Innovation in libraries

Having recently read over the Art Council England report about innovation in libraries, I thought I would blog about it. Even though the project is based on public libraries, and I work in an academic one, I feel that the innovative projects could be transferred from one area to another. This is of particular interest to me and I feel there is a lot that can be learnt from different libraries as well as my current library is moving location.

This, I think would be an ideal time to alter processes, make them more effective and provide new services. It seems that all libraries at the moment are either having funding reviewed and maybe because of this or due to this there is an increased need for local communities to help with libraries.

One of the libraries that the report highlights is Delft Concept Library, DOK, in the Netherlands, which is basically a world leader on the types of services, facilities and design that it offers its users. Using mobile technology and gaming to help people use the library.

Some of the other services mentioned in the report and offered by UK and overseas libraries, are more main stream but done either in a more personalised manner or found innovative funding. Other innovative services which have been highlighted in the report include:

·         Digital Bazaar, run by volunteers for people who want to learn more about their technology device. Providing hands on experience for people to learn how to sell on eBay, how to make an online phone call to a member of family and how to download an eBook.

·         More technologically advanced projects have been the reading glove, fitted with RFID, where the wearer can choose the direction that there story takes. 

·         Door step library, building on the notion of mobile library service, but instead it is specifically aimed to low income families, who can borrow children’s from someone working at the library.

Joining ARLIS committee

This year has been a great year, professionally speaking. I have now been asked to join one of the ARLIS committee's- ARLIS is the art libraries society and I have become a member of the publication committee. I have to say I am really happy about this, I have wanted to branch out in to new areas of work and this is a great opportunity to be right at the middle of my subject specialism. Also it is starting to be expected of people where I work to have a large network of people you can ask for help etc. So this will be great for that too.

Not sure what I am more excited about- trips to London, living in Plymouth it is a bit of a trek to get over to London on a regular basis. Or the challenge of working on a publishing committee. Visiting the V and A!

Not 100 % sure what is expected of me at the moment, but I also think that in itself is exciting. I would be happy to work in any area of publication.  I have started thinking about projects I would like to work on, but I know I must not get carried away, as I haven't even been to a meeting yet and I have to be realist about what I can achieve in a short space of time.

I think it would be good for me to blog about what is happening during my ARLIS days. 

New CILIP regulations

With CILIP having changed there regulations, on obtaining chartership, I thought I would spend a few minutes to explain the changes. Firstly for MCLIP, they are going from 4 (or was it 5) down to 3. Plus making a clearer definition between each of the criterion.

The first Criteria deals with identifying there learning needs and reflect on the learning. This is made much easier with the introduction of Professional Knowledge and Skills Base.

The second criteria needs to show that they have examined their organization and shown an ability to improve the service. 

The third and final criteria needs to show an understanding of their wider professional context.

It sounds much easier but maybe because I have just had someone calmly explain this to me for near 6 hours and I don't need to put any of this in to practice.

There are loads of simple things that can be added in to tick off parts of the criteria. for each there needs to be 5-6 piece of evidence. 

Chartership and beyond

Tuesday I was able to attend the CILIP qualification session on the new regulations. Which first of all is a little confusing because as the trainer said achieving chartership is not a qualification. Which I thought it was, however it turns out it is actually demonstrating a level of achievement and commitment. But the day was good, I met some people I think who could be useful contact for the future. This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy these sessions, you mean people who are connected to your role or right on the edge of your role and they can be really useful in a certain situation as they have experience in a field that is not connected to your own.

The pace of the session was slow enough to write up notes but contained enough information for the session to hold the attention of people thinking about becoming ACLIP, MCLIP and the odd person like me who is thinking about becoming a mentor. 

Having completed my MCLIP, I now would like to give something back, if that makes sense and pay on the favor to another generation of librarians. My mentor was great with me, she was very supportive and everything that she made me do (which in the end I did do) was on the list of things that needed to be completed. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention at the last session which I attended. 

My next step is to register as a mentor and get trained, I have already have 4 people say they would like to have me as a mentor, which is pretty amazing.

