Reviving the CILIP in Kent branch and presenting to other librarians

A few of us were interested in reviving the local branch and also in sharing new initiatives/recent work with other Kent librarians. To get the ball rolling a Lightning Talks events was organised which also included a chat about how best to start up CILIP in Kent again. My write up of the event can be seen on the CILIP South East branch web page.

I can't hear you...

A little summary of my attendance at a voice coaching taster workshop:

The course was offered via our in-house Staff Development team and it was of interest to me because my voice is 'little' - I'm not naturally loud and booming. Sometimes my voice whispers away in the background trying to be heard over the din made by 200 students in the lecture theatre and I hoped to develop some techniques to help me project my voice. During the year I deliver a number of talks in an old ballroom-type space at a partner institution where I have to stand on stage and talk to 50 people without the aid of a microphone in a two storey high space - it was this session I had in mind when I decided I needed to attend this course.

 

The first activity was to lay on the floor and practise breathing from the belly not the shoulders. This is an activity much-practised by actors. We had to feel our breath going in and out of our bodies to get in tune with how our body relaxes when we breathe in this way. The intention of breathing from the diaphragm is to calm yourself and avoid higher breathing in the chest which tenses you up and can make your voice sound stressed.

The only way I can think to describe activity two is as 'wiggling and jiggling' our bodies. We started on all fours (!) to stretch out our backs then gradually began to stand up and continued by stretching our arms and rib cage. This was still about feeling the breath go in and out of our bodies although heaven knows what the people in the meeting room opposite thought we were up to. We also practised a spine roll and whilst our heads were dangling by our knees we had to shake our shoulders side to side, let our arms swing loose and babble - I kid you not.  Still, in for a penny, in for a pound - I was certainly beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone but not in a scary way as we did all these activities as a group.

 

Babbling was quite appropriate for me as one of the other presenting quirks that happens to me at the start of term is that I often babble some fluffed words for the first few talks of the year. I think I go a bit rusty over the summer and then can't articulate the words as well as I'd like to (after the third/forth talk this disappears and I'm ad-libbing away). We spent a while doing some humming, tongue twisters, stretching our mouth/jaw/face and talking with our thumb in our mouth. Thankfully for me we weren't asked to sing and all the talking out loud/humming stuff was done as a group so we were all idiots together. We did a lot of saying 'ahh' as if we were in the dentist's chair and then attempting to project the sound across the room. All this was about opening up our mouths to get our tongues around the words and to give the sound a wider hole to escape from.

Then it was time for some Shakespeare. The breath is the start of your communication (words/speech). Taking a breath means you have time to pause and connect with your space and audience. A good tip for public speaking be it meetings or lectures is to think 'new thought / new breath'. To practise this we read a section from A Midsummer's Night Dream - reading aloud then taking a breath at each point of punctuation. It's quite difficult but it works. Taking a breath keeps your audience engaged as they are subconsciously thinking - they are about to breathe, there must be more talking to come, therefore I must keep listening…

The final set of activities involved the group splitting in two and standing opposite each other like tram lines. We picked a partner and had to talk to them and then every few minutes we had to step further away from each other and keep projecting our voices to our partner. The technique I picked up from this segment was the most valuable to me. As my voice is fairly little I should stop trying to talk over noise and instead imagine I am bouncing my words along the floor to my intended audience. Hopefully this technique will help me conquer the battle of trying to project my voice the next time I’m in a lecture theatre and the microphone ceases to work.

It was a challenging course in terms of getting over the embarrassment of being on all fours with your colleagues (not something I'm recommending for our next staff meeting although it was an effective icebreaker). In future I shall be attempting to bounce my voice of the floor so that it projects to my audience and I might (behind closed doors) try warming up to make sure I can articulate my words clearly for the first talks of the year.

That 'quiet' time of year..

Lots of non-librarians ask me if I'm away on holiday for the whole month of August (I wish!) and there are lots of people, librarians included, in my own organisation that say 'now it's June and the students have gone it will be peaceful'. Hmmn now the thing is the students I look after are here until the end of July and back in the first week of September. I can't remember the last time it was 'quiet'. I might get some respite from student tutorials and meetings in August but I'll be busy preparing for the new students arriving in September and answering emails from students keen to start their dissertation.

I thought I'd start making a list of all the summer jobs I need to do between now and the 1st September. I do this every year to keep me on track with all my tasks as there are some that I know won't get a look in during term-time. I think of my 'Summer Jobs 2013' list as a living document. I add things, add more things, add deadlines/names/notes, change deadlines and delete things once I've completed them. By the end of August I expect to see one or two things left on the list (previous experience tells me that there will always be things added at the last minute plus a few boring tasks will hang on in there in the hope that they will be achieved - this year I expect this will be the action to tidy my email folders).

So at this moment in time my list looks like this...

Yes, a simple word document. I don't want it in Evernote, GoogleDocs etc because I don't want to be reminded of it when I'm at home.

I'm a list person and so my Summer Jobs list will spawn lists for almost each action on it - but over the years this tactic has worked for me so I'll be sticking to it for the foreseeable future. So in 12 weeks time I'll let you know what's left on this list!

