Welcome back - 9th February 2013

It’s been a surreal week, a surprise album from My Bloody Valentine, the success of the squatters of Friern Library in winning a 2 year reprieve for the library, an 8-1 win from the mighty Stags and a return to writing on my blog.

Work wise – dare I say it – we’re over busy as usual and it’s one of the prime reasons why I’ve lapsed on my blog. We’ve been another person down since October and working on my blog in the evenings is the last thing on my mind. Just getting through the week in one piece is my aim!

Since I last blogged back in September, we’ve moved in to a new office in a completely different part of the building after 16 years of living with the frantic Customer Services. It’s quiet, in its own contained space which opens up loads of possibilities of doing things like running a regular reading group for staff and is next to the new braille and giant print library which has just moved down from Stockport. It’s probably one of the best things to happen at work since I’ve started! (I’m easily pleased). The downside is the lack of people to fill the office! We should be getting a couple of afternoon part time staff in a few months’ time though in reality we could have done with some extra cover in the morning – our busiest time! We also going to be extending our opening periods in the afternoon though, barring any disasters, the new staff will be picking this up. Looking on the bright side (as I always tend to do) – there may be an opportunity to have a break from the phones for the odd hour in the afternoons. We’re also will be picking up some of the braille and giant print duties which will be good, particularly for the customer so we don’t have to keep passing them on.

Our forthcoming new reading business system is still forthcoming! Unfortunately we had one of our not so finest hours by sending all our members a letter announcing the benefits of the new computerised system where you can select your own books and manage your own lists only to cause a massive panic from customers who thought they had to cancel their subscription as they didn’t have a computer and would therefore no longer be able to use the service. One positive thing that did come out of this fiasco was how the customers valued our services and the horror that they could no longer ring us up to help them choose their books.

Our stock familiarisation and book club meetings are still going strong. Claire Morrall (The Man Who Disappeared) received an almost record 8 out of 10 from everybody, which was pretty credible considering there were a number of members who prefer Crime Fiction. I’ve read a real mixture of authors for stock familiarisation, trying to mix it with books I really want to read and popular authors I keep putting on people’s lists but have never read myself. It’s really widened my horizons as I’ve been introduced to writers who I would not normally have considered such as E V Thomson and Sidney Sheldon.

I’ve finally braved it and sent in my revalidation (first cycle) in to CILIP. It’s gone very quiet so slightly worried that it’s failed! I’m busy collecting evidence and filling in my log for my 2nd cycle in the meantime. The first year is already nearly completed though so I’m going to sit down and write some objectives for the next 2 years – probably split them in to essential, realistic and nice to do goals again.

The newly merged CDEG committee continues to work well together and I feel quite excited and optimistic about the future. I’ve also taken on board the e-newsletter which has given me an opportunity to learn new skills – Constant Contact and Sharepoint - and a feeling of contributing something.

This was the article I contributed regarding the Library Camp (Birmingham) 2012 (slightly belated!)

Helped with a large flask of black coffee to cope with an early start and a freezing Melton Mowbray railway station, I made my way to Library Camp 2012 with some trepidation. Cheered by the sight of all those cakes and more caffeine, I soon forgot the inconvenience of getting up so early on a Saturday morning.

Despite arriving late, I managed to arrive just in time to find out more about the sessions which seemed to involve lots of people jumping up on the stage “selling their pitch” and someone armed with a flipboard and post-its madly trying to keep up with the day’s sessions on offer.

Clutching my library camp timetable, I hastily scribbled the pitches down in the allocated time slots and made my decisions on which ones I wanted to do. With 5 sessions running on the hour from 10.00 to 4.30, there was plenty of choice with topics as wide ranging as cataloguing, book repairs, the happiness index, starting a library from scratch and how to cope with users swearing at you.

