Monday

Well actually, on Monday I had the day off. Because I do that occasionally. And work’s been really busy lately, having started my new job in December, so I’m building up lots of flexitime…

Tuesday

On Tuesday, my diary was quite busy and I had four meetings. In the morning, I met with colleagues to discuss the refurbishment of our Level 3 computer room and developing new IT areas across the four floors of the Main Library. I also saw the Charities Officer from the Student Union about promoting the Library giving one day’s fines revenue to charity, which will hopefully help to combat recent negative press about our fines revenue. In between, I managed to get through Monday’s emails and do a few odd jobs, like updating our screensavers and plasmascreens and putting up a few posters which were lingering on my desk.

I started my afternoon by meeting with my colleague Vicki, who’s helping me to put together Easter vacation publicity materials this year and we talked through the various ways we tell the students about borrowing resources and using the Library during the vacation period. Then, I knocked together a plan of action for this year’s Library 24/7 campaign. I seem to be writing plans quite a lot at the moment, because otherwise I have to hold everything in my head (never a good idea).

After that, and a quick cup of tea, I had an update meeting with the Deputy Librarian, who’s my new line manager. We discussed support for my role, recent issues and things that were coming up. Of which there is quite a lot…

Wednesday

I spent most of Wednesday morning putting together a statement for the student newspaper about the Library’s budget for resources and staffing over the last few years. Not a pleasant task. We haven’t had the most positive relationship with the student newspaper in the past, so last week, I spent quite a bit of time writing a very carefully worded briefing document about the Main Library’s £11 million pound extension, which opens in April.  In Monday’s newspaper, page 3 was devoted to Library developments, so I felt like that was a job well done. This week, a very vague enquiry about the Library’s spending, which gives no idea of what kind of angle our student journalists are looking to take. And yes, we do spend quite a lot of money, because academic resources are really expensive and we offer long opening hours across a range of Library sites. We are like any other large university library. So I talk to the Library’s Finance Officer and get something drafted…

In the afternoon, I spent an hour serving customers on the help and information desk, I updated our horrible opening hours database and got documentation sent off to IT to get a Bristol Online Surveys account. I also started redrafting the Library 24/7 webpages.

Thursday

First thing on Thursday morning, I jumped on a bus to the other University campus for an introductory meeting in my new role with library staff there. When I arrived, the network was down across the campus, so I phoned staff at the Main Library to let them know and get information out to customers on our webpages and social media accounts. In the meeting, we talked mostly about Library 24/7, as well as vacation information. There’s a new member of staff there who’s keen on helping out, so that’s great.

Back at the office, I finished off a document outlining what kinds of information a potential new opening hours system would need to display. I spent the rest of my afternoon starting to design an infographic style poster about the Main Library’s East Wing extension…

Friday

After an hour on the help and information desk, I finished off the first draft of my ‘East Wing in numbers’ infographic, although it will need a bit more work next week when I’ve got feedback from the Communications and Marketing Group on Monday. Talking of the Communications and Marketing Group, I wrote an agenda for Monday’s meeting and circulate with the meeting documents.

Later, I wrote a news story and social media posts about the updating of our building developments pages, which I’m hoping will go live over the next week. I made some amendments to the budget statement for the student newspaper, but I’ll need to talk to the Deputy Librarian about this before it can go out. Last thing (and this is what I always tend to do on a Friday afternoon!), I wrote myself a to do list so I can hit the ground running next week.

And that was my Library Day in the Life, Round 8! It’s first thing on Monday morning now, and I’m about to start it all over again. Here goes…

My new role is to continue and develop Durham University Library’s communications processes. I am responsible for ensuring that we deliver clear, consistent and effective information about Library and Heritage Collection resources, services and developments to internal and external audiences. Planning, managing and developing promotional campaigns, publicity materials and events from initial concept to final production are part of my duties. I’m going to be advising and supporting our Web Steering Group and scoping potential mobile applications. I will be heading up collecting feedback, evaluating how effective our services are at meeting customer needs and responding to the National Students Survey results. I also have some responsibility for internal communications.

