Another busy month full of bits and bobs:
1. I had a meeting with my Chartership mentee who is progressing extremely well. I enjoy mentoring as it keeps me on my toes with regards to thinking about issues beyond my workplace and it gives me a way to give something back to the profession.
2. I helped to staff an e-books promotion stand at work. We were hoping to catch people who had not yet discovered our e-books or those who were a little hesitant about using e-formats. We had a steady trickle of people drop by the stand and it was pleasing to see that most of the students had at least tried an e-book once and there were many keen to discover more about our collection.
3. Inducting new students to the Library - the courses I look after have two intakes per academic year. I'll have 2 cohorts of BSc, Foundation Degree, CPD and Master students every academic year. This means that induction happens all year round and just when you think things are calming down, in comes another group.
It's all good fun though and means that I get to try out induction activities and not have to wait a whole year to tweak it or try something else.
4. Learning not to assume - I had a request from a member of academic staff who wanted advice on "advanced search strategies". We made a time to meet, talked about the topic they were intending to search for and what resources they had used so far. Now when someone said 'advanced search strategies' I assumed (quite wrongly as it turns out) that they wanted truncation, snowballing, search filters and subject headings galore... How wrong I was. It became obvious that advanced searching was simply using the Boolean operator - AND. On reflection this was what they perceived to be advanced searching (and for them it was) but it wasn't what I thought it should be. Still their expectations were met even if it meant I couldn't flex my searching muscles as much as I wanted to.
5. Running tours for prospective students on Visit Day. This is an important and yet infrequent part of my role. Several times a year the University holds Open Days (for those thinking of applying to the institution) and Visit Days (they've applied but aren't sure whether the institution is their 1st or 2nd choice). Library tours are on offer at these events and the take up is good. The tours are devised to promote the library and therefore the institution. We run short tours of key parts of the library and mention lots of statistics about the number of computers, books and journals we have. These tours cater for prospective students and their parents. It is my observation that the parents get more out of it than the students do - why? Well there are still a lot of parents out there who didn't go to University (this Sept will see us cater for those born in 1994) and they enjoy seeing inside institutions that were once, for whatever reason, seen as not for them. Their child might also be the first in the family to attend University so they'll be interested to see where they are going and what they'll be doing when away from home. So it's often the parents who ask all the questions.
6. Professional development activities - I've arranged a visit to the College of Occupational Therapists to see the library and find out about their services. Many of the students I look after can apply for membership of the organisation and I wanted to ensure I knew enough about them to promote their collections to our students especially those doing their dissertation. I'm also waiting to book a place at my first ever TeachMeet - I'm too chicken to present but maybe next time. I'll blog about these events later in the Summer.
8. Annual leave - yep - there won't be any posts for a while as I'm on leave and after that I will be busy with inductions. So Happy Easter and I'll be back in May.
Friday 30 March 2012
Tuesday 27 March 2012
The one-to-one...
So far this academic year I have delivered 105 one-to-one appointments. This is a record number for me and it's not even Easter yet! I thought I'd offer some of my observations on what's involved in running a one-to-one search support appointment.
The one-to-ones I run for students and staff tend to range from being 10 minutes to 1 hour long. It could be on anything - library catalogue, databases, finding the full-text, creating a search strategy, referencing, how to record a search... or all of these. The student/staff member could be a novice or good searcher - they just want to learn that little bit more or have a refresher.The aim is to help/coach them to carry out a search, not to do the search for them - it's their degree and it needs to be their work.
Before the event:
1. If the person emails or telephones to arrange a date - make sure you ask them what course/what module they are studying/what assignment they have been tasked with.
2. Ask what it is they want your help with - people rarely ask for what they want and a quick conversation should elicit the aim of their visit or allow you to direct them to another more appropriate source of support. I quite like being confronted with a topic/query that I'm not sure how to solve as it's good for the little grey brain cells to be tested but the student's needs come first and I like to be prepared with something on their topic when they arrive - even if I've just peeked in a few databases to see what's out there/looked up the condition etc they are searching for.
3. Do you have a room/space/computer to work with?
The event:
1. Ask what it is they want your help with? Yep, ask again. Don't jump in with advice, let them take the lead with their questions.
