A bit late this week, by 2 weeks!. The truth is I haven’t much to report workwise. The calls keep raining in and everyone around me are dropping down with sickness bugs and colds at home and work. It’s just been one phone call after another with the in-tray in between calls.
I’ve had no committee work to do though I’m still madly working on my portfolio – making sure I’ve got my evidence together and reflecting on everything. I went to see my mentor Kate on Friday and was pleasantly surprised not only how far ahead I was with my portfolio but also that I was on the right track with my idea of what needs to be in it.
My mentor gave me a copy of her portfolio which included her CV, a record of her professional development and her audit sheet which she recommended using as it asks the questions what did you learn from this activity and how would you apply this to your workplace. She had further separated this into different sections which I thought was a good idea. Also included was her personal statement where she had highlighted her five main professional development activities with the main learning outcomes and a summary of what has been learnt in 500 words maximum. There was also a copy of her job description and about 13 examples of evidence of professional development with a summary piece on each in turn relating it to one of the three criteria set out on the CILIP handbook as there isn’t a word limit in the appendices. I have also done this so I was quite pleased that I was ahead of the game on that. After looking through my sample portfolio, I’m worried about the quality of my professional development – there’s no restructuring staff, doing presentations at conferences and contributing to books and anything else impressive.
One thing we did discuss was the dates of my 3 year cycle. I was using Nov 2009 to Oct 2012 but Kate suggested bringing these dates forward, particularly as I was ahead with the portfolio. I’m pretty sure that I have got some evidence of professional development for the preceding months. The only worry is that I have emailed my log in with my dates already so I’m not sure what they would think if I suddenly send my portfolio through 4 months earlier! I also need to go through my evidence and decide which ones I want to put in my portfolio and pick out the ones I want to feature in my personal statement.
We had our stock familiarisation meeting last week. This time it was the readers’ favourite “I want a good biography of somebody who has done something interesting”. Mine was Ben McIntyre’s Agent Zig Zag – a biography of Eddie Chapman - a double agent spy in the Second World War. I would seriously recommend this book, not only to people who like to read war biographies but also readers who asks for true adventure books and perhaps even to someone who likes a good thriller. Other biographies included As Good as God: the impossible life of Mary Benson which was a highly enjoyable book with very colourful characters and one for the more open minded reader. Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea was also positively reviewed though probably the Amazon rating of 4 and a ½ stars was a little optimistic. The Hare with the Amber Eyes was similarly given glowing feedback and was also one to put on people’s lists as one that “led interesting lives”.
Huge excitement at home with the new F1 season starting. My son, Matthew, is in seventh heaven though at the moment is looking for a new driver to support as his favourite driver of the last four years, Sutil, has lost his seat. It looks like it’s going to be a good season as well, a lot more unpredictable instead of Vettel winning everything and some new drivers to watch. Our main questions are Will Massa last the season? Will Grojean ever complete a race without crashing? Will Hispania ever be off the back row? It will keep Matthew quiet until end of November, plus before every race he goes on his xbox to have a go on the same circuit so he can follow the driving more closely in the race. Watch out Grojean, if you keep crashing, Matthew will be wanting your seat. Mind you, I think I could even do better!
Monday 26 March 2012
Sunday 11 March 2012
The horse boy, portfolios and trip up to Stockport - March 5th-9th
Another week has quickly gone by. Huge excitement as I’ve had an email from my prospective mentor. We’ve arranged a meeting at Grantham College to include a visit to the library. This will be interesting in itself as it has been years since I’ve set foot in an FE College Library so I will be curious to see how these libraries have changed. I’ll need to get my portfolio sorted out though so I’m going to be busy for the next 2 weeks filling out missing gaps and making sure that everything’s got a piece of reflective writing in there. Mind you, I wasn’t looking forward to going through the mentor list again and try and find another victim.
The phones have been busy again. We’re slightly worried that the talking books seem to be taking longer than usual to get to readers, particularly March 1st yet we’ve had no report from Production to say that there’s been any problems with the burners.
