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Changing library sector can be a daunting process, but in a tougher economic climate, flexibility is essential for career development. In her 1978 paper, Slater describes a situation many of us will recognise in today’s climate:
“…what the profession seems to be suffering from at the moment is immobility… because of the current economic and employment situation” (Slater 1978)
During tougher times, stepping into an unfamiliar work environment can feel risky, but traditional career paths may not be available due to financial pressures on employers. This paper aims to illustrate the benefits and drawbacks of sector changes, with ideas for getting the most out of a varied set of experiences.
My own career began at (what was then) the Library Association, in a temporary post in the information services department. This proved to be an excellent place to start, as I quickly learned about the profession in its widest sense, through scanning the press for relevant stories and responding to all manner of library-related enquiries. This was followed by two years working in the specialist tax library at an accountancy firm. Following redundancy, I gained a post as an assistant library manager in a public library, and held two more equivalent posts in that library authority before relocating to another county and taking up a role divided between public and prison librarianship. This did not play to my strengths, and I refocused my career aims, gaining a post in a university library working with electronic resources, a role I still hold.
I chartered in 2008, following my achievement of my CILIP Certification (ACLIP) in 2005, and since 2009 have been studying for an MSc in Information Management by distance learning.
Library roles in all sectors will include core information skills, as represented in CILIP’s Body of Professional Knowledge. When looking at a career which includes a range of roles, it is important to be able to identify which skills are aspects of the same core activities. Linking work activities with this framework can also make it easier to identify where skills applied in one type of environment might be transferable to another. This requires a good understanding not only of library work, but of your own strengths and interests. The reflection and self-awareness required to re-purpose skills becomes a habit out of necessity, but it is a productive habit that brings benefits when undertaking professional qualifications, or when convincing potential employers of the relevance of your experience.
Experience gained in an environment with which a prospective employer or assessor is unfamiliar may not seem relevant to them, so it is important to consider how this is demonstrated, by giving examples, and explaining the impact it has on the end user. This is especially important if the skills you are demonstrating lie outside the traditional library skillset, but can be transferred or applied in different ways: just because you understand why they are important does not mean that everyone does.
One thing I always liked about Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans was that sometimes the least promising flavours were the best: carrot turned out to be my favourite by far. Sometimes when you look at a job description, there are some aspects which do not sound as appealing as others, but when you actually do the work, you find that it is the most rewarding part of the job – I had not expected to become quite so enthusiastic about usage statistics when I began in academic libraries! This is one area in which I feel sector changes can be particularly beneficial, as you very often pull experience from a number of different areas together to meet the requirements of a person specification for a job application, and learning how to adapt skills from one area to another can be a huge advantage in making the most of a new role.
While some skills may only be needed in a particular role, many others form a continuous thread though a sector-changing career.
For example, some level of serials management has been part of most of the roles I have held. However, this has taken a range of different forms, and when applying for my current role, the experience I had gained in special libraries related more closely to what was required, as did the computer aspects. However, in other areas, such as customer service and understanding of library management systems, public and prison library work had provided me with more relevant experience. This synthesis can open up opportunities that might not otherwise be available, as you do not necessarily need to gain all the required experience in one place.
The combination of skills gained in other sectors can prepare you not only to gain posts, but to develop them while you hold them, as your experience will often provide you with different insights, or alternative ways of working. It is crucial, though, to remember to learn from those with more sector-specific experience and ensure you are in dialogue, not monologue, with your colleagues.
(Rowling 1997, p. 218)
Changing sector can bring risks as well as benefits. While networking with colleagues through professional activism and visiting libraries in other sectors can give you a good feel for whether you might enjoy working there, they do not give the whole picture. The challenges of a particular sector are not always apparent, and the differences can be hard to identify.
It is demoralising to find that a particular role does not suit you as you felt it should, but it is usually possible to extract positive benefits from negative experiences. It is easy to focus on the problems in a role, but through honest reflection, it is possible to identify your strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Knowing what does not work for you can be a huge advantage when considering future positions, e.g. if you know that timekeeping is not a strength, look for posts offering a flexitime scheme. Understanding your weaknesses can also help you play to your strengths. For example, one reason librarianship appealed to me as a career was because it had a strong element of computing. As this is a cross-sectoral aspect of librarianship, it was never a significant factor when considering my next career move, until I worked in a prison library, where the ability to use IT was very limited. This highlighted to me that the absence of computing as a key part of the job was a problem, and gave me the impetus to focus my future career on that part of the work.
Of course, the biggest advantage of sector changes is that you gain experience in a wider range of skills than others, but this can also be a disadvantage, as your curriculum vitae fills with a range of abilities, which may or may not be relevant to a given situation. It is not unusual to find myself rewriting my CV at length for particular job applications, and then rewriting it again for professional development activities. While this is often desirable, the increased choice can make this a very daunting task indeed. Additionally, it can sometimes be hard to demonstrate skills which are sector-specific, such as academic liaison, or community outreach work.
Grouping skills into broader categories can significantly improve this, especially as greater responsibility often supersedes earlier achievements. Publications such as CILIP Update can be very helpful in understanding whether your experience is equivalent to that being asked for in a potential role. Additionally, using a functional or achievement based format, as opposed to a chronological one, helps to unify your experience and reduce repetition.
When considering what to include in a particular representation of you career, it is important to remember that ability to select just those parts which highlight the relevant details is a valuable attribute in itself. This can be achieved by paying careful and systematic attention to the requirements. It is also vital to get the balance right between showcasing your adaptability, and demonstrating a deeper understanding of librarianship.
Hall (1996) describes the career of the 21st century as “protean”, with success being measured psychologically, in terms of job satisfaction. To pursue a protean career, one must learn about oneself, and the learning curve becomes a series of shorter, progressive curves, dipping where significant career changes occur, but rising higher as each career stage reaches its peak. In my career, this pattern was evident when I looked at the earning patterns in my career. It is common with sector changes to find roles advertised at lower salaries than your current post, as there is a learning curve, but the potential to earn higher salaries over time is also present, especially if progression beyond a certain point is limited, as is common in public sector environments.
CILIP’s Framework of Qualifications offers library and information professionals an excellent opportunity to consolidate their experience, in whatever form, and to plan for the future in a structured way. The reflective and evaluative statements in the Chartership, Certification and Revalidation qualifications are an ideal chance to bring disparate career elements together, and observe more objectively how learning from each role has contributed to the current post. You, the information professional, become the centre of the process, and this enables you to consider the path you have taken, however scenic, to your current state. When applying for jobs, you apply this reflection speculatively, while the qualifications framework enables you to do this analytically. The need to be selective still applies though, and in this case, it is useful to consider the question, “How did that contribute to where I am now?” when deciding whether a particular item should be included or not.
As well as reflection, the Framework provides a flexible way of assessing your future needs using the personal professional development plan (PPDP). This document is absolutely vital if you follow a protean career path, as you need to be in charge of your learning and development needs. If your current role is not fulfilling these, and you feel that a change is in the foreseeable future, the PPDP gives you a practical framework to plan for the future. Because it can include self-study, it is flexible enough to include areas in which you are unlikely to get training from your current employer.
It also enables you to plan on different timescales, which helps in decision making when new opportunities arise for learning or employment. For this reason, it is worth treating it as a working document after qualification, even if you are not participating in the Revalidation scheme.
Sector changes, while a step into the unknown, can add colour to your CV and enable you to use your existing skills in new ways. They can make some aspects of career development harder, but can also open up avenues which may not be available to those following more traditional career paths. At the core of a protean, cross-sectoral career is a continual process of reflection and self-directed learning, and although this involves a good deal of motivation and work, the benefits in terms of job satisfaction are immense. These lifelong learning habits feed into the CILIP Framework of Qualifications, and the qualifications themselves provide a clear structure in which to make sense of a varied and non-traditional career and to plan for the future, whatever it may hold.
HALL, D.T., 1996. Protean careers of the 21st Century. The Academy of Management Executive, 10(4), pp. 8-16. NOH, Y., 2010. A study analyzing the career path of librarians. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(4), pp. 329-346. ROWLING, J.K., 1997. Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone. London: Bloomsbury. SLATER, M., 1978. Career patterns and mobility in the library/information field. Aslib Proceedings, 30(10-11), pp. 344-351.
Lizz Jennings Information Librarian, University of Bath E.Jennings@bath.ac.uk
The NHS is no stranger to change, although the current reorganisations have made headlines for the combination of major restructures with financially challenging times. This case study shows how one NHS Library has faced the challenge and adapted to life in the strange new land, and how, by maintaining motivation and flexibility, it is possible to remain relevant in times of change, even when the organisational winds of change cause you to land in a whole new organisation.