One thing that did positively annoy me was if someone with experience in a library now wants to go an get a chartership they need no previous qualifications, I am not saying I only want people with Masters to be librarians. I am not elitist and part of the first generation of my family to obtain a degree. Actually I am the highest qualified person in my family. Getting more people in to librarianship is a good idea, but I don't think making everyone a chartered librarian is the right way forward. Personally I think there sound be different awards depending on your qualifications and experience.

Chartership completion

Having completed my chartership about a month ago, after two years of struggling and battling with word counts. I have hand it in and last Friday I was contacted rather unspectacularly and told I have passed, or being successful in completing your chartership. So I am now Donna Gundry MCLIP. 

But working in education and post chartership manner of thinking, I am now wondering so what and what next. In terms of so what, I will now, fingers crossed, when I need to, be a more appealing candidate for another job position. As for what next, I want to move on to being a mentorfor for someone else. Hopefully more than one person. 

When I started working in a library 7 years ago, my manager was great at helping other people, so this would be my way of me continuing her ethos. Plus I want to see what it's like on the other side. My first library manager was a great woman who I a proud to say I worked alongside her. Sadly she passed away, 6 years ago. Paying a good deed forward was something she would have not only approved of but welcomed.

One thing my chartership has told me, is stopping every now and again and reflecting on what you have done is a good idea. Not just at new year and your annual performance appraisal. 

UKlibchat

Last night for the first time in ages I managed to catch #uklibchat, usually I join #chartershipchat, as I have just submitted my chartership, but I fancied a change. Uklibchat is a twitter conversation between library professionals, we met roughly once a month. Last nights session was really good. We discussed the definition of users, who are the users. For me it's a closed group, the staff and students that are at the college. An easy one to start with.

Customer service and barriers to delivering this. Coming from a retail background customer service is back ending a shift exhausted having helping everyone else. Maybe that is a bit extreme, but customer service is about putting the customer first, stopping that conversation and dealing with the customer. Personally I hate to ask where something else in a shop and if I then get a rude person telling me I am likely not to bother buying the product. Good customer care is shared, you normally tell someone about it. Working in education where students have to pay a massive amount to attend, someone recently told me students are paying £35 per day to attend, so give them what they deserve.

Barriers to providing good customer care- staff personality, work load and not being able to give students what they want due to budget or conflicting strategy plans of the department. I have to say reading success at the enquiry desk by Tim Owen, dated by very good for training sessions.  I must have used this book twice, maybe three sessions.

Online users experience, a decent website needs to have the content written by the librarian, a web designer to make everything pretty and a web developer to make it actually work. Technology not working, due to IT issues is one of my biggest problems when teaching students. Luckily I have a decent relationship with the IT department and they are use to no body ever saying something works well.

Article update

Having spent time researching my topic for my article of information literacy, and read far and wide on the topic, I have started with a bang.

At the moment my article is still in the draft stage, but I have early results from my third years. All I need to do now is write the questionnaire for my first and second years. Then I should be pretty much there.

I have to say I am feeling pretty happy about my article, I think it is too long, but I could write a book on information literacy. I've researched, created the FE and HE programme for the college and shared it as best practice to another institution.

ARLIS conference

So I have been back to reality after the ARLIS conference for a week now. You may ask why I say back to reality, I have a young son, and after spending three great days in picture perfect surroundings, returning home to a little man who wakes me up twice a night, is a bit of a shock to the system.

As for the conference it was great, ARLIS Rising to the challenge, and it really did cover a lot of the challenges facing art librarians today. This is the first time I have attended an ARLIS event and would do again, it was well organized and not as rushed or as busy a CILIP umbrella, though I do understand they are pitching at difference audiences.

Each day was had great speakers, plus there were relevant workshops, that I struggled to choose which one to attend. I opted for the negotiation workshop, which was really interesting practical session, based on the side of personality types and when negotiating you need to think about the types of people you are dealing with to get the best result. I'll definitely use this next time I have to, not only negotiate with others but also delegating, to team members. The other workshop was increasing your online personality. Another very interesting topic, it might have taken a week to even start putting it in to practice, but at least I am trying.

On the first day there were also a series of visits, I choose the theater collection, I was expecting to see just a load of costumes, but it was so much more, the amount of content they had was outstanding. Books and play script with images drawing in them from the head costume designer and other really special objects with a fabulous history and social story to tell. 

