Reflecting on Reflection on Role

Wigglesweets doesn’t really set a task for this Thing as such, instead asking for a consideration of one’s personal approach to reflective practice. So, my first thought on reading the blog post: “urgh - reflective practice!”. Let’s start with a confession; I pretty much hate reflecting on myself, assessing my achievements and setting targets. I was forced to do it in school from about the age of seven, and I’ve never been able to shake going into an immediate juvenile ‘no, I hate this, it’s rubbish’ paddy every time someone suggests reviewing performance and progress. My first instinct when asked to reflect to write a pat response which has little or no value or meaning to me; this, obviously, limits the resultant document’s helpfulness.

I’ve got to become better at reflective practice, because it forms a key part of writing a successful Chartership portfolio. I’m currently working on developing my PPDP for the next 12-18 months, which I suspect would be more effective/useful if I first identify which areas I could do with development in. I can’t usefully use my work PDR to inform this, as it refers to local targets and (as a non-professional position) focuses on moulding me to their needs rather than facilitating personal growth. I think that my problem is that I... am self-obsessed? Far too many personal pronouns there! I don’t like thinking about my positive qualities, because it feels self-congratulatory, and when considering my failings I tend to begin equivocating and justifying why this is the case. I externalise blame and internalise success, but cannot sufficiently get outside myself to consider myself - what a horrible sentence. This is like pulling teeth.

Bottom line: I need to get better at reflective practice. To the books!

Returning to Current Awareness...

A Thing 4 addendum, as I’m burying my head in the sand regarding Thing 5. My 'current awareness' has gone to pot somewhat this week, as I've not been on Twitter at all prior to about an hour ago (some may claim that I envy those who are at #ub11 and excitedly tweeting about it; those people are silly poo-poo heads if they think I'm that immature).

A week on, I’m still using Pushnote to make note of interesting half-read sites which I may want to return to. However, it’s not grabbed me that well, and I probably will stop using it once I’ve caught up on the linked sites I currently have.

In similar thematic area to Thing 4, I have Google/Scholar alerts on my particular areas of interest (‘academic* liais*’ and ‘subject librarian*’), which I’ll periodically go through. These were set up to support the lit review for my dissertation in this area. Whilst they generally result in junk, occasionally something valuable turns up. I currently have over 100 alerts emails to read - they remain firmly stuck to the bottom of my to-do-list.

Finally, flicking through a Google Doc of half-baked thoughts which might one day become blogs, I came across a rambling rhetorical question. My RSS feeds featured several US librarians, as well as aggregated blog-feeds from some US academic librarians (email updates such as LJ Academic Newswire could also be lumped into a wider ‘US library landscape awareness’ blob), leading me to wonder thus:

Do [US librarians] have it better or worse than us; they are equally vocal, if not more so, but whilst they share common themes (budget cuts, risk of closure for public libraries, identity crises) they also have very different concerns (faculty/teacher status, state politics, guns on campus) which resonate less. Is it worthwhile to continue to maintain an international focus, or is this taking time which could be spent drilling down into local issues? Is it merely a pretence that LIS is the same beast worldwide, with fundamentally the same concerns and aims?

I remain undecided about this issue; I have found some blogs from US librarians to offer useful concepts which translate well, but others never really speak to my personal experiences. In practice, I now have less RSS feeds from US-library-centric sources. Have I narrowed my world-view, or made a conscious decision to focus on my own back yard?

A happy accident: becoming a librarian

According to James G. Neal (2006), librarianship is often a 'second career’ for its adherents: “Many move to the field from jobs in other professions or after stints in academic assignments. […] [Does this] reflect limited opportunities in [their] chosen field, a recognition of a problematic fit between previous job and personal aspirations, or a profound interest in and commitment to the service goals of librarianship[?] The issue is whether the decision to become a librarian and to proceed through an extended educational program is a reflection of personal disappointment and compromise or a positive orientation to a new professional adventure.”

This line of questioning reminded me of an interesting point raised at the recent New Professionals’ Conference, where a straw poll of speakers and attendees revealed that many had fallen into librarianship ‘by accident’, following a period of career uncertainty or undertaking a non-professional role which brought them into the area of librarianship. Elements of what Neal suggests also apply to myself. Whilst I first applied for a job in a library at around nine years old (some may argue that my application style hasn’t changed much since), it took a series of accidents and snap decisions to get me where I am today. 