It was also our main book selection meeting though it wasn’t my turn to represent the Team. The big issue was Imports as it was getting ridiculous that one minute we were recording a book ourselves and then we would have to pull it as one of the publishers that we work with have decided to produce it themselves. It was also getting hazy with which publishers we were going to import from and the list of titles that we couldn’t pick was getting longer. It’s quite a thorny area as the Management do not want us to do Imports at all. Their argument is that we need to be investing our money in titles that can’t be obtained in alternative format elsewhere and that we should be signposting readers to public libraries. It’s a logical argument as there are 1,000’s of titles that just won’t get done in alternative format for commercial versions and also some titles are quite complicated to produce and need more expertise to produce them. Also, there is a huge emphasis in this area in campaigning and getting the libraries to meet the needs of VI people with the 6 steps campaign and MANIL.
It’s not that straightforward though as on the flip side of this argument is that a significant proportion of Talking Book members cannot access public libraries – they are elderly, housebound and don’t have any help from family or friends. Also commercial versions are not in DAISY format and come in loads of disks and make it hard for a lot of readers to use. Also, most of the popular authors, particularly crime and family, are readily available commercially which will mean that if we had to ignore these we will be marketing a second-class library. I’m all for signposting readers to different sources, particularly with the advent of e-books, but we do need to provide an inclusive library for everyone.
We’ve come to a decision that we will concentrate on the three main publishers – ISIS, Audiogo and Oakhill – as imports and that if we’ve started to record a book after all the checks to see if it’s not going to be done, we will continue with it. The allocation is only 4 expensive titles (ISIS and Oakhill) and 12 cheap ones (Audiogo) a month. I would be happier if we increased the expensive titles and cut down the Audiogo as most of our readers want the ISIS authors. It’s still cheaper to do an Import than to record a title by scratch so it’s important for us to save money as much as we can.
We had our Team Day on Thursday, a trip up to Stockport. There were some interesting features, one of our younger readers talked about her use of social networks, particularly Facebook, which gave us food for thought. I had reported back from the Reading 4 life day about the possibility of having a Facebook page for the library services as it was a way of reaching some of the younger VI groups. One of the exercises we had to do in groups was to look at ways of increasing our audience. Some of our suggestions were wildly ambitious such as availability of all titles in all formats and a free service. We also got into the world of incentives – such as cash reductions for local authorities if they reach a certain target, a smaller subscription for low users or incentives if you introduce a friend to the service. We were also targeting low vision centres, pension organisations and Surestart to pick people up at the start of diagnosis. However, afterwards I did have the thought that perhaps we should be working with organisations such as National Reading Agency or Adult Basic Education to make reading more appealing and sexy in general as it’s no good reaching all these people if they have no incentive to read.
My evenings have been busy this week as I have had to try and work out my notes for the CSG meeting we had in the afternoon with the Diversity Group. I think they make sense but I’ve emailed them to the Chair to have a look through first before circulating!
It was also our Book Club and it was my turn to lead the group. Unfortunately there were only 3 of us there which was a shame as the book was quite an interesting read. It was Rupert Isaacson’s The Horse Boy turn to come under the spotlight. This was about a father’s son to heal his son’s autism by taking him to the Shamen in Mongolia. At times I found myself getting annoyed with the parents particularly at the beginning where the poor boy was under every therapy under the sun. There were also one or two comments which I disliked such as “we had become one of those families (a family with someone with special needs) and I still felt, although the author said he was accepting his son’s condition and took it as part of his personality, I felt at times he hadn’t as he made a great deal of his son going to mainstream school, having friends that were normal and having a higher than average reading ability. Two of us weren’t so sure about whether it was the shamen that had did the trick. From my experience, autistic children do experience a slight improvement and seem to be better able to function between the ages of 6-10, then the hormones kick in and they tend to regress for a few years. Also that high level of intense attention is likely to bring the best out of him in terms of language. It was also a good travel book as we learnt a lot about Mongolia. It was a shame that so few of us read it to the end as we all gave it 8 out of 10 and the 3 of us managed to keep the discussion going for 3/4 an hour!
