Library Day in a Life

I'm not going to be able to take part properly in Day in a Life this year, but I will enjoy reading other people's blogs about their working days:
http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/w/page/48173078/Round%208%2C%20January%2030th%20through%20February%205th%202012

I was off work sick yesterday, so it took me a few hours to work through my emails and remind myself about what I need to do this week. I'm surveying our readers this week to find out which departments they work in, to see who is using us, but happily my colleagues have taken over this task yesterday and today, while I had a 1-1 with a reader from 10.15-11am about NHS Athens and library resources, and then a search clinic from 2-3.15pm at the palliative care department. I have to do some work on our Emergency Control Plan now in the last few minutes of the day before I go and meet my sister.

Priorities - monthly statistics (do tomorrow/ Thursday, when January is well and truly over); typing up notes from Technology group meeting last week and figuring out aims for our group this year; organising Endnote/Refworks training session(s) for people in our building for the end of Feb; organising 3-fold leaflets about Endnote X5 (and Pubmed) for our readers, copied with thanks from something created by Swedish colleagues; send my monthly report to my bosses; read a book on NLP and see if it's useful for work; plan the next stage of my Chartership/porfolio.

Career

I went to the International Careers Fair at the Exam Schools on the High Street on Saturday. I went to presentations from Google, two Oxford scientist-academics, the EU, and about OxAID. I'll recommend a few ideas to a friend of mine who is thinking about their first job and what they want to do. But what about me? Am I in the right job? What do I want to do?

Times are changing for me at the moment. Flux. Liminal stage. Liminality - I like the word but I'm finding the state hard to cope with.

Career change - why think about this when other things in my life are in flux? Well, what the hell. Change one thing, change 'em all....

To this end, I'm reading a Wolfenden report blog post on a recent Webinar on career stuff:

• Wolfenden report 'My first webinar... alternative careers' 15/01/12
• Link to the presentation
• Blog post: Non-Librarian jobs for LIS grads

I think this is a theme to which I'll return at some point soon...

Where are we?

And where are we going?

I worry that we don't have a mission statement, a clear statement of our goals and direction as a library service. I actually worry about this! I find it a problem because it affects me and my work: I need a focus, direction, aims, goals etc. Is our mission to provide library services to the NHS staff in our trust and to university members, help with information needs, help with research and excellence therein and thereof? I guess so.

To that end, when I give a presentation next week to a hospital and university department, I'm going to ask them how I can help. Can I provide a fortnightly search clinic service, sitting in a room with a laptop in the department and being available for all staff to come to? Can i start a blog to help nursing staff (or other groups?) keep up to date with the latest evidence and research in the field? What can I do?

I'm thinking increasingly about what reference management training we can provide here: Endnote, Refworks, Zotero/Mendeley/Colwiz.

I picked up three URLS this morning from a presentation about the 2011 Charleston Conference:

1. A reminder about Vivo - "facebook for scientists"
2. Total Impact - about how research has an impact on Twitter etc, not just in terms of H index etc.
3. Microsoft Academic Search - fun. found people I know, might be a useful search tool.

All of these thoughts and musings on a day when our printing, copying and scanning machines are out of action in the libraries. It is intensely embarrassing when they malfunction, because we have no local control over them, except for turning them on and off. Basic library stuff = photocopying, printing. What else though? What does the future hold for us?

A new year

It's now 2012. 5 days into 2012 in fact. I was impressed by Sarah Wolfenden's blog post reflecting on her 2011 - http://thewolfendenreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/reflections-on-year-gone-past-2011.html - and felt guilty that I hadn't done the same. It's good to stop and reflect at this time of year.

I've now been in my management/ outreach librarian post for 9 months. I feel a lot more confident with the two library assistants that I manage; I've nearly completed the Introduction to Management certificate; I've helped to appoint a new member of staff and am now planning his training as part of his induction. I feel more confident about my job. I think I know what I'm supposed to be doing and how to keep busy, promoting our services, conducting 1-1 training sessions as part of my outreach duty, maintaining high standards all round.

This year's Staff Development Reviews/ Annual Reviews will be challenging for me, as I didn't enjoy them last year and will be holding the meetings on my own with the two members of staff this year, looking at what (SMART!) objectives to set them for 2012-3. And what objectives for myself? Pass the Introductory Certificate in management and then start compiling my portfolio and other documents for my chartership; work hard at being the best manager and librarian that I can be; enjoy it! I could do with being able to enjoy my work for a while, given that I have other things going on in my life this year, and settle into my role here. I'm not saying that I want to get lazy, complacent, or bored: just enjoy what I'm doing and feel comfortable.

I have Endnote/Refworks/Zotero training to organise (can I ask someone else to deliver it in our training room? When?), and I would like to attend a Wiser session on Reference Management to see how others teach people about the programmes. I know what I do, and how I prefer to teach things, but I'd like to see how other Bodleian staff members do their stuff.

I also would like to visit some more libraries this year. Oxford, London, anywhere.

Happy 2012.