As with many in my Library School cohort, my undergraduate degree was in English Literature; like many on that course, I was then planning on doing a PGCE (to teach Secondary English/Media). I duly applied for a PGCE programme, and was accepted (with the caveat of gaining additional classroom experience prior to the beginning of the course); however, I found the acceptance letter physically sickening - I suspect that, deep down, I had known for a while that I didn’t want to teach, but hadn’t wanted to let go of the security of knowing what I was going to do next. Concerned about leaving the warm cocoon of higher education, I opted to do an MA in Modern Literature, with the vague idea of maybe following an academic career.

I knew within a few weeks of starting my MA that I was never going to be an English lecturer; whilst I gained some useful insights into twentieth-century literature from that year, the formative experience it gave me was extra-curricular. The first semester was accompanied by a librarian-embedded information-skills module*  which I rather enjoyed; however, other people on the course found it difficult to keep up with. One course-mate in particular, David, had problems keeping up with the electronic reference sessions. A mature student returning to HE after several decades, David was capable of following the course content; however, he was unable to do so at the pace at which sessions were delivered. As a result, he asked me if I could sit with him and go through the processes covered again. This became a regular thing, with other course-mates also occasionally asking referencing and database questions. It occurred to me that I seemed to be quite good at this sort of thing, and thus my mind turned back towards a career in aiding access to information.

The previous spring, after I had accepted my place on the Modern Lit course, I had spotted a flyer  advertising a graduate library traineeship. I had toyed with applying for this, but had ruled it out as I had already been through several application interviews in that period and wasn’t sure it was what I was looking for. Following my experiences with David, I returned to the idea of working in libraries, and did some research into professional options. I briefly spoke to a librarian where I was studying, who gave some useful advice, and following a summer spent camping in various areas of the library completing my (pretty useless) dissertation I began applying for any and all library jobs, to gain the experience needed to begin another Masters.** Luckily, I somehow convinced my current employer that I was a viable candidate, and became an Information Assistant, working evenings. I recall getting home after my first day, smiling and saying ‘I’m a librarian’ - it felt like I had finally discovered who I was.

I was able to keep this post throughout my MSc studies, which added useful real-life grist to the largely-theoretical assignments I wrote (as well as providing a partially-captive audience for dissertation research), and have since transitioned to a full-time (still non-professional) post. In many ways, I’m pretty happy where I am (which is making applying for jobs that much harder): I get to do varied jobs which sometimes verge on the professional remit, my contributions are appreciated and I’m pretty well paid.*** Whilst I don't leap out of bed every morning, I usually am looking forward to the day before I get to work.

So, is being a librarian the result of several happy accidents or my fate? Helping people learn and discover new things (the thing which most appealed to me about teaching) still forms a core part of my day. I get to interact with a variety of people, doing interesting and diverse things, and who use the library in ways which would never occur to me. Librarianship certainly isn't a "personal disappointment" or a "compromise", and whilst I sometimes lack that "positive orientation to a new professional adventure" I love it, and can’t imagine doing anything else.

This post ended up being a bit personal and stream-of-consciousness. I was shooting for a more considered, wider-ranging consideration of why people become librarians. I may adapt parts of this for the ‘bio’ page. In the mean time, I’d love to hear how any readers got sucked into the profession.

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* This Information Literacy intervention (holiest of grails) contributed towards final degree score - that hadn’t occurred to me until I wrote it down...
** I also applied for two or three graduate traineeships, but was unsuccessful.
***Indeed, I applied for one professional role which paid less than I’m currently earning.

So that's the function of social media...

(Not sure who to attribute this to; originally saw it myself here; however, after following it back through several other sites I was unable to trace the original source)

Alert and Aware in the Digital Castle

How time flies. Thing 4 already. I think I'll break this blog down into three sections, as the services dealt with in this Thing relate but don't particularly interact in my practice.