That’s what the job description says.

I’ve come back to work after Christmas to a series of introductory meetings and I’m using January to review, plan and prioritise. And at the very start of this process, what I’m already starting to realise is that it’s a big job. I’m managing marketing and communications for 5 libraries, one of which is just about to open a £10 million pound extension in April. So far, so at least kind of within my comfort zone. I’ve worked in the Library for two years and I’ve been involved in all of our major campaigns and publicity activities. I have been a student at the University. I know what we offer as a library service, I know our main customer group and I’m confident I can promote what the Library does to our different audiences.

But as well as the libraries, I’m responsible for effectively marketing our archives and special collections. There’s also the small matter of our growing special collections gallery space, which will be hosting the Lindisfarne Gospels in 2013. And then there’s the two university museums. And all of the outreach work that goes with this.

I’m really excited to have been offered the promotion. It’s definitely going to be a challenge and a job that I can hopefully do some really interesting things with. It’s my first ‘professional’ level post, and my first ‘graduate’ job. And I’ve managed to get it without postgraduate qualifications in either librarianship or marketing. I feel massively lucky that my colleagues have recognised that I work hard, that the standard of work I produce is good and that I’m capable at handling whatever’s thrown at me.

But with the very serious concerns I have for my family, who are falling apart over 300 miles away, I can’t help but feel that a lot is being thrown at me right now.

2012 is certainly going to be interesting…

Attending

I’ll tackle attending first, as that’s the one I have most experience of. I went to my first big conference last year – the UC&R and CoFHE 2010 conference – after I managed to wangle a sponsored place from UC&R Northern. As a Library Assistant, I didn’t feel like I could really ask to go to a big national conference like that (in my head, that’s the kind of event that the Subject Librarians might attend, or members of Senior Management Team). So I was really pleased to be offered the place and be able to attend. It was my first opportunity to meet people from libraries all over the country and I took away lots of ideas. Attending really broadened my horizons in terms of being able to evaluate what we’re doing well as a library and what’s not so great.

Since attending that first conference, I haven’t looked back in terms of going to conferences and events. You can read my thoughts about some of the events I’ve attended here, here and here. 

Presenting

As well as attending conferences, I’m now also exploring the possibility of presenting at them. I helped the library to win a CILIP Marketing Excellence award, and alongside a colleague gave a presentation to the 2010 PPRG conference about our winning Library 24/7 campaign. Earlier this year, I blogged about answering a call for papers for the first time and being unsuccessful.

What now? Well, I think I might feel ready to throw my hat in the ring again. The LILAC call for papers is out and there might be a good short paper in some of the work I’ve been doing recently, if I put my mind to it. Or if only I could find someone who is equally afraid of presenting a workshop on their own at the 2012 UC&R and CoFHE conference… (hint hint!).

Organising

The other Thing to think about for Thing 15 is organising events. That’s something I haven’t really got involved in outside of a work context. Have you been involved in organising conferences and seminars? Is it something I should start to consider?

I’ve certainly found this week’s Thing thought-provoking. And maybe something else will come out of it…

Whilst I was revisiting my old life, I found a library service which was changing and moving to new ways of working. These were the key points of change I picked up on during my time at the public library:

1. Budget

The budget the public library is operating on is massively and rapidly reducing. The county council library service had to make £1 million of savings in the last financial year and they’re looking at making the same cost saving this year as well. To do this, the library was attempting to save money where possible and had implemented lots of little income streams, such as asking people to pay to hire meeting rooms, selling greetings cards and auctioning rarer books for disposal. This was a difference between the public library and the university library, where I work, that I wasn’t expecting. Traditionally, libraries are seen as a ‘free’ service (although they’re not, of course. Customers pay for the public library service through their council tax and for the university library through their ever-increasing course fees). Beyond simply borrowing a book, there wasn’t much you could do in the public library which was free. This seemed a little sad from a customer perspective, but from the perspective of the public library’s tightening budget, necessary.

