough to keep student attention were the ones we already owned (but on DVD rather than video). Too expensive to justify buying twice, so I'm still looking, if anyone has any ideas!

After that, an induction session. It was arranged as part of an induction programme for a small course, but only the library session was on Wednesday. Isolate library sessions never seem to encourage students to attend. Terrible turnout: a few arrived on time and a few late, making eight out of an expected twenty. I wasn't presenting, but did lead the tour, and felt a bit better about making the effort to organise the session when the students who did come were interested and asked lots of questions.

Most of the rest of the day week involved wrapping up activities, as this was my penultimate full-time week in the post. Wednesday concluded with my late night in which I created (by request from the head of my section) a list of keywords for induction demonstrations (such as databases) for the different departments I cover. There's some general subject-specific keywords, some comparative ones to show the difference keyword choices make, and a classic article to use in citation searches for each of the four departments. Sourcing and trialling these took me most of my late night shift, bar ten minutes which I spent editing margins so the crib sheet fitted onto a single handy sheet of paper!

Thursday and Friday morning (I work only the morning on Fridays to compensate for the late night) involved summary activities which more or less ran into each other. There were a couple of highlights. On Thursday afternoon we had an interesting session on the government's new Customer Service Excellence standard, which we're working towards, identifying measures we could use to demonstrate our excellence.

The best part of the week for me, though, was the announcement that I've made the Project Board for the Big Conversation: a discussion that CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the UK) is running to determine its future. I'm really pleased and got lots of nice comments on Twitter from people who were happy to have a New Professional on the board. I've got project experience from my PhD and other academic activities, plus a billion opinions on research methods, so I'm hoping to be valuable in choosing a strategy for the project. The first meeting kicks off in February. Definitely a memorable week for me!

Picture: Sign at the new Nottingham Contemporary art gallery. I caught the end of the David Hockney exhibition on my week off this month.

Labels: academic libraries, CILIP, librarydayinthelife, professional development

Tuesday, and I started the morning by working on my module spreadsheet: my somewhat haphazard knowledge management project. I don't have access to any centralised information about the modules I support, so every time I get a little bit of information - module details, leaders, student numbers etc. - I squirrel it away in my spreadsheet. I'd gathered from a departmental meeting that a lot of the module codes for Human Resource Management were changing this year, so I asked for a list of the changes from the HRM module admin to update my info. I'm hoping to compare this information to our reading list stock before I leave to get some idea of which need updating and which we can drop off the system.

After that, I started updating the library 'How To' sheets on Internet searching. It's something I've been asked to look at before I go. At the moment my major dilemma is how much to expand them. It's tempting to put in lots of information, but I actually think their current simplicity is a strength, so I'm mainly concentrating on updating them for currency.

As well as the work I plan to do, there's always a little bit of work which travels over to my desk when I'm not there, in the form of notes or mysterious items. I went for a hot chocolate after being thoroughly chilled by some unnecessary air conditioning, and returned to discover a textbook and a copy of the Radio Times TV listing magazine on my desk. While I was deciding whether or not to withdraw and / or replace the first textbook (missing some index pages) by looking at usage and considering its currency, a second textbook arrived. Luckily the second book was hardly used, badly damaged and had a second copy, making at least one easy decision. Once the books were sentenced I read through the Radio Times, sadly finding no business-related TV for the week to record, and headed up to the Information Desk for my shift.

I was on the Information Desk for an hour. It's always hard to tell when we'll be busy, and so it's not too unusual that the first 15 minutes were deserted, and the next 45 frantic. I pointed one student towards books on dissertation / research project writing and gave some literature searching hints and tips, including explaining peer review. I found a spelling mistake on a reading list which was stopping one student finding a book on the catalogue, and tried to help another find some photographs of insects as a reference for drawing. As so often happens, as soon as I got back to my desk I thought of better places to look, but hopefully I did enough, and at least I'll remember next time! Then lunch.

After lunch I was 'on call' for the Research Training Programme for PhD students we hold in our lecture theatre. There's a morning looking into the process of literature searching, current awareness etc. and then the students get a practical session on Endnote (the reference management software) in the afternoon. This wouldn't always happen, but there's a bit of library flu going round, and so we were short of staff with Endnote knowledge to support the session. However, if I'm around during this bit of the session I do pop down occasionally as I used Endnote to manage my references for my PhD, and so I've got lots of practical hints and tips on use. I went down to answer some general questions, including those of one repeat customer who'd picked up importing references to Endnote at the last session, and now wanted me to demonstrate a bit of Cite While You Write (using Endnote in conjunction with Microsoft Word).

