ARLG Conference 2014: The Final Frontier - to boldly go where you've never been before

There was so much packed into the 3 days, that I can't hope to cover all that I went to, so I am going to pick out the things I took from it the most, in no particular order:

That it doesn't cost a huge amount of money to make your library and it's services more accessible than they currently are. My plan  - to assess where we are at and find ways to improve it, using some of the ideas and resources mentioned by Virginia Power in her Inclusive Practice session. They are JISC TechDis' Online Accessibility Self Evaluation Service (OASES), the MLA Accessibility Toolkit, which I do have in paper format at work and is still available online from the National Archive (Disability Portfolio Guide) and to start making screencasts of how to use the accessibility resources we have.

Promote and encourage better use of e-books - Elaine Mulholland sent lists of relevant e-books (from the JISC e-books for FE) with live links to each curriculum area in her College, to raise awareness and encourage use. This, I think, is an excellent idea and as the JISC e-books for FE original agreement is about to expire, I feel that promoting what we still have available is very important. We have 3 different e-book providers and a 4th imminent (i.e. when I get my new budget), so it's a good opportunity to drill down into what we have and see if there are any gaps in the resources.

A task that I keep mentioning and never actually do anything about (I mentioned it at my last performance Review too, so I need to do it!) - better use of social media. We have a Facebook and Twitter account and are guilty of sporadically using it. My plan of campaign is to start with Georgina Cronin and Meg Westbury's idea of a social media policy and build from there. My initial thoughts are in addition to keeping people upto date with changes in opening times, events and any database downtime we are informed about, is to incorporate stuff that ties in with our displays and maybe current events. I know that in order for this to work I will need some way of scheduling updates - Hootsuite springs to mind, as I already have used it (not to full effect though) - I will need to train myself how to use it more efficiently and then train my staff.

I would also like to make a glossary of library terms, as suggested by Kirsty Carver and Sophie North in their Culturally Aware Library session. Whilst we do not have the same extent of diversity as Bradford University, we do have learners from different countries and as importantly we have a population who, in many cases, have never been into a library before. Therefore a glossary could be of benefit to a great many of our learners.

I have set a target for all of these goals to be achieved or at least worked towards (as I know some will take some time to put in place) within the next year.

Marketing my LRC

Over the last few months, things in the LRC haven't gone very well. We feel like we are not valued at all by the senior management and despite efforts to convince that we are a very valuable service, we have taken a hit. So what to do to futureproof?

Marketing is my answer.

And that is why I have Ned Potter's Library Marketing Toolkit on my desk at work with post its sticking out all over and why I chose to go on the Marketing Libraries: strategic and creative communications for information professionals course.

The first session How do you like your eggs in the morning? provided a fascinating insight into how the University of Sunderland library market their service. They have created a 7 step toolkit to create marketing plans:

1. Identify strategic direction
2. Do SWOT analysis
3. Profile customer segments
4. Match offers to segments
5. Transform offers into benefits
6. Translate benefits into messages
7. Plan communication campaign

I think that I already do part of this unconsciously and that I would benefit more by writing and recording it as they do at Sunderland.  I especially like the trees they used for feedback, which were visible and fun. You can see more about their marketing campaigns on their Pinterest page.

I have been told by my manager that he will get us (him, our e-Learning Manager and myself) a monthly slot on the senior management team meeting agenda, where we can promote our services and shout out about what we do. I would like to use the 7 step toolkit to start planning which services to promote. I therefore expect the handouts from this session to end up on my desk alongside the Library Marketing Toolkit book.

The second session was about Social Media Marketing for Libraries and this session reinforced what I have read in the Library Marketing Toolkit. Currently I have a Twitter and Facebook account for the LRC and that is quite enough. They are not updated as regularly as they should be and I wish to address that. I have started with Twitter by tidying it up and tweeting more, I now need to turn my attention to the Facebook page, to see what needs sorting and to start to use that more effectively. I know that there are College Flickr and You Tube accounts too and hope that I can make use of those in my social media campaigns.

The third session was about being consistent and creative with branding. I have spent the summer trying to do this with the current marketing materials that we have and the few new ones that we had to do. I am pleased with the overall effect of what has been produced, it builds on the excellent LRC Guide that was produced last year with bite size information and everything now has a College logo on, so that we are aligned and a part of the College brand. This I think may go some way to help build the reputation and value that we desire.

The final session of the day was about marketing in small specialised libraries (in this case York Minster Library) and looked at the library being a place to belong not just visit. Although this session was a very different type of marketing to what I would expect in an academic library, it was still useful, as well as being very interesting and excellently presented by Antonio Jiminez-Milian. What I got out of this session was that you can promote your values and what you want to be associated with by using status updates. To do this you retweet or like updates from bodies, institutions etc that share your values. So I will be reviewing my Twitter account again (and looking into this when I review the Facebook account) and looking at following people who share the same values as the College and LRC want to promote. 