2. Staff and structure

The county council library service had recently undergone a major restructure in terms of staffing and structure. The public libraries throughout the county had been organised into tiers, determining their opening hours and levels of staffing. After the tiers came a major staffing restructure in March 2011. Collection management was centralised, whilst specialist roles such as the children’s librarians, reference librarians and community librarians were spread throughout the library service, working with a number of different branches. The remaining staff within the branches worked in front-line or management roles and were directly engaged with running the library they were based in.

It was interesting to talk to staff about the restructure and how it had impacted upon their jobs and the service that the library offered. I came away with the feeling that the staffing structure was becoming leaner, that several jobs had been lost, and that even visiting six months down the line, a few of the creases had yet to be ironed out. However, the public library staff seemed to be making the best of it and making it work. I was really impressed by the positive attitude demonstrated by all of the staff I met in the face of such big changes to their established ways of working.

3. Service

The public library is currently preparing for another big change – they’re moving to self-service and RFID in November. This will mean an entire new customer service desk layout in the entrance level to the library, which houses the circulating stock out on the open shelves. Transactions will be handled by RFID machines, which will allow customers to borrow and return items, as well as check their Library record and renew items. There will be a small visitor desk created which will handle library registrations and enquiries, but on a much reduced scale.

I’ve seen RFID in action at a public library in the North East, and it’s spangly technology – the way that the self-service machines recognise a stack of items is pretty magical. The new kit will certainly have the wow factor, but it will mean a shift in the way customers experience the library service. I think that the word ‘service’ implies a personal element, rather than a machine. The library I work in operates on a self-service model and I feel that although it works well in terms of handling the volume of customers we see, we’re constantly trying to get across to students that Library staff are approachable and that we’re (as one of our ‘identities’ says – we don’t call it a logo, otherwise Marketing are down our throats!) here to help. The public library is a public service; by moving towards using RFID, the human element will be reduced and I think that’s a really important part of what public libraries do.

Bearing the first big change that the public library is up against in mind, and the fact that the public library is looking to save a million pounds before the end of the financial year, the move to self-service also rings alarm bells. Will this decision make the impact of budget cuts upon staffing even more drastic?

Over the next year, I’m going to attempt to revisit the public library to see how self-service works in practice and how staff are adjusting to this. I’m also going to try to monitor what the local press is reporting about what’s going on at the public library.

It’s true that change is inevitable, but not all changes are necessarily for the better. It will be interesting to see what kind of changes lie ahead for the public library and what kind of challenges and opportunities they bring.

Google Docs

I thought that I’d never used Google Docs before. But Google seems to be gradually taking over my life – I’m sure it reads my emails, and now it seems to have started to squirrel away the documents I download from my Google Mail account. So upon logging into Google Docs for the first time, I was quite surprised to see that I had a number of documents there, all of which were not very useful and were promptly deleted. Now that I know I have an account though and can use it to share and collaborate on documents, I might start to utilise this more.

Wikis

Wikis are something I do have some experience of. I’ve contributed to a few, such as the Library Day in the Life Project, which I’ve taken part in for the last few rounds. I also thought I’d contributed to the Library Routes Project wiki, but turns out I hadn’t. So as part of this Thing, I added my Library Routes blog post. Excellent reminder.

At the moment, I think I’m content with being able to add information to wikis. However, in the future I could explore setting up a kind of test wiki, so that I get to know this software better.

Dropbox

And actually, I’m also using Dropbox on a regular basis. I share an account with my boyfriend and it’s installed on our home laptop, and both of our work computers. Paul uses this for SERIOUS WORK BUSINESS. I mostly use Dropbox for something much more fun… I’m writing a children’s book. It started off as a kind of distraction, because lots of nasty serious things are happening in my life and I needed to take my mind off them. I’ve nearly finished the very first draft of it now, and I know that when I have finished it, I will be amazingly proud of my achievement. Whether it sits on my mantlepiece as something to read to my future children, or whether it’s good enough to be published.