I then went back up to the office (answering one more Endnote query remotely!) and did a little more office work. I finally crossed off one of the 'to-do' items I've had on my list for a while. Since I arrived we've been setting up a new database, and one with relatively unusual requirements and demands. I'd asked for some information from other librarians on a mailing list on how they ran the database, and needed to collate their responses to feed back to the list. I went through their mostly unstructured responses and categorised them, to make it clear which strategies other libraries had used and finished just in time to re-check my emails and go home.

Photo: Note the cunning tie-in via the use of the word 'squirrel' in the first paragraph. The bird seeds at home have been subject to attack by this furry critter.

Labels: academic libraries, librarydayinthelife, professional development

I am participating for the first time in the Library Day in the Life project in which library workers all around the world blog or otherwise record their working days for a week. Check out the Library Day in the Life wiki for further details. For those new to the blog I am currently working as an academic librarian, supporting Business and Accounting, in the UK.

I've been away from the library for six working days with my MA Librarianship graduation and a week's annual leave. I'm approaching the end of my contract as academic liaison librarian for business at De Montfort University so was using up the annual leave I had left. I came back from holiday to have a familiar panic that I was supposed to be on the help desk first thing (I always have Friday afternoons off, and often miss the rota coming round) but didn't have any shifts today. I seem to be getting better at avoiding a last minute dash!

On the train in the morning I was occupied with reading my notes for the presentation I was giving at lunchtime. This was on my MA dissertation project, and consisted of talks I'd given to a visiting group from UCR Wales in the Information Commons at the University of Sheffield (on which my dissertation focused) and at the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE) Annual Conference. I'd presented both parts (the findings and theory) separately before, so once at work I just produced my handouts and then started wading through my accrued email from the previous week.

I'd reduced my emails to one page by the time I had to head to the Academic and Professional Development Unit, where I was presenting. The two talks seemed to gel together quite well, and I was pleased to get some practice presenting. I'm going to be giving regular lectures in my new job starting in February (as part-time academic liaison librarian for science at Leicester University). The questions after the talk were really interesting, and we had a great discussion about how students can be encouraged to use learning spaces in new ways. Plus, free sandwiches.

After a quick break for a walk I went to see Nathan (the normal business librarian, who is seconded into another post) deliver a lecture I'd written for him on library resources as part of a module on Professional Skills for Accountants. The talk seemed to go well - I liked the way he fleshed out my slides with lots of live searches as examples - but some students at the back talked all the way through, which was a shame. Last week I went to a staff-student committee in which students complained about other students talking in lectures (I heard some students shh-ing in this lecture too), and it's making me consider whether to address this kind of behaviour more actively: it's nerve-wracking, but I can see the benefits.

In the afternoon I caught up with a few more tasks. There are some which never seem to end, and two of my old faithful eternal projects (setting up a complex database, and a book I'm ordering through non-standard channels) came back to haunt me. I'm pleased to say that I made a bit of progress with both before hometime... maybe they'll be finished before my contract ends!

Picture taken in Lincoln in October 2009, on the way to a comedy festival. Moving into librarianship seems to have given me an uncontrollable desire to photograph things with the word 'library' on them.

Labels: academic libraries, dissertation, librarydayinthelife, professional development

Well, as I'm in my first professional post I'm starting the process of chartership with CILIP. I've stumped up my £50 to register, and now have 6 months to compose and submit my chartership plan. It's still not fully formed as yet, but one of my aims will be to maintain my knowledge and awareness of new technologies (something which I try to do anyway, but it's nice to acknowledge and record). One such technology is no doubt Google Wave, and as my invitation arrived a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd record my first thoughts.

First up, who thought Google Wave was a social networking tool? Well, me, for one, but it turns out I was wrong. When you've added someone to your list of contacts they're not prompted to add you. It's more like an email system with a contacts list. In fact, if you watch any of Google's explanations of 'what Wave is' then you'll find they're pretty keen to tell you it's like email too. It took me a while to work out what Google meant here, but I think what they mean is it's like a step forward from Gmail... I haven't been able to see the links between Wave and Outlook without going via Gmail myself.