The Health Information and Resources Library’s origins are as complex as the NHS itself. Manchester Primary Care Trust (PCT) Library began as part of the Manchester purchasing consortium in 1991, and survived numerous organisational changes, over the years becoming part of the Health Authority and then NHS Agency for the city, as NHS structures in primary care and healthcare commissioning changed over the years. The library served staff of these various organisations, providing professional information services to support commissioners and primary healthcare practitioners such as GPs. The Public Health Development Resource and Information Centres, also part of Manchester PCT, had also lived through numerous reorganisations and changes of organisational name since their beginnings in the 1980s as part of health education in the city. Established to provide health promotion resources (think the likes of Jars of Tar, models of livers and other visual resources often used in health education) they served a client based including NHS staff and also staff of partner organisations such as schools and youth groups. As part of the same organisation but in separate directorates, the two services had separate but complementary roles, and had been working in partnership and cross-referring staff where appropriate. In late 2009, after ongoing discussions that had been hastened by economic cuts and restructures within the PCT, the two services merged to form the Health Information and Resources Library, offering a combined service. This new service was based in the Public Health Development Service, in the provider arm of the PCT.
I came into post in mid-2010, to a service that was striving to work together but still had a long way to go in terms of combining policies and procedures. My post had been vacant for 6 months due to a recruitment freeze and staff had not had the capacity to learn about the other half of the service, or had a person to co-ordinate the service. My first few weeks were therefore spent frantically trying to learn and understand 2 sets of procedures, and begin to plan to harmonise them where necessary, and to encourage staff to start to learn about each others’ roles in order to begin to fully integrate the service. Moving premises
A month or so after I came into post, we were faced with a major accommodation issue. The PCT needed to vacate the building we were in due to lease issues, without yet having a confirmed location for us to move to. We faced the task of packing up the entire library for storage with no idea where we would be moving to as the PCT searched for suitable accommodation for us. Meanwhile, we were preparing for major structural changes in the organisation, and the real possibility of our posts being moved out of the PCT, due to the impending NHS reorganisation.
It is perhaps worth expanding a little about the NHS reorganisations in order to explain how an NHS library service came to be moved from one organisation to another. Since 2009, PCTs had separate provider and commissioner services, resulting in two halves to the organisation; one responsible for providing services (such as community nursing, health visiting) and the other responsible for planning and funding these services appropriately to meet the needs of the population. In early 2010 the Labour government had announced plans to split the two halves completely, with separate organisations for provider and commissioning. After the election that year, the Coalition government further developed these plans, and it became apparent that for provider arms in our area, this meant either merging into other NHS organisations, either acute (hospital) trusts or mental health trusts, resulting in a new type of NHS organisation that was responsible for provision of services, meanwhile setting up clinical commissioning groups with GP representatives to take over the work of the PCT.
For Manchester PCT, the decision was make to split the majority of provider services between the 3 acute Trusts in the city, based on the locality (north, central or south) the service operated in. Certain services, including Public Health, our directorate, were to be moved to Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, a “citywide” Trust that also had links to the city council. In late 2010 it was confirmed that we were to be transferred to Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust on 1st April 2011, and MMHSCT would become a new type of mental health and wellbeing trust.
By October 2010, all of our book stock, most of our health promotion stock, not to mention our desks, PCs, and all but essential files were in storage and we were hotdesking with the public health team. Initially we were told this would be for a couple of weeks at most, although of course things never go according to plan and in the end we did not unpack and reopen in our new premises until March 2011. The period in storage was understandably frustrating and anxious for all staff. However, we were determined to continue some form of service for our users – not least so they didn’t forget us. Not having the physical stock did not prevent us from carrying our literature searches, providing document supply requests for articles and offering training – although the hotdesking situation was not ideal, and it meant a lot of the training had to be offered wherever we could lay our hands on a PC. Fortunately, the excellent interlending network in the North West meant we were still able to offer users books as and when they asked for them, obviously not quite as quick or convenient as being able to offer them from our own stock, but we ensured our registered users received regular emails updating them on the situation and reminding them of services available. Even without our physical stock, we were able to put our skills to good use. In March 2011 we finally unpacked in our new space, shortly before transferring to Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust. Unpacking was an adventure in itself as due to the speed of our removal and the fact things had gone into storage and then out again, our 350 crates had been shuffled like a deck of cards with no consecutive numbers next to each other – thankfully none of the labels had fallen off, although the next crate needed was inevitably at the bottom of a stack of 5 crates. Fortunately we had a lot of help from our patient (and very strong) removal men to shift the crates around, and miraculously all of the books went back onto the shelf in pretty much the right order. The health promotion models also, incredibly, made it through with no catastrophes.
Although the turmoil of physically moving the service had just about died down at the end of March, the less visible but equally disruptive change was about to happen. On 1st April, we transferred under TUPE regulations to Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, along with the rest of the Public Health Development Service and various other services from the PCT, moving into the Trust’s Health and Wellbeing directorate. The rest of the PCT staff who transferred were moving into one of the three hospital trusts in Manchester. All three had well established library services, who suddenly found themselves with several hundred new potential users. Meanwhile, we found ourselves now in a different organisation to many of our long-term users, although with a potential new user base of staff members in MMHSCT; we had lost many users but were about to gain new ones. We did, however, retain the remit to provide services to health promoters regardless of organisation, which did give us some continuity of users for that element of the service. This was understandably an anxious time for staff, but reminding them of the opportunities in the new Trust, such as potential to link in with other teams, and promote our services to a wider group of users.
MMHSCT had no physical library service of its own. However, 6 months earlier it had appointed an outreach librarian to begin to develop library services for the Trust. The outreach librarian was based in the Research and Development directorate, and we were to all intents and purposes, two completely separate services. However, we began collaborating early and agreed to work together to establish a cohesive library service for Trust staff, as the initial comments from staff had highlighted the need for a “full” library service with access to books and electronic resources, as well as an outreach service to the 30-plus sites across the city. Working across directorates, we began to develop our services jointly, and found that there was a natural fit between the two services – so there was no fighting over who would take responsibility for areas of work, just an easy collaboration.
We began to promote ourselves to our new audience in the Trust, meeting with staff, producing a new flyer with the corporate logo, and developing pages on the Trust website, plus taking whatever opportunities came our way, such as articles in the monthly staff newsletter and attending the staff induction “marketplace”. We also held an open day to encourage people to drop in and meet us. Slowly, we are gaining a presence and staff are beginning to understand what library services can do for them. Fortunately, there had always been a good investment in mental health stock as the PCT has always placed an emphasis no good quality mental health services, and our collection was therefore still relevant even in a mental health trust, and our mental health, psychology, leadership, management, and mentorship books have all proved relatively popular with staff. We had to be very clear that we would listen to our new users and develop the collections as appropriate, for instance liasing with Learning and Development to obtain reading lists for courses that groups of staff are undertaking, and where appropriate purchasing stock in that area. It was also necessary to revise the collection development policy to ensure it was relevant. We have also decided that it is important to give the service time to bed in, and although we won’t necessarily dispose of stock that at the moment doesn’t appear to be being used, in 12 months or so we should have a better idea if there are areas of stock that need to be targeted for weeding and disposal. In terms of journal collections, again there were existing subscriptions for mental health-related journal titles, although we have begun to develop this further. We have found there is not the dichotomy between a primary care library (albeit one that had invested well in mental health stock) and a mental health trust that may have been assumed. Although collection development is of course ongoing, in many ways the move was made easier by this good luck. We are also planning to begin a period of user consultation to gain feedback from users.
We have also begun to redevelop the library strategy to fit in with the Trust strategy. It was important not to assume that we would automatically fit in perfectly, and may need to be pragmatic about our approach to services. However, the Trust strategy places an emphasis upon research and developing staff professionally, and improving services, all of which the library is clearly able to support, although we had to ensure it was phrased appropriately in order to make this clear.
A barrier we have faced is coming into a Trust with no history of its own library service, and the work done by the outreach librarian had highlighted that although there was a role for a library, it would take work to encourage staff to use it and to ensure that what the service had to offer was fully understood. Many staff were uncertain about whether their role would “entitle” them to use a library service, as there was perhaps a perception that it was an elite service only for researchers, and that “ordinary” staff did not use library services. As well as promoting to all staff, and highlighting the fact we are open to everyone, we are working to link in with other directorates such as Learning and Development, Research and Development as well as all patient service departments. Obviously in an ideal world, if a service was to be developed from scratch with the funding and support to create an absolutely bespoke service, links would be made with these departments and services developed accordingly. Although we need to be careful to adapt our service where necessary and not to assume that what worked for the PCT will work for MMHSCT, realistically we do not have resources to do this and it is a case of tweaking as we go along and not being reluctant to respond to changes, or to be pro-active in reaching out to users to offer them our services. It is a time of great change in the Trust, with staff being required to become more efficient and effective, and work towards modernising services. A good library service should be able to support these developments, by providing high quality information and developing users’ information skills. Although it is an anxious time for everyone in the NHS at the moment, we do have an opportunity to demonstrate our value and contribute to the organisation.
Admittedly our situation is an unusual one – although not unique in the current NHS climate. But, while we may identify ourselves as librarians or information professionals in a specialist area, and completely attuned to the needs of our organisation, our skills are transferrable and we are, or should be, constantly re-evaluating services and re-aligning our services as organisational needs and priorities change. This happened for us on a bigger scale, but highlighted the fact that, even landing in Oz, we still had our skills of connecting people with information, whether that be providing access to the evidence base, training users to improve their information skills, and these skills remain relevant. Our willingness to be flexible, to pick up new subject knowledge, to adjust our collections and the way we do things to serve the needs of new users (or existing users whose needs are changing), is what helps us put those skills to good use and remain relevant and valuable to our users. Although our 6 months without a library was difficult, it was in a way an opportunity to work on developing and reassessing our skills,
Unlike Dorothy, we cannot click our heels together and go home; that farm in Kansas isn’t there any more. But we can enjoy the wonders, and oddities, of Oz and stay relevant in that strange new world.