The phones have been busy again. We’re slightly worried that the talking books seem to be taking longer than usual to get to readers, particularly March 1st yet we’ve had no report from Production to say that there’s been any problems with the burners.
It was also our main book selection meeting though it wasn’t my turn to represent the Team. The big issue was Imports as it was getting ridiculous that one minute we were recording a book ourselves and then we would have to pull it as one of the publishers that we work with have decided to produce it themselves. It was also getting hazy with which publishers we were going to import from and the list of titles that we couldn’t pick was getting longer. It’s quite a thorny area as the Management do not want us to do Imports at all. Their argument is that we need to be investing our money in titles that can’t be obtained in alternative format elsewhere and that we should be signposting readers to public libraries. It’s a logical argument as there are 1,000’s of titles that just won’t get done in alternative format for commercial versions and also some titles are quite complicated to produce and need more expertise to produce them. Also, there is a huge emphasis in this area in campaigning and getting the libraries to meet the needs of VI people with the 6 steps campaign and MANIL.
It’s not that straightforward though as on the flip side of this argument is that a significant proportion of Talking Book members cannot access public libraries – they are elderly, housebound and don’t have any help from family or friends. Also commercial versions are not in DAISY format and come in loads of disks and make it hard for a lot of readers to use. Also, most of the popular authors, particularly crime and family, are readily available commercially which will mean that if we had to ignore these we will be marketing a second-class library. I’m all for signposting readers to different sources, particularly with the advent of e-books, but we do need to provide an inclusive library for everyone.
We’ve come to a decision that we will concentrate on the three main publishers – ISIS, Audiogo and Oakhill – as imports and that if we’ve started to record a book after all the checks to see if it’s not going to be done, we will continue with it. The allocation is only 4 expensive titles (ISIS and Oakhill) and 12 cheap ones (Audiogo) a month. I would be happier if we increased the expensive titles and cut down the Audiogo as most of our readers want the ISIS authors. It’s still cheaper to do an Import than to record a title by scratch so it’s important for us to save money as much as we can.
We had our Team Day on Thursday, a trip up to Stockport. There were some interesting features, one of our younger readers talked about her use of social networks, particularly Facebook, which gave us food for thought. I had reported back from the Reading 4 life day about the possibility of having a Facebook page for the library services as it was a way of reaching some of the younger VI groups. One of the exercises we had to do in groups was to look at ways of increasing our audience. Some of our suggestions were wildly ambitious such as availability of all titles in all formats and a free service. We also got into the world of incentives – such as cash reductions for local authorities if they reach a certain target, a smaller subscription for low users or incentives if you introduce a friend to the service. We were also targeting low vision centres, pension organisations and Surestart to pick people up at the start of diagnosis. However, afterwards I did have the thought that perhaps we should be working with organisations such as National Reading Agency or Adult Basic Education to make reading more appealing and sexy in general as it’s no good reaching all these people if they have no incentive to read.
My evenings have been busy this week as I have had to try and work out my notes for the CSG meeting we had in the afternoon with the Diversity Group. I think they make sense but I’ve emailed them to the Chair to have a look through first before circulating!
It was also our Book Club and it was my turn to lead the group. Unfortunately there were only 3 of us there which was a shame as the book was quite an interesting read. It was Rupert Isaacson’s The Horse Boy turn to come under the spotlight. This was about a father’s son to heal his son’s autism by taking him to the Shamen in Mongolia. At times I found myself getting annoyed with the parents particularly at the beginning where the poor boy was under every therapy under the sun. There were also one or two comments which I disliked such as “we had become one of those families (a family with someone with special needs) and I still felt, although the author said he was accepting his son’s condition and took it as part of his personality, I felt at times he hadn’t as he made a great deal of his son going to mainstream school, having friends that were normal and having a higher than average reading ability. Two of us weren’t so sure about whether it was the shamen that had did the trick. From my experience, autistic children do experience a slight improvement and seem to be better able to function between the ages of 6-10, then the hormones kick in and they tend to regress for a few years. Also that high level of intense attention is likely to bring the best out of him in terms of language. It was also a good travel book as we learnt a lot about Mongolia. It was a shame that so few of us read it to the end as we all gave it 8 out of 10 and the 3 of us managed to keep the discussion going for 3/4 an hour!
