ALISS Visit to Institute of Education, London

On 16 April I visited the Institute of Education Library in London with ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences), to hear about their special collections, archives, and digital archive of official publications Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA). As liaison librarian for Education, this was an excellent opportunity for me to learn about other Education subject-specific collections and resources. DERA, in particular, will be a useful resource to point students towards.

The day began with a talk from Nazlin Bhimani, Research Support & Special Collections Librarian, about the Library generally and it’s special collections. The Library collects everything published on education in the UK, with a representation of other countries, as well as curriculum resources, such as reading materials for use in classrooms and a ‘literature’ collection – books with schools or education featured or as a theme, such as Harry Potter!

Special Collections
The special collections include libraries of individual scholars or significant figures relating to education, as well as historical collections on a particular subject (for example, music, physical education), and historical textbooks. To promote the collections, Nazlin uses LibGuides, attends inductions, hosts library and archive study days, and uses social media.

Some items from the IoE archives and special collections

Archives
I enjoyed Becky Webster’s presentation, as instead of slides she projected some interesting images from the archive collections while talking us through some of the aspects of the IoE archives.

Their collection development policy is deliberately broad to cover education as represented in all areas. Their main areas of enquiries are school architecture, politics of education (gender, moral education, student activities), and gender and education.

Tiny models of classroom furniture – adorable!

Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA)
Emma Alison works with the British official publications collection, and spoke about the collection and it’s digital archive.

What’s in the collection?
The core is crown copyright and parliamentary copyright, but also includes quango publications and others.

What isn’t in the collection?
Letters, speeches, technical guidance, press releases, subject development materials.

DERA is a permanent digital archive of largely born-digital government publications. It has been a solution to the movement of many documents to electronic-only and ‘link rot’. The items turn up in Google, which is how the majority of users find DERA. Some possible future plans include investigations into formats to expand file types, possible expansion of organisations included, and enhancement of features and visibility.

We rounded off the day with tea and a tour. It was great to have a snoop around, including the midly terrifying stacks with a mesh floor. The Library itself is light and airy, and seems like a great place for students to work. It was great for me to see first-hand their collections, as I can now feel confident in referring our students there through SCONUL Access if our own Education collections are not sufficient for their research needs. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between the IoE library’s and our Education collections.

Reviewing the reviews

As part of my role as liaison librarian, I am the shelving supervisor for the Social Sciences floor. Mostly the shelving ticks along nicely, but I am often involved in arranging cover for busy periods (like right now!). Another part of being shelving supervisor is delivering annual Staff Development Reviews (SDR) for our part-time shelvers. This year, I was responsible for two SDRs. This was the first time I have been in a supervisory role, and my first experience of a formal management responsibility. I was feeling quite nervous, but also fairly excited.

The university is very good at providing opportunities for personal and professional development, and to my great relief provides workshops for both new reviewees and new reviewers. Although I fell under both categories, I only attended the workshop for new reviewers, since there would be a significant overlap in content. I had expected this workshop to be full of management jargon, but in actuality it was incredibly helpful.

The presenter was knowledgeable and relatable. All my concerns and questions were addressed, and I came out of it much more confident and relaxed about delivering my two SDRs. Some of the advice I found particularly useful (though not exhaustive), and things I learnt from the two SDRs included:

• Block out time for writing up too - The SDRs took 30-45 minutes, but I blocked out an hour and a half of my time, so I could write up our discussion straight-away. It stops you forgetting things, but also I feel it demonstrates your commitment to their professional development.
• They should be talking 70% of the time - ask open ended questions, which are far more conducive to discussion than yes/no answers. In my first SDR I found myself slipping in this regard, which leads me to…
• Plan what you will talk about, and practice- that might feel a bit weird for a one-to-one discussion, but remember that the more prepared you are the better you’ll feel, and the better they’ll feel. There’s nothing worse than your manager rifling through papers trying to remind themselves what exactly it is you do!

In particular, I received some great advice about SDRs with staff who have been with the institution much longer than you have:

• Frame it in light of changes - This was easy for me, as we are about to have some major rewiring and refurbishment, and had just undergone some significant book moves.
• Might be related to objectives from your own SDR - we were advised to have our own SDRs before setting the agenda for theirs, as our own objectives may well feed into theirs.

Additionally, I found Simon Barron’s Idiots Guide to Annual Staff Reviews both helpful and comforting. The later comments about impostor syndrome were, too, very reassuring!

I am glad I did these SDRs, as it is very likely I will be in a job role in the future which also involves the supervision/management of staff and therefore carrying out annual reviews. Now I have done them, they are not nearly as scary as I had thought. Plus, it’s a useful addition to my Chartership portfolio.