Twitter 

I am relatively-new tweeter, and still feel like I'm working at getting balance of work vs. minutiae right! Upon joining, I chose not to follow lists assembled by stars among the Twitterati,* instead following some people I knew of in LIS sector, individuals I read the blogs of etc: I then followed people who were interesting/relevent within their feeds, and so on. Once again, I subscribe to the Ned Potter view on this.**

I have found tweeting regularly to be difficult for several reasons: I feel no-one will be interested in what I have to say; I struggle to phrase myself in 140 characters; I'm also technically not allowed to social network during work time. However, I do find the 'conversation' of interacting on Twitter useful. When I log on, I tend to scroll back an hour or two to get a flavour of what’s happening, then follow along, occasionally butting in when I feel I can contribute (not very often!). Attending #npc2011 helped, as it gave me a whole heap of Twitter IDs (and a justification for adding them!) - this has given me several more good people to follow. 

I still can’t get up to speed with live-tweeting at events; I'm not a quick-enough typist, and am always afraid of missing something whilst I struggle with my unresponsive phone. Still, my attitude is greatly changed from this time last year, when I was ignorant of tweeting's usefulness. 

RSS

I have used Google Reader for quite some time, for personal as well as professional feeds - I mix these together as a rule, but will sometimes focus in one one area: for this reason, all my feeds are sorted into thematic folders. My professional feeds are listed in a package on the right panel of this blog - whilst can’t say I recommend all of them, there’s a selection of interesting things and each one had at least a few useful things to add in the past. 

Personally, I will not be taking the cpd23 RSS bundle: it’s too darn large! I struggle to keep up with my existing feeds, and can’t stand deleting unread articles! Generally, I look for feeds which update less than 50 times a week, and which deliver a substantial part of the article, not just a headline or the first four lines: there are exceptions to this rule (mostly in the Geek News sector), but it’s the only way I’ve found to keep feed-reading from taking over my life!

Pushnote

This service was new to me (as I believe it was to most participants), but I downloaded the plug-in and began using it to comment on interesting sites. Everything seemed pretty nice, and its functionality replaced the text file I tend to pop half-read interesting pages into for later perusal, as well as negating the need to share every link I find using Twitter.***

However, when I wanted to go back to a page I had been reading, I logged into Pushnote and... couldn’t find how to look at my own links. I can find how to delete links, but not how to go back to them eventually found my own links in the ‘Friends’ tab. Well, of course it is. It took me five minutes to find that; partly because I began to vent spleen in draft of this blog^ rather than calmly and rationally trying each of the screens available in both the plug-in and the Pushnote website,^^ but also ‘friend’ seems a counter-intuitive label for oneself (barring certain personality disorders). 

Overall, whilst Pushnote has it’s advantages, I suspect I’ll soon slide back to noting bookmarks in my trusty text file (mostly because I bookmark things I’ve not finished reading, and so shouldn’t be recommending them to peers/followers). The ability to cc Twitter into Pushnote posts is useful, but, only allowing 109 characters for comment suggests that there is further optimisation of link-shortening etc to be done.

Overall, I’m finding it hard to judge how useful Pushnote is going to be. Instead of delaying posting this blog, I think I’ll post an update on how I’m getting along as a post-script in a few days. So there’s something to look forward to!

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* I like corny, hackneyed phrases which have fallen into disuse, okay?! It's the same reason I use 'blogosphere'...

** I do feel that someone might be looking at what's coming up on cpd23 and then writing a blog about it prior to it's launching...

*** Not that I tend to do this very much; my reading is historically at least 7 days behind the cutting-edge, and I often first stumble across things only after they’ve had their brief flare of popularity and are already becoming redundant/ridiculed/memes.

^ Believe it or not, I do draft these things...

^^ This is already something I've identified to work on in PPDP; scorn should not be my default setting!

The value of libraries as cultural institutions

NB: The inspiration for this post made the rounds when it was first broadcast, I think, but I only came across it at the weekend.

On a recent edition of Front Row, Russell T. Davies was interviewed. Discussing BBC funding cuts, he suggested that: 

"it's very easy to say that a school is more important than a play, that a hospital is more important than a drama, and that's because we're talking a totally false language in which these things are comparable and one reduces the other - that's the language of economics that simply does not fit cultural life" 

(He also said some wonderfully-cutting things about the Coalition government - I highly recommend listening to the full interview if you have 12 minutes to spare).

