DMU visit

Last monday I visited one of our affiliated universities - De Montfort University - to find out more about their Library. I was amazed at the size of it and the amount of space available for students and can imagine its a great place to study.

One of the first things I noticed was the proliferation of self service machines in the Library - this seems to be the way forward for many libraries and especially those that are opened (but not staffed) 24hrs. When I enquired further I did deiscover that they are not particularly well used at the moment as student prefer to go to the issue desk and have a more personal experience (which I can understand as I do the same at the bank). So at least ther service users appreciate the value of a staffed library rather than a self service one.

I also got the opportunity to sit in on a Class (Centre for Learning and study skills) session - something I could have done with whilst I was at university as it exmplored reading and writing styles. We do some information skills sessions in our college and the most popular one seems to be on referencing, however I thinks sessions on essay writing could also be popular if targeted at the right audience.

I was suprised to find out that the university also struggles in encouraging student's to use e-books, this is something we have diffculty with at the college so it was a great opportunity to consider some marketing strategies, one method they use at DMU is to have an e-book roadshow that showcases the e-books on offer and gives students the opportunities to meet publishers. We also agreed that the best way to get students on board with books is to eduate teaching staff about them as they will recommned useful resources to thier students.

During the visit I got ot meet so many lovely people who do such varied but key jobs in order to keep the service running effectively and smoothly. I learned so much in just one day and I only saw a small sample of the work that goes on behind the scenes. I would definitley reccommend visiting a variety of Libraries as I have taken away something useful from each of my visits and it is an excellent way to netwrok and build relationships with others in the safe field of work.

William Harvey Library

Yesterday I spent the day at the William Harvey Library at George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton. I really enjoyed my day as it gave me the opportunity to experience a different type of library. Prior to my visit I hadn't really ever considered working in a hospital library as I thought it may have been too specialised. However I was delighted to be proved wrong, whilst they do use a different classifying system (The Wessex Classification Scheme) it was still fairly easy to find my way around to re-shelve books and locate journals. I also had the chance to see how Inter Library Loans for articles worked (something we no longer do at the college as there isn't a demand for it) as whilst I was there we recieved some articles from the British Library and also copied some articles for another NHS library. It was also great to see how the SLRA had implemented some of the procedures she had seen art our library on her visit, such as texting library users when library books are due back.

In additon to getting the opportunity to seeing 'behind the scenes' of a hospital Library it was a great opportunity to network with other library staff and discovered that the SLRA had also done CPD23 and we compared our experiences and whoed each other the prezi's we had worked on from thing 17 she also very helpfully pointed out that she had to chase her certificate for CPD 23 and found out you have to have done all the 'things' to get it which has inspired me to check which ones I may not have done and speak to the CPD23 people about getting my certifica

I enjoyed the expereince of a day at a hospital library and has caused me to think about the different types of library work there are and not to be so closed minded about what library work I see myslef doing in the future.

Working across Multi-sites

This is a subject that has been on my mind recently as over the last couple of weeks I ahve been based only at one site. As it is I usually only work at one of our other sites one day a week due to staffing. Perosnally I think it is useful to work across at all sites as it give an interesting variation to the job with the different tasks that need to be carried out at each of the site and the type of visitors you get at the different libraries. I also think it is a good opportunity to work with, and as a result get to know your colleagues. Currently due to the way we work there a members of my team I only see for half an hour at our team meetings or for half  day when I'm at the other site.

I do enjoy being at thie site I work at mostly and I have a good gauge of the staff and students and therefore how to approach them if necesary, this is likely due to the fact that I am here for three days in a row at the begining of the week. On the other hand my time at our other site is much busier when I'm on the counter and there ore lots of tasks that need doing all the time and as a result the time flies by.

we do have a third site that is due to expand and I haven't had the opportunity to visit it as yet due to travel difficulties but would like to do so in the near future.

I think for good communication nd an understanding for other peoples job roles it is essential when workng at a multi-site Library that the team makes the most of the opportunity to work at all sites.

Stock take - The aftermath

I blogged before Christmas that I had done my first ever library stock take. Well for most of January I have been working through the data produced from this and trying to tidy-up our records so that our catalogue actually reflects our stock.

Thie first stage of this was to locate books that came up as "no accession" these are books that I scanned during the stock take (and are therefore on the shelves) but have no catalogue record. Secondly I had to check/ change the status and location of many of the books. I managed to work my way through this list of books quite quickly.