Beginning Chartership

I have embarked on Chartership, CILIP’s professional qualification. Although I had originally intended to wait before starting Chartership, a number of others at my workplace are also starting it. My Library runs a structured programme of seminar style discussion and support, so it made sense to take advantage of this and the peer support of those colleagues also embarking on Chartership, rather than waiting and doing it on my own.

Chartership involves setting yourself professional development goals, and compiling evidence to support that you are working towards them. This all comes together into a portfolio, tied together with an evaluative statement.

So where am I currently at in this process? I have registered, and have a mentor. I have a few rough ideas for my Personal Professional Development Plan (PPDP), which will soon become actual training and development needs and proposed actions. I’ve attended a Chartership event with CILIP, which was really helpful (and compulsory for Chartership). It helped get the process straight in my head and showed me what I need to include. I recommend attending one of these sessions early on, as it answered a lot of my questions.

In order to audit my skills, to show my strengths and potential areas for development, I filled out the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB). I was surprised that I had a large number of areas where I scored myself 0:

1.4 Ontologies
1.7 Subject indexing
1.8 Information architecture
1.9 Database design and management
2.3 Data management
2.6 Organisational information/knowledge assets
3.4 Data analytics
5.1 Information governance
5.5 Information ownership and accountability
5.6 Information risk management
5.7 Information assurance
6.2 Retention and disposal
6.6 Curation
6.8 Web information continuity
8.4 Writing, numeracy and creativity
9.5 Partnership development
9.6 Influencing key stakeholders
10.2 Business planning and asset management
12.3 System design and development of systems
12.8 Language skills

Some of these are quite technical or specific, but it still came as a shock. Nevertheless, with so many areas it gives me a lot of scope for developing my skills, knowledge and expertise. Points in my PPDP will involve reading around areas to bring some 0s up to 1s, and things I can do to bring 1s and 2s up to 3s. Worth bearing in mind, too, is how developing some of these areas will help me in future, by broadening my skill set and therefore broadening my job-hunting ‘net’ (my contract is fixed-term, so this will become more pertinent for me in a couple of years).

When filling out the PKSB, it would have been useful to have concrete examples. It was sometimes hard to know what a section was actually about. I may have scored myself 0 on some points, when in actuality I may know a little about it but don’t realise I do!

So what now? Once I have firmed up my PPDP I will inform CILIP. Then, it’s just a case of actually doing those actions to meet my training and development needs, and collecting the evidence to support it. I am lucky that my employer is extremely supportive of those doing Chartership, and offers a great deal of opportunities and flexibility for attending training and events.

A Librarian who Lectures, Part Two

A few months back, I gave my first lecture to roughly 200 undergraduate students. It was terrifying and thrilling speaking in front of such a large audience, and I count it as quite an achievement. Last week I gave a second lecture to this class, and since I blogged about the first, this post is a reflection on how it compared.

This lecture covered a brief introduction to using databases for research, and citing and referencing. I used my predecessor’s slides, which I updated and amended to my own style.

In my original post, I advised the following:

• Don’t let them know you’re afraid. 

This time round, I was a lot less anxious – I knew what to expect, and I knew I could handle it.

• Don’t underestimate how long it takes for people to settle down

I started at five minutes past the hour, and didn’t acknowledge those who came in late (rather than letting them disrupt my flow).

• Balance making the session as interactive as possible without it descending into chaos. 

There wasn’t much scope for discussion in this lecture, but it is something I tried to bear in mind during the quiz questions.

• Make it personal to their course

The content of the lecture – primarily referencing – can very easily become generic. By using examples that are key texts they have likely encountered can trigger recognition and makes it more relevant. I also tried to emphasise the benefits of referencing correctly – you’ll get better marks!

I felt a lot more confident giving this lecture, having done the experience before. Which just goes to show that practice really does make public speaking easier. The audience was also a bit smaller this time, as not everyone turned up – I won’t take this personally!

Support for Researchers

Senate House – the venue

In December I attended the cpd25 event Support for Researchers. A key theme of the presentations and discussion was collaboration. With the roles of libraries evolving as research needs and activities change, collaboration with other relevant services and departments can offer greater knowledge, expertise and skills. Much of this was echoed in the Guardian Higher Education live chat last Friday. I have collated the Guardian’s tweets from the live chat into Storify:
[View the story "Guardian #HElivechat" on Storify]

Supporting Researchers Collaboratively

The first presentation, Supporting Researchers Collaboratively, was from Miggie Pickton and Nick Dimmock from the Research Support Team, part of the Library and Learning Services (LLS) at University of Northampton. Miggie and Nick spoke about the Research Support Hub, a blog which brings news of interest to researchers into one place, where before it was scattered. It publicises services of the Graduate School, the Research and Strategic Bidding Office (RSBO) and LLS Research Support Team.