There's various information out there on the web. Most people I've spoken to have been directed towards and immediately put off the 120 minute launch video. Like me, you may be relieved to discover there's an 8 minute Google Wave video that isn't directed towards developers. This is a pretty good overview of what Google would like Wave to do, but it isn't yet a guide to what it does. Currently, for me, it's been a bunch of email conversations in which I discuss what on earth Wave is, and one big public collaboratively edited conversation in which even librarians are struggling to organise themselves into alphabetical order while everything goes slowly.

So, do I like it? Well, currently that's an emphatic 'no', but if you'd asked me about Twitter when I first signed up I might have said the same thing. I think, and this isn't the most original thought on Wave I've had, that it lacks critical mass. If Google really are developing something to replace email then it needs to be available to everyone. What's the point in trying to arrange a barbeque through Wave if only two people I know have invites? Furthermore, half the functions Google would like it to have they're kind of waiting for someone to develop (that's what the 120 minute video's about). It's interesting to see what it does currently, but I think I'm going to have to withhold judgement until the critical mass of people and apps is reached. If it ever is.

Note: tenuous photographic connection: Google Wave / sea. Taken on holiday at Gower this year.

Labels: chartership, professional development, Web 2.0

Some excellent library bloggers have recently set up a project in which our kind blog both our routes into librarianship, and our roots in librarianship, and this is my contribution. I'll leap straight in, but do check out the other fascinating entries at the Library Routes Wiki. My route into librarianship has been a meandering one, starting with an MSc in Occupational Psychology (the psychology of work and organisations). My roots in librarianship, which we'll come to later, started a long time before that.

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?

Labels: jobs, MA, professional development, traineeship

There was an interesting conversation happening on Twitter this week about whether or not to charter. I understand completely that many people feel rather disenfranchised from CILIP, and don't feel like they get their money's worth from the organisation. Chartership, similarly, is an aid to professional development, but not the only way to expand ones knowledge and self-awareness (and I'm sure there are some who (whisper it) cannot be bothered... although I've never met any self-proclaimed non-bother-ers).

My background is in psychology, and there a completely different conversation is happening: whether the unchartered should even be allowed to call themselves psychologists. It is understandable that people are more worried about ensuring a certain level of training from someone playing with their minds than someone fetching them a book. As Joeyanne Libraryanne pointed out the equivalent conversation in librarianship is whether a qualification is needed at all. However, isn't the whole point of calling us a profession to point out that librarians do more than just fetch books? I really hope we do, as I get bored of fetching books quite quickly.

For me, CILIP membership and chartership is a complete no-brainer. I have been indoctrinated somewhere along the line to believe that professional organisations are a good thing and CILIP does seem to have given back to me for everything I've put in. I'm a CILIP blogger, which has given me incentive to keep on blogging, I've been sponsored to attend the Mashed Library Conference via CILIP, and I'm a member of the CDG Yorkshire and Humberside committee where I've helped organise events which gave me experience and information. I even read the Gazette and Update on the train. Oh yes, I'm one of those.

For me, the process of chartership is the unimportant part of the equation. I've not gone through it, and the stories I've heard indicate that it may not be the most well-developed programme in the world. But idealistically, the idea of chartership is important to me. If librarians really are a profession - if there's some benefit to shared training and continuing professional development - then we need to have a chartership process to reflect and validate our professional activities. My thinly veiled opinion is that there is a benefit. Now, how do we make that benefit more evident, CILIP?

Note: photograph shows view across the lake, University Park, University of Nottingham.

Labels: chartership, CILIP, professional development, Web 2.0

As well as commenting on the more formal learning I took from Mash Oop North, explored in my blog posts on the opening sessions I also wanted to take time to comment more generally on the unconference.

I was funded to attend Mashed Library by CILIP Yorkshire and Humberside - I'm writing a report for their newsletter in 'payment' and because I was travelling from Nottingham rather than Sheffield, where I study, they generously offered to put me up in a hotel before the event to allow me to avoid a super-early start.