Emily Hopkins Library Manager Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust
The impending £9000 annual student fees is causing universities to think more about how they justify expenditure on services and resources and demonstrate value for money and this includes expenditure on libraries. Libraries have to show that what they do is essential to developing a positive student and learning experience.
For libraries this raises a number of questions in relation to: student expectations and perceptions of services, senior manager’s expectations and perceptions of how a library services contributes to the university mission and justification for expenditure on developing and supporting high impact value added services and resources.
Student perceptions of what they expect a library service should deliver to them personally do sometimes feel unrealistic and trying to explain that no the library cannot open 24/7, nor can we provide you with your own personal copy of the textbook often makes us feel we have to go into defensive mode and that we are being personally attacked for perceived failings in service. As a service we need to shift from this defensive mode and move towards changing their perceptions on what we do and can do rather than focussing on what we can’t do.
A very visible statement both to the university and nationally on student expectations and perceptions is the National Student Survey results. Annually we look at the Learning Resources questions in terms of score and comments and we see the same kind of issues in relation to opening hours and books. For students the simplest answer to solving these issues is to spend more money; however it isn’t that simple and we have to look at alternative ways of trying to improve ratings by changing perceptions.
These perceptions: lack of books and inadequate opening hours suggest that we aren’t being effective in demonstrating and telling people how as a service we contribute to the development of a positive student learning experience. We need to be more proactive both to students and senior managers in selling ourselves and our services and not just expect that people “know” what we do.
Since taking over as Head of Academic Liaison and managing the team of Academic Liaison Librarians (ALLs) these issues have become more apparent. We needed to think about how we as a team could change perceptions and improve customer satisfaction by raising awareness of who we are and what we do.
We realised we needed to become more visible especially as we were no longer physically visible on Customer Service desks answering information related queries. We needed to create a voice to tell people what we did, we needed to engage again with our student (and staff) population and we needed to demonstrate to a wider audience what we did.
Visibility was the key, we felt we had become hidden and that people weren’t aware of what we could do or did do because they hadn’t had the opportunity to engage with us or find out about us as a service.
To help us give focus we created a vision statement:
“Visibility both physically and virtually to deliver high quality services to the learning needs of our students, staff and researchers.”
By having this vision it allowed us to understand what we were trying to achieve and why. When identifying priorities, objectives and tasks for the team and individually we were able to ask “will it help us achieve our vision?” The vision recognises that the library is no longer and hasn’t been for a long time just a physical space but also virtual and that many of our resources and services are available in this 24/7 library. It also recognises the environment we operate in has changed, that we can’t be complacent and continue doing what we’ve always done in terms of tasks, assume that people know what the library does in terms of supporting their learning and expect people to come to us rather than us going to them. For many of our students this is the first time they have used an academic library and for many of our staff they aren’t used to librarians providing learning opportunities in relation to information literacy and academic study skills.
For the team this has meant a shift away from what we might consider traditional librarian tasks such as collection management and cataloguing and concentrating on or placing a higher priority on more on marketing, promotional activity and evidence based service development. This is a change in focus can be defined as:
This change in emphasis and focus has been challenging for some of the team as it requires a personal change in perspective and viewpoint in terms of role and function. Change takes time and with suitable staff development, and by developing a more open, trusting, sharing and supportive team culture we are continuing to cope with change.
For a number of years we have been placing a high priority on developing our virtual presence on our webpages. We do this in a number of ways:
Our library subject guides are more than just lists of relevant resources. The guides provide guidance on why (underpinning knowledge) certain resources are relevant to a course, a topic, an assignment or give a certain type of data. Each link to a resource whether that be a database, ejournal, ebook or print based book has its own unique persistent URL which links back into the library catalogue to provide a reliable access route or in the case of print based resources live data on availability.
The guides also offer help and guidance on undertaking research, keeping up to date with latest research, referencing guidance and academic skills development.
In addition to the subject guides we also produce a range (and are continuing to produce) of other online guides relating to specific resource types (newspapers, ebooks), referencing, Web 2.0 tools and current awareness. We feel these guides supplement the subject guides and give more added value to the wider information literacy programme by providing guidance of getting the best out of resources such as EBSCO or CSA platforms and managing the research process.
These guides are heavily promoted on other library webpages, the Virtual Library Environment (VLE) and printed publications such as ALLs profile guide and course documentation. Between 01.09.11 to 18.11.11 there have been 4,141 hits on our subject guides and of the top ten visited lrweb pages in the same time period, seven were subject guides or help related ones produced by the ALLs.
Our digital library page on the library catalogue and the associated guidance on the library webpages provide we hope an easily navigable access route into the vast array of digital resources. One of the key tools on this page is the Databases for My Subject menu. This A-Z list of subjects taught at the university links in to the database page on the associated subject guide.
These pages have been very successful in directing students to the core resources for their subject. By providing the persistent URL to the catalogue record we have seen a definite shift in access to resources from these persistent URLs between 30 – 40% rather than direct searches on the library catalogue title searches 14% and keyword searches 43%.
We are also encouraging academic staff to use persistent URLS to create “digital reading lists” on the VLE to again guide students to core reading and resources.
Each of the team has their own profile page which describes their role, their skills and expertise and how they support learning and teaching. The aim is to appear professional but approachable. In addition each profile also has key information on their base location, contact details, hours worked and the all important photo. Again the address for these profile pages is heavily promoted on other library web pages and print based publications. Between 01.09.11 – 18.11.11 the profile pages had 1,555 visits. Students (and staff) can identify who their Academic Liaison Librarian is by using either the subject, department or research institute lists on the associated section pages.
A number of the ALLs use blogs to promote resources; these can be new, core, or related to particular assignments. Persistent URLs are used to provide the direct route to the resource. One of our Applied Social Sciences librarians uses his blog in quite a different way from just resource marketing. His blog contains more personal discussion and thought provoking narrative with a subtle link to a resource that can be used to find out more about the report, theory or issue discussed. He encourages students to sign up to the blog at lectures and workshops and recently hit the 500 subscribers mark.
We have a very definite Learning Resources policy to promote services, resources and academic skills development by using a rolling programme of banners that scroll along the top of the front page. Each banner has a link to an associated web page that gives more information. Analysis of hits on the associated webpage whilst a banner is running has seen a substantial increase in hits (on average an increase of 50 – 100 per day) which suggests this is an effective and cheap method of marketing
As part of strategy we recognised that we needed to be more visible and proactive in our physical space so we identified a number of activities that we hoped would achieve this visibility.
For the university induction period we created a Welcome Desk in the library. At our biggest campus it was located in a busy walkway that links the library to the main campus centre which gets a lot of traffic.
The desk was populated with a range of publications and staffed by the Academic Liaison Librarians. The aim was to raise awareness of services by actually speak to students rather than just sit there and wait for them to ask questions. Opening questions included, what year are you? Have you used the library yet? Do you know who your Academic Librarian is? Are you lost, can I help? As the weeks progressed many of the students we spoke to had already met their Academic Liaison Librarian and were able to name them or recognise their photos. We also got to see senior staff including the VC and were able to explain what we were doing.
Part of our response to improving our scorings on the NSS was to target 2nd and 3rd years students and remind them of the good things we do, what had changed and how we can help them this year. We produced a Welcome Back Newsletter which we gave out on the Welcome Desk and those ALLs who were seeing 2nd and 3rd years took them along to lectures. One of key promotions was our webprint service which allowed students to print from their laptops using the wifi.
To try and find out what our students thought of our services we devised a Wish You Were Here postcard. Aimed at 2nd and 3rd year students, it gave them the opportunity to quickly write down what they liked and didn’t like about using the library. On the whole the comments were nothing we didn’t already know or had heard, but it gave the students the opportunity to comment and provided us with more evidence to evaluate services. We’ll use some of the positives in future marketing campaigns.
Once we finished staffing the Welcome Desk the ALLs started to act as roving support on our main customer service / self service floors at our two main campuses. We located ourselves around the catalogues and basically pounced on anyone who was using the catalogue to see if they were ok. It really worked as we were able to pick up information literacy related queries, explain how the catalogue works, how classmarks relate to physical location of items and promote the skills and expertise of the ALLs in relation to getting better grades.
The ALLs have been long established in the curriculum delivering information literacy teaching. The majority of the team have undertaking the Post Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) to provide them with valuable skills, knowledge and credibility as teachers. The team utilises a range of interactive learning techniques (problem based learning, group work, peer assessment, workbooks) as well as more traditional lectures to create a relevant and hopefully enjoyable learning experience. So far this year from 01.09.11 – 18.11.11 the team has delivered 313 hours of teaching to 9842 students (student population of 15,000). Last academic year we delivered 1270 hours of teaching to 17982 students.