LILAC conference - 25th-27th March 2013

On 25^th-27^th March I attended the LILAC (Librarian Information Literacy Annual Conference) conference in Manchester. An enormous number of events were on offer and it was an exciting, informative and exhausting three days.

I’ve come back to work brimming with ideas that I can use to improve my information literacy sessions. The three events that made the most impression were Transfrom your training the sequel: return of the interactive IL trainers by Emily Shields, Rosie Jones and Karen Peters; the Teach Meet and Alan Carbery’s Arming the teacher librarian: using experiential learning and reflective practice to guide pedagogy.

As well as the listening; thinking; reflecting and participating that went on during the daytime there were also ample opportunities to socialise and network.

Gorton Monastery was the venue for the conference dinner – a stunning interior, if a tad chilly. The networking event was held at the John Rylands Library, a huge Gothic building, built with the proceeds of a textiles business and very archives/special collections in tone. I took a liking to the signs displayed next to their collections – I think they helped to set the tone and expectations about the building and purpose of the collections. Whilst networking I met some people I had previously worked with and put faces to names I’m always seeing on mailing lists.

 

 

Since being back at work I’ve compiled a short action plan to make sure I apply all the knowledge I gained at LILAC. Here are a couple of my information literacy ‘resolutions’.

The Tidy Librarian’s LILAC Action Plan

A) Improve my presentation images

·         Take some useful images with my own camera for use in my presentations.

·         Try the Public Domain Image site which I saw referenced on many slides.

B) Information literacy sessions

·         Try using PollEv for online voting.

·         Use the jigsaw method with Foundation Degree students.

·         Use the IL trainers' activity called ‘choose a picture that represents…your feelings about searching’ with the Research group.

·         Question my current lesson plans – are they inclusive of trans/digital literacy?

·         Suggest a researcher information literacy strategy at work and use this to market our offer to PhD students, the research centres and research active staff.

C) Personal Professional Development

·         Begin to build a teaching portfolio using a teaching journal as recommended in Alan's workshop.

D) Building my professional reputation in my organisation

·         Keep blogging and tweeting.

·         I need to get more items in Faculty newsletters; integrate to a greater extent with the research teams, muscle-in on staff development days. I shall attempt to promote information literacy (or whatever we want to call it) better at learning and teaching committees.

E) Building my professional reputation in the library world

·         I should and would like to present something at a future LILAC event. I have previously been reluctant to realise that what I do in my day-to-day work does have value and is of interest to other people in the library world. There were a couple of sessions at LILAC where I sat back and thought ‘I do that already’. However I think to present at a conference you need to ground that work in theory.

Getting a belated introduction to learning and teaching

Over the last few months I have been attending a workshop series at my institution that consisted of five discussion-based workshops each focusing on a particular learning and teaching theme. The themes were planning a session; giving a lecture; leading a seminar; providing feedback to students and observation of teaching.

Despite being involved in delivering information literacy sessions for almost a decade my theory base of learning and teaching is limited.  When studying for my Masters in Library and Information Studies there was no acknowledgement that we would go on to ‘teach’ and hence no formal training in designing and delivering instruction was included in the course. All my teaching knowledge was learnt on the job (and sometimes on the spot!) followed by attempts to improve that teaching through continuous, usually informal, personal reflection.

I do not feel that my institution adopts a supportive role in encouraging all those involved in learning and teaching to improve their ‘classroom’ skills. There seems to be a reluctance to accept that some non-Academic staff have a substantial role and influence in the learning and teaching of students and that those staff would like to improve skills that the institution deems are outside the scope of their staff category. An obvious course to participate in to improve my knowledge is the PgC in Learning and Teaching but at my workplace this is validated for Academic staff only.  Initially I was a reluctant participant at the practical workshop sessions because they were aimed at those new to teaching in Higher Education and I felt I had more practical experience to work with. The course did not provide a qualification and this is something I have long strived for on my CV.

However, despite my reservations, I did ascertain a lot about learning and teaching as well as validating knowledge I already have.  Since the end of the course I have reflected on the knowledge acquired and have started to think about how to apply it to my day-to-day work.

What did I learn?

 
Looking back at my notes I think there are four key aspects of information that I can take from the sessions.
 

1. A good teacher keeps trying to improve what they do.

All the informal personal reflection I have carried out over the years was along the right lines. Whenever I get back from a session I scribble down notes for the next run through of the session – what didn’t work/ideas for next time or other sessions – or I write formal notes in response to student evaluation form comments. This activity means I’m always trying to move things on/get things right for myself and the students. I need to continue this method but endeavour to record more of these thoughts than I currently do.

2. Turn first year dependency into final year independence.

A good teacher encourages their students to be independent learners. A good teacher doesn’t get final year students pestering them about reading a draft or how to find a book – they should have grappled with this; got it under their belt and be able to do this on their own. This is a tough challenge for me as I get limited time with students and have to work hard over a number of years to achieve this independence from a distance. It is possible but maybe I need to improve my coaching skills for those students who attend one-to-ones and assess my strategies for group work – can they go away without needing my specific support?

