Musings of a chartering librarian

Yesterday, I went to London for a CILIP-run course on “Assertiveness for Managers”. I’m still in denial about being a  manager, but I do supervise people and I definitely need to be more assertive, so I thought that going on the course would be a good idea.

I think that it was a good idea, because I found most of the course interesting and potentially useful in my line of work. However, there is always the problem of actually applying what you learn in training to everyday life and real situations. Having said that, the way in which the course was run, using case studies to explore what we would do in particular situations, was helpful in making us think about how we could use the training in real life when dealing with people and situations. Having a case study and imagining what you would do in that situation made it much easier to think about what you would really do in real life as opposed to trotting out what you should do.

Even though role play on courses is often a bit grim I found that the one piece of role play that we had to participate in was very useful. We had to pretend to be a either a manager ‘having a quiet word’ with a member of staff who had done something wrong or the member of staff who had done wrong. The interesting thing was that, even though we were only pretending, the same difficulties in being assertive that we face in real life were very much in evidence while we were playing a role. I suppose that’s the whole point, but I was surprised that the fact that we were in a pretend situation didn’t help us behave more assertively - even though we knew that there would be no real negative consequences if we did so.

Apart from learning general techniques for practising assertiveness we also looked at particular skills, such as motivating staff, delegating, dealing with difficult people, negotiating, listening and resolving conflict. All of these skills are relevant to me in my work in the library and all of them are skills I know I need to improve and develop. I hope that I can remember what I learned yesterday and really apply it to the way I work. We shall see!

Apologies to anyone who also reads my other blog. This is just another version of a post I wrote there that I thought might also be relevant to my chartership. Also, apologies to anyone who has recently tried to access this blog and found it password protected.

It’s my fourth day of attempting to do someone else’s job. So far, I have done two inductions, four tours, filled in a book ordering form, been to a meeting or two, tried to arrange some more tours, answered several queries and looked at various electronic resources to make sure that I have at least a vague idea about the main ones used by Education students.

On the whole it’s very quiet and that’s taking some getting used to after the busyness of Reader Services. I don’t think I have decided whether or not I like the quiet as yet. Even though it’s nice and peaceful and easier to concentrate in I miss the company of the people in Reader Services - it’s just not so much fun working in an office on your own. I know work isn’t supposed to fun, but the occasional (or frequent)amusing moment doesn’t go amiss.

I now realise that being a Faculty Liaison Librarian involves a completely different way of working to that of a Reader Services person.  I have to make more decisions about what to do now, whereas in Reader Services it was decided for me by what was the most urgent thing on my desk or who came through the door, at least to a certain extent. I’m using my brain in different ways to how I use it in Reader Services, but I think this is good for me and I’m enjoying the change.

I think the remaining Reader Services people are coping, but they have had to let people know that it is going to take a lot longer than usual to get things done at the moment, which is fair enough and quite a sensible course of action to take in the circumstances. I feel guilty that I can’t do anything to help them (except on a Thursday) and feel that I have just run off and left them to stew while I’m off sitting in a nice quiet office. Which is, of course, exactly what I have done. Well, maybe I haven’t exactly run off but the resulting stew is the same. It’s not that I don’t think they can cope. They are coping and will continue to do so, but I have still made life more difficult for them by going to do this job. I know it’s up to the library managers to make sure that Reader Services people are alright and not about to go into meltdown, but I’m not really convinced that they will do this sufficiently well, considering previous performances.

I will try and keep this blog regularly updated during this time that I’m working in Academic Services. I’m learning lots of new things that I need to keep a record of so I have even less excuse than usual for not posting!

From Monday, 7th January, I will be working as the Faculty Liaison Librarian (FLL) for Education four days a week, while the real FLL is on secondment elsewhere in the University until the end of March.

I decided to apply for the post because I’d like to move into the faculty liaison/subject librarian field of work, so it’s definitely I want to gain more experience of. As more than one person applied to cover the post, I had to submit an application form and have a short chat with the Head of Library Services and the Academic Services Librarian. They decided that I would benefit the most from the experience due to the stage I’m at in my career.