I'm really glad I got to go to the event early as the Monday night getting-to-know-you meal and drinks were invaluable in finding my feet and getting to know some delegates beforehand. I commented on my previous posts that Twitter was useful in following ideas being generated and discussed elsewhere in the event itself, but the pre-show was great in that I got to meet up with people who I knew from Twitter beforehand. It was great to put people to IDs / pictures of faces, and I found a few more interesting people to follow as well. I've always tended to arrive at events like this on the day, and I think I might actually arrive early wherever possible in the future, as it really helped me settle in.

The conference was brilliantly organised: not only were we asked to indicate our own experience and interests beforehand, but we also got to vote on pizza toppings for the lunch, and influence which of the opening sessions ran parallel to each other. I missed the Yahoo! Pipes session, as it ran opposite one my choices, but fellow-Twitterer @spiky7 and I had a play with it in the afternoon and created an exciting tool for stalking conference organiser Dave Pattern. Unfortunately we had to edit out his #mashlib09 tweets as they overwhelmed the timeline!

If you're interested in learning more about Mashed Library then it's well worth visiting the Mash Oop North blog, where there should be further updates on the event. Next year's event will take place in Birmingham, entitled Middle Mash, and I'd recommend attending if you can find a place - this year's sold out with speed!

Note: the picture shows the Ikea rat on display at the Rat and Ratchet, which we called into on Monday night. I have the exact same toy rat, so he made me feel right at home.

Labels: conferences, library tech, mashlib09, professional development, Web 2.0

The second session I attended at Mash Oop North was by Brendan Dawes who "does things with data" as he described it, creating playful and interactive visualisations. The major message, for me, in his talk, was how much more creative we could be with the way we represent data in libraries. The OPAC tends to be quite serious and workmanlike, and, sure, usability is important. But what about encouraging playful and creative exploration of information? Maybe libraries need to learn a lesson from Donald Norman's Emotional Design where he realised that his focus on usability in his earlier works could divert attention from the kind of design which we fall in love with. There's a more obvious place for playfulness in public than academic libraries, but a more ludic approach might be a good way to engage students and encourage them to explore library services in the early stages of their university careers.

The final formal session of the day was perhaps the most practically useful for me, a whistlestop tour through applications by Mike Ellis. He particularly focused on applications which could be used to 'scrape' data from webpages which aren't formally set up for data sharing through RSS feeds or APIs. I must admit to getting a little lost in this session, joined by a few others in the Twitter chat, but Mike came to the rescue by putting all the information down in a blog post on scraping, scripting and hacking which I'll definitely be revisiting.

The nice thing about being at a techie conference was that lots of people were using Twitter, and so I got to experience bits and pieces of the other talks by following along on the #mashlib09 hashtag on my borrowed-for-the-day iPod Touch. More on Twitter to follow in my other thoughts on the conference.

Note: photo features obligatory white-blood-cell-in-transit-to-conference shot. The white blood cell team did quite well at fending off conference lurgy.

Labels: conferences, library tech, mashlib09, professional development, Web 2.0

This week I attended the Mashed Libraries event Mash Oop North. This is an unconference (informal conference) event looking at the use of mash-ups in libraries. I've put together a few posts on the day, and in the first two I'm concentrating on the opening sessions, as these were the most information-rich parts of the event.

My first opening session was Dave Pattern and Iman Moradi talking about "Making data work harder". The simplest way to sum Dave's section up was that it was about libraries doing an Amazon - harnessing library usage data to enhance the user experience. There were lots of great examples of how this could enhance user activities. I was also provoked to wonder whether there were opportunities for libraries to go beyond some of these more commercial models of data to create more library-specific data usage. Free provision of resources which adds a whole new angle to features like book suggestion, and there's some aspects of library usage – such as renewals and repeat borrowing of books – which don't feature in the commercial sphere.

Dave's thoughts were followed by a section from Iman about design in libraries. I had a brief chat with Iman later in the day about ethnography in libraries, and his comments about how libraries might capture information about using the library from students before they leave – almost a form of student-focused knowledge management – were thought-provoking. It resonated with some of the intentions of my dissertation, although my work is focused on harnessing that knowledge for institutional rather than community learning.

Note: Picture shows the deluge Mashed Library was treated to at lunchtime. The misty effect in the background is genuinely caused by sheer weight of water.