3. Develop mindfulness in the learning and teaching setting.

It turns out that I am mindful when in the classroom but I didn’t know that’s what it was!

Mindfulness – being aware of/paying close attention to your responsibilities – such as thinking and asking:

• Can they hear me?
• Did they understand that last point?
• Checking for puzzled faces in the audience
• Putting yourself in their shoes
• Does the session ‘feel’ like it’s going well?
• Is it going badly? Can you turn it around?

This is something to keep doing in the classroom. I think the key teaching skill I need to take away is to pick up on those puzzled faces and ask them what they need to make them unpuzzled.

4. Lesson plans – always make one.

I usually but admittedly not always create a lesson plan. I started to make them in my current role because it was expected and as the librarians team-teach sessions from time to time it is a good way to map everything out for the other person.

 

Making a lesson plan forces you to think about what you want the students to be able to do, both in and after the session (a step towards independence). It moves you on to think about how you are going to get them to learn that information – talk/activity/reading – and how it fits with their assignment i.e. constructive alignment.

… and number 5 – read up about Carl Rogers; go back and refresh my memory about learning styles and read the odd book about being a lecturer HE...

 What did I learn? That I’ve picked up a lot on the job; that I have surface learning for some of the above and can move on to deeper learning by reading some trusty tomes and that I’ll always be working at my learning and teaching if I want to be a ‘good’ teacher. I think ‘keep going but take it up a notch’ sums up my next move.

 

What did I enjoy?
 

I enjoyed being back in the classroom as a student rather than standing at the front. It was surreal after ten years of being on the ‘other side’. I had to dust off my note taking skills and remember to write up the session each week which has always been my tried and tested way of absorbing the knowledge.

 

One of the tasks we were set was to watch an experienced Higher Education practitioner deliver a lecture. I found it an enlightening experience but I don’t feel confident enough to discuss my criticisms/praise with the lecturer – there were lots of things I thought were good teaching and learning strategies but a couple of areas where I thought things didn’t quite work out but we all have our own styles.

 
Meeting colleagues on the course who were embarking on their first teaching assignments was interesting. They were worried about working with groups of thirty students whereas I work with multiple groups of thirty and routinely deliver lectures for 200 students. They too had similar concerns in terms of not having had any formal teacher training. It was a supportive group who were quite honest and self-critical in their contribution to the discussions. And we were all committed to getting it right.

 

What worked well?

I had thought the session on providing feedback to students after an assessment would be least relevant to me but I was surprised by how engaging and useful it was.  I’m not involved in deciding or designing assessments instead I have to find out what the assessment is; work out what the students need to know in order for them to tackle the assessment and then design my teaching session to facilitate that learning.

 
Unexpectedly I picked up ideas about why students want feedback; what type of feedback they want; delivering negative feedback and getting them to write their own feedback for themselves or their peers. One tactic I might use more of in future is to get them to mark their own work or their classmate’s work. This self-assessment should encourage them to model what their tutor does so they understand the assessment criteria and what they should be aiming for in their work. This has worked well with keyword exercises in some of my sessions – they have to swap papers and assess the search words other person has thought of. By enhancing this and getting them to check the other person’s work against a checklist of core search skills I hope to get them to see what they should be looking for when searching.

 

What, if anything, went wrong?

I found it hard to contribute to some of the discussions partly because I am shy in that environment until I trust the group but also because I felt unfamiliar with some of the topics. As discussions progressed, particularly in the week about leading a seminar, I reflected on how my role in learning and teaching is different from the academic tutor’s role – for example I am parachuted in to timetable slots and often see students once whereas a tutor has more time to build a lasting rapport and learn names. I struggled to make a link between my work and the seminar theme because of the nature of the sessions I deliver - although I get the seminar slot I rarely deliver a traditional ‘seminar’. I ended up picking up things about asking students questions rather than facilitating discussions.

  

What would I change?

If I did this course again I would push myself to contribute more to the discussions even if it was to say that I was finding it hard to relate the topic to my day-to-day work.

 
 

What (potential) impact could this have in my workplace?

 

I have picked up lots of tips about learning and teaching and pointers about what to read and what skills to develop in the future. It has certainly encouraged me to reflect on my skills and the way I work. As I reflect on the notes I took I am buzzing with ideas for workshops which I intend to investigate further. I hope by looking at my sessions with a fresh and more informed perspective that I can improve the learning of my students so that their ability to search independently and more confidently increases. We are moving to a resource discovery tool soon and this gives me the opportunity to revamp my information literacy sessions and make them less about database instruction and more like ‘seminars’.

  

What can I practically apply from the experience I’ve had?

As the workshops progressed I noted down a number of things to investigate or to try in future workshops:

 

• Try to reduce the number of PowerPoint slides in my presentations – can I turn any of the text in to images/diagrams/infographics?

• Look at the generic library induction – do we have constructive alignment issues by trying a one size fits all approach?