But if it got published? Now that really would be the best thing.

Security

Perhaps it’s a bit obvious, but the biggest difference that struck me about my time at the prison library was the importance of security. In prison, everything revolves around it. Walking to the library, we travelled through pairs of locked doors every few metres around the prison buildings. Alongside the librarians, prison officers assigned to the library were present at all times to ensure the security of both library staff and prisoners. Due to their customer group, stealing of library property was an issue and prisoners are unable to access the internet, word processing software or printing facilities. Security issues also extended to the stock that the library offered. There are a number of banned items and subjects which you won’t find in the prison library’s collection, from the obvious – books about bombmaking, for example – to the ones you wouldn’t have thought of, like the Igguldens’ Dangerous Book for Boys.

Customer journey

This heightened awareness of security stretched to the customer experience of using the library. The customer journey begins when the prisoner fills out an application form, or ‘app’ to visit the library. Each wing has appointed times when library officers collect those who have filled out an app. The prison officer takes the men to the library for around half an hour and then the group are escorted back to their accommodation or their next activity. I found it interesting that the customer experience of using the prison library begins sometimes days before their visit. This had its own unique set of problems – sometimes when called to go to the library, the men are busy, for example. If prisoners forget to fill out a library app or are unavailable when the library officers come to collect them, they are unable to return their books on time. These were issues that library staff were debating on the day I visited and I hope they continue to investigate ways to resolve this.

Prison libraries and public libraries

Something that I found surprising was the close relationship between the prison libraries and the public libraries in the area. The library service, like the educational provision in the prison, is tendered out. The county council currently provides library services to the prison and the library staff are employed and managed by the council. Therefore, there were a number of crossover points – one of the part-time librarians working at the prison also works for the main public library in the city and the prison and public libraries use the same library card system. The prison libraries in the county use the same library management system as the public libraries and borrow books from there. This close relationship between the services means that data protection is paramount. Library Orderlies (prisoners who work within the prison library) can use the library management system, but can’t access any information on patrons within the public library network. Similarly, only very basic information – surname, current cell and prisoner number – is held on the library management system about the prison library’s customers.

Although I wasn’t aware that the two systems were so closely linked in my area, it appeared that this had a number of benefits – the library is able to provide access to a wide range of material, and there is continuity between the service provided within the prison and libraries within the local area.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I turned up at the prison gates, but I found the atmosphere within the prison to be calm and controlled, and the prisoners seemed to respect and value the service that the library offered.

I’m not sure that prison libraries are for me, but it’s not so bad in the clink.

Well. I went narrowboating. I explored a crazy alternative reality volunteering as a Cook’s Assistant on a tall ship for a while. I survived Brownie camp and a visit from my mother. You could say I was taking a break (but it’s blatantly not true). September is not less busy than August. Life is sort of something that is happening to me at the moment, and I’ve given up bothering with trying to keep up.

BUT:

In an attempt to gain some sort of hold on all the good work I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted by life, I thought I might return to the world of blogging and CPD23 by jumping a Thing to muse on Thing 10: Graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, Chartership and Accreditation.

Certification: It’s now around a year since I found out I’d been awarded CILIP Certification…

Graduate traineeships: by the time I was able to add the letters ‘ACLIP’ after my name, I’d spent 3 years working in my university college library on a part-time basis as an undergraduate, and a year doing what I initially thought was my equivalent of a graduate traineeship. Another year on and I’m continuing to extend my ‘trainee year’ as a Library Assistant based in the academic liaison team at an academic library in the North East.

Chartership: The next step on for me is CILIP Chartership. I’m halfway through now, and I think it’s going well. I’ve got placements with prison and public libraries in the pipeline. The induction period is coming up at the university, and I’m doing some interesting things at work. And then…

Masters degrees: as part of my Chartership work, I’m just about to enrol myself onto one module of Northumbria’s Library and Information Management Masters course. I’m taking the Organising Knowledge module, which I’m hoping will fill some of the gaps for me when it comes to more ‘traditional library’-type skills.