Labels: conferences, library tech, mashlib09, professional development, Web 2.0

This blog's been a little bit quiet recently as I've not been feeling too good: for some reason one of my symptoms has been weird vision when looking at screens (I can see them but my eyes are a bit weirded out by long exposure) hence the lack of updates!

Lots has been going on, however. The best news is that I've received a funded place at Mashed Libraries 2009. This is one of those fancy unconference things looking at mash-ups within the library field. I'm really excited about attending. I don't have much experience in any kind of library technologies: the shot on the right shows the nearest I got to library tech in my last job, a new computer to access our old-fashioned LMS. However my enthusiasm for social networking, my love of playing with random software and the bits of my PhD involving representing and supporting homework through lots of different technologies should be pretty relevant.

On top of this I've been recruited to work on an HEA funded synthesis of research alongside members of CILASS, the University of Sheffield's centre for Inquiry Based Learning over the summer. Should be interesting and a way of keeping up my research skills and giving me something other than my dissertation to think about over the next few months.

Other than those exciting pieces of news, the most thrilling thing in my life has been the gradual erosion of my coursework deadlines. At the time of writing I've only got two more pieces I need to get done, and hopefully things will keep ticking along. In fact, I've got some editing awaiting as I speak, so off I go!

Labels: jobs, library tech, MA, mashlib09, professional development, Web 2.0

At the start of last week I went to LILAC, the Librarian's Information Literacy Conference, for which I was lucky enough to win a student award. The growth of information literacy in academic libraries particularly drew me in, plus two of the key themes of the conference were emerging technologies and supporting research, which reflect my interests quite well. Overall, LILAC was a great mix of research and practitioner accounts, particularly in the HE sector, so was ideal for me to get a good understanding of best practice.

One of the most interesting themes of the conference for me was the idea of doing information literacy without saying information literacy. I think that generally people outside the information professions don't really know what the 'information' in 'information professions' means. Whether we within the information professions agree with what it means is another blogpost entirely! More than one speaker (such as Jonathan Westaway and Moira Bent) mentioned needing students to acquire habits rather than skills, expressing that it's not really the ability to spot the seven pillars that counts, but making effective use of information so automatic that it might not even be articulated. Keynote Melissa Highton suggested that maybe digital literacy might be a more inspirational phrase for non-librarians, and in the final session of the conference Claire Packham from the British Library mentioned that the major factor in increasing attendance at the Information Literacy sessions in their new reader education programmes was stopping calling it information literacy.

On the other hand, if we're not saying information literacy we hide the message that certain key skills transfer across contexts. Perhaps the solution is to make the information professions synonymous with information literacy practices in the minds of the public so they automatically see new contexts of information use as under our remit. I think librarianship suffers from the idea that librarians are experts on the resources under the library's roof (physical or digital). An awareness that we are experts on doing information literacy even if we aren't saying information literacy requires us to focus on our practices rather than our products. Therefore the importance of the information professions acting as advocates and implementers of information literacy practices is what I'll be taking away from LILAC.

Photograph of the Cardiff University dragon reading the LILAC 2009 Conference Pack taken by Katie Fraser.

Labels: conferences, information literacy, LILAC Conference, professional development

I've just heard that I've received a sponsored student place at the LILAC Conference 2009. LILAC is the Librarian's Information Literacy Annual Conference, and this year it's looking at emerging technologies and supporting research, which is right up my street. I enjoyed the first semester module on information literacy but didn't feel the second semester one reflected my particular interests in the area, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to round out my understanding of the topic. Definitely looking forward to it.

On the course, I'm one week into the second semester and starting to find my bearings after a busy week working out my new schedule. This semester we get to pick and choose our own modules, and I'm taking Academic, Research and Special libraries (which pretty much fits perfectly the range of libraries I'm hoping to work in), Electronic Publishing and Educational Informatics.

Although some of the Electronic Publishing and Educational Informatics work overlaps with what I've studied in my PhD (or self-taught skills, such as the creation of xhtml / css websites) I think I can learn a lot from information scientists' perspectives on these areas. For example, Electronic Publishing concentrates on standards and legislation, and the Educational Informatics modules focuses on the use of established technologies for formal education, whereas my own research covered more informal uses of emerging technologies.

Finally, I'm currently discussing working with Sheffield's Information Commons for my dissertation, which promises to be an exciting exploration of evaluating new learning spaces. More on this soon as the details get worked out - I submit a proposal at the start of March.