• Try negotiating some ground rules in the year one lecture. As it’s the first lecture the students attend, I should try saying what the nature/purpose of a lecture is – schools do not lecture students so this is an alien concept.

• If students are utilising their phones in lectures/sessions for socialising – I can re-engage their concentration by using the phone as part of the session. For example, I could ask them to look up a phrase or how many articles are retrieved on a search for ‘health’?  Maybe I could get them to tweet/email in what they want to know about the resources or get them to check whether we have a particular book in the library and what the classmark is.

• Make the seminar a trial run for the assignment – make it significant/relevant. I do this but maybe I don’t make it obvious to the students.

• If we are mindful of our classroom we are always on the lookout for ‘assessment’ or students’ comprehension of what we are saying – we look for puzzled faces; ask if they have any questions or would like us to repeat anything. I want to test their knowledge by getting them to write down the clearest/muddiest ideas they have taken from my lecture/seminar. I could do this at the beginning or end of the session but must make sure I clear up the muddy ideas asap. Something like this might work best if I see the students for a couple of sessions.

I have offered to participate in a ‘safe’ teaching observation exercise which is being run by the workshop leader. The idea is to run a micro-teaching session that will be observed by others in the workshop group. Getting feedback on my teaching skills in this way is both terrifying and exciting. I’ll report back on the experience.

Course write up - Web of Knowledge Update Training workshop Nov 2012

This update session focussed on features and enhancements recently applied and also looked at forthcoming features. The event was a mixture of presentations and hands-on practical searching.

I was interested in attending this event because I do not use WoK frequently and needed to know more about it before promoting it further within the Faculty and to the PhD students.

The agenda for the event covered the following topics.

Search engine and navigation enhancements

>> you can now use ‘left-hand truncation’. For example: *saccharide retrieves polysaccharide/sialylsaccharide/eligosaccharide.

Alerting enhancements

>>if you have a personal account for WoK you can now renew all your search and citation alerts simultaneously.

Author identification enhancements – improved author finder tool and ResearcherID now searchable across WoK

>> an updated Author Search option in the Web of Science guides you through a series of steps that are designed to disambiguate common author surnames. You type in a surname and initial; select the author’s research domain and then choose their organisation from the list. This search might be useful if you are looking up an author and you have some background information on them. As a warning, this search is only as good as the information you have available on the author and frankly is rather fiddly.

>> try the Author Search by looking for Stephen Hawking.

Cited reference enhancements

>> the Cited Reference links now display the full reference of the citing article – so it has more in common with the Cited by links in Google Scholar.

ResearcherID and ORCID integration

>>For me, this was the most interesting piece of information gained at the workshop. Researchers can set up a personal ResearcherID (basically a code that is unique to them; the code is attached to all their research output indexed in the WoK). This ResearcherID only works in WoK however a new ID option is gaining popularity – ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID).

ORCID is rapidly becoming the preferred ID option because it can be used across multiple database platforms rather than just WoK.  So if a researcher has an article indexed in WoK or Medline their ORCID will be displayed in both databases – allowing the researcher to get maximum exposure and for readers to follow ORCID links and see the researcher’s full output. ORCID allows researchers to attach their ID to their research output. See http://about.orcid.org/

Introduction to the new Data Citation Index

>>This is a new database in WoK – it provides a single point of access to research data from repositories across disciplines and around the world. Most of these repositories contain data sets such as statistics about ice and snow levels from The National Snow and Ice Data Centre. Essentially it offers access to sets of data which can be used in research. Most (but not all) of the repositories seem to be freely available so the Data Citation Index acts like a resource discovery tool.

>>Apparently there is no standard way to reference data sets so WoK provides a recommended way of citing the data.

In summary

There was a lot of jargon – taxonomic; supatax; DCI record; geospatial field….. this was a little tiring and not something that you could engage students with. The event was not particularly interactive – the group followed the presentation on their computers and then did a short worksheet. We sat in regimented rows and I only managed to speak to two other people! However, it was comforting to see that live demos can be problematic for everyone – search results looking different and resources on a go-slow.

I’m not convinced that undergraduate students would find this level of detail useful however there are some items that will be relevant to the PhD students  – I will be investigating the ORCID scheme further as this seems most relevant to the students I support.

Inductions: done and dusted

Inductions are done - well until April when I get a new cohort.

It has been exceptionally busy - busier than last year although I can't figure out why.

The last week included:

Two introductory talks for distance learning students who were visiting for their block placement. Always a treat to meet these students - not only are they lovely but I get to visit them at a 'Jane Austen' country house - the kind of place where you imagine taking a turn around the room and promenading in the garden for the afternoon!

A couple of student tutorials - squeezed in between this and that.

Three workshops on searching for evidence - I usually say that you can tell when a workshop is not going quite as planned (blank faces, confused faces etc) and I thought that was the case with all three of these workshops. However the students' comments at the end and on the evaluation sheets were all extremely positive. I think the session was forcing them to think about new search techniques and the strained faces were a sign of learning rather than not understanding.

A drop-in session for the final year students who are embarking on their dissertation - I had a queue form outside the door which I took as a compliment.

