Monday 12 August 2013

500 reflections on academic librarianship

I feel I'm more focused when I'm blogging to some kind of regimen (see the cpd23 posts which make up the majority of this blog's history if you require proof!). I also probably need to polish up my reflective skills prior to writing up my Chartership, not to mention improve my brevity of language (you may have noticed I over-write somewhat...).

Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil last night, I happened to flick through a book I'd nicked, sorry, borrowed from my boss's office. The book was 500 Tips for Academic Librarians by Brown, Downey & Race. I'd had this ages, and it was on the kitchen counter waiting to be returned, unread.* But looking at the structure of the book, I realised that it was ideal to prompt me to think about parts of my job I often just do instinctively, without critically reflecting on what I'm doing or if improvements could be made to my process.

So, I'm going to try and sit down each day (or more likely every two days) and reflect on a couple of the tips Brown et al offer. To make it more fun, I'm going to use a random number generator to pick the ideas to respond to.** I plan to think about if we actively or passively follow these tips in our service, if there are alternate viewpoints and if the advice is still relevant. It should be noted that this book was published in 1997, so it may be that developments in the LIS sector have superseded the good practice discussed there.

I had a go at doing this this evening, and I was kind of happy with what I wrote. I found it useful to have a short, focused activity to help reflect on library matters. To encourage me to treat this as more than just lip service to RP, I plan to post a few responses here each week. So, fair warning to remove me from your RSS lists!



* In my defence, I had read sections of the other 3-4 books I'd taken at the same time.
** Yes, that is fun, okay?