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.