My first session was Mental Health in the Library and was probably the best session I attended. We debated whether it was best to be open about your mental illness as people would be more understanding about your problems or whether this would lead to prejudice. The group then talked about however understanding the manager is, the attitudes of other staff could be problematic. Solutions suggested included buddying staff with mental health problems, getting mental health awareness as part of staff training such as a Mental Health First Aid Course (run by MIND) and incorporating mental health awareness in corporate policy. One participant, speaking from personal experience, found that her team were more accepting of her manager making reasonable adjustments to her work because of good communication within the Team.

I also learnt about a couple of interesting initiatives – Make Friends With A Book (Sandwell) – where participants of reading groups held read out aloud sessions and Health in Mind Project (Northern Ireland) which has also recognised the importance of mental health first aid training and read out aloud sessions. Online discussion groups for people with mental illness including http://www.facebook.com/mindelephant and http://www.blackdogtribe.com/ was also mentioned.

The second session I attended was on careers and was led by a couple of librarians who are part of #uklibchat at http://uklibchat.wordpress.com/. Although it was a supportive group though a little subdued, I didn’t really come out of this session feeling that I had learnt anything new. An experienced library camper would probably have left half way and tried a different session.

Next up was Media Literacy and Young People which started with a healthy discussion on young people interpreting media, grainy footage of rioting in Syria was given as an example. The discussion moved on to doing essays in the age of the internet and the problems this created such as plagiarism which concluded that information literacy needed to be embedded in the national curriculum. Somehow this led to a discussion on the Rucksack Librarians of Hammersmith where library staff went out in the community and found the families that wasn’t coming into the libraries to try and get the children to come to the library. Interested, I later looked this up and found out that they were referring to the Doorstep Library Network of Hammersmith and Fulham.

The debate moved on to libraries not stocking particular papers such as the tabloids and dis-encouraging young people in reading papers like the Metro. However, this view was questioned that surely it was better that young people were reading something and they may read other papers in the future and then start to question what they’re reading.

After a really good lunch of veggie bean chilli, couscous, salad and more cake, it was back to the afternoon sessions. Next one up was Living libraries: overcoming prejudices (Living Books Project) where the idea is that you borrow a person and lose a prejudice. This was a project that took place in Malmo, Sweden, back in 2005 as part of a festival on multiculturalism and featured people such as a Jew, Romany, transvestite, homeless person, ex-criminal, Muslim and an animal rights activist. Follow up projects included a female vicar, ex-addict, police man, middle aged straight white man and a senior citizen.

Variations of this were suggested and included borrowing experts of skills and hobbies, borrowing for history purposes ie people that have lived through certain periods ie holocaust and One World Week where you borrowed a person and learn about other cultures.

One problem that was raised was - who was doing the borrowing? Were they open minded already? Also how do we reach people that don’t have contact in the library?

Although people in the room thought that this was something new and hadn’t happened in the UK, I was sure that I had come across this before and later found this useful article http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/03/living-library-communities.

The following session was working with volunteers which polarised the room in opinion. The lady who led the group had worked with volunteers for 2 years and, from experience, found that when she worked closely with staff identifying gaps where they didn’t have time to do the work themselves, it helped to alleviate the attitude “they’re here to take our jobs”.

One of the arguments was that using volunteers helped to involve the community with the library and allowed tasks/events to take place which wouldn’t normally happen; she cited the library being able to run a gardening show with the help of volunteers. Examples of uses of volunteers cited in the group included helping VI people to choose books, being computer buddies, chatting to users and summer reading challenge.

The invisible cost of using volunteers was also discussed including training, expenses including travel and that there were often situations that they may not want to do certain jobs, after all they’re not being paid so you couldn’t really force them to do something they didn’t want to do. Concerns were expressed that we needed to have the library service intact after the recession with library staff that were members of a professional body with professional ethics and values at the core of the service. In fact, somebody argued that she would rather see her local public library close than see it run by volunteers. This debate is continued on the following blog http://johannaboanderson.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/library-camp-pub-chat-dilemma-volunteering-would-you/

The last session was how to run a library camp where people shared their experiences of running camps in the past and inspired others to have a go next year.

More details on Library Camp 2012 can be found at http://www.librarycamp.co.uk/p/librarycamp-2012.html or http://librarycamp2012.wikispaces.com/.

