Catching up

Totally remiss of me but I haven't done any reflecting on the CPD I've done for ages. I am now trying to catch up, so in this post I intend to write a paragraph (minimum) on the CPD I have done over the last few months:

OpenAthens

Initially this training was meant for a colleague to go to so that there are a few of us trained in Athens admin. However, after the interface was changed I felt like I was a beginner again with it and was struggling to manage it. I decided that I would go to the training as I had many questions on how to do things. 
As it was awhile ago when I did this training, I can't remember what questions I had. They must've been resolved as I am managing well with it for now. The main thing that I remember learning is that I can correct any errors in the bulk upload file and resubmit it without having to leave the page i'm on. This is fabulous because I can quickly see where the errors are, fix them and resubmit the file. This has saved me loads of time.

How to build resilience in the workplace

I wasn't sure what to expect on this, our Workforce Development Manager had mentioned that the session was on and would be useful for my staff and I. So I made sure we all booked on and went along to see what I could learn. Building resilience is a way of trying to achieve good physical and emotional health, in this case within the workplace. It focussed on positively handling conflict, being positive about yourself including readjusting any self-sabotaging beliefs we have, dealing with manipulative behaviour, avoiding burnout and stress management. This was a lot to take in all at once and I think that to help me build my resilience, I should evaluate where I am at with each area and try to improve my resilience in my weakest areas.

ARLG Members Day

This year's theme was accessibility something that I have been looking at improving at work over the last year and am continuing to work on. This session gave me so many new things to think about. Some of the things that were mentioned, we already do or have but I need to train myself and my staff about them and then promote what is available. I need to implement any quick changes that can be done. Investigate new apps / services etc that I heard about and train, promote and advertise where appropriate, and finally make a wish list of big things that I would like, in case money is available for implementation.

Safer staff recruitment

This looked at the process of staff recruitment and how safeguarding should be built into it at every stage. In a way this was timely and in another way it was too late. I am currently recruiting a new LRC Assistant and the job has gone out to advertisement now, so all the processes involved before this stage have been reliant on Human Resources and my subconscious for safeguarding issues. I can now though apply this new knowledge to the remaining processes starting with reviewing interview questions.

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.

RSC Northern's e-Fest 14 - an e-Ventful Tale

Guess what? As usual I've left this too long from the event to writing it up. Bad practice I know, and not what I was taught whilst doing my Chartership. So first of all any action plan I have should start with must reflect sooner on training rather than later.

What can I remember about the e-Fest?

I can remember tweeting all day rather than taking notes. This is a first for me and something I would like to continue doing. What I haven't done is collected the tweets together so let me put that as another point on the action plan.

I am a digital native apparently, this came as a surprise. I'm not saying i'm no good at it and I'm not scared of it, I just don't find it as intuitive or as easy to use as (some) other people - especially those who are younger. I do though make the Internet my first port of call when I want to find out something which is what supposedly makes me a digital native. I'm still not convinced!

Minecraft - using it as an educational tool. I tried to do a bit of homework before this session, I'd heard of Minecraft but never seen or played it, so I decided to take a demo of it and get a feel for what it is about. I was so inept I drowned myself 3 times in about an hour of play :( Anyway as an educational tool, I can see the benefits of Minecraft, build something collaboratively, project management, teamwork, decision making etc it is all there and in a fun way.

Sensory Pods - definitely the most fun thing of the day. An immersive learning experience where you have smell, sound, climate and movement to accompany the topic you are learning about or you can go in and chill out, which makes it ideal for learners with special needs, as it is a safe haven for them. This is todays version of Star Trek's holodeck, we are not quite as advanced as in Star Trek but we are getting there.

CoLRiC Roadshow, Durham - my top 5 most interesting points

Last week, I attended the CoLRiC Roadshow event in Durham. To help get me back into blogging, I am writing this post about it. Also to help me get back into blogging, i'm going to try to keep it fairly short by writing the top 5 things I took from it. These are in no particular order:

1. I enjoyed using the Socrative app, which is an online and mobile student response system app. I was pleasantly surprised that when I downloaded it onto my phone, I didn't have to put in my e-mail and password. It only asked for a room number, which is provided by the person taking the session.
2. Dundee and Angus College have front facing IT Technicians. This is very refreshing and sadly for most of us probably a pipedream.
3. In order to survive the LRC / library service needs to make itself essential to the College. To do this you need to identify what the College needs and then provide this service. Where I work the first service that springs to mind as being essential is our assignment submission service. This service allows students to hand in their work at a central location. I will be looking at the other services we provide to see if anymore are essential and also thinking about what else is needed that we could provide.
4. The Six Book Challenge can now be ran from September. The Reading Agency has moved up the timescale for when the packs are available to accommodate the academic year, as there are so many Colleges taking part now and some would like the full year to do it in. Whilst my College hasn't yet started running the Challenge, I am now going to give it another push and see if we can get a group going in September.
5. LRC induction done as a gameshow complete with compare and scoreboard using the Cephalonia method of learning - looks and sounds great. Done in a lecture theatre, so it reaches many students at once. I really like the idea and would love to give it a go.