As well as curriculum based teaching the team provides 1 to 1 tutorial type support on an appointment basis to students who require additional support. For the same time period we have seen 125 students for a total of 90 hours, the average appointment takes 43 minutes. Last academic year we saw 549 students for a total of 412 hours with an average appointment taking 45 minutes.
We encourage all new academic staff joining the university to book a desktop visit (we try to see a percentage of current staff yearly for a refresher as well) with their ALL. It is an opportunity for the individual ALL to tell the academics about the services and resources that we provide that can support learning and more importantly for the ALL to find out about curriculum and course developments and personal research activity.
The New Staff Conference and University Research Conference are also great opportunities to meet new and existing staff and promote how as a team we can support research and teaching. Many of the ALLs deliver workshops and papers at the research conference based around the action research projects they have been doing which further demonstrates their skills, expertise and credibility as researchers and teachers. What’s been the impact of this activity?
Some of the initiatives that I’ve described are long standing and successfully embedded into university culture, a lot of the more physical visibility activities we have been undertaking and will continue to do so over the academic year are new and being tested at the moment.
In terms of assessing whether all this activity is changing student and staff perceptions of the value and role of a library will take time and evaluation will consist of a number of factors including: NSS results and other national student feedback mechanisms and localised activity in conjunction with the Students Union and academic teams.
What we have seen certainly at our biggest campus is a very positive vibe emerging in the physical library space in terms of student learning activity and confidence in using our services. Students seem genuinely happy and thankful when you’ve explained how it all works and early feedback is showing that students recognise the value of library staff.
In terms of ALL team visibility I think this is improving, anecdotal evidence from the team suggests that students do know who we are, we get smiled at and greeted all over the university and often asked for advice in the most unlikely of places.
The ALLs are enjoying being more visible even if it is tiring. On the whole they have relished the opportunity to develop new skills, knowledge, expertise and confidence to participate in self promotion and marketing and using new technology to develop new innovative teaching material and learning opportunities. Getting direct feedback and thanks such as this anonymous comment from our online suggestions email for the work you’ve put in to create advice guides and learning materials is the strongest reward and motivator.
“best n greatest………….of all da other universities…. spcially fr dose who dont posess a laptop or computer”
University of Bedfordshire webpages (see examples of banners): http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/
Library guides: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/guides
Subject guides: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/guides/subjectguides
Digital Library: http://library.beds.ac.uk/search/D
Academic Liaison Librarians profile pages: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/help/ALLs
Blogs: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/libraryservices/whoweare/blog
Bedtimes and Deadlines blog by Alan Wheeler: http://bedtimesanddeadlines.blogspot.com/
Welcome Back newsletter: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/libraryservices/whatshappening/welcome-back
Desktop Visits: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/libraryservices/staff/desktop-visits
Jo Myhill Head of Academic Liaison Learning Resources, University of Bedfordshire jo.myhill@beds.ac.uk
As you may have seen, CILIP has been consulting with branches and special interest groups about the feasibility of merging in order to bring the number of groups down, and also to give groups an opportunity to refine their remit to meet the changing needs of the profession.
Career Development Group was no exception to this process, and discussed possibilities with a range of groups. However, due to our size and the geographically-based divisional structure, the closest match seemed to be with CILIP’s branch structure. As CILIP’s Framework of Qualifications has adapted and developed, the functions of Career Development Group have become less clear cut, and a number of areas of overlap were identified.
A number of divisions already worked closely with their local branches, and two regions, the South West and the East of England, decided to pilot the idea of working more closely together, towards a merger.
The East of England region is continuing to operate as two separate organisations in 2012, with a subset of each committee forming a merged committee to plan events together. The boundaries of the division and branch do not exactly match, which is an initial challenge. There are also a number of functions of the group which are not mirrored by the branch, such as candidate support and new professionals officers. The aim of the pilot year is to see whether a full merger is feasible, and what effect closer working has on members in the region. The pilot scheme will be evaluated with the intention of identifying what works well locally, and what could also be applied nationally.
CILIP South West and the two CDG divisions in that branch (Devon and Cornwall and the West Country) have a good history of working together, and have held a number of combined events in recent years. All three groups were interested in the idea of merging, and have decided to pilot a full merger in 2012. The aim of the new group is to provide a more cohesive group to support the CILIP members of the South West. The group will continue to offer portfolio and qualifications support, and build on a strong programme of visits, but also hopes to develop a wider range of events on this basis.
The group is also planning to develop a more participative approach to organising events, encouraging members to become involved even if only for one event or project, recognising that the commitment to serve for a longer period of time is a barrier to participation for some members.
In both regions, communication, participation and feedback are strongly encouraged, to ensure that any changes work in the best interests of library and information professionals, whatever sector or stage of their career they are in.
Date: 28th April 2012 Time: 10:30am – 4:45pm Venue: Chancellor’s Room, Hughes Parry Hall, 19-26 Cartwright Gardens, London WC1 Cost: £25 (£20 unwaged)
Librarians and Disciples in a Time of Trouble is the title of the annual conference of the Librarians’ Christian Fellowship which is to be held on Saturday 28 April 2012 in the Chancellor’s Room, Hughes Parry Hall, 19-26 Cartwright Gardens, London, WC1, from 10.30. a.m – 4.45.p.m.
The Conference fee is £25.00, including lunch and refreshments, with a reduced rate of £20.00 for unwaged delegates. Non-members are welcome. Further details are available from The Secretary, Graham Hedges, 34 Thurlestone Avenue, Ilford, Essex, IG3 9DU. Tel: 020 8599 1310. E mail: secretary@librarianscf.org.uk
For more details, visit the web site: http://www.librarianscf.org.uk/events/conferences/forthcoming.html
Editorial Katie Birkwood and Naomi Herbert: Teaching old books new tricks: how special collections outreach can help you, your career, and your library Megan Wiley: For your eyes only? Why careers information teams need to demonstrate professionalism Helen Murphy: Supercharge your CPD: 23 Things for Professional Development Joseph Norwood and Ka Ming Pang: Can We Play?: Building Opportunities for LIS Student Activism and Why It Matters Rachel Bickley: Establishing dialogues between new and experienced professionals Nicola Forgham-Healey, Sue Hill and Susie Kay: Umbrella 2011: Do Skills and Professionalism Matter? Forthcoming Events
This edition of Impact is a bumper conference issue featuring a number of the papers presented at this year’s New Professionals Conference. It is clear that there were a huge range of professional topics discussed at the conference, and the findings and ideas apply equally to more seasoned professionals.
Katie Birkwood and Naomi Herbert, whose paper was voted the best at the conference, demonstrate the value of promoting special collections in the community, with lessons that apply to all collections.
Runner-up Megan Wiley gives us an insight into the perceptions of careers information professionals by their counterparts with advisory roles.
Helen Murphy describes the 23 Things for CPD programme which launched over the summer, and invites everyone to participate. Jo Norwood and Ka Ming Pang report on professional activism among their cohort at university. Rachel Bickley’s paper explores the relationship between newer and older professionals, and identifies a number of areas which could benefit from improved dialogue.
Finally, Nicola Forgham-Healey, Sue Hill and Susie Kay report from a session at Umbrella 2011 where they considered the aspects which make up your professional reputation, at any stage of your career.
Due to uncertainty over the exact nature of special interest groups going forward, we have decided to make Impact an open access publication for the foreseeable future. This will ensure all those who wish to read it are able to and open up our content to all.
If you have any feedback or constructive criticism, please email the editor:
impact@careerdevelopmentgroup.org.uk
I hope you all enjoy this exciting and varied issue.
Lizz Jennings Editor
Lizz Jennings
Editor
I’m Naomi Herbert. At the moment I work as the Assistant Librarian at Christ’s College, Cambridge. In my last post, at St John’s College, I set up a schools and communities program for the special collections there.
I’m Katie Birkwood. I currently work as a rare book specialist at Cambridge University Library. For 3 years until March 2011 I worked at St John’s College Library as Hoyle Project Associate. I’ll explain what that means later.
The title of this paper is a bit misleading. When we talk about special collections, we don’t simply mean old books; special collections needn’t be books, and they needn’t be old. They are any collections that have particular significance because of subject, provenance, rarity, or any other reason. For example, important archival collections often end up in libraries and these can have been collected at any time – right up to the present.
The word outreach can have many different meanings so we need to clarify the sense(s) in which we’re using it.
At St John’s College, ‘outreach’ meant engaging non-academic audiences with the Library collections through events held in the Library, in the College, and elsewhere. The Library’s primary audience is academics, either from the College, the University or from other institutions around the world. The Library’s outreach work aimed to give other sorts of people access to the collections. These people were school pupils, local residents, special interest groups, and so on. In other libraries, ‘outreach’ of this kind might mean engaging young people, old people, academics, schools, colleges – whoever doesn’t currently have access. What we’re not talking about is marketing or promoting your collections to your core user groups.
Outreach has many benefits for the institution, the staff that organise it, the wider community, and society as a whole.
The community get to experience something out of the ordinary. They get to see amazing books, photographs, documents, or buildings. They get privileged access to what’s normally a hidden environment. And they get to connect with history by interacting with tangible objects. Those who participate also get a great educational experience. They might learn about the local area, their special interests, or the wider word. Their intellectual curiosity will be aroused, and they, and their teachers and group leaders, will be inspired.