2. Don't take over. Let them use the computer/do the clicking. If you have to demonstrate things, talk them through it and explain what you are doing.
3. Answer their questions, not the questions you think they should be asking.
4. Summarise at the end - check you've covered what they wanted.
5. Do you need to give them handouts/guides for extra support when they are searching on their own later?
6. Remind them that they can contact you again - email/phone or another one-to-one appointment if appropriate.
After the event:
1. Keep statistics on how many one-to-ones you have carried out - it helps you to keep track of your workload because one-to-ones can be time consuming.
2. Keep a note of who you have seen - what course they were on and the general details such as search topic/advice given. This might seem onerous but I find that these students will pop back for additional bits and pieces of advice later on in their search - it's much easier to remind yourself of who they are and what it was they were looking for so you can help them quickly.
3. Reflect on what you did, why you did it and what you might do differently in the future. For instance I have run one-to-ones where students have wanted to bring their husband 'because he helps me use the computer at home', son 'because he types up my essay' and boyfriend 'because he'll get lonely sitting outside'. At first I thought it a little odd but on reflection if that's the way they learn/study and it works for them - I'm ok with it. Obviously the one who said he never realised 'how clever librarians were' was my favourite!
The best bit of a one-to-one is when you see the penny drop/the fog clear. It could be 20 minutes through, 59 minutes through or 3 minutes in. We all have different ways of learning and although people attend library workshops/lectures as part of their module it might be that a short one-to-one meeting consolidates all that person's previous learning.
The one-to-ones I run for students and staff tend to range from being 10 minutes to 1 hour long. It could be on anything - library catalogue, databases, finding the full-text, creating a search strategy, referencing, how to record a search... or all of these. The student/staff member could be a novice or good searcher - they just want to learn that little bit more or have a refresher.The aim is to help/coach them to carry out a search, not to do the search for them - it's their degree and it needs to be their work.
Before the event:
1. If the person emails or telephones to arrange a date - make sure you ask them what course/what module they are studying/what assignment they have been tasked with.
2. Ask what it is they want your help with - people rarely ask for what they want and a quick conversation should elicit the aim of their visit or allow you to direct them to another more appropriate source of support. I quite like being confronted with a topic/query that I'm not sure how to solve as it's good for the little grey brain cells to be tested but the student's needs come first and I like to be prepared with something on their topic when they arrive - even if I've just peeked in a few databases to see what's out there/looked up the condition etc they are searching for.
3. Do you have a room/space/computer to work with?
The event:
1. Ask what it is they want your help with? Yep, ask again. Don't jump in with advice, let them take the lead with their questions.
2. Don't take over. Let them use the computer/do the clicking. If you have to demonstrate things, talk them through it and explain what you are doing.
3. Answer their questions, not the questions you think they should be asking.
4. Summarise at the end - check you've covered what they wanted.
5. Do you need to give them handouts/guides for extra support when they are searching on their own later?
6. Remind them that they can contact you again - email/phone or another one-to-one appointment if appropriate.
After the event:
1. Keep statistics on how many one-to-ones you have carried out - it helps you to keep track of your workload because one-to-ones can be time consuming.
2. Keep a note of who you have seen - what course they were on and the general details such as search topic/advice given. This might seem onerous but I find that these students will pop back for additional bits and pieces of advice later on in their search - it's much easier to remind yourself of who they are and what it was they were looking for so you can help them quickly.
3. Reflect on what you did, why you did it and what you might do differently in the future. For instance I have run one-to-ones where students have wanted to bring their husband 'because he helps me use the computer at home', son 'because he types up my essay' and boyfriend 'because he'll get lonely sitting outside'. At first I thought it a little odd but on reflection if that's the way they learn/study and it works for them - I'm ok with it. Obviously the one who said he never realised 'how clever librarians were' was my favourite!
The best bit of a one-to-one is when you see the penny drop/the fog clear. It could be 20 minutes through, 59 minutes through or 3 minutes in. We all have different ways of learning and although people attend library workshops/lectures as part of their module it might be that a short one-to-one meeting consolidates all that person's previous learning.
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