Library Camp North East

I have heard a lot about Library Camps in the last year and wondered what they would be like, so I was excited at having one in the local area. I wasn't sure what to expect except for cake - an absolute must at these events. I knew the theory about them - whoever shows up are the right people and what we discuss are the right topics. 

This is actually a very refreshing idea because so many times I can look at conferences or training days and think that it is a narrow scope or predominently (to the point of exclusively) aimed at university libraries and whilst there is crossover in some areas, many current hot topics for universities are not for colleges until much later. Although it is good practice to have a wider knowledge and keep up with these things.

So an unconference, where anything can be discussed, surely would have a broad scope and diverse attendees. And so it proved to be, attendees where from assistant up to senior management level and from many different sectors which was wonderful. I got to meet new people from public and specialist sectors, many who have the same issues as I do in my library. I always find it reassuring that it isn't just me or my sector that has 'x' problem and it is fabulous that I can discuss with colleagues from the wider sector their approaches.

I very much enjoyed the Library Camp and recommend to others to go to one if you have the opportunity. It is a great way to discuss important issues in an informal manner.

ARLG Members Day

This was quite a long time ago now - 15 May at Regent's College which we now have to call Regent's University. I was especially interested in the sessions about partnerships with academics and creating learning hubs. These are both things that get spoken about a lot where I work, sometimes that's a good thing and other times it worries me.

Partnerships with academics

The partnership is similar to our curriculum liaison only dealing with specialist collections. This session discussed the proactive approach at Goldsmiths, University of London to marketing and making the most of their specialist collections by targeting groups and showing them what can be done for them. It raises awareness of the resources, their content and the profile of the department. I think that this is a very important aspect of library work because it demonstrates a high level of professionalism from the library staff and helps consolidates the importance of the library services to their institution. For many years we have tried to forge close links with the curriculum staff at the College and have had varying degrees of success. This year I think we have made a significant breakthrough by attending directorate meetings that give us an overview of the wider department and what their plans are. Now that there is a foothold, we can build on this and maybe this is a way forward. We have a wide range of resources many that are underused, with more awareness and targeted promotion of them they may start to get used more.

Creating learning hubs

This is something that worried me or so I thought. The term learning hub has been used to decentralise the library I work in and that is something I don't want to see happen. It feels like a step backwards because we were orignally on 4 sites and have been brought together onto 1 purpose built site. This session however wasn't actually about this kind of learning hub, it was looking at a new way of delivering information literacy and integrating the library into teaching and learning. This proved a very timely session for me, as my College are currently piloting self supported study which they hope to roll out across the College next academic year. My Senior Librarian and myself realise that this potenially could have a huge impact on our services and are going to review our information literacy provision during the summer to take into account these changes.

Going to the ARLG Members Day was extrememly useful for me, it has given me lots to think about and has provided a starting point from which I can review and build on my library's services.

Mobile Technologies webinar

I signed up for this webinar as I was curious to find out what other institutions are doing and to see if anyone had anything to say about using tablets in College. I wasn't disappointed, the presentations covered roving with an iPad and lending iPads to students. Both of these are to be introduced in my LRC within the next year.

iPads are good to rove with because they have a good battery life according to Jackie King, from Reaseheath College. She hasn't compared them to tablets so that is something I will need to consider before buying ours. A case or bag is needed to carry it, thus freeing up your hands and so that you don't put it down and then forget about it. I think that is especially important, whatever I get to carry it in though will depend on what I buy, as size and shape will be a factor. Jackie gave a list of free apps that she found useful for library staff to have on. This was interesting because at the moment I can't see my staff needing to use any apps, just internet. The purpose for me of introducing iPads or tablets, is to provide a better customer service by negating the need to go back to the enquiry desk to use a PC. I would like the ability to have apps, as I believe this is the way forward and I'm sure that once we are using the tablet or iPad, we will discover useful apps - Jackie's list will be a good starting point.

The second presentation was from Ihar Ivanou of North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, where they already lend iPads to students. They are lent for 4 hours, are issued from the LMS and the library try to make sure they are charged before lending. Students are allowed to use them for what they want, there have been no thefts and sometimes the iPad needs to be cleared of apps that students have downloaded. Originally students were asked to sign an agreement for use before they were allowed to borrow the iPads, this has since been abandoned as it was too much paperwork and the College agreement that students have to sign cover them anyway. This was of particular use because we have not decided yet how to loan out our tablets or iPads. There is an exisiting equipment for loan service, where staff can borrow different types of equipment to either aid their teaching or to help students do work. At the moment there are sets of netbooks that can be borrowed if the classroom does not have PCs. In the LRC, there are laptops for loan within the LRC for groupwork purposes or for when all PCs are in use. As we are looking at the tablets / iPads to replace the netbooks and laptops, we haven't decided whether to keep the same system as we have now or to change it, hearing Ihar has given me much to think about. Although it won't be solely my decision, I can take this information to my colleagues for consideration.