I think I’ve got Thing 10 covered.

Adobe Premiere

Why did I use it?  I’m creating a testimonial video to promote our institutional repository, and I found screencasting and video editing software Camtasia Studio limited. Having created a first draft of the video in Camtasia, I used Adobe Premiere to create the final version of the video.

How did I learn it?  Mainly through using online video tutorials. I have the CS4 version of Adobe Premiere, so I watched a lot of the Getting Started guides on the Adobe website. I also consulted online forums when I had trouble exporting my video.

What worked?  I created a video from scratch, which I’m quite proud of. I was also able to adjust the brightness of the filming and use overlays using Adobe Premiere, which I couldn’t do using Camtasia.

What do I need to work on?  I need to try to remember to save regularly, as I got quite frustrated when I lost an hour’s work when using Adobe Premiere. Also, the video camera I used to film the footage, which was borrowed from our IT department, is pretty old and this means that the quality of the finished video isn’t great, despite my best efforts at editing it.

Adobe Illustrator

Why did I use it?  To update the Library floorplans, which were already in Illustrator format

How did I learn it?  When this responsibility was passed to me by my line manager around a year ago, he went through how to make basic changes to the floorplans using an older version of Adobe Illustrator. I already use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, and the menu structure of Adobe Illustrator is similar, so I mainly used trial and error to pick this package up. Although I was making fairly significant changes, I was also working to update a document which already existed, which made this task a lot easier.

What worked?  I managed to pick up the programme quite easily and created professional-looking maps for two of the University libraries which are undergoing major redevelopment work over the summer.

What do I need to work on?  I tend to try and find quick and efficient solutions to problems. However, in this case, it meant that when I was trying to ‘grey out’ unusually shaped staff areas, for example, I’d go for the primitive method of just colouring those areas in with a paint brush tool. This doesn’t affect the way the finished plan looks, but there’s every chance I’ll be using Illustrator for other projects in the future and I should take some time to pick up more advanced tools and features.

I’ve got to say, being able to add ‘familiar with the Adobe Creative Suite’ to my CV makes me feel like  a graphics Jedi. The force is strong in this one…

Monday 25th July

I’ve mentioned this before – I’m not a big fan of the library’s opening hours pages. They’re not particularly user-friendly, from a customer perspective, and they are horribly difficult to update.

The problem-solver:

Could be Google Calendar, which is what Thing 8 of the 23 Things for Professional Development course is all about. Over the last week, I’ve been investigating using Google Calendar as a interim fix to our opening hours pages problem. I have a Google account, so I’ve set up my personal Google calendar as if it were the library’s opening hours calendar. I’ve inputted some data as if we were undergoing a time where opening hours were changing from vacation, to term, to 24/7 opening hours. And this is the result:

Having not used Google Calendar before, I found it quite simple to schedule appointments, and you can set events so that they repeat on certain days of the week, or for a certain length of time.

There are certain problems, however, when you’re using it less as a diary and more of an opening hours database. When I scheduled appointments to reflect the times the Library was open, they only displayed the start time on the final calendar, like this:

Which looked quite odd. I couldn’t really find a way to get around this, although it might be just a case of digging deeper into the calendar settings, so I ended up scheduling everything as an all day event, and then manually inputting the times, i.e.:

But then this also has some limitations, because Google Calendar wants to order all day events alphabetically. I ended up changing ‘Help and Information Desk Opening Hours’ to ‘Service Desk Opening Hours’ to make sure information about the times at which full library services were available followed the information about the library’s opening hours.

Anyway, I meddled a bit with the display settings, and then Google produced some code so I could embed it into a webpage.

So, it didn’t take any technical wizardry whatsoever – and it should hopefully be quite easy to embed this into the university’s Content Management System. However, if we decide to go down this route without any technical work by the library’s IT team, it will be a bit of a dirty fix and we’ll need to be careful about how we input the data.

It’s not perfect, but it could be a better way of organising this information, particularly if we can add in Library events as well. Watch this space.