Note: The picture accompanying this post was taken at the Apple Store in London. It's my website on the largest computer screen I think I've ever seen, which for some reason I found incredibly amusing.

Labels: conferences, information literacy, LILAC Conference, MA, professional development

As a second step in my campaign for media dominance, I'm mentioned in an article in this month's (the January / February issue) of CILIP's Library and Information Update. Hello to anyone who's found their way here from the article - it's on the RLUK (Research Libraries UK) Conference I attended back in October 2008 and here are the posts from the conference mentioned in the article.

Just to avoid / add to the confusion, the article's got a teensy error in it: I'm actually a student with a PhD, rather than a PhD student - I'm currently studying for the MA in Librarianship at Sheffield, and my PhD was in Learning Sciences at Nottingham University. Still, nice that Update were so interested in our experiences as student attendees at the conference, and I hope this is a positive sign for RLUK continuing to offer student places at their future events.

Labels: conferences, media, professional development, RLUK Conference

As part of my involvement in the CILIP Career Development Group Yorkshire and Humberside (and in conjunction with the University of Sheffield Library and Information Professionals Social Society), my colleagues and I are arranging a career event with speakers from course alumni and other local professionals.

Putting together the poster was good fun, and you'll be pleased to hear that the picture is of a real librarian, who blogs as the Librarian by Day. Picture is used courtesy of Creative Commons Licence and the same rights apply to this poster.

I quite like how the poster turned out, and I'm looking forward to the event as well - hopefully there'll be a good turn out, and proceeds are heading to charity, so it'll be good all round if it's a success. I'll probably update more after the event (on 11th February) to reveal how it went.

Otherwise, the coursework is ongoing (due in the day after tomorrow and should be polished by the deadline) and I've got a meeting tomorrow about possible dissertation projects, so everything's running to schedule. I'll be glad for a rest next week before lectures commence nonetheless!

Labels: CILIP, displays, jobs, MA, professional development

The final theme was the future of librarianship, and this covered two main aspects - the need for leaders of the future, and the research library-specific consideration of how librarians' roles might change.

There were two talks on leadership. The first came from Alistair Work, and mainly focused on how individuals react when the moment to show leadership arises. He also asked an interesting question - given that long-term professionals tend to develop certain styles of thinking, with associated neural changes, what does a librarian's brain look like? For me, an equally interesting question was whether a newly qualified librarian is going to end up with a similar brain to the librarians in charge today, and what, if any, differences there are between the current cohort of library school students and those of a few decades ago. In addition, Sheila Corrall, my Head of Department presented an evaluation of the Leading Modern Public Libraries programme - it seems well worth a look for those interested in library leadership across the sectors.

The other main theme was the emergence of new types of librarian role in research libraries. Often when speakers talk about the changing role of librarians it is simply a matter of integrating new technologies into old posts; this was about how changes from technologies might create entirely new posts. For example, with the advent of open access, researchers will need librarians to manage internally produced repositories of publications, and even data. In research libraries it seemed like librarians were being encouraged to move away from liaison roles to the support of researchers' information needs, and with my background in research this certainly sounds like an exciting opportunity!

So, that's the end of my thoughts on the RLUK conference. There's a bunch of stuff about the course and visits backed up to talk about, but that will have to wait until my next update!

Labels: conferences, future of librarianship, leadership, professional development, research libraries, RLUK Conference

Another theme of the conference was digitisation, and as one of my main interests is in the use of technology in libraries both of the parallel sessions I attended focused on this theme. Alice Prochaska from Yale University spoke to the whole conference about the opportunity for libraries to exploit their special collections as a "unique and distinctive" resource in the information age. The major question to be asked in doing this, however, was "how do we prioritise our digitisation programmes?" and several speakers over the course of the conference gave their opinions.

A session themed around OCLC's Shifting Gears paper, led by John MacColl, argued for mass digitisation - getting as much 'out there' as possible so that collections could be sifted through by researchers rather than librarians. A number of strategies were put forward for this - from 'scan on demand' to simple 'scan the first one and keep going' strategies. However, researchers still have to find the digitised information. One issue identified in the following JISC / RLUK session was that collections tend to be available through individual portals, and designing usability and interoperability into these has not been a priority. The other, recurring throughout the conference was whether to add metadata at the collection level, at the level of items, and whether user tagging could substitute for / add to metadata added by librarians - I'm a fan of the tagging route, but it was interesting to see the range of (passionate) opinions on whether it was a good idea!