Wrote an article for the departmental newsletter about my work during the induction period - attempted to highlight all the non-tour type of induction work that goes on.

A lot of workshop planning for events looming in the coming weeks.

A couple of meetings in which I volunteered to run library update sessions at the next meeting. I vaguely remember saying something like "I'll do some stuff on copyright, linking to the VLE and e-Library troubleshooting". I have a feeling I may regret this next term when they only give me 5mins on the agenda.

Now that inductions are over I can focus on some workshop planning, book ordering and getting ready for next term. As a friend once said 'Academic librarians are for 3 years, not just the 1st semester'.

Inductions: going, going...

I'm in to the penulitmate week now - phew!

This week rattled by at the speed of sound.

1. Workshop on behalf of another colleague. Had a student who said she didn't 'do' university computers and proceeded to do the workshop using her iPad - how I marvelled (and fumed with jealousy) as I tried to get the mouse to work on my university computer.

2. Student tutorial - discussions about a set of articles and whether they were quantitative/qualitative/mixed methods.

3. The second workshop for my Foundation Degree students - refresher of last week; moving on to advanced searching and creating a search strategy for their assignment task.

4. A workshop for the Masters group - think I changed a few students' views about databases - they seemed to agree by the end that there are some full text articles there but you just have to click!

5. Staff tutorial on using reference management software for a project/keeping track of module reading lists.

6. A meeting about a project by three local universities - we're looking at student experience at one of our shared sites.

7. Lecture for new distance learning students who were here on their block placement - a bit wide-eyed and nervous but seemed happier as soon as I said all my slides would be on their VLE.

Next week is my last week of induction-type activities - I am looking forward to it - a lot.

Inductions: nearing the end

Nearly there - almost. Another busy week but there was some variety in terms of student groups.

The week began with a session for the new PhD recruits - the group spanned a range of subjects and specialist topics. Myself and a colleague attempted to engage them in conversation about the resources they already use, how they feel about literature searching and what sort of problems they have faced before when searching for literature. We wanted to gauge their confidence levels in terms of searching and - as we had guessed beforehand - there were some who seemed to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the fact that they might have to search for something and those who did it but didn't enjoy it. We tried to get them to share their favourite resources with each other and we've set up a wiki so they can continue to share as their researcher development course continues.

Mid-week I met some Foundation Degree students who - and obviously I'm making a sweeping general statement - always seem up for a laugh. No use for PhD type discussions with this group - they were desperate to know what a journal was. Their tutors and handbooks had all prattled on about journals and yet they had not actually shown them one, told them what it was or why it was useful. Once I had demystified journals we messed about putting search strategies together (they had to swap their keyword thoughts with the person next to them who had to try and think of more keywords on the same topic) and merrily clicked around on databases whilst working out what all the buttons did. This was their gentle starter workshop - next week I will whip them all into shape and get them started on their assignment.

I ended one day this week with a call from a publisher who wanted to ask about budgets and my selection criteria for online resources. I can't remember the exact details but my replies were along the lines of 'I do indeed have a policy I refer to when selecting new resources for the online collections but it all goes out the window when you tell me the cost of the resource'. Still they were very nice and got the feeling that they had heard that response a lot that day.

I managed to fit in three walking tours of our 4 storey building and another orientation activity complete with tour/worksheet/freebies. Plus a couple of student tutorials; writing my appraisal objectives for this academic year and planning some upcoming workshops.

I have endless emails tagged with little red flags but they'll sort themselves out at some point....

Inductions: technical hitches

Another week of inductions done and it was certainly eventful.

Day one was spent helping with a couple of orientation events for other subjects; advertising some drop-in sessions for dissertation students; organising workshops/rooms for more courses in the Autumn term and answering emails from my Chartership mentees. My main aim was to clear my inbox because I knew that on day two I would be unable to check my email.

And on to day two - in my diary I had written "busiest day of year!". What I had forgotten to do was to find a four leaf clover; dig out my lucky charm and cross my fingers (and toes).

First up was a lecture for two hundred students. On arriving at the lecture theatre (early, in order to test and set up) I found that the projector was not working and there was no spare bulb available. After a discussion with the tutor we decided it was best to cancel the lecture - no slides, no internet and no other room to move to made achieving the aim of troubleshooting database problems rather tricky. So it was time to operate the back up plan - meaning that at some point in the next few weeks I shall have to talk to each of the 10 groups involved individually.

Next was the same lecture but for the other 200 students in the year. Projector working - check; students - check; me - check; microphones - no; dimmed lighting - no. I spent 45 minutes almost shouting at students who were mostly sat in darkness except for the light emitted from my PowerPoint slides. A tricky morning.

Then the afternoon. Three groups of 50 for a database searching workshop - oh and no access to the databases because the e-Library was having a tantrum. Another back up plan was unleashed - I talked about databases and why we use them etc; showed them some screencasts of their key databases and got them to ask me any question they wanted to about the library. The time passed but it certainly didn't give them hands-on searching practise which was my main aim - their timetables are so tight that I can't scheduled more workshop so this may come back to bite us later in the term.