I hope my efforts are not in vain and that indeed the LRC does build its reputation up and start to feel like we are valued and are an important part of the College.

ARLG Conference 2012

This post is going to look at the workshops I attended as a delegate.

Writing Right for Twitter by Meg Westbury. 

Meg was looking at how companies / institutions can engage and connect with their users rather than just putting information on Twitter. Her top tips are:

• Know your audience
• Clearly state the idea
• Make the Tweets frequent and varied
• Well thought out
• Use short, descriptive and action words
• Use headline formula
• Write them knowing they might be shared i.e. don't use all 140 characters, leave room for comment

The workshop built in time for the delegates to rewrite example Tweets using Meg's tips. This was very popular and illustrated the need to think about Tweets before writing them. I will be trying to use these tips when Tweeting both at work and for my own account.

How to Make Yourself Almost Irreplacable by Steve Lee. 

Steve started the session with asking us to work in groups and write down what we dislike about supermarkets. The comparison being that as it is a customer facing business many of our dislikes of the supermarkets transfers to a library too.

His suggestion for improvement is to get out of the library. Go and talk to the tutors and find out what they want and need from the library, then see how we can meet those needs.

Top tips are:

• Send new book and journal information to staff. This may take time initially but then the process can be automated, saving library staff time whilst still giving the tutors what they need
• Respond in a timely fashion to any issues
• Trial new ideas, if they don't work you can go back to your original way of doing things
• Do surgeries in departments, you may need to be proactive to start with but it breaks down barriers and eventually work of mouth leads to people approaching you for advice and help. It was noted that roving skills are useful when doing surgeries.

At work there is a desire for the library staff to eventually become partly based in the departments. I think that if I can trial surgeries in the new academic year, this will help to make that transition.

LRCs and Flexible Learning Environments by Sue Caporn and Vicki Bowd. 

This was one of the most amazing ideas I've seen. Their library at City of Bristol College has no boundaries, basically if you are in a communal area, you are in the library. They have technology for people to borrow (all are catalogued on their LMS), the classrooms don't have PCs, they borrow laptops from the library and all the library staff have an ePICT qualification to ensure that they can help with any queries. They are hoping that eventually everything will be self issue.

This kind of idea, whilst innovative, would have to be a concept that is bought into throughout the College and might not work in buildings that have not been designed to cope with this strategy. I very much like the idea but somehow can't see it working where I work, although we do have equipment for loan and are looking to extend this.

Putting a Face to a Name by Leanne Young.

This looked at using technology with overseas distance learners. Leanne told us that currently distance learning is not done by VLE and that to help students she has been trialling free resources, as she doesn't have a budget to buy anything. She has used AnyMeeting to hold sessions with students. This requires a lot of preparation which she has done via Google docs to collate the information she has gathered in order to set up the meetings. She also makes heavy use of Tumblr, so that information is easily available to the students and in one place.

The scheme although quite small at the moment is very popular, with students being able to see Leanne and know that she is their to help them. She made the point that in some countries the librarian is not expected to be there to help students and part of what she wanted to do, was to get the message out that it is her job to help them and that they should feel free to contact her whenever they needed to. 

Although I don't work with distance learners per se, there are students who are not traditional learners and I think that some of Leanne's ideas could work with them. I look forward to trying some of them out.

I have totally enjoyed the Conference and have so many new ideas to think about. Some of them can be implemented straight away and others will take some planning. I hope that all will benefit and enhance the library experience. 

NE CILIP AGM Social media presentation

I went to NE CILIP's AGM last month, where Phil Bradley was giving a presentation. Aude Charillon has already written a great blog about it, so i'm not going to write it up myself, just provide the link to Aude's Social media talk at NE CILIP AGM post.

I have seen Phil present before and always find him very engaging and interesting. I came away from the talk with a very long list of websites to look at. My intention was to look at one a day until the list had been completed. This naturally hasn't happened.

However, I have made a start and have finally got a new start page (Netvibes) to bring my various social media accounts together. I don't know if I've added them all, I'm fairly certain there will be something lurking around that I've missed. I've also taken another look at LinkedIn and added some new stuff, although my profile is in desperate need of attention. That will probably be one of my next tasks. 

I have at least another 10 websites to check out and I will get there eventually, no doubt just in time to hear Phil do another talk and end up with another very long list!

JISC Collections 2011 Conference 24/11/11

This was held at the National Railway Museum in York, which is close to where I live so I thought it was a good opportunity to go to something different but still useful. The day began with a welcome address from the Chair of JISC Collections, followed by an overview of what JISC Collections have been doing over the last year by their CEO. The corporate style was not something I'd experienced before in person, both speakers were very accomplished at speaking to a large audience and very good at making the topics understandable.