The role of FLL is very different from my current role in Reader Services, so it will be a challenge. I am quite anxious not to make a mess of it! However, it will be a very interesting and useful experience. New things I will be doing include the following:

• Delivering programmes of information skills training for staff and students in the Faculty of Education
• “Providing a specialist subject-related information service and producing support materials both in print and online to help users make the best use of available information resources”
• “Selecting resources, processing book orders, managing reading lists and assisting with the withdrawal of stock”
• “Monitoring spending in the relevant book and periodicals budgets”
• Attending Faculty Boards and Departmental meetings as a representative of Library Services

(Quotations are from the job description)

I won’t be doing every single thing that the FLL would do, as I’m only covering the role four days a week. On the other day I will meet with the real FLL to talk about how things are going and discuss any problems that may have arisen and then go back to work in Reader Services and pick up any problems that may have occurred there during the rest of the week.

Although I’m looking forward to starting in the new role, I have been frustrated by the lack of organisation that has gone on  behind the scenes in order to make sure that my Reader Services work still gets done. Although things seem to be falling into place a bit more now, decisions that could and should have been made weeks ago were only made yesterday! This has been rather unhelpful for everyone concerned, and has added unnecessary stress to what is already quite a stressful situation.

Change is never really welcomed with open arms, even when it might be for the better in the long term, and the way it’s handled has a big impact on the way people feel about it. The same thing happens all the time in our library - decisions are left until the last minute and when they’re made they’re not communicated as they should be so people are left wondering what is going to happen to them and, naturally, worry about it. Sometimes it’s my fault, because I genuinely forget to tell people things, but sometimes I don’t know what’s going on either so I can’t give anyone concrete information. It’s very frustrasting.

Anyway, I begin my new role in earnest on Monday, when I’m going to be doing a library tour and induction for BA Education students in the morning and an induction session for Lifelong Learning students studying at a partner institution in the afternoon. Although I’ve done library tours before I have only actually delivered one induction session at my current institution and that was in my first term there! I am feeling slightly apprehensive about it, but the real FLL has made nice plans for me to follow, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too scary. I’ll let you know how I get on.

My poor, neglected chartership. I have been doing lots of things which could be said to be contributing to my career development, but as far as actually doing anything specifically towards chartering…err…no. I have thought about it a few times, usually something along the lines of, ‘oh, pants, I really need to do something about my chartership’. So what’s new?

 I did a presentation about the new inter-campus borrowing scheme, firstly to library staff at my home site library and then to Helpdesk staff. The library staff had more questions, which I was surprised about, as they are more used to borrowing schemes. I think that perhaps doing a presentation made it seem like more of a bigger deal and therefore scarier and more complicated than it actually is, but I was only doing what I was told to do. Actually, all I needed to say was ‘give them a form’, but it’s useful for people to know what on earth the form is for, I suppose!

The interesting thing about talking to other people about things such as cooperative schemes is that something that seems quite straightforward to some people seems to really confuse others. There is a definite case for tailoring what you say (or rather how you say it) depending on who you’re talking to, which is quite difficult when giving a set presentation to a group of people with diverse ways of learning and very different personalities.

There have been various changes made to circulation and issue desk related work in the library. We are trying to crack down on fines, stopping the payment by instalments scheme and introducing a block on the records of people with very overdue books. Of course, all of these changes will effect the work of the issue desk and Reader Services staff in various ways. I think it will be a case of short term pain (dealing with angry borrowers) for long term gain - or at least I hope there will be long term gain, otherwise I might have to run away. We shall see.

We’ve been given another Library Assistant post, which is good news but means that I’m on another interview panel and have just spent about two days shortlisting from 70 applications. We’ve ended up with five people who’ve made the grade but we might have to revise the list on Monday. It’s very tedious, but it has to be done properly in order to be fair to all applicants. I can’t say that I really enjoy it. The good news is that the last person we appointed (another Library Assistant) has fitted in really well and is working really hard and being a great help to the Reader Services team.

