Busy week

This week has been a busy one, but so is my next week- including a trip to London for a 3 hour meeting.
This week has seen several meetings, including performance appraisals. We've been staff down due to sickness, which is always a problem when we have so few staff to start with.

Having been audited for 6 weeks by the CLA, this ended this week. Which is at least one thing off of my do to list. I am just hoping that nothing comes back, saying that we have infringed copyright.

With the added pressure of having to visit two school. With my son starting primary school in September, this seems like another pressure.


Next week I need  to start work on reorganising students on the library system, moving them from one code to more specific ones, so I can then collect data on usage. Tuesday I am off to London for the ARLIS meeting. Wednesday back for more meetings and working on staff performance appraisals- 3 to do.

I think next weekend I will need a rest and a glass of wine or two.

Fellowship

Having completed my chartership and then 12 months later revalidation,  I was unable to find a masters (final project only) course that inspired me. So I have decided to work on my fellowship. One of the reasons for doing this is that I really wanted to say that I am a member of the fellowship- LOTR reference.

So far I have been working on it since March this year (2015),  I have found a mentor, not actually had much of a conversation with them. But as we work together, we have had several informal chats. Nothing formal yet, even when we do formal ones I am thinking of doing them over lunch so we are eat and chat. Reducing the stress and anxiety.

Anyway, as I have been working with ARLIS and SWRLS for over 12 months, this goes towards working in a wider remit of libraries. Within the organisation, I am a member of CMT and a Head of a department. Therefore I hold a position of authority within the organisation, another point that is relevant for the fellowship.

In the last 2 years, I have faced some hard management decisions/ experiences, which have been resolved and I have gained a reputation as a decent manager and leader of a team. Though I won't discuss what happened here, the experiences have certainly changed me as a manager.

Having recently introduced a series of information literary events for art students, these have made an impact on student. Some have become more willing to speak to library staff, requesting help etc. Plus I have gained confidence in my delivery.

Overall I think I should have enough evidence to complete my fellowship.

Update

Been a bit lazy this week, I haven't written anything on my blog. So I am going to write an update of my week- just so I don't get out of the habit of writing.

During the week I had a few one to one mop up inductions with new students who missed their group induction- I tried to keep them brief. By this time of year it is so hard to keep on rolling them out- it actually becomes exhausting. The group inductions were done over 3 days, and I they ended up totalling 18 separate inductions.

Updated my Line manager on what has happened in the last 4 weeks in the library. Always a decent meeting- I usually leave the meeting, feeling more motivated and that I want to run back to my department and start dishing out work. Doesn't always happen sometimes I return to my department full of energy and just start absorbing myself in my tasks.

Last week was also my self imposed deadline for getting back to LMS providers. However I have missed it by a few days, for one reason I wanted to get someone else in my department to read over them...in case I had missed something. Plus I was on leave on Friday. In preparation for this I need to allocate all the students a p-type depending on their course, as we have nearly 2000 students this is going to be tough.

With course validation process starting, I need to provide information on what support the library has offered students in these courses- journal holdings, online databases, number of books purchased and amount of money spent on these courses. In addition to this I have been handed a large number of previous students dissertations. The library keeps the best ones each year...so I have been working out which ones I need to keep, digitalise and catalogue.

Writing a policy for the college's interlibrary loans- need to present this at academic board in November. Done roughly half the work but I need to write it for a different audience- senior management team.

Read a couple of articles on libraries, more public libraries- so interesting back ground reading, but nothing worth writing about.

Plus I have redesigned our store cupboard..need to get a few bits of furniture next week.

Fellowship- no real progress has been made. I have signed up to a professional CV writing session, which should help me, as at the moment my CV is ok... but not great. I think it is lacking the detail of what I do. But I work in a company where "we are only ever one member of staff deep" this means that I end up being a jack of all trades.

Friday I was on holiday, which was great..I did a 5 miles walk, caught up on some TV and managed to get my sons play room sorted.

Next week is already looking busy- Monday alone, I have a lunch meeting with pre-degree staff about what I can offer there students in the research week. Plus our book sale starts on Monday. Tuesday and Thursday are looking like there might be some time to work on the LMS situation. Friday I am teaching Havard Referencing to A level students.

Inductions 2015 Day one.

Today was the first day of the 2015 inductions. After having throat problems during the summer, resulting in two throat operations, I was pretty concerned with having to start this year's inductions, having to talk for hours on end is going to be tough. But day one is done, only 8 days left.

Day one, 5 inductions over the course of the day, which I did 4 of them. This year I was asked to create a simply Harvard referencing guide for students on day one. To me this felt a little harsh...welcome to the college, now lets learn Harvard referencing. My work sheet was aimed at 16 year old, and was a simple fill in the blanks form

But the sessions went pretty well. The first, as a little ropey, I missed some information out and my usually well organised speech was a little jumbled. By the second group  I was feeling more relaxed and started to enjoy the experience. I will reflect on this for my fellowship.

Having a new cohort of student in the college does give the place a buzz, but it takes some time to get the students to learn our rules. Firstly I had to explain to a student why they should not be smoking on college ground- clearly ignoring the large sites requesting people do not smoke on the site. Or having to explain to loved up students that the library is a place for learning, reading and researching not kissing.

Though I have to say the funniest part of the day was over hearing a conversation in the girl's toilets.
Girl one: do you know how to spell gangster?
Girl two: g-a-n-s-t-e-r
Girl one: (typing in to her phone)- no that's not right... it's GANG- STER
Girl two: oh you want the right spelling.

Generally I was quite confused about this, but it did make me laugh.

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. 

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.

Academic librarianship

Book review on Academic librarianship    by Camila Alire and Edward Evans.


Thoughts  
Having started reading this dense and rather heavy book, a couple of weeks ago. I have found that the majority of evidence though interesting, is all from America. Making some aspects of the book have limited relevance, which at times just leads to frustration.  The author also point out the reason why there needs to be a section on the history of the academic library, I feel it has limited impact or relevance, in particular to a English academic librarian. Especially when this takes up nearly 40 pages of the book. At times the book is too in depth, covering too many subheading, resulting in the initial point is at times lost and the reader needs to refer back several pages to ensure they remember what point is being made. On a more positive note, the chapter on services, under the heading of "the academic library today", which starts 215 pages out of 355, does provide very useful information, which is worth reading and developing certain ideas within any library. It is in this section that the authors show there worth and the relevance of the text.

Overall the coversge of topics is very good, possibly this book would have been more useful when I was  studying for my post grad, to provide a wider insight in to academic libraries. However this book is clearly written for people in academic libraries, more so than people wishing to join 


Cost 
Nearly £60.00
Understandably due to it's specific nature and detailed highly researched text. This book was 
never aiming for the mass market.