The third presentation was about HE and FE perspectives and future directions, these presentations were given by Stephen Town from University of York and Emily Armstrong and Chris Skerrow from Hull College. Town's main message was that research libraries are not matching the values of the researchers. This needs to be addressed as he believes that value measures are becoming more important than quality measures. The University and research libraries, in his opinion are slow to change even though they are committed to sustainability.

Armstrong and Skerrow painted the picture at Hull College and this view is similar to my experience, as I work in the same sector. They have experienced an increase in e-book usage due to JISC's E-books for FE Collection and students want their e-resources available through their own mobile devices. Ideally they would like federated searching to be available, however they are yet to find an affordable system. They also try to make best use of their VLE by making all their library information and digital literacy information available through it. It is encouraging to hear that this is what they do and want to do, as it what the students I work with want too.

The workshops that I attended were Managing E-resources and E-books for FE. The Managing E-resources covered JUSP, which is what I was most interested in, a single point for journal usage statistics. The publishers currently involved are not ones I deal with and there is a question over longer term funding for the project.

E-books for FE was presented by Anna Vernon from JISC and David Scott from Dundee College. Scott mentioned that if the Colleges were to buy the books that are available through the Collection, it would cost £115,000 - that is amazing. Independent study skills are very important to Dundee College, so it is also very important for e-access to as much as possible and for it to be simple and straightforward. They are using QR codes for e-book access and this is something that I need to look into as a way forward, for both the access to e-books and moving on our use of QR codes. Vernon looked at how you can make using e-books more interactive through collaborative reading by using social media apps such as Open Margin, SocialBook, and Flipboard.

I found the day very interesting and have got some good ideas especially for e-books and how they can be further promoted and accessed.

Thing 12: Putting the social into social media

My networks have expanded due to social media, there are definitely people I communicate with that I would not have met. I have used social media for professional development prior to cpd23 and thought of this as a natural progression to what I have already done. I will continue to use it afterwards and hopefully keep blogging.
An advantage for me is that I can get information about most topics i'm interested in very quickly, if I need quick opinions I can Tweet, if I have more time I can send message to a discussion list too. A disadvantage is that I can suffer from information overload.

Thing 3

Branding myself. I looked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google produced pages I expected, a few Twitter links, some that were not me but have the same name and the others that were professionally related - a recent presentation and 2 things that are quite old now. Yahoo had results that were not me until about 5 or 6 down, where it has picked up an old professionally related thing and then Bing, very interesting, mostly it was all other people with the same name except for 1, the recent presentation that Google picked up.

Does this bother me? Looking at the things that are actually me - no I think I'm OK with it. You may see lots of mentions to Mistee Mog, who is in fact my cat, alongside it is my name. There may also be a black cat as my profile picture (Twitter account), she is the real Mistee Mog. I've failed dismally in finding a picture for Blogger, I can't find anything suitable in my photos, my Facebook profile picture was taken at the computer with my web cam and went straight to my Facebook profile, I apparantly can't do the same thing on Blogger.

Splitting everything up, Facebook is my most personal profile, Blogger is my most professional and Twitter is somewhere in between. Although I recently went through it and made it more professional and may indeed change my profile picture to me rather than my cat. This will still leave me with the Mistee Mog moniker, so I wonder whether it is worth it.

That brings me onto why I used Mistee Mog to start with, well because it is consistant. If I use my work e-mail address and leave to work somewhere else, it is not defining me anymore and I would have to update various bodies with a new e-mail address (presumably my new work one). By using Mistee Mog, I have something that is still me no matter where I work. I chose this to start with, over my own name, because at the time, it was suggested it was a way of reducing spam (and yes it did work). It was a way of keeping in touch with personal friends only. Then I moved jobs and realised that if I use my work e-mail, I will have to update it everytime I move on, so I started to use Mistee Mog for more professional reasons.

The visual brand - I guess you could say that Mistee Mog currently is part of that. The colour scheme I have never really thought about, I just choose something I like. It does tend to be lilac / purple (I love Joeyanne's purple flowers), as these are my favourites colours. I occasionally venture into a light / pastel pink, which is not my favourite colour but I think works better as a background than others I've seen and certainly better than my next favourite colour - black. This would also make Mistee Mog blend in too much. The green and blue of the blog is OK, it is inoffensive and hopefully accessible. This is my task for the week now, sorting the colours on my various accounts and still trying to find the right picture for my blog.

Twitter

That's excellent, I've successfully managed to post the blog link to my Twitter account, which is linked to my Facebook account, so it should be showing there too. Yes it is, I've just checked. 
Tomorrow I will try to add a picture of myself and work on my profile a bit.