I’ve assisted some of the Faculty Liaison Librarians in a couple of information skills sessions recently, which has been good and made a change from my normal day to day work.

In general, things have been very busy, quite stressful and have left no time for doing chartership related things. I have thought about giving up, to be honest, because I just don’t have the motivation to make time to do anything towards chartering. Most of the time my job makes me quite miserable in one way or another, which isn’t exactly conducive to wanting to practice career development. If anyone has anything motivational to say to me, please say it!

As usual this blog and my chartership have been forgotten for a while. Perhaps I currently have more of an excuse for this than usual, as it’s the beginning of the academic year and very busy. Most of the students are back, or at least it feels like it, but they haven’t all returned yet. However, despite not having the full compliment of students we’ve been very busy with beginning of term/year activities, such as library tours and, for the Academic Services team, inductions and information skills training sessions.

In Reader Services we’ve just about recovered from the periodicals move. In the end we moved about 600 boxes worth of closed runs from the open shelves into the stack. It was quite satisfying to see the completed project and particularly to see the periodicals section looking so neat and tidy. We can now find things and, most importantly, there are no periodicals on the floor!  The withdrawals project is continuing apace and we now have an extra hand on deck in the form of a new, part-time, Library Assistant. She is proving to be very useful and seems to be fitting in well.

This time of term there are always the usual problems with people’s cards having mysteriously expired over the summer, despite them having weeks/months/years left of their courses. This is normally due to some strange thing happening with their registration, but we often end up dealing with the result of this - i.e. a cross person wondering why they can’t take any library items out. Sometimes I feel like a detective. It can be frustrating, though, as most of the time there is nothing we can do for the poor person who has to wait for their tutor/Registry to sort out their student record.

The advent of SCONUL Access has meant changes for issue desk and Helpdesk staff and for me, who is the SCONUL Access contact person at the library. It’s actually a lot easier to administer one scheme rather than two, although I have to try and remember what type of student/member of staff belongs to which SCONUL  Access band.

We’re also starting a new scheme whereby students registered at our campus will be able to borrow items from our library at another campus. You may well ask - ‘why can’t they do this already?’ Well, the other campus’s library is shared between several institutions and they use a different library management system. Our students registered at the other campus can, of course, borrow from their campus library (and, because of the weird way it works, from our campus library), but not the other way round. Hopefully, the new scheme will be useful to students registered at our campus who live nearer to the other campus library. I wonder if that made any sense to anyone! Sorry, it’s quite difficult to explain!

 I have been involved in setting up the scheme - only in a small way by checking through the materials that a couple of the staff from the other campus library have prepared. I think the scheme should work quite smoothly - it looks a lot more complicated than it actually is - and hopefully it will make some students lives easier.

Our new line manager is still getting stuck in and making changes. Some of these are things that will only happen gradually, while others are happening quite quicly. One of my tasks over the past few weeks has been to redesign the date labels so that they’re of a consistent design (can you have a consistent design?) across all of the campus libraries. It’s been interesting (possibly more interesting than it sounds!), partly because I didn’t realise before that the other campus libraries didn’t use the same date labels as us! What does that say about my powers of observation? Hmm. Anyway, it has been/is going to be quite challenging to get all of the information required into the space available.

Having the issue desk back in the hands of Library Services has meant that Reader Services and Bibliographic Services staff have had to get used to being on the desk again. I think most of them are glad to be back having more face-to-face contact with students and things seem to be going OK - so far. We’ve had a review of some of the circulation policy, as in lengths of loan periods and amounts of fines, which I think might cause some problems for returning students. Although some fines have gone down, others have gone up and some of them might be in for a bit of a shock. Hopefully, not too many people will be affected because, of course, most people will have remembered to renew their books on time.

One efffect of having the issue desk back is that I have a few more staff to supervise. In reality, this hasn’t made a great deal of difference to my day-to-day work, as, even when the issue desk staff weren’t part of Library Services, they tended to come to Reader Services if there were any problems. I suppose the real test will come when term is in full swing.