The institution that offers the outreach also benefits. The public image of your library will be improved, and an active outreach program might encourage benefaction now and in the future. You will learn new things about your collections by using them for outreach, both from the research you do beforehand, and from what you learn from your visitors. Outreach also helps preservation, even though that might sound like a paradox. Using your collections for outreach you will find out what needs conservation work, and will be able to justify that work being done. Outreach will also inspire and motivate your staff.
Outreach benefits everyone. It improves the public image of libraries, it increases public access to cultural and heritage events, and both staff and visitors will have fun because of it.
We will use two case studies from our work at St John’s College to illustrate different ways of doing outreach. Our first case-study is a school outreach project that Naomi started in 2007.
When I joined St John’s College Library, its special collections had recently received MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives) Designated status.1 This Designation scheme was designed to recognise, and improve standards in, important collections outside national museums. Designated collections are expected to widen access. Consequently, I was encouraged to provide opportunities for new audiences to access the special collections.
In Cambridgeshire the professionals who had the most experience working with these audiences were the museums education officers. So I made myself a cunning disguise and went to their meetings. I met professionals from all around the region and they gave me support, ideas, and information about funding and training. Although the funding and training seemed to be aimed at museums only, I realised that St John’s Old Library was a museum of the written word in all but name.
I applied for MLA Learning Links Funding and was awarded £1500 to collaborate with teachers.2 I used my network to find two Year 4 teachers at a Primary School within walking distance from St John’s. They were initially encouraged to work with us by the funding. Once they had seen the seventeenth-century library they were determined to work with us and asked me to help them overhaul a boring literacy module on explanatory texts.
We worked together to design the module. They brought their knowledge about the curriculum and their students and I brought my knowledge of our collections. I showed them lots of books that I considered to be explanatory texts and they chose Hocus Pocus Junior, published in 1638, the first book in English devoted to magic tricks.3 I then researched their choice and the rest appeared almost as if by magic…
We planned that pupils would end the project with a hand-made book that contained explanations of how and why magic tricks work (like Hocus Pocus). These would be judged at the end for a prize. To prepare the pupils for their visit to St John’s, I went into the classroom the week before. I used E2BN (a photo sharing network for teachers in the Eastern region) to take the pupils on a tour through the College to the Library and introduce Hocus Pocus.4 I then took pupils through making and decorating a simple stab-stitched book.
On their visit to the Library, we split them into three groups on a rotation of half hour activities: A tour of the College with the Librarian (a History Fellow), a look at Hocus Pocus and other magic books in the Old Library with the Special Collections Librarian, and…a magic show! (Thankfully not by me). I also put all the resources I’d created on our website, including pictures of Hocus Pocus and the College, and my instructions on how to build a book.5 Hopefully other people may use them.
This project was so successful that we ran it again the next year, and the next. The children wrote thank you letters which show the impact of the project. Here is a selection:
“Dear Naomi. The magic show tricks were brilliant. I would love to be a magician when I grow up.”
“I loved the small book. In fact I went home and had a go at making one. But did not succeed. The Old Library was amazing. Next time I come I would like to stay for longer. P.S. see you in 9 years”
“I can’t believe we got to see Hocus Pocus Junior! Although I really enjoyed it next time I would like to see the biggest book because it looked very exciting.”
“The number one best was when Jon showed me the old library and I saw all the old books. That was cool.”
“Thank you Mark, Jon and you for giving us a wonderful trip ever!”
The costs of the project could have been covered entirely by the funding. Some of the teacher’s and all of my time was given free, and photocopying and materials were paid for by St John’s, so we had some funding left over. We used the extra funding to pay for the magic show a second year running. The third year that we did the visit the school paid for the magician.
Our second case study is a science-based project that Katie designed and ran.
In 2002 the personal papers of astronomer and author Sir Fred Hoyle were donated to St John’s College Library. The Hoyle Collection comprises some 150 boxes of papers, a library of 600 books, audiovisual materials and a number of artefacts. At the time of donation it was the largest collection of personal papers in the College Library, and because of its size and prestige it became a processing and cataloguing priority. The Library made a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant of £48,000.6 This covered half the costs of a three-year project and one full-time member of staff to run it.7 That member of staff was me, the Hoyle Project Associate.
The Lottery requires its projects to engage with the public, so I had a clear mandate to increase the level of access to the Hoyle Collection. One of the outreach elements stipulated in the Project plan was involvement with Cambridge Science Festival. The Festival is an annual two-week programme of free events coordinated by Cambridge University and part of National Science and Engineering Week. It focuses on families and hands-on activities.8 It was difficult to find a hands-on activity directly related to Hoyle’s work, much of which was about cosmology and stellar physics. We couldn’t really hold a ‘build your own big bang’ session in the Library!
Inspiration came from an exhibition that I had already curated about the history of astronomy at St John’s College.9 The exhibition included an astronomical manuscript from the Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts: an early fourteenth-century copy of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe.10 I really enjoyed working with this manuscript, because I’d previously studied Middle English manuscripts and although I didn’t know much about astrolabes when I started, I discovered that they’re both beautiful and fascinating. Astrolabes are portable scientific instruments, traditionally made from brass and intricately carved, that let you calculate which stars will be in the sky when, or let you work out from the stars and sun what time it is, and where you are.
However, despite thinking astrolabes are great, I found it very difficult to explain in words and diagrams how an astrolabe works. They’re something that you really have to see in action. I had a pie-in-the-sky idea for how I could have improved the exhibition – why not have a working model for people to handle? And, indeed, if we could have one working model, why not let everyone have one of their own?
I did a literature search to find out more about Chaucer’s Treatise on the astrolabe and to see if anyone else had produced an astrolabe kit. This search uncovered an article which explained how amateur astronomers could build their own astrolabes.11 But this wasn’t written at a level that a general audience could understand. I happened to be friends with a professional astronomer and he helped me design and test a simplified template for building an astrolabe out of card, overhead projector transparencies, glue, ribbon and split pins.
I submitted an event for Cambridge Science Festival 2010. I ran three hands-on sessions aimed at ages 10-plus. Each session had a capacity of 15 people. The publicity and booking were managed by Cambridge Science Festival, not by the Library, which saved a lot of work. The aim of each hour-long session was for everyone there to build a working astrolabe, and to learn the basics of how to use it.
Although this seemed like an an ambitious plan, it was such a success that I ran the same event again the next year, although this time I enlisted some volunteers to help run the sessions. I wanted those who came to the sessions to be able to find out more about their astrolabes when they got home, and I wanted the kit to be accessible to more people than the 45 who could be there in person. I therefore designed and built an online resource to add to the Library website.12 It has a kit of astrolabe parts to download and print, assembly and usage instructions, some historical background information, and brief introductions to the Library collections that inspired it.
The costs of the project were confined to materials, photocopying, and staff time.
Volunteers designed the astrolabe and ran the 2011 sessions, and their costs were limited to goodwill gifts.
Visitor comments such as these proved the event to be a success:
“This was a really useful workshop. I’ve seen astrolabes in museums & had no real idea of what they are for.”
“Very interesting – I didn’t know how old astrolabes were, for example & fun for non-science minded people”
The Library has had enquiries about the online kit from astronomers around the world, and the template has been downloaded hundreds of times.
We hope that these two case studies answer some of the questions you might ask when thinking about doing outreach for the first time.
Funding, both major and minor, may come from large organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, or, at least in the past, the MLA. Other bodies such as professional organisations, learned societies and charities may also have funding schemes from time to time. Even if you can’t get external funding, it is still possible to have an outreach offer. Many independent museums charge schools for their visits, so it’s not unreasonable to fund library outreach with a small per-person charge. Costs outside staff time can be very low; your institution and collaborating institutions might manage to squeeze together the funds to cover limited quantities of materials, especially as the success of initial events will help to bring in funding in the future. (The St John’s HLF application was strengthened by the existing schools outreach work.)
There are all sorts of people and groups who can help you out, simply by being a supportive listening ear, or with specific technical advice, or with practical on-the-spot help, or as collaborative partners. Institutional colleagues are a great source of advice and support, especially if you need an extra pair of hands when your event is taking place, but do look more widely, too. Don’t be shy about using existing contacts to support what you’re doing. That might mean professional contacts who can help directly, or who can put you in touch with people who can help, or even your own personal friends. Museum education professionals in particular are very knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. Get in touch with some local to you, and try and get involved with any ideas-sharing meetings that they might have. Local and national organisations, such as the Museums Association and the Archives and Records Association also have useful publications, courses and email lists.
You probably already have expertise about something; don’t be shy about using that. If there’s interest in something outside your expertise, you can always learn, and recruit experts to help you. You don’t ever have to know everything; you can use the skills of those around you, or of the people to whom you’re offering the event. Don’t be scared that visitors will know more than you. They’ll always be learning something new, and the new things that they can tell you will contribute to your institution’s knowledge of its collections; it’s a win-win situation.