As you can see from the previous three paragraphs it was a trying day where I was thwarted by technical hitches and glitches. It proved to be a long day and one that I am still trying to erase from my memory.

Day three was much improved - a bit of planning for a workshop to be delivered to the new PhD students; a couple of meetings with colleagues and two more tours.

Day 4 was back to workshops again - same workshop delivered four times. Only one technical hitch involving a very slow database - think it was using a card catalogue to search for its journal articles.

Final day saw another lecture and many questions about e-resources. They students did a lot of furious scribbling so hopefully they took away some hints and tips for their assignments. One more orientation tour and a tour for one student who had missed their slot meant my legs were very tired by 5pm.

A long, busy week featuring some hiccups but I still had lots of students say thank you for the advice/support supplied.

So that's four weeks done - only another 4 weeks to go until things get a little calmer (fingers crossed xx).

Inductions: my oh my!

What a week. Busy, manic, busy and exhausting.

The week began by delivering a one hour lecture to the new first year students. They have started a two week academic skills module where I meet them three times. The lecture was about what is information, why do we use it and where can we find health and social care information? We talked about books, journals (because often they have not heard of them before) and databases. It was a full-house in the lecture theatre and miraculously everything went to plan - including the IT. We played a game to introduce Boolean and they were quite happy to shout out when I asked them questions. I had to deliver the lecture twice to cover all the students on the course so I was worn out by the end. I don't know what I did to deserve it but I spent the rest of the afternoon at a Quality meeting!

I ran seven orientation sessions (each lasting 1 hour) over 1.5 days. Good attendance and some of the tutors joined in with their students. Most of them engaged in full with the talk/tour and task but inevitably there were some who preferred to do as little as possible - I usually find they are the ones who get to the third year and still haven't used a database. Still you can't take a horse to water...

Mid-week I managed to deal with all the emails I had red-flagged and photocopy everything I needed for the rest of the week. It's difficult to keep up with the induction timetable yet alone do 'normal' work in addition. I also got lots of requests from students to meet for search tutorials - I've had to tell them all I'm fully booked for the next 3 weeks. I always send them guides and hints and tips to keep them going in the meantime but it feels bad to keep them waiting. Most of them understand that my time is currently consumed by meeting the new students but some get a little cranky.

The end of the week saw me deliver two more lectures for the third year dissertation students. They were furiously scribbling down everything I said about truncation and wildcard searches so I think I hit the nail on the head with content. I demonstrated reference management software and got a round of applause. We had the usual banter about why I didn't show it to them in the first year but they were keen to try it out for themselves. Just before I left for the weekend one of the students sent me a lovely email. He said that he had previously cross-searched lots of databases but had tried my suggestion of using one at a time and making full use of their limit/refining functions. Apparently it has changed his searching habits and he was surprised and relived to find he got lots of relevant, quality articles in his results list. Hearing things like this is greatly rewarding and is validation for all the time spent creating the presentation. I've saved the email in my special 'Comments' folder as such emails come in handy for appraisal/end of year review time.

It was a very tiring but rewarding week. From looking at the timetable next week looks to be more of the same - hopefully my voice will not diminish from croak to whisper....

Inductions: a pause in proceedings

This week was a little calmer - thankfully. It consisted of:

a) a meeting with one of my Chartership mentees.

b) two student tutorials where I offered assistance with developing keywords and accessing the full-text. One of the students had compiled a rather extensive and impressive Boolean connected concoction of keywords. It was a valiant attempt but they had ended up in a bit of a pickle. Once we had unpicked it all became much clearer and they are now finding articles here, there and everywhere.

c) a refresher workshop for a group of MSc students - they were bowled over by reference management software.

d) a meeting with a colleague to 'thought-shower' ideas for some workshops the team is putting together for a new cohort of PhD students. I always think we'll be discussing advanced search techniques and how to access various archives elsewhere but every year they want (and need) the same old talk covering logging-in/passwords/explaining what databases are for. One day they'll surprise me and ask about truncation or institutional repositories!

e) a couple of tours - more practise for next week. I'm almost on auto-pilot now.

f) I showed a librarian, from a nearby University, around my library. They were impressed with the facilities and we exchanged library-gossip.

g) one team meeting looking at last minute preparation for upcoming inductions and a discussion about the business plan for this year.

h) I had to return my journal renewals spreadsheet to our Periodicals librarian. I've basically signed up for another 12 months of expensive material that will probably go up in price without any real explanation and wipe out the budget by Christmas. But hey ho that's journals.

i) the last task of the week was to run a library orientation activity for library staff in order to refresh their memories for this year's inductions. They will be helping out with some of the scheduled activities.

A busy but relatively calm week. I've looked at the timetable for next week - my feet are hurting at the thought of all the upcoming walking tours.... see you on the other side.

Inductions: number crunching

The first week of 2012 inductions is done. Thankfully it went well. My biggest problem was the fluctuation in student numbers. With set numbers of students expected I had made sure multiple rooms were booked and plenty of staff were on hand to help. However, all but one of my groups experienced considerable numbers of no-shows (not for the library tour but no-shows for the course itself).

