Things I've been up to this month...

Workshops:

Finally the demand for workshops has lessened for the first time this term. However I did run a couple of drop-in sessions for 3rd year dissertation students. I've tweaked the content of these one-to-one meetings since attending a course at CILIP last year. I've now got a set of questions that I run through with the students when they turn up. I quiz them on what their topic is really about, what searching they've done so far, what databases they have used, why they haven't searched using some other tools and why they chose to search like that etc. This has helped to engage them a little more and helped them to realise that I'm not going to do the search for them. Verbal feedback has been positive and the numbers dropping by remains good - it seems that I can promote these sessions on the VLE but then word-of-mouth takes over in terms of advertising.

Many meetings this month:

Disabled services group, programme management committees, team meetings, Quality committee and Faculty Board. Some of these meetings are tedious but you always gain a small nugget of exceedingly useful information so it's worth sitting through everything. The most informative meeting was our team meeting about blended learning where we looked at what it is and how we might engage more with it in the Library. We shared some of the audio PowerPoints/screencasts that we have developed for our subjects.

Meeting people:

I've met a couple of new members of library staff and told them about the work that I do on daily basis.
I've had two student tutorials - one for a dissertation and one for a PhD student. It never ceases to amaze me how little some PhD students know about searching - not the one I met this week as they were very clued up and just needed a few pointers - it just goes to show that you should never assume that someone studying a 'higher' degree knows how to search.
I've been involved in a focus group for the Investors in People quality mark that the Uni is applying for. A diplomatic but frank discussion of management styles etc was had.

Appraisal:

I like appraisals. I find it makes me reflect on what on earth I have been doing all year and it gives me a chance to get some training plans/events in to the diary. I struggled with the question about 'where do you see your career going in the next 5 years' because I'm actually quite happy where I am. I've asked to gain some sort of credit/certificate for all the teaching that I do as this is something that's missing from my portfolio.

Extra-curricular:

I've managed to rack up 4 Christmas parties at work so all in all a successful and sociable month.