People are already feeling tired and I don’t think that anyone feels like we really had a break over the summer, mainly due to the periodicals and withdrawals projects. I, as usual, have done nothing towards my chartership except go to work every day. I thought that over the summer I would have time to sit down and get all my evidence together, decide how far I had to go and set some goals…or something. Now the summer is gone and I’m no further on with anything than I was before. I think lunch hours are going to be spent gathering things together, which I will then take home and sort out. My next step is to try and get my job description sorted out - no, this still hasn’t been done!

I must also contact my mentor, although I’m not sure what I have to tell her. Perhaps it would be better to have something more concrete to tell her about before I contact her. I just can’t seem to get my brain into gear to tackle anything chartership-wise. Other people, who I’m sure must be at least as busy and probably busier than me, manage it, so I should be able to! As usual, I think it comes down to motivation. I am in desperate need of some!

I thought I should write something on here, as I haven’t done so for a while. I haven’t done anything particularly chartership-related since I went to Umbrella. In the library, the summer has been busy, mainly due to the continuing stock management project and the infamous measuring of the periodicals. I now have to measure all of the closed runs to see whether or not moving them into the stack will create enough space on the shelves to allow all the periodicals that currently reside on the floor to fit onto the shelves. It’s all a bit complicated. Really, we just need to throw lots of periodicals away,  but I doubt that this will happen. The whole of the stock management project and the periodicals relocation should have been done years ago. It’s all driving me a bit mad, really.

Anyway, the good news is that our new line manager started work this week. She is very enthusiastic and keen to improve things. I think (and hope) that there are going to be lots of positive changes to the way things are done. Although I’m happy about this it is still slightly disconcerting to have a new person coming into our office where we’ve been left to our own devices to quite a large extent for so long. Our new line manager is quite keen that I continue with and finish off my chartership so hopefully I will be a bit more motivated to do things for it, even if that motivation has to be a swift kick!

I applied for a new job and went for an interview on Wednesday, but I haven’t heard anything back, so am assuming I didn’t get it. I would have turned it down even if I had been offered it. On paper, the job seemed ideal, and pays a lot more than my current job, so I thought I should apply. However, when I went for the interview the job appeared to be much more to do with using and administering electronic resources, and less to do with working with people and the kinds of things I’m more used to doing and know about. I just don’t think I would have enjoyed the job, and the place of work felt oppressive and claustrophobic. At least it was good experience in applying for a job and going for an interview. It made me look at what I do in my current job and how that could be applied to a role in a different context, so the experience was useful in that respect as well.

I don’t think I have anything else to report, but I will try to be more regular in my updating of this blog from now on. I’m sure I’ve said that before…

Well, not really. We actually managed to avoid the rain for the most part, I think. I just got absolutely drenched, though. Anyway, I am now dry and must put off writing about Umbrella no longer! I’m afraid this might be a bit of a ‘I did this and then I did this’ sort of a post, but I hope it won’t be too dull.

I attended Umbrella for one day, on Friday. I made it to Hatfield station without major incident, although I did have a slight panic when I thought I’d boarded the wrong train at King’s Cross! Fortunately, I was on the right one! I got the lovely purple Umbrella bus from Hatfield station and made my first observations of a large number of librarians out of their natural habitat. [Back at work on Monday someone asked me whether I could tell that the people at Umbrella were librarians. I'm not sure that I could, really, although most of them did fit the stereotypical white, female, nearing middle age, demographic.]

Once I had collected my badge and quite useful bag from the reception desk I not only looked like I was going away for a week, especially as I had had to wear my winter coat due to my only other coat being ripped whilst doing my hair in Norway (it’s probably best not to ask), but I felt rather lost and not quite sure what to do¹. I arrived too late to attend the Breakfast Briefing, but too early too look round the exhibition, so I settled for having a cup of tea and looking at the large timetable for the day, which was helpfully displayed.

Although I’d planned to follow the ‘Information Literacy’ strand, I actually ended up going to one session from three different strands; ‘Information Literacy’, ‘Workforce Development’ and ‘Communication’, as well as the plenary session.