Apples and oranges comparisons of ‘value’ in this way are everyday experiences for library services, across all sectors but especially for public libraries, competing against welfare schemes, swimming pools and road surfacing amongst other diverse council responsibilities. It is common to think of the library as a economic cost-centre (especially in business libraries); how, then, do we switch the focus to the library as cultural profit-centre? Equally, how do you measure the impact of a service whose effects may manifest years, possibly decades after its use? Anecdotal advocacy has got us this far, but can it compete against tangible images of suffering which the removal of other services can produce?

Even if they don't seem value-for-money, libraries give values for money!

Making an impact: JISC LIDP

Impact: ‘any effect of the service on an individual or group’

(This can be positive or negative, intended or accidental, and affecting any stakeholder)

The professional area which currently most interests me most is the impact which libraries, and librarians have on their students, academic staff, employees and other users (hereafter collectively ‘stakeholders’). With this in mind, I jumped at the opportunity to attend the UC&R event East Midlands event ‘Making an Impact’, held on Tuesday at De Montford University (#UCREMimpact). I had wanted to write a report of the day along thematic lines, and first-drafted with this intention – unfortunately, the result just didn’t read right. The event is already receding in my mind, however, so instead I have decided to present one of the discussed projects in this post, and intend to re-hash the rest of my notes into something coherent over the weekend. Please bear in mind that this is not a verbatim report, so some elements of this may be conjecture.


Paul Stainthorp (University of Lincoln) spoke at length about his involvement in the JISC Library Impact Data Project (LIDP): a collaboration between 8 UK universities, this project was designed to improve the intelligence of library systems, collating useful data and applying it to ‘join the loop’ and corroborate what we anecdotally already believe - that use of the university library has a positive correlation with higher degree results. Whilst there is data in the professional body of knowledge regarding the impact libraries have on users and parent institutions, surprisingly there has been no UK-based, publicly-available study into this for HE libraries: therefore, such data would provide valuable ammunition to library services fighting for the budget to remain effective in the new HE landscape.


Whilst the data available to be collected and collated varied between partner university libraries, there was a core focus on three areas: circulation of stock, use of e-resource gateways and gate entry stats. The hope was to gather data to support statements like the following:

User A did B C times during D time. User A achieved E in their degree.

As an individual statement, there is only a weak correlative link between B (B*C?) and E; create the statement thousands of times, and the resultant correlation is much more reliable and statistically-relevant. Note that, even with large data-sets, this link cannot be considered causal - there are too many variables not captured to make definitive statements about the library as key contributing factor to degree success (apparently there’s some teaching goes on in the other buildings on campus; who knew...).

Stainthorp highlighted that this data can be difficult to collate, even where it was already being collected, and may require access to data-sets from other departments (such as Registry). However, each partner library managed to produce some data, on the following kind of lines:  

LIDP results are likely to be published in due course (with the anonymised data sets also possibly to be made available): however, initial results show a positive correlation between greater circulation numbers and higher degree results across all partner university libraries, with similar results for e-resource access. These results would potentially be rendered more significant and reliable through further study. This may take the form of longitudinal study, replicating methodology over several years to confirm initial results are accurate; it could take the form of comparing library use figures with results of other research, such as the Student Satisfaction Survey, to examine whether greater incidence of use of the library correlates to better scoring of University facilities in general (and the library in particular); it may focus in further, targeting specific groups within the user population. This last area bears further scrutiny.

‘Students’ are not a homogeneous group.

'Business students’ and ‘English students’ are not homogeneous groups either; indeed, in some ways the only reliable correlation which can be drawn is at the level of the individual. However, subject groupings provide a reasonable level of demographic stratification for a large-scale project given the unavoidable variables introduced by different partners’ facilities. UCAS codes were included in the data set for this project, and are currently being utilised to produce more stratified data for LIDP results. However, we must be prepared, once the data is broken down in this way, for some upsetting results - it is possible that there will emerge negative correlations between elements of library use and degree results for some subjects due to differences in the currency and breadth of resources for that subject area. As David Streatfield, a later speaker on the day, highlighted, data from impact studies must be presented ‘warts and all’, so that it is clear that we are presenting an honest picture of the library’s importance and influence over the institution’s academic success. Whilst Streatfield slightly contradicted and challenged the usefulness of large, wide-ranging studies such as LIDP, I remain convinced of their usefulness in providing a consistent, quantifiable argument for the value of libraries. I await the full results of this study with great interest.