It can be daunting, looking at a collection and wondering what you could do with it. There are various ways to make it less scary. You can ask potential visitors what they would like to see or learn about, and then work from there. Or you can find out what other events – festivals, open weekends, or open nights – are happening locally or nationally and think of ways in which you could contribute. Always remember that you don’t have to ‘do everything at once’. You can try one thing first, and see how it goes, before carrying on to exploit your collections more fully. You also might not need to start from scratch: use what’s been done before, even if that’s not much, and improve that, rather than reinventing the wheel.
Every venue and event is different, but there some practical things that every event will have to consider. These include:
We can’t promise that your employer will go head-over-heels about the idea. But it’s very likely that once they’ve seen it happen they’ll start to appreciate the benefits. So do try and see what you can do.
Organising outreach projects and events can seriously enhance your CV. You’ll be able to add skills and experience such as:
Lastly, working with people who are amazed by your library holdings is fun for all concerned.
1. Museums, Libraries and Archives, Designation Scheme (no date), http://www.mla.gov.uk/what/raising_standards/designation, accessed 29 May 2011.
2. Museums, Libraries and Archives, Learning Links 2009-11 (2011), http://www.mla.gov.uk/what/programmes/commissioning/Learning_Links_2009-11, accessed 29 May 2011.
3. Hocus Pocus Junior, The anatomy of legerdemain, or, The art of iugling… (London, 1638), STC 13544, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99852148, accessed 29 May 2011.
4. E2BN, To the library! (no date), http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery1392-e2bn.html, accessed 29 May 2011; E2BN, Hocus Pocus Junior (1638), http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery1390-e2bn.html, accessed 29 May 2011.
5. St John’s College, Cambridge, How to build a book (no date), http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/cms_misc/media/library/Howtobuildabook.pdf, accessed 29 May 2011.
6. Heritage Lottery Fund, Your Heritage (2011), http://www.hlf.org.uk/HowToApply/programmes/Pages/yourheritage.aspx, accessed 29 May 2011.
7. St John’s College, Cambridge, Sir Fred Hoyle Project (2011), http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/, accessed 29 May 2011.
8. University of Cambridge, Science Festival, http://comms.group.cam.ac.uk/sciencefestival/, accessed 29 May 2011.
9. St John’s College, Cambridge, ‘The Way to the Stars’: a History of College Astronomy, http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/events/#waytostars, accessed 29 May 2011.
10. St John’s College Library, Cambridge, MS E.2, http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manuscripts/medieval_manuscripts/medman/E_2.htm, accessed 29 May 2011.
11. S. Eisner, ‘Building Chaucer’s Astrolabe’, Journal of the British Astronomical Association 86 (1975-1976), pp. 18-29, 125-32, 219-27.
12. St John’s College, Cambridge, Build Your Own Astrolabe (2011), http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/library_exhibitions/schoolresources/astrolabe/, accessed 29 May 2011.
Katie Birkwood Rare Books Specialist, Cambridge University Libraries Email: kib21@cam.ac.uk Naomi Herbert Assistant Librarian, Christ’s College, Cambridge Email: nsh27@cam.ac.uk
Katie Birkwood
Rare Books Specialist, Cambridge University Libraries
Email: kib21@cam.ac.uk
Naomi Herbert
Assistant Librarian, Christ’s College, Cambridge
Email: nsh27@cam.ac.uk
Since August 2009 I have been an Information Specialist in the University of Bristol Careers Service. I have chosen this topic because as a newly qualified librarian working outside a library for the first time, I was struck by the need to market my team’s services and professionalism to our immediate colleagues in the careers service. Students and graduates use careers services in a very different way to an academic library, with many being unaware the service exists at all, let alone understanding the help an information team could offer. Information resources will probably never be the key draw for our users, which makes it even more essential that our colleagues, particularly careers advisers, recognise our worth and can promote us to both users and management.
I work alongside some people who have no conception of what a librarian is or does – a very different situation to when I worked in university libraries. Indeed, I completed my MSc nine months after I started working in the careers services and – despite often talking about my dissertation – found that some of my colleagues had no idea what I was studying or that it had any relevance to my role. To some extent, they do not need to know this, but it did make me realise how different my own perception of my role might be to theirs. This could be an advantage as it means I cannot assume others in the team are aware of my work and skills, as I might do if I worked in a more traditional setting. This raises a question of relevance to all information workers, qualified or unqualified, in any sector: are you communicating your value as clearly as you could be? From my own perspective, many Higher Education (HE) careers services do not employ qualified librarians and several are making cuts, so this issue seems more pertinent than ever.
UK HE careers services vary greatly in terms of staff numbers and responsibilities. Whereas my own service has around 30 full time equivalent staff, I have met people who are the sole employee in their careers service and some services are much larger. As such, generalisations are difficult, but services tend to focus upon the key areas of employer liaison (which might include attendance at careers fairs, other events and vacancy listings), advice and guidance (often including one-to-one meetings with careers advisers and workshops) and some information provision, although this can range from a website to a relatively large collection of print resources, depending on service priorities and staffing levels. Careers services also usually collect data from graduates for the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey. Most cater not only for current students but also graduates, although levels of support vary.
We also field a number of questions from prospective students, attend University events such as open days, and provide a limited service for graduates from other universities too.
The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) is the professional association for HE careers practitioners. Similarly to CILIP, they provide training and relevant qualifications for staff, hold events and opportunities for networking, accredit services and represent the industry. Information is embedded within this with an active Careers Information Specialists Group (CISG), careers information officer mailing list and a specialised qualification in careers information. I utilised this network myself to send out a survey asking for information about different services, including: the number of staff both overall and within the information team; whether anyone in the team had a CILIP-accredited qualification; attitudes towards CILIP membership; how valued they feel by their colleagues; what they do to actively promote their team’s work to colleagues; how they perceive their role within their service and their work with immediate colleagues outside the information team. I received 50 responses which have helped to clarify, confirm and challenge my own perspective.
As with careers services in general, there is no typical information team. Responses to my survey demonstrate that information workers have varied roles and, as some of their job titles indicate, many have responsibility not just for resources but other areas including employer liaison, vacancy listings and the DLHE survey. The variety of responsibilities and division of labour described by my respondents confirmed that there is no single approach.
I have identified several key differences between my current role and what I perceive to be more traditional librarianship roles in academic libraries. The main one is that I am nearly always front-facing and so spend a lot of time helping with reception-type queries such as basic questions about event bookings or the service in general. Many careers services do not have library management system and instead use Web 2.0 technologies such as tagging and social bookmarking. The website is often the key resource and physical stock is often relatively sparse or even non-existent. One reason for this is the fact that the majority of students will never come into the building and graduates tend to live further afield. Another is that our stock has to be reviewed and updated very regularly, since careers information quickly become obsolete, so the need for weeding and new acquisitions is near constant. I attend regular cross-team meetings such as the Publicity Group and Employer Group to ensure we are working well across our teams and promoting our services effectively, and most of the respondents to my survey talked about similar working practices. We also have a lot of contact with our Employer Services Team, including the provision of regular tours for visiting employers – a commercial aspect to our role. In our service the relationship with careers advisers is a key one, as they refer students to see us and have input into our stock development. Although we also do ‘traditional’ work such as basic cataloguing and classification, handling complex enquiries and delivering information literacy training, it can be difficult to unpick the information within our roles and focus on this, as many of my respondents agreed.
I think the issue of being perceived as admin is a common concern for many librarians and information staff. However it is arguably a particular issue in careers services, since if your colleagues perceive you in this way it can have an effect on the work you are given, or feel able to prioritise.
Several respondents expressed frustration that their role was not fully understood or that they were seen by colleagues as “a generic admin role”, “receptionists”, were “treated like secretaries”, or expected to deal with “mundane, trivial matters and tasks” such as broken photocopiers. Some of this is due to the range of the role and the necessity to undertake a variety of tasks, not just information-specific ones. This is not always imposed from outside, as one respondent talked about information staff feeling “unhappy at being asked to take on an information role as they were originally employed as admin staff”. Another person described the difficulty of proving value to colleagues without the support of the entire information team.
I asked people how valued they felt they were by their immediate colleagues outside the information team and of those who answered this question the responses were: very highly (10); quite highly (17); unsure (4), not very (3). Whilst some people feel they are already doing all they can to raise their profile, this mixed response suggests that there is more we could be doing to demonstrate our worth.
One area described by many of my respondents as their key focus is the updating and development of their website. As in most library services, I have already noted that online information is increasingly central to careers work. Another reason for this is lack of staff time to update and develop both print and online resources, particularly in services where only one person is looking after information or people have many other responsibilities too. Some respondents to my survey feel that this has enabled them to raise their profile within their services, whereas others expressed concern that the increasing predominance of online information might reduce the need for information staff or threaten our existence.
One of my respondents described how much “information research has disappeared from the role” due to the availability of information online, whereas I would argue that this has actually increased the need for information staff to help organise and navigate an overwhelming amount of information. This is a point commonly made by librarians but it often needs reemphasising. I have been asked directly more than once by students “what can you tell me that I can’t find online?” and it has been important than I can articulate this. Similarly, some of our careers advisers are confident using the Internet and may not come to us for help if they don’t think we will offer anything further.