My first session of the day was “Web 2.0 and Information Literacy: all hype and no substance”, an amusing and informative talk by Peter Godwin. He gave some good examples of how Web 2.0 can be used in teaching library and information skills and gave an enjoyable overview of some of the many Web 2.0 applications. If nothing else, Web 2.0 is certainly fun (for geeks like me, at least!) and I think it really does have the potential to enhance the work of librarians, especially with younger people and students, but also with other groups. I think it’s particularly important that the groups who are already using Web 2.0 applications now use them with integrity and some sort of ‘discrimination’ for want of a better word. Librarians using Web 2.0 have a great opportunity to reach out and market their services to a wide range of people, many of whom may be uncomfortable with the traditional model of a library. It’s also vital that the information gap (yes, I think there still is one - apparently some politician/other big wig said that the information gap/digital divide no longer exists) is narrowed, and quickly, otherwise many people are going to be left behind without access to basic services, if things carry on the way they are. 

Anyway, enough preaching to the converted. For some distraction please have a look at this video featuring a couple of  slightly scary librarians. Peter reckons that this is what many librarians have dreamed of! Is he right?

The second part of the morning’s session was a talk by Helen Conroy from Netskills and Debbi Boden  from Imperial College, entitled “Teachers, trainers, educators, enablers: what skills do we need and where do we get them?” This was an intereting session, and brought up some of the problems faced by library staff when they are expected to teach without having had any training and, (almost) conversely, when they are told that they have to have some formal teacher training in order to do the job that they are already doing. Overall, having some form of formal training was seen as a good thing, whether it was through a traditional teaching route like the PGCE or more library focused training like the Current Library and Information Practice (CLIP) programme.

 The talk was based around a study undertaken to find out what skills library and information professionals feel that they need, how they got these skills, what they feel should be taught on library courses and what CILIP should do to help LIS professionals gain the skills that they need. The results all made for interesting reading. I’m hoping that all the presentations from Umbrella will appear online at some point so that people can see what on earth I’m talking about!

After listening to Helen and Debbi I and everyone else went for coffee. A lot of my day at Umbrella seemed to be taken up with consuming some sort of beverage and cake, which was no bad thing. I think I counted at least five different types of cake on offer during the day.

After coffee and a nice pastry I went to the session on “Building your portfolio”. It was extremely useful and this session alone made it worth going to Umbrella. I really hope that the presentation from this session will be online soon, because I’m sure it would be a great help to anyone chartering or following the ACLIP route.

Lunch was nice. Lots of interesting things to eat. Well, I thought so. I managed to meet my boss (by accident), but he was talking to some other people and I was getting in the way of a catering man, so I wandered off to look at the stands in the exhibition and the poster display. I was quite impressed by some of the posters, particularly the ones from the National Library of Scotland, which looked very professional and were interesting.

I attended the Career Development Group’s AGM after lunch. This was the first time I had attended a CDG AGM and it was a good insight into the workings of the group, as well as another opportunity to eat cake. It was also quite entertaining as Bob McKee was weighed in preparation for his latest  charity weight loss attempt.

The plenary session, a talk by Dr Alex Byrne, President of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, provided much food for thought. His theme was “Advocacy and Freedom of Information: the challenges facing the Library and Information Profession in the Global Information World”. Phew! As you can probably tell it was quite a ‘heavy’ talk, but really interesting. As I was settling into my seat I was approached by someone who turned out to be Pete. It was nice to meet him in real life, after being in contact via the blogosphere.

My final session of the day was one on “Making copyright cool” and “…introducing real marketing to libraries”. The session consisted of two talks. The first was by Monique Ritchie of Brunel University Library, who is employed as their ‘copyright consultant’. I didn’t realise that dealing with copyright matters could be someone’s full time job, but it seems that it can be. I suppose there is a lot to it, really, especially if one is dealing with copyright issues across a whole university. It was an enlightening talk.

This was followed by a talk from Nigel Thomas of Leicestershire Library Services, who talked about real marketing, clean and dirty data, among other things. He made some interesting points, including the idea that we need to base are marketing strategies around what our users do, rather than what they say they want. It’s a good point, I think.