Tour number one was for social work students and the full quota arrived. As they were a Masters group I chose to run traditional walking tours. So we toured 3 groups of 15 students around the library simultaneously - this involved much choreography so that we didn't all crash into each other en route. When I was at library-school it didn't dawn on me that logistics would play such a huge part in my day but I always plan routes for each group so that they get the best experience.

The second group were registered nurses who were returning to specialise in being public health nurses. Alas instead of 60 we had 28 turn up. They are always my favourite group of students - the phrase "cracking bunch" doesn't do them justice. I couldn't run the tour I wanted to because they students hadn't been through their registration process and did not have computer logins/id cards etc so the tour couldn't be as hands on as I desired. Still we had lots of fun - a walking tour and a talk about the e-Library followed by an attack on my basket of freebies!

A group of Foundation Degree students were next up - they too were reduced in number, 28 instead of 40. They looked distinctly nervous about starting their course and using a university library but we had a good natter about all things library and they seemed to relax a little. I did an orientation activity for this group which consisted of a short and sweet presentation about the library service, followed by a mini-tour on one floor of the building and then they had a quick activity. The task consisted of picking one book from a little list, searching for it on the library catalogue to find its classmark, the number of copies and which floor it lives on etc. They then had to go off and retrieve the book from the shelf and tell me what the title of chapter 2 was. The team I work with rest their tours on the principle that we 'learn by doing' so we like to get the students to put their hands on a book and use it.

I was off-site delivering a lecture to a group of distance learners on Friday morning and returned to a phone message that my afternoon group had been reduced from 30 to 7 and then later in the afternoon only 2 turned up! Still the two that made the effort had a small, personal tour around the facilities and got plenty of freebies between them.

The first week is always a wake-up call. Summer hurtles by and suddenly your back in the saddle trying to remember all the things you're supposed to mention on the tour and fluffing words in presentations as you try to regain your patter. By the end of week two I'll be word perfect and probably on tour auto-pilot.

What did I do on my day off - I went on a tour! Yes, a tour of a newly opened museum/library in my home town. Still at least being on the tour was a change from running the tour.

My top tips for inductions:

Freebies - always have freebies. A free pen endears you to many a student! I am often reminded in workshops that I was the lady who sorted all their stationery needs in week one.

Rooms/staff - better to be over prepared. It's easier to take structure away rather than add it at short notice.

Flat shoes - if you're giving walking tours your feet will suffer so be nice to them!

Engage tutors - get them to join you on your tour (freebies work on them too) as the students can ask them questions about reading lists etc during the event and the tutor gets an annual update on all things library.

Time flies...

It has just dawned on me that I haven't posted in months. Apologies to my followers - the Tidy Librarian was busy going on holiday, watching the Olympics and madly planning for the start of the new term. In an attempt to rectify the lack of posts I thought I would blog over the next few weeks and talk about the process of introducing new students to the Library.

My new students start arriving in the first week of September and they keep on arriving until early October. This year could prove to be more of a challenge than previous years. Timetabling, herding large groups, flitting between lectures and workshops are always tricky for the librarian to negotiate in the few weeks at the start of term but this year I don't know what to expect from the students. Will they demand additional resources once they've handed over their fees? Nursing has moved to degree-only - will this generate a different type of student to the old diploma days? Only time will tell.

I'll post next week on how my first inductions have gone. Only 300 students to look after next week and that's what I call a gentle start to the new academic year! Eek!

Visit to College of Occupational Therapists’ (COT) Library

I probably shouldn’t admit this but when I got the job of Librarian for Health and Social Care I didn’t know what occupational therapy was! So for those that don’t know, this is what the COT claim occupational therapy is all about,

 “Accident, illness and ageing can turn everyday activities into challenges which reduce independence and undermine our sense of identity. Occupational therapists work with people of all ages and backgrounds who are affected by accident, physical and mental illness, disability or ageing. They provide help and training in daily activities, such as bathing, dressing, eating, gardening, working and learning; offer advice on adapting your home or workplace to meet your needs; assess and recommend equipment, such as mobility aids and help children with disabilities to build their confidence, enabling them to take part in school activities.”

(BAOT/COT, 2012, www.cot.org.uk).

The College of Occupational Therapists sets the professional and educational standards for the occupational therapy profession and represents the profession at national and international levels. Similar sorts of organisations in the health world include the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nurses.

Students can sign up to be members of COT and they often mention to me that, as well as our own resources, they use the library space and resources provided at the COT library. I thought it was high time I went and investigated the library for myself to see what services they offered and how they work with higher education students. I wanted to see the resources and facilities on offer and have a good rummage through their stock to see what they provided.

I met with the Librarian who gave me a tour of the library and showed me the members-only area of the COT website. The library is small but perfectly formed and filled with policy documents, archive material, hard-to-find journals and key textbooks – it is truly a specialist collection. I was greatly relieved to see that we already have lots of the key textbooks that I saw on their shelves.  Their website is used by both academic staff and students at the University. Not only do they have access to key journals via their COT membership but from the members section of the website they can access hot topic guides which list key journal articles, web resources and grey literature on a diverse range of issues such as driving, working with military personnel who have been injured and obsessive compulsive disorder.