They also spoke about other ways they are collaborating with other parts of the University. A mandatory four-day induction for new researchers which involves two days of information and research skills, such as the institutional repository, is a chance to identify learning needs by meeting face-to-face. The institutional repository also offers an opportunity for collaboration through technical help, metadata and copyright support. It’s the main source of data for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and representatives of LLS and RSBO are on a REF working group. Collaboration can bring an invitation into research community, and higher visibility and perceived value.

New technologies and online research presence

The second presentation, Blogs, Twitter, Wikis and other web-based tools: collaboration and building your online presence, was from Jenny Evans, Imperial College. This is a six-week programme of face-to-face and online elements for PhD students, exploring tools and technologies, but also developing online research presence.

Collaboration occurs within the project, as the library staff write content for the programme, which includes case studies of researchers at various career stages and how they’re using these tools.

Obligatory ‘research’ photo

Perspectives of a Research student

Tahani Nadim presented on her experiences doing a PhD, giving us an insight into her self-proclaimed “messy practices”. Tahani has also worked as an institutional repository manager, and has completed Library research as part of JISC funded projects, so was able to bridge the gap between researchers and library/information staff.

Although Tahani never had a problem gathering data, it was organising information that was more challenging. Since she wants to, and will, revisit her texts, audio files and transcripts from interviews, there are issues of the management and organisation of this information. It’s as much about managing your research as actually doing it! When opened up for a Q&A, it seemed PhD researchers are very much in isolation, making it difficult for librarians to anticipate their needs and skill-levels. The students are much more likely to go to their peers for advice and support, even if it is something the library does offer. Increasing visibility, and an increased embedded nature of library liaison, can help alleviate some of this.

Points of discussion

Some interesting themes emerged in the discussion session, including;

• Support for bidding process
• Value of librarians as practitioner researchers
• Re-focusing titles of our courses, and building in more “research” aspects to existing sessions
• Effects of Open Access policies on libraries

Evaluating our support for researchers is a current hot topic at my own workplace, so the chance to benchmark with other university libraries was valuable. There was quite a discrepancy between the support offered by different institutions, both in terms of how much was offered, and what shape that support took.

2012 in review

I was mulling over a review of 2012 blog post, and WordPress have helpfully compiled an annual report for this blog. I’m very pleased with how this blog has been going this year, as I’ve gained new readers and followers, and there have been interesting discussions in comments.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

My posts from SLA 2012 in Chicago have been very popular, particularly my write-up of Mary Ellen Bates’ session on marketing for introverts. I hope to blog more this year, keeping it more regular and also expanding into more professional issues as well as personal reflection.

2012 was quite a year, especially in terms of my professional life and career. I won the SLA Europe/Business and Finance Early Career Conference Award to attend the SLA conference in Chicago. An amazing experience which I am sure you are all sick of me going on about! I wont repeat my gushings here, but if you’d like to read about it, I’ve tagged these posts SLA 2012.

I also completed my MA in Librarianship, and as such qualified as a librarian. Sadly, this meant leaving Sheffield, where I made some great friends, but I have moved on to bigger and better things; I am currently in my first professional post as a subject liaison librarian at a University. This is a challenging but rewarding role, and you can read about my first month in the post over at the LIS New Professional’s Toolkit site, the website accompanying Bethan Ruddock’s recently published book. If you are thinking about Library School at Sheffield, or even more generally, these posts are under Library School.

So what does 2013 have in store? I’ll be starting chartership this year. I also hope to get to some conferences, such as Umbrella or LILAC. I’m going to be blogging throughout chartership, as it’ll be useful to keep a record of things and for reflection. So there are a few professional activities to keep me going!

What are your aims and resolutions for 2013?

Apply now for SLA Europe Early Career Conference Awards 2013

Applications are now open for the SLA Europe Early Career Conference Awards (ECCA). Go apply now!

The awards, co-sponsored by four Special Libraries Association divisions (Business & Finance, Leadership & Management, Legal, and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology) offer new professionals an amazing opportunity to attend the SLA annual conference and INFO-EXPO in San Diego, and covers conference fees, flights, expenses and accommodation.

I was extremely fortunate to win an ECCA this year to attend SLA 2012 in Chicago, co-sponsored by the Business & Finance Division. It was an unbelievable experience and an incredible opportunity as a new professional. I met LIS professionals from around the world, experienced a country I always dreamed of visiting, and joined a welcoming and enthusiastic community.

More information about the awards, including how to apply, is at the SLA Europe website. I urge you to apply. You have nothing to lose, and you could end up in San Diego!