Monday 5 March 2012
Broad beans, borstal girl and we bought a zoo - Feb 27th-March 2nd
I’ve decided that I quite like February and March as I had another 4 day week. I had saved a few annual leave days in case of emergency but I didn’t get snowed in this year and my son seems to have inherited the same healthy genes as me. The garden has had a second good spring clean and I’m now turning my attention to the vegetable garden – peppers, tomatoes and lettuce for the green house, onions and broad beans for the allotment itself, spinach and rocket for the pots and spring onions and radishes for the salad patch.
It was a double pick for our book selection meeting this week as NLS has now reverted to a meeting every 2 months. Our team will continue to pick monthly and then send the final list bimonthly after this month. We thought it would be difficult to select 80 titles particularly that we would lose quite a few titles with the imports but it’s another good pick covering a good range of genres and subjects. Non-fiction titles include Borstal Girl by Eileen Mackenney for our true crime fan and collecting customer requests on a regular basis, Duncan Barrat’s The Sugar Girls for our history fans, We brought a zoo for our animal lovers and Jeanette Winterson’s autobiography which has been well received in the papers. The fiction is also a mixed bunch – from Jonathan Barnes The Somnambulist (steadily collecting the customer requests) to a new stand alone from Harlan Coben and from M C Beaton’s Hamish McBeth (we’re only on number 4 so far in this series) to the book of the moment - John Lanchester’s Capital.
We were struggling to select the 10 synthetic speech titles though and had to drop one of the customer requests as it turned out that the book was going to cost us £35 to purchase! We did however choose the Institute of Business Management book of last year The Cult of the Leader, a book about preventing alzheimer’s and the ever popular cook book and gardening book, 2 more customer requests – Gordon Ramsay’s fast food and Jenny Uglow’s A little history of British gardening.
The rest of the week was pretty undistinguished with the phones being busy, finishing the proof reading for New Books and catching up with the intray which was threatening to get out of hand with being short of staff for the last 2 weeks. It was also quiet on the professional development front though I have been given permission to go to the CILIP East Midlands AGM at the end of the month.
It was a double pick for our book selection meeting this week as NLS has now reverted to a meeting every 2 months. Our team will continue to pick monthly and then send the final list bimonthly after this month. We thought it would be difficult to select 80 titles particularly that we would lose quite a few titles with the imports but it’s another good pick covering a good range of genres and subjects. Non-fiction titles include Borstal Girl by Eileen Mackenney for our true crime fan and collecting customer requests on a regular basis, Duncan Barrat’s The Sugar Girls for our history fans, We brought a zoo for our animal lovers and Jeanette Winterson’s autobiography which has been well received in the papers. The fiction is also a mixed bunch – from Jonathan Barnes The Somnambulist (steadily collecting the customer requests) to a new stand alone from Harlan Coben and from M C Beaton’s Hamish McBeth (we’re only on number 4 so far in this series) to the book of the moment - John Lanchester’s Capital.
We were struggling to select the 10 synthetic speech titles though and had to drop one of the customer requests as it turned out that the book was going to cost us £35 to purchase! We did however choose the Institute of Business Management book of last year The Cult of the Leader, a book about preventing alzheimer’s and the ever popular cook book and gardening book, 2 more customer requests – Gordon Ramsay’s fast food and Jenny Uglow’s A little history of British gardening.
The rest of the week was pretty undistinguished with the phones being busy, finishing the proof reading for New Books and catching up with the intray which was threatening to get out of hand with being short of staff for the last 2 weeks. It was also quiet on the professional development front though I have been given permission to go to the CILIP East Midlands AGM at the end of the month.
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