In my service, as in many others, much of our more detailed enquiry work comes to us through careers advisers after they have met with students. This is perhaps one reason why information staff can suffer from what one respondent labels “status anxiety”. My survey results confirmed a common concern that advice and guidance may enjoy a higher profile. As I have outlined, it is what most students associate with careers and anyone working in a careers service will be able to tell you about students insistent that they need to see an adviser when their query is “can I have a list of dental surgeries in Kent?”. From my own experience, information teams do tend to be smaller than their advice counterparts and directors of services are themselves often advisers by training. Information staff are also generally paid less, as more than one respondent mentioned. Perhaps for all these reasons information work can sometimes be seen as a stepping stone to advice work rather than a career in its own right. One respondent spoke of “the idea that the main career aspiration should be to become a careers adviser – it’s definitely not in my case!”. It is also probably more common for careers advisers to be professionally qualified than their information counterparts and this may add to a perception that they have higher status. However I also had many positive responses about teams who disputed that this was an issue and I think that the responsibility for redressing any imbalance lies with information staff, who need to be clear about their own value.
I feel that there is an obvious overlap between ‘traditional’ librarianship skills and careers information work. I believe that our ability to organise information and present it in the most appropriate form is a specialist skill shared by all information professionals. So although it is rare for careers services to be utilising cataloguing standards, for example, this is because they have adapted the essential skills of the profession for their own environment. Yet a number of the respondents to my survey who do not have a professional qualification stressed that they do not identify as librarians and could see no relation between the two areas of work. I suspect that this has more to do with misperceptions of librarianship than anything else, but it does raise the issue of how ‘professional’ careers information roles are in general.
Of the 50 responses I had to my survey, 17 people said they work in services where none of the information staff are professionally qualified. The majority of these were from post-1992 universities (10 of 17 respondents), whereas only 3 of the 19 respondents from Russell Group institutions said the same. 41 people answered the second part of my survey and of these only 11 were CILIP members. Some had been members and left and many feel that it is not relevant to their current role and that the support offered by AGCAS is enough. Whilst the strength of the AGCAS network is evident from the number of responses I gained to my survey, I believe that CILIP could be doing more to engage this group of information workers and that it does offer something additional.
The fact that a professional qualification is not a given and many people are not CILIP members could be another reason why information staff in careers services sometimes struggle to maintain focus on the ‘information’ element of their role. Whilst I do not believe that professionally qualified staff are inherently better at their jobs, I do think that being part of a professional information organisation provides you with a wider perspective of information work, whilst helping you to recognise your specialist skills and how best to promote them. So, although much of the work I do is not obviously ‘professional’, I feel that my membership of CILIP and networking with other information professionals help to remind me of the importance of identifying the information aspects of my role and to keep these in the foreground. As my qualification was an essential requirement of my role, I perhaps have more scope than others to focus on this. It is important to remember though that the management of my service, or the wider University, could decide at any point to review the necessity for a professional qualification, just as a couple of respondents to my survey are doing themselves.
Whilst I think that being qualified and a CILIP member are advantageous to me, why would any service bother to pay a professional librarian in a sector where so many people do not have that background? I would argue that the wider professional knowledge that I gained from my course is also of benefit to my organisation, as it means I am aware of a context to my work beyond the immediate one. Collection development and management are skills that are definitely enhanced by a library qualification. Even if your course, like mine, does not include a significant practical element, it still provides you with an appreciation of the key principles behind this kind of work. Your ability to apply these to your own setting is key, yet this is exactly the sort of work that may not be noticed or understood by non-library colleagues.
However, what I consider to be misperceptions about traditional librarians expressed by some careers information staff are potentially damaging not only for them but for the wider information profession. For example, one of my respondents felt that their employer would be likely to remove the need for a professional qualification for the role in the future and a manager described their reluctance to hire qualified staff who they imagined might view the Internet with “trepidation”. New professionals have a key role to play here in articulating the value they could bring to a service and challenging stereotypes. In careers services, as in many special library settings, managers (and even information managers) are not necessarily professionally qualified themselves and so may not see the point in hiring someone who is. It is also essential that those of us already working in this environment recognise and demonstrate our unique skills as information professionals.
As I have outlined, many of my respondents talked enthusiastically about the variety of their roles but also expressed concern about this. The generic skills we offer are important and without our ability to contribute to different tasks and teams outside our information work we would not be contributing effectively to our services. Nonetheless, we need to make sure that we understand what we offer as information staff that nobody else can. Many of my respondents expressed concern about cuts and staff losses, either impending or already happening, and there is a danger that if we cannot articulate our value we will be seen as dispensable or replaceable by someone on a lower pay grade.
It is up to us to make sure our colleagues recognise the work we do (whether we are qualified or not) and value it, by telling them about it. However, this is not as straightforward as it perhaps sounds. I am fortunate to work in a service where my professional qualification is recognised, my manager and colleague are also qualified, and I am being encouraged to get involved with professional development opportunities such as Chartership. My wider team are supportive and appreciative of the work I do yet, even in this fortunate situation, it is not necessarily the case that they understand what I spend all day doing. I can identify with one respondent to my survey, who said: “I feel that my skills are valued but unsure whether these are identified as being part of my ‘information’ skills”.
We try to regularly communicate our activities to our colleagues and we always provide new staff with an induction, just as many other careers services describe. Yet the difference with a traditional library setting is well illustrated by an exchange with a colleague a few months ago, who revealed they did not know what I was talking about when I mentioned our library management system, as they had forgotten that we had an online catalogue at all. As someone who adds or amends records on there almost daily, this was unthinkable to me, yet why should a member of staff working exclusively with employers be expected to remember? Much information work can be invisible and the majority of respondents to my survey recognised this and described using meetings, newsletters, demos and email to inform their colleagues about what they do. I agree that these are all important activities but I suspect that we need to go further to try to help our colleagues understand more about the nature of our work and its value.
Some of my respondents were extremely positive about their status in their respective services. However, of these, many were members of small teams who felt that everyone knew what they were doing anyway – an assumption I would challenge. Of the others, one person had introduced an enquiry form to professionalise their research process and raise its profile amongst the careers advisers. We have done this in my own service and have found that it has increased usage of our team by colleagues who had not previously realised the level of research we could offer. We are also now using a Word template to respond to users and we copy our emails to the relevant careers adviser, as well as keeping records of the sort of enquiries we have tackled. One respondent’s service sends out a weekly summary of research to all advisers, not just the one who requested help, which is an interesting model. Volumes of email are high in most work environments now, but I can see the advantage of circulating this type of information.
One of the other key areas of our work is keeping resources current. This is perhaps also one of the most difficult elements to explain to our colleagues. Although they are quick to notice if a link is broken or a folder contains outdated information, it is rarely practical to describe the process of identifying, acquiring, describing and placing a new resource to someone who is not involved in the process. Yet drawing attention to new resources and updated information is definitely important and many services are making use of social media to do this, often ostensibly for the benefit of users but with the added bonus that colleagues will also notice. One example from my survey that I thought went some way to addressing this was a service who have held a ‘day in the life’ event at a staff training day to demonstrate to colleagues exactly how they approach their work and what is involved in information work. This potentially both demystifies and elevates the work of the team. It is obviously impractical to repeat such exercises regularly, and they depend on the interest of the wider team – and management buy-in – but opportunities like this should be seized and remind us not to make assumptions about our colleagues’ understanding.
In summary, it is important for all information professionals to recognise their value, actively demonstrate and articulate this to colleagues and fully utilise the professional networks available to them. Even if you work in a library environment surrounded by qualified colleagues you cannot assume that they understand what you are doing if you have never told them. Plus just as my colleague forgot that we had a library catalogue, your colleagues cannot be expected to remember what you do on a day-to-day basis. As the careers service example demonstrates it is important to consider what you are articulating and how, so that your colleagues feel involved and hopefully appreciate your work but also have the opportunity to give you feedback. It’s something that we still have not got right in my own team but that we continue to work on. In a time of cuts the support of your colleagues is a key first step to ensuring that your organisation recognises your worth.
If your attitude to your work is that it is ‘for your eyes only’, then you may be failing to demonstrate your worth. In any sector or working environment, I would argue that puts you at risk and reduces the chance of you working most effectively with your colleagues.
Megan Wiley Information Specialist – Careers Service, University of Bristol megan.wiley@bristol.ac.uk
23 Things for Professional Development is a self-directed, self-paced, cost-effective, inclusive and practical way for all professionals, at any stage of their careers, in any type of sector or role, and from anywhere in the world, to underline, boost or kickstart their professional development. This paper will introduce the programme, also known as cpd23, in more detail, identifying its background, origins, content and espousing some of the predicted benefits of taking part. It will also discuss how a programme like cpd23, in our current economic situation, is particularly timely, useful and productive.
New professionals are acutely aware that professional development is the hallmark of a good, successful and fulfilling career. Its benefits are wide-ranging and varied, extending far beyond the simple goal of career enhancement or the opportunity to earn more money. CPD enables professionals to remain relevant and current in a sector undergoing significant and rapid changes. It concretises and cements our existing skills, encouraging us to reflect critically on our career profession, assisting us in identifying where we want to be, and in assembling our plans of how we will get there. It demonstrates that we are flexible, adaptable and motivated people, that we are committed to improving our performance, and concerned about our jobs. It confers a fitness to practice, helping us to develop a sense of professional identity and responsibility. Megginson and Whittaker summarise CPD concisely and accurately: it is “…a process by which individuals take control of their own development and learning, by engaging in an ongoing process of reflection and action” (2004, p. 5).