Here are some other perspectives of the day.
http://rachel-s-b.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/library-camp-2012.html
http://neonlibrarian.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/library-camp-2012/

http://bumsonseats.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/my-notes-on-libcampuk12-playing-games-organising-your-own-library-camp/

There’s a lot to like about the Library Camp. It’s on a Saturday which makes it easier to attend, it’s free apart from my train ticket, there’s a distinct lack of suits, the majority of the people are on the same level as me so no awkward faux pas conversations about management, it’s up to the participants to decide on the day and it’s a great opportunity to eat lots of cake.
 

Lake District, The Savage Garden and Congratulations to England - 1st – 17th June 2012

I always seem to suffer from writers block when I haven’t written on my blog for a few weeks. I've spend the first ½ an hour typing, deleting, retyping and redeleting until I get in the swing again.

I met up with one of my best friends in Nottingham on Saturday. I hadn’t seen her for quite a few years so we had quite a bit of catching up to do. Most of it was done in Pret a Manger. We spent nearly 2 hours there. It’s put me in a good mood and spending the Sunday doing the usual chores didn’t seem quite so arduous as normal.

The month has flown by. We took avoidance tactics for the Jubilee and hid in our tent in Chapelstile (Lake District) until it was safe to come out again. We didn’t get flooded out this time, in fact it stayed dry though it got progressively colder as the competition on who could wear the most layers in the evening became more fiercely fought as the days went by. The only trouble with camping is that you always feel that you need a holiday afterwards to get over the ordeal. You always feel that you are on a fitness fanatic outbound break as you end up going on about ½ dozen walks a day excluding the numerous treks to the toilets and the water tap.

Work has been busy as usual, lots of calls and never a full house in to take them. The latest batch of customer requests was a varied affair, including autobiographies by Sheena Byrom (a midwife), David Jason and Kenny Dalglish, some poetry from Auden, the classic Mary McCarthy’s The Group, A Daughter’s Secret - a saga from Anne Bennett and Louise Foxcroft’s Calories and Corsets which looks at the history of dieting over 2,000 years.

We had our first Committee meeting as the newly formed CDEG last week. I thought it went well with lots of plans for the Committee to work on including an Equal Opportunities Act Workshop, a Library Camp, Libraries Change Lifes, Umbrella, the Diversity Award and a Conference. One of the next big things we need to work on is the quarterly Newsletter though we didn’t come to a final agreement on how we should do this. It would be interesting to see how the other merged groups came to an agreement on this one.

There was an interesting bit in the latest CILIP Update. Hidden in the 60 seconds with…. was a mention to The 25 Research Things which looks similar to the 23 Steps CDP and might be worth going through to refresh myself on some aspects of Social Networking. The website is http://25researchthings2011.wordpress.com.

Another useful link for Librarians and related professionals is http://www.rin.ac.uk/resources/library-and-information-professionals.

We had our stock familiarisation meeting last week where we picked a book out the book cupboard for one of our work colleagues to read. I was given Mick Mills – The Savage Garden – which could be classed as a well written, atmospheric mystery book though some readers may find it a bit slow and lacking a thrill. Other authors reviewed included Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men which was described as similar to Dan Brown, a page turner and one to take on holiday but weak characters and not very well written. Another book reviewed was Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America where although it was a well written funny book, it was too long and the reader had to work hard to work out what was happening. The Warrior’s Princess by Barbara Erskine was another book up for discussion. Again, this was another enjoyable readable book but was spoilt by being too far-fetched. The last book was Barbara Nadel’s A Noble Killing which again received positive feedback though took the reader a few chapters to get used to Turkey as the setting and they also thought that some readers may find the subject matter – honour killing - difficult to stomach.

Congratulations to England, the final whistle’s just blown and we’ve managed to win 1-0 with a struggle. We’ve got lady luck on our side at the moment – not played very well at times, Ukraine not been given a goal and Rooney getting a goal with about his only good touch of the game. Italy next!