Thing 10 – how I became a librarian

When I finished my first degree in 1985, I thought I would probably become a librarian.  I remember looking at the various postgraduate courses on offer, but most colleges seemed to expect a year’s experience before they would give you a place and anyway, I had had enough of studying for a while.  So I put the librarian idea to the back of my mind and, quite by accident, became a bookseller instead.  A temporary job lead to a permanent fulltime job and eventually 11 years as a Waterstone’s manager.  And I loved it – well, mostly.  I loved the books and the people (colleagues and customers – well, mostly) and I also enjoyed the financial aspect.  I discovered a very competitive streak that I suppose I hadn’t been aware of before.  I loved my branch to beat targets and if we beat them by more than any other branch, even better. 

Why did I leave bookselling and return to plan A?  The short answer is that Waterstone’s changed.  Managers were still held accountable for their branch’s performance, but we no longer had any real control.  Most of the books were ordered by head office and we were told what had to go in the window, what was in the bestsellers section (no more local footballer biographies), even which book had to go on which table.  I also had a regional manager who was a complete moron – rumour had it, he had never even read a book.  So, I waited for the annual performance bonus to be paid out and plotted my escape.

I started a Masters in Information and Library Management at Northumbria University on my 40^th birthday and loved every minute!  I enjoyed being a student so much more than I had done first time around and I was better at it too.  I knew I couldn’t stay up all night to finish an essay, so I planned my time better and made more use of the library and other facilities.  Having worked in the increasingly aggressive retail world for years, it was great to be in a more supportive environment.

I have been lucky to work in very different libraries, especially considering I never did have that year’s experience before I started the course.  I worked in my local public library while I was finishing my Masters.  Like most library assistants, I did a bit of everything – my favourite job was probably helping with school holiday craft activities, which involved distributing large quantities of multicoloured glitter around the library, the kids and myself!  My least favourite was probably washing the picture books.

On finishing my course, I left the glitter behind to work as a senior library assistant in a university library.  I was involved in several projects and learned a lot, but was happy to move on to my current job after 16 months.  I have now worked as an NHS librarian for over 5 years.  I would never have imagined doing this all those years ago when I first considered being a librarian.  It might seem a world away from being a bookshop manager, but it is still about the books (and information in other formats) and the people.

Thing 4

No one said you had to do things in any order!

I like Google reader a lot.  I can now follow CPD23 without all the hassle of continually having to sign up for “quota time”.  I’ve also added Shannon’s CPD23 single feed, so I’ve been having a look at everyone else’s comments this morning.  I love the fact that we’re all writing about different things and it makes me feel not so bad that I’m a bit behind the programme.  We had a librarians’ meeting last week, so I said that I would demonstrate Google reader and we could discuss how to share it with some of our users.  I’m sure all our busy healthcare professionals who are trying to keep up-to-date would find it very useful too.  Unfortunately, the PC in our meeting room only had IE6 and Google reader didn’t work at all!

I’ve also joined Twitter and seem to have collected a couple of followers already, which only makes me feel guilty as I haven’t had much to say.

Thing 6

One thing that I find very frustrating is when technology, instead of enabling learning, just gets in the way.  A very good example is my Trust’s use of e-learning.  Every employee has to be up-to-date with mandatory training – moving and handling, fire, infection control, equality and diversity etc.  Arranging for thousands of people to leave their wards, offices and departments to attend face-to-face training was an enormous task both organisationally and financially, so someone had the bright idea of covering a lot of this stuff with e-learning.  The Trust potentially saves lots of money and meets all the targets.  However, using the e-learning system is so complicated, that is completely beyond the IT skills of many employees and the technical specifications of the software are so exacting, that hardly any of the PCs can even run the modules!  I tried to do my information governance e-learning, but the version of Flash on the PC I was using was too new, so I had to phone IT and ask them to reinstall the old version and by the time they had finished, it was time to go home and I still hadn’t completed the training.  This is being repeated throughout the Trust, wasting an astronomical amount of time, driving everyone mad and not ticking those boxes that the Trust needs to tick.  I have some experience of designing e-learning (and an NVQ Level 4!), so I know that one of the most important starting points is to make it accessible for everyone.  If you have to do three tutorials about how to use the e-learning before you can even start learning anything, it has failed.

This might not seem relevant to Thing 6, but it provides a bit of background to why I am so far behind with CPD23.  I looked at the online networks and considered which ones I should join.  We are not allowed to say who we work for on any social media site – possibly on any website at all – so Linkedin didn’t look viable.  I initially rejected Facebook because of the privacy policy and my perception of how people use Facebook.  However, I discussed this with my colleagues and reminded myself why I’m doing CPD23.  It’s not primarily about what I want to do; it’s to explore the different options for our library service to have an internet – not just intranet – presence and to enable us to communicate with our users in the way that they communicate with each other.  My aim was to join up as an individual in order to investigate what we could do as a library.  So, I decided I would join Facebook after all……only to find that it is completely banned by the Trust.  I can look at Twitter “for work purposes” and for a limited period, I can access my own blog for 60 minutes a day in 10 minute chunks, but Facebook is totally banned.

I have signed up for LISNPN and intend to join Librarians as Teachers too.  Oh, and I have a Twitter account @JennyR23, so I am slowly progressing.  However, to go back to my rant at the start, I don’t think I have learned much so far apart from how many barriers there are.

Thing 2

I am getting left behind because I was on holiday last week.  With a big list of stuff to do - including library stats for last month, which is never my favourite job - I'm going to have to rush through a couple of steps.  Unfortunately, I have to sign back in to both my blog and CPD23 every 10 minutes because of my organisation's policy on using blogs (and just about everything else on the internet).

At least I had a lovely week in Greece!

cpd23

I have created my blog as part of the cpd23 course.  I am working towards chartering and this offers an interesting opportunity for cpd without having to leave my desk.  My library service would like to have an external website and we identified blogging as a way to do this, so I am hoping that my experience of setting up my own blog will be useful later.  I work for the NHS, so have already experienced problems doing this course.  Accessing social media is either not allowed or tightly controlled by the organisation, so I had to get permission from IT to even start!  It will be interesting to see what happens as I progress through the course.  Again, it should be good experience for when we start our library blog.