Conversely, though professionals are proficient in talking fluently about CPD, in defining it and espousing its advantages, this ability can often fail to translate into practice. Knowing what CPD consists of, what might potentially constitute CPD, how to track one’s CPD and how to make the most of it, form a series of different challenges. Being aware of what ‘doing’ CPD actually looks like can be a barrier to professional development, especially for those at the nascence of their careers. There are other barriers too: pressures of time often mean that CPD is relegated or forgotten; opportunities may seem scarce and when they do arise, they seem unsuitable, directed instead at people with more experience, or less experience, than we have. Lack of confidence or shyness may be another genuine obstacle. Or we may work in isolated roles, in rural areas, far away from the perceived ‘hub’ of CPD activities in our big cities.
These barriers have existed for a long time, but the economic downturn has exacerbated them. Opportunities are scarcer, and our employers’ training and development budgets may have been cut, placing the responsibility for our CPD even more squarely on our shoulders, which can be daunting. Yet in a situation where there have been, and will continue to be, redundancies, cutbacks and closures, our ability to advocate strongly and persuasively for our jobs, our profession and for ourselves becomes ever more crucial. Jobs are fewer, and competition is fierce. We all know that these are not easy times for the profession, yet what we learn through constant, ongoing engagement with the branches of CPD may equip us with the confidence, knowledge, tools and skills to prove our value more consistently and more thoroughly, and to emerge from the economic crisis in a stronger position than we otherwise would have. This is a CPD-centred Catch 22: just as professional engagement becomes ever more essential, it becomes ever more challenging.
23 Things for Professional Development is a potential solution to this dilemma, and makes a step towards overcoming these barriers. It will supply participants with the knowledge, connections and ideas to navigate our current situation more skilfully and more positively. It is a self-directed course, modelled on the now familiar 23 Things framework, so it has been designed to be completed at participants’ own pace, mitigating some of the time pressures we face. It is cost-effective and entirely inclusive, practical and forward-thinking. It is about exploring the different routes towards CPD and doing CPD in a positive, useful way, and not simply because it is something that we ought to do. It provides enough guidance and support for all participants, not just from the organising team, but from everyone else taking part as well, generating significant opportunities for making connections with the people in our profession.
The first 23 Things programme was held at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg in North Carolina in 2006. The aims of the original programme were to introduce library staff to Web 2.0 technologies, encouraging a culture of exploration, and to consider if, and how, these technologies could be incorporated into the working lives of staff (Blowers, 2006). Its success led to several other versions, and in the UK alone, there have been academic library programmes at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Huddersfield, Warwick, Westminster and Limerick, and public library versions at Devon, Kirklees and many others.
The Cambridge version (Cam23) was launched in May 2010, and was completed by just over 60 members of the library community in Cambridge, including several members of the cpd23 organising team. It is no understatement to stress that Cam23 has had a noticeable, tangible impact on libraries of Cambridge University. Among the many outcomes have been an increased (but critical) use of Web 2.0 by libraries, for a variety of purposes, and increased confidence of those using it, by both those who were already skilful and those who were new to Web 2.0. Participants developed better understanding, applied their knowledge, and reflected on this process. The programme led, if indirectly, to other events and innovations—the birth of the Library TeachMeet owes its existence, if only in part, to Cam23. However, the most significant and hopefully enduring consequence has been the generation of a sense of community across Cambridge libraries and librarians. Cam23 provided unhierarchical networks of support, advice and communication across a playing field now far more level than it was before. It encouraged librarians to communicate and engage with each other, no matter who they were or what job they had. It was also, crucially, an enjoyable, rewarding experience—a comment made by many participants in the feedback collected after the programme (Priestner and Carty, 2011).
The 23 Things framework is well established and familiar. There is a central blog, to which posts are published approximately once a week, on each of the Things. The posts are staggered, so that participants are not overwhelmed, and they contain detailed but accessible instructions. There are built in ‘catch up’ (or reflection) weeks, which provide not only some breathing space, but allow participants to reflect on what they have learned so far. Each participant is asked to write a post on each Thing after exploring it and, if they wish, to read fellow participants’ blogs and start conversations. The programme is strictly informal and can be completed at participants’ own pace.
23 Things for Professional Development works in the same way at these tried and trusted frameworks, but there are a few differences. First, the focus is not simply on Web 2.0, but on a combination of social media and what might be considered more ‘traditional’ means of doing CPD. Second, the aim is not to consider whether that Thing could be integrated into daily working life, although of course the application of any new ideas is encouraged! Rather, the aim is to focus on how these tools can assist participants in their professional development and how to make the most of them: how, for example, joining a network like LISNPN could benefit their careers. Third, although we hope that participants will complete the entire programme, there is no reason why they cannot ‘dip in’ for Things that particularly interest them. It is hoped that this new twist on the 23 Things framework will encourage those who have already participated in them to get involved, but the familiarity of the framework has assisted in the organisation, promotion and explanation of the programme.
Being comprehensive in the selection of the ‘Things’ proved a near impossible task, especially given the number of worthy candidates. In selection, therefore, an attempt was made to be varied, broad, thematic and fair—and, importantly, free to use. The first week is taken up with setting up a blog and exploring others’ blogs, so that everyone begins from the same starting point. Participants are asked to register their blog so that a list of urls can be developed, facilitating the process of making connections with others. The Things then include, among others, personal brands, on- and offline sources of knowledge to assist professionals in remaining current, ways to organise yourself and this new knowledge, training available at all levels, both formal and informal, tools for collaboration, filesharing and presenting, and ways to discover what is happening around you, and how you can get involved professionally. Other topics include guidance about identifying one’s strengths, and expressing this in application forms and at interviews. The posts will be researched and written either by members of the organising team, or one of our truly fantastic line-up of guest bloggers.
It is expected and hoped that participants will have additional insights, knowledge and suggestions, and they are strongly encouraged to share their perspectives on their blogs and to offer alternatives. This highlights the principal point that not all of the organising team are especially ‘experts’ in this particular field; we all have different levels of knowledge and experience, both of the tools and of CPD. This is very much a grassroots enterprise and we hope to learn as much from the programme as everyone else. It is also not expected that each Thing will be either immediately applicable or useful to every person taking part, nor is it expected or desired that participants will arrive at the same conclusions about the utility or value of each tool. We are looking forward to some conflicting ideas! Integral to the selection of Things is a sense that there are several routes to CPD, and no ‘one-size-fits-all’; we hope that in the exploration of alternative routes, participants may be able to determine which one(s) work best for them. By recording their thoughts and progress on blogs, it is also hoped that participants will gain some skills or experience in being critically reflective; the blog will also function as a very personal learning toolkit, which can be revisited and revised once the programme has ended.
There are several benefits to taking part in the programme. The first, and most practical, advantage is that it is cost-effective—it requires no travel, nor any financial commitment, demonstrating that CPD does not have to be expensive. The programme is an example of lifelong learning—and the form of learning which is adopted and encouraged, through playing and discovering, is highly effective. This should encourage a spirit of investigation and instil confidence among those taking part. Third, it provides an excellent opportunity to engage with other professionals, to support and advise them and to receive support and advice in return. As professionals we can learn a great deal from one another, even if we often underestimate quite how much we personally have to offer; cpd23 is an incentive and an excuse to think more closely about the skills and the knowledge that we each have, how we can make the most of this personally, and how we can contribute to the professional development of others. Fourth, the programme is absolutely inclusive, with no barriers at all to taking part. It emphasises the equality of participants, no matter what role in the profession they have. Fifth, it is an opportunity for participants to grow in confidence through the setting—and achieving—of their own goals, which we hope will be a rewarding experience. Sixth, it is an opportunity to take part in something which has never been done before; part of its fun lies in its potential unpredictability!
Taking part in 23 Things for Professional Development is, in itself, a form of CPD. It reflects a commitment to learn about new tools, to make new connections and gain a deeper insight into our profession. This makes taking part in the programme an excellent starting-point for some, and an excellent mid-point for others, and we genuinely hope that participants will enjoy the experience and will gain from it. 23 Things for Professional Development began formally on June 20th, 2011, but participants are welcome to join in at any time.
Central blog: http://www.cpd23.blogspot.com On Twitter: http://twitter.com/cpd23 On Delicious: http://delicious.com/cpd23 On LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/ikTbRp On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cpd23
Blowers, H. (2006). ‘About the Learning 2.0 program’. Retrieved on May 29, 2011, from: http://plcmcl2-about.blogspot.com/
Megginson, D. and Whitaker, V. (2004). Continuing professional development. London: CIPD.
Priestner, A. and Carty, C. (2011). ‘We know what we did last summer: feedback from the participants of the Cam23 Web 2.0/social media programme’. Retrieved on May 29, 2011, from:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/conference2011/programme.html
Helen Murphy hem37@cam.ac.uk
Helen Murphy
hem37@cam.ac.uk