I left at 5pm to get the train home, so I missed the last bit of this session, but it was a good job I left when I did, as lots of London was closed, due to the car bombs being found. On the way home I started talking to another delegate, and it turned out that she used to work in my current job! We had a good chat, and I wished I’d met her earlier in the day!

Overall, I enjoyed Umbrella. At times I found it a bit overwhelming and wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself, but all of the sessions I attended were interesting and useful.

I hope that I’ve remembered things correctly. If anyone who attended Umbrella would like to correct me on anything I may have remembered wrongly or just completely forgotten to mention, please let me know!

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1. I actually spent quite a lot of time wandering about feeling slightly lost. I think Umbrella might be more enjoyable if you either go with someone you already know, or plan to meet up with people once you’re there.

Just recording that my article about why I want to go to Umbrella was published in the most recent issue of the CILIP Gazette. It was nice to see my ramblings in print.

We now have a new line manager! She doesn’t start for a while, but at least we know that she’s on her way! It will be quite strange have a line manager after all this time. I’m wondering  what will change with my job, if anything, and what changes she will want to make within Reader Services. Whatever happens, it is bound to be an interesting time - hopefully in a good way!

I’ve recently written a report about why we need two more part-time shelvers for the library. This was the first report I’ve had to write with a real purpose, as opposed to one for my library qualification. A lot of the work was done for me by the library assistant who supervises the shelvers, so really I only had to make it sound more official and put it into a report format. I was glad that the big boss thought we’d done a good job. However, it remains to be seen whether or not we will get any new shelvers!

Meanwhile, I have been putting my negotiation skills (such as they are) to use again. We got what we wanted, but there are always added complications…The joys of library politics!

Apologies for yet another change of layout. I was finding the other one a bit difficult to read! 

This week I attending a few interesting meetings. The first one was the long-awaited Information Services Committee meeting. This was actually a lot more interesting than I expected it to be, but I can’t really write about it here as I don’t think that would be appropriate! Anyway, I learnt a lot about the structure of ‘Information Services’ and the various teams and committees that attempt to run it (or should that be ‘them’?).

The second meeting I had was with my colleagues in Reader Services and Bibliographic Services, and the Head of Library Services. We were talking about the running of the issue desk for the next academic year. Work on the issue desk is going to be a larger part of the work of the Reader Services and Bibliographic Services from September, so we have to think about lovely things like staffing and rotas again. Sorting out the staffing and rotas will be my responsibility. I used to do the rotas last year, and they are less complicated now (allegedly!) so I am hoping it won’t be too stressful.

The third meeting of the week was about the very important, but oft overlooked subject f shelving. Basically, we don’t have enough shelvers. Next week I’m going to help the library assistant who’s in charge of stock management to write a proposal to try to persuade the powers that be that we need two more shelvers. I haven’t written a report for a while, so it will be good practice.

I wrote my article for the CILIP Gazette last week. I wasn’t very well for some of the week and forgot all about it until Friday, and, as the deadline was Monday and I was going to be away for the weekend, it was a bit of a rush job. I didn’t think it was very good, but the editor said it was alright, which was a surprise, but a relief. I’ll wait and see whether or not it appears in print.

I wrote to CILIP to ask whether or not I need to send them my updated PPDP, and they said there was no need, so that will save me some trouble.

Erm, I think that’s about it!

Another short one, I’m afraid… 

The fact that I am planning to go to Umbrella is proving to be useful for my career development - and I haven’t even got there yet! I’ve been asked to write something about why I’m attending Umbrella for the CILIP Gazette, and I’m also hoping to get involved with the ‘Umbrella Wiki’, which is being set up by some people from (if that is the correct term) the LIS-CILIP-REG email list (email list for chartership candidates). I’ve never done anything on a wiki before, so I’m not completely sure what I’m doing - but I will find out and learn some new things, which is always good!

Meanwhile, in the library, the saga of the periodicals continues! It is proving to be good for my diplomatic skills, as well as being useful for experience of stock management…