For the latter part of the visit I chatted to some of the other library staff to find out what support they offered students.  The staff do not carry out literature searches for the students (after all it’s the student’s assignment and it should be all their own work) but help them to develop a search strategy and point them in the direction of their university librarian.

The COT library staff are hoping to run a networking day for higher education librarians that support OT students. In a moment of madness I offered to present something on the day – this means I have a new challenge to get my teeth into.

To embed or not to embed?

Each September and April the University accepts new cohorts of health students. They have a 2 week skills module at the very beginning of their course during which they have several library activities scheduled in their timetable. As part of the module content and for a formative assessment they have to carry out a search on a topic given to them by their tutor. They are expected to find a couple of books; journal articles and websites on their topic and explain how they found the sources. At present their timetable of library activities looks like this:

Week 1:

Monday – Core lecture about ‘Finding information’ – 1 hour (compulsory)

Tuesday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 1^st half of cohort)

Wednesday – Library workshop 1 ‘Library catalogue and introduction to e-Library’ – 1 hour (not compulsory but strongly encouraged by tutors to attend/shown on central timetable)

Thursday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 2^nd half of cohort)

Friday - Library workshop 2 ‘Finding health information resources’ – 1.5 hours (not compulsory but strongly encouraged by tutors to attend/shown on central timetable)

Week 2:

Wednesday: Repeats of library workshop 2

Friday: Repeats of library workshop 1 and 2

As expected, there is good attendance for the lecture and orientation activities. The optional workshops have ok levels of attendance but certainly do not cover the whole cohort (Total students numbers are Sept = 380 students and April = 110 / students are from a range of health areas and are mixed together).

Why are the workshops non-compulsory?  Several reasons, firstly (and quite wrongly) because there are not enough members of library staff to run the number of workshops required to accommodate the large cohorts in the two week module (plus lots of other students also start at the same time). Secondly, some students will ‘get’ searching from the off and will possibly have done a degree previously therefore both library and academic staff felt it was a little harsh to make them go right back to the beginning. 

Overall the timetable and activities work well. The workshops were started by a previous librarian and have been built on and modified over the years. I get the students to evaluate the library workshops and feedback has been consistently positive for many years – something I am very proud of.

However, it has emerged that the start date of the module has shifted to a quieter time of the term and with the changes to higher education it has meant a modest reduction in student numbers for 2012/13. This has made me think that I can offer compulsory workshops to all the new students rather than optional ones.  I’ve been musing over this for a while. I can offer compulsory library workshops but I can only provide workshops that are 1 hour long rather than the combined offer of 2.5 hours when they were non-compulsory workshops. I’m worried that this is wrong – am I better off embedding the short library workshops or persevering with the positively received 2.5 hour offer of non-compulsory workshops?  Here’s how I envisage the possible timetable of library activities:

Week 1:

Monday – Core lecture about ‘Finding information’ – 1 hour (compulsory)

Tuesday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 1^st half of cohort)

Thursday – Orientation to the library physical space – 1 hour (compulsory for 2^nd half of cohort)

Week 2:

Tuesday – Library workshop ‘Using the e-Library to find journal articles’ – 1 hour (can run 6 one hour workshops covering 10 personal tutor groups)

Thursday - Library workshop ‘Using the e-Library to find journal articles’ – 1 hour (can run 6 one hour workshops covering 10 personal tutor groups)

Pros	Comments
All students have equal access to workshop	Gives parity across the different pathways of the programme
No sign up required	No wikis, paper forms, extra notices needed
Less confusing for students/staff if workshops are timetabled centrally	All in place before start of term, academic staff can request large IT rooms.
Embedded into their timetable – no longer an add on	Eureka!
Content can be more closely tailored to their area of health	Can introduce them to their key resources rather than ones which cover a spectrum of health topics
Opportunity to meet the librarian on 3 possible occasions rather than one	I can’t do all the sessions but I can do most of them
Can rejig lecture and tour to accommodate some items that were previously delivered in the workshops	Revitalise lecture and tweak orientation activity
Cons
Time to cover e-library only in workshop whereas we used to cover evaluating websites and the catalogue	But can move these items to lecture and orientation activity. New VLE gives scope for video content.
Complicated timetabling	But probably worth the agony
Some current workshop evaluation forms say they ‘want more time to practice’	However they can log in at any time and keep practising using the worksheets/VLE information
Is second Thursday too late in module?	Needs discussion with academic staff

I think I may have made my decision simply by writing it all down for this post - it helps to see it set out.

New blog post in sight...

I've been busy with inductions and book orders for the last few weeks but I'll be blogging again next week. In fact I'll be doing a post about an information literacy issue I'm wrestling with. Hopefully people will give me some feedback via the blog that will help me make a decision. In the meantime have a look at A Cat in the Library  who has just embarked on cpd23 Things and is hoping to ramp up their blog viewing statistics.

Things I have been up to this month....

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.