My current on-going task is to process our 'missing items' this is a rather large list of items that are currently listed as available at Hinckley but were not scaned during the stock take. Part A of this was to establish that none of the books had appeared back on the shelves, Luckily for me quite a few had been retruned at some point. Part B is to work down the list and either withdraw (for items that are over 10 years old/ haven't been borrowed recently) or change their status to missing.

If only it was this simple - I am also making a record of books that have been borrowed in the last couple of years as we need to establish how these have gone missing, it may have been during the move to the new site or they may have been transferred to another site.

At the moment this seems like an arduous and never ending task, I know that when I complete it I will feel a great sense of satisfaction and it will make my job so much easier as we won't be trying to locate books that aren't on the shelves or have students/ staff complaining as they can't find the book they want. It has made me realise that catalogue or systems management is probably not an area of Librarianship I would particularly enjoy as I find it doesn't hold my interest and I get bored easily. I am much happier being at front of house, interatcing with the students and helping them find resources or solve problems.

BETT 2012

Last Thursday I went down to London with some of my colleagues from e-services to attend the BETT 2012 exhibiton at Londons Olympia exhibiton centre. When I was originally asked if I wanted to go I declined as the thought of being the only member of the library team going was a bit daunting and I wasn't really sure what to look for. However as it turns out our line manager requested that both myself and our Senior Learning Resource Assistant for User Education both go.

I'm glad I did go though as it was a great experience it was initially a bit overwhelming as the venue was huge and there were an uncountable number of stands. I stuck with the SLRA and one of the e-services team to track down useful items for the library. One such item was a sanner mouse - this allows the user to scan a portion of text and transfer into a word document. This is a great idea - especially for use on our reference books however I can see it being problematic in realtion to copyright liscences and plagarism.

We also saw some multi purpose computer desks which work by storing the screen and accesories under the desk so it can be used as a study desk, or if you pop-up the scrren and take out the accesories you can use it as a computer table. This type of desk would be ideal in smaller libraries/ resource centres as it creates a more flexible workning environment.

I do wish we had more time there as we didn't get the oportunity to look around all the stalls, perhaps if i were to go again I would plan the stalls that I want to fit in a visit to.

New Year's Resolution (sort of)

As a rule I try not to make resolutions as I end up feeling like I've failed when I reach the end of the year and I haven't kept it up.

However earlier today I was thinking about blogs as a reflective tool and thought it would be worth looking over my old (personal) blog. It surprised (and concerned) me how easy it was to find my old blog and read the posts. I simply put my blog name into google blog search and there it was, a whole three years of my life laid out for anyone to read.

 It was interesting to read back through them as it was written partly during my time at uninveristy and then through my first couple of years of life post Uni.  It charts my first steps in the the world of being an adult and how I dealt with it including my first job after University, living away from home and general finacnial woes. I can see how much I have changed between then and now in the way I deal with situations and my life focus is completely different. This is the first time I have really seen the benefits of blogs as a reflective practice as before now I kept my personal one as an online diary and my professional one has only been going for a few months.

 But back to the point I opened up with - this year my aim is to try and blog at least either once a week on either here or my personal blog.

Stock Taking

Before we moved to our new Hinckley site in September we had to reduce our book stock by a large amount and as withdrawla were done in a bit of a rush before the move there have been some inconsitencies between our catalogue and our physical stock. So it was decided that this week whilst the students are out of college we would do a stock take. I have done stock checks before in previous job roles, but usually not on sucha  huge scal and in more of an inventory style. This time i got to use a hand held scanner to scan the accessions of all our books - now this was quite fun to begin with but by the end of day one (and 2164 books under my belt) the novelty had worn off, my arms were aching and I was dog tired.

On day two I thought I wuld learn from my expereince on day one and try it differently - this time instead fo trying to hold heavy artbooks in my hands whilst scanning I utilised the trolley - this was slighlty more comfortable although still gave my arms a work out.

Today I completed the stock take of 6000 items and was vey please with my achivement. Admittedly this is not something I would relsih doing on a regular basis but I enjoyed getting up close and personal with our book stock - I have never really taken the time to really look at what we have and this was the ideal opportunity to look at what we have to offer the students and also at what books haven't been taken out in years I know feel I have a better knowledge of our books and feel I could reccomened books or at least a sleection of books for students if they had a query rather then just relying on the catalogue.

It has felt like a long three days but it is great too look around now and have a sense of achievement that I have scanned just about everything in our Library, as well as feeling confident about advising our students about our books and as an extra bonus I will have wonderfuly toned arms.