Again collaboration rose as a core theme, with the collaboration between JISC, JSTOR and the pamphlet owners on the 19th century pamphlet collection an interesting example - JSTOR provide the infrastructure for storing / accessing the collection. The difficulties (and opportunities!) of working with commercial partners were something I hadn't seen spelled out in concrete terms before, and again the OCLC Good Terms report on such collaborations seems like a useful resource.

Finally, and particularly up my street, the difficulty of storing born digital information was considered. At RLUK the focus was very much on how to store websites / pages, and whether regulatory backing could be achieved to allow this to happen. This discussion came up again recently for me in the context of Game City where the National Videogame Archive was launched. Videogames can be 'born digital' but they are associated with physical media, such as cartridges, and other physical materials such as instruction booklet and inserts. Digitisation of materials sounded like such a simple concept before I started digging!

Labels: computer games, conferences, digitisation, professional development, research libraries, RLUK Conference

It seemed inevitable that the credit crunch would crop up at some point during the conference - it seems to be everywhere at the moment - and Sir Drummond Bone launched straight in. He predicted less funding in the pot, and the responses research libraries would have to make to this, such as finding funding elsewhere. In what might have been good news for the majority he predicted that major financial changes wouldn't hit until 2010, although as I'll be launching myself at the job market in late 2009 it could have been better news for me!

What hadn't really entered my radar is what a big effect small changes in government have on funding research. Apparently Gordon Brown was a big supporter of research funding as chancellor, and his move to PM may not be great news for funding. Less surprisingly, a complete government change is likely to make waves. The Conservatives are apparently enthusiastic about evidence-based practice, but whether this would translate to cash flow is debatable. I won't be voting based upon these considerations, but it was interesting to think about the impact of the political climate on funding priorities at a range of different levels.

The big issue for RLUK and funding was, however, the move from the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) to the REF (Research Excellence Framework). As a PhD student I was highly aware of the effect of the RAE on departments. This was notable among my graduating peers looking for employment in university departments, and the emphasis placed on publications in staff recruitment as the 2008 RAE approached. The REF is planned to have a major bibliometric component to it: using staff publication citations to assess quality. On the one hand removing the administrative burden of the RAE on higher education sounds promising. On the other, part of me baulks at the idea of assessing departments in this way, particularly as it has not yet been decided whether staff can take their publications with them when they move jobs, which would preserve the same job market issues.

Stephen Pinfield's comments about the REF, and its trial at the University of Nottingham were particularly relevant to me, as I was both PhD student and library assistant at Nottingham, and know the organisation well. In addition, Alison Weightman's presentation on internal peer review for developing research quality at Cardiff University was also intriguing. While I was a PhD student informal peer review - commenting on work and reading through papers - was a common process among students and some staff. However, it would certainly be beneficial to officially recognise these efforts. The idea of the library / information service acting as a facilitator or this process also appealed to me: the potential for a well thought-out and centrally coordinated peer review process to encourage interdisciplinary research seemed high. As Alison Weightman pointed out, better publications are possible with internal peer review, better publications lead to more funding in a bibliometric model, and this is a great example of how the library can work together with researchers for the good of the institution as a whole.

As well as collaborating with researchers, however, the library might also need to procure more funding for their own work. One particular need for funding for libraries explored during the conference was for the digitisation of special collections. Presenters discussed ways in which the library could partner with institutions like JISC or corporate partners such as Google to support digitisation projects, as I will discuss on the next entry, on digitisation.

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

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: conferences, professional development, research libraries, RLUK Conference

This week is week one - the first lectures of all my modules in the MA. Everything so far has been pretty interesting. The modules I'm taking this term cover management, libraries and society, information literacy and information retrieval, and the practicalities of the course itself. Each one's been a good mix of subjects I've got a genuine interest in, subjects I've got a background in and subjects where I feel I have a need to grow, so I'm neither feeling out of my depth nor like I'm covering old ground. I hope this persists!