Overall the conference was excellent, there was a really interesting session on augmented reality and  the use of QR codes, plus a session from The Hive in Worcestershire, which is a one stop shop for all library and council needs combined with the cities university library. The idea is complex but excellent, every decision needs to be taken for the good of everyone, not an easy task, when the public and the university students have very different needs. Or as it was explained, very similar needs, just said in different words. Plus a session on open source resources, such as ItunesU.

Great conference, now I need to write up one of the session for ARLIS newsletter. 

One of the other things that really impressed me was that at the moment there are loads of Gromits (from Wallace and Gromit) around the city of Bristol, painted and decorated to look amazing, I manged to see quite a few, we at least I thought it was quite until I found out there was 85 in the city, my rather lame 6 weren't really worth mentioning.

Write an Article

After a 2 hour train journey, I decided that yes I should write an article and try to get it published. After a week procrastinating about it, I decide I really should start to put fingers to keys and start working.

My plan is to write an article about the success of the information literacy program that I run here.

With a second article, maybe on a smaller scale about social media in academic libraries .

Then maybe the third on our digital archive that we are working on.

But it's taken me a week to start typing, and look what has happened I've returned to my blog after a 2 and a half month absence.

Tips for down sizing a library

Having recently been given the task of downsizing a library, here are my tips for such an activity

1. Think about you audience, has the library collected resources, but not actually removed any. That way you end up keeping a great archive to the way the library use to be and fight to get space for the way the library needs to be.
2. If in an academic setting, could some the less well used magazine and journals be passed on to the academics. Keeping the last few years in the library, the most relevant stock for all.
3. Are all the annual subscriptions relevant, are all the online resources used as much as they could be, are all the magazine subscriptions needed?
4. Have a book sale, that way the library users could buy items that they want, generating income to the library and freeing up space for new stock. 
5. Which physical resources can be converted into online resources
6. Invest in an Ebook platform or Ebook devices, or better still both. 
7. Look at the room, could the shelving be altered to create niche shelving, under windows, maximizing the actually floor space.

Reducing Stress in the workplace

Personally I've always believed stress can be caused by different things, for those niggling irritations, I always find physically leaving the situation, finding a friend to speak to and having a laugh is a good idea. Sitting in the place which is irritating you will only make the situation worse.

If it is because someone has said something, a common problem, rationalize, and remember- it's not personal, something may have happened to them just before speaking to you. Plus don't sweat the small stuff!

If it ongoing and starting to grate on your nerves, have  photo next you your desk of  the reason why you are working so hard, your family, your house- either way that should help. Plus remember, you can't change someone else's attitude but you can change your behavior to how you react to the situation. 

What will I and won't be doing in the next 12 months

I've just been asked the question, what 3 things will I and won't I be doing in the next 12 months.

What will I be doing?

1. Building my team, I have recently employed 2 new members of staff. So I will need to integrate them in to my team, as well as take up my place as the head of the department returning from maternity leave. To do this, I will set up team meetings, discuss what I expect and let the team speak. 
2. The library will be moving so I need to research and visit other instituions to see what is hot in libraries at the moment. 
3. Improve the online aspect of the library, I'll be doing this for several reasons. Firstly, for what ever reason I feel we are slightly behind other instituions, having online resources will aid the students in 24 hour studying. This is to include eresources, ebooks and journals.
4. Ok, this is cheating adding in a fourth, as I only said I would do 3, but I want to complete my chartership.

What I won't be doing 

1. Worrying so much, so that I am loosing sleep. So far my career has gone in the right direction, there are changes ahead, which I have mentioned above, but I need to trust that all will end well. 
2. Listening to office gossip, mostly untrue and very distructive. 
3. Keeping so quite, I need to speak up more. 

National libraries day

I have to say I am impressed with the activities planned for national libraries day, planned for saturday 9th Feb. From Warwickshire libraries having a fine amnesty, cake at Debenham libraries, is bound to bring in the customers. Charon house library is doing a special event on pride and prejudice study day.

 For more information check outhttp://www.nationallibrariesday.org.uk/get-involved/add-your-event/

Sadly there are very few events happening in the south west.