The other big news is that I've won a place to go to the RLUK Conference (Research Libraries UK, formerly CURL) from the 22nd to the 24th of this month in Leeds. My department ran a competition for two sponsored places, and my essay was one of the winning two! The full details are available on the Department of Information Studies blog. My essay focused on my interest in the new Research Excellence Framework (which is to replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)) and the talks on digitisation I'll be able to attend, so the conference should be relevant to my background in academia and learning technologies. However, I'm generally keen to hear talks from my new Head of Department Sheila Corrall and Dame Lynne Brindley from the British Library. The RLUK consists of several research libraries, including Sheffield University, where I'm undertaking my MA, and Nottingham University, where I worked as a library assistant and undertook my PhD, so the conference feels like it's on my home turf, so to speak. I'll update later this month with all the news from Leeds.

Labels: conferences, MA, professional development, RLUK Conference

I have received my supervisor's comments on my chapter rewrite and it is time to make the final rewrite and submit - there's a lot to do, so don't hold your breath! In the meantime I'm also beginning to wind down at work. I finish my trainee post at the end of August and then I enter a limbo period until mid- to late September when my MA starts. Limbo period seems like a remarkably sedate way of describing what will probably be manic thesis writing!

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!

Labels: MA, phd, professional development, traineeship

My task for this week is to take the European Computer Driving Licence. I've had my ECDL book since quite early in my trainee year, and I was meaning to start taking exams once I'd settled back into my final four months in cataloguing. When I was moved into acquisitions, however, there were new procedures to learn, and I was sidetracked for some time. Finally, I had some trouble contacting the ECDL coordinator, and at that point I realised that the best time to take the test was during this week, giving me five days to go through the seven exams!

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!

Labels: phd, professional development, traineeship

Recently I added my blog to the UK Library Bloggers Wiki, or at least it was added by Jennie, its creator. This prompted me to subscribe to a few other library blogs, not least that of Jennie herself, and this recent post caught my eye: http://jennielaw.blogspot.com/2008/05/to-join-or-not-to-join.html. As a wannabe librarian whose interests have always lain in academic libraries, this is an interesting subject for me, and I thought I'd ruminate a little more.

I joined my local library when I decided that maybe I wanted to be a librarian one day. It's actually quite illuminating to see a service entirely as a user, so I guess I see librarians joining libraries as an opportunity for professional development, rather than an ideological imperative. However, I share Jennie's guilt. I haven't joined my local library while I'm on my year-long trainee placement. I barely go into town, and we have a fiction section in our academic library, which provides all the literature I need. I have visited the library out of curiosity, a library is always a good bolt hole in an unfamiliar town, and I've been on a visit to Chelmsford Public Library, part of the same Essex system, so I've got an idea of how it works behind the scenes as well.

My favourite fact I gleaned from Essex Public Libraries is that I'm not really the library's target audience, so that makes me feel a bit better. The active acquisitions head revealed that libraries cater better for some than others, as some are much bigger users of libraries than others. This is partly in response to perceived need. Some of my favourite genres (sci fi, graphic novels) are purposefully stocked in low numbers, as readers of these tend to buy their own materials. And yes, said head pointed out how circular this was. Apparently I need to develop a taste for 'sagas' (read: Mills and Boon) to truly benefit from the local library's stock!

How important is it to know about (let alone use) public libraries in order to be a good librarian? An ex-colleague of mine, working in an academic library, was put out when his chartership was questioned on the grounds of a lack of reference to public libraries. Some assume that public libraries are the 'real' libraries, and that other librarianship is just a pale, commercial shadow. You certainly wouldn't expect a chartering public librarian to be criticised for failing to include references to special libraries in their materials. However, neither would a public librarian be eligible to become a user in the majority of special libraries.

I think that assuming librarians will be public library users is a bit naive. However, as individuals it's well worth taking the time to learn a few lessons from our local public library. It seems to me that one of the major jobs of any librarian is convincing his or her userbase that he or she is not just the keeper of a bunch of book shelves. Looking beyond our book-based needs as users to see what services the library can provide us therefore makes a whole lot of sense. Thinking about our own enthusiasm for such value-added services (or lack thereof) can help us think about how to market our own services to users. Of course, if we truly believe that the only service the public library offers for librarians (and others like them) is obsolete, maybe we should go and give our colleagues a good sharp poke in the ribs.

Labels: professional development, public libraries

Labels: academia, professional development