Category: professional development

2016, the year that tried to break me..

Well, THAT was a busy year! And it’s not going to get any quieter this year either….

So, why was it so hard? Well, last year involved these things in the library:

  • Implementing a brand new Library Management System
  • Getting the core library materials (textbooks and looseleafs) recatalogued (1,200+ items by the end of the year) on the new LMS
  • Reclassifying all library materials to a new in-house classification system
  • Setting up the subscription records for hundreds of journals and looseleafs
  • Relocating all stock to match the new classification system, over a three floor library
  • Driven to the Borders and back three times, to pack and relocate 40 sacks of books and law reports
  • Setting up and stocking a new room with library materials
  • Coping with recruiting and training three different assistants in six months*
  • Spending a month running the library on my own
  • Me having two different managers
  • Managing a mid-year wholesale move of the library from the oversight of one department in the organisation to another
  • Dealing with the associated chaos related to every single thing that had previously worked smoothly when we were in the original department 
  • Hosting a pre-law intern for two months
  • Hosting a Masters student on placement for a month
  • Gaining the assistance of a librarian volunteer to help with the recataloguing project
  • Writing a demanding but successful business case
  • Going through the process of successfully recruiting a Doctoral candidate to work on a proposed archive project
  • Taking on a temporary promotion in order to focus on setting up a new library service
  • Drafting job descriptions for both my own promoted role, and two new library roles 
  • Starting the internal and external recruitment process for two new library roles.

So, not all bad things, but definitely a huge amount of work for two (or at times just one) people to have done, often utterly phyically exhausting work too – book relocations from the Borders, and manual moving of all stock over three library floors.

We have been hugely assisted by the amazing volunteers we had/have, in the form of EM (top legal research and analysis skills, eternally cheerful book relocator) and LM (amazing cataloguer and super focussed relabeller). WT our Robert Gordon placement student was an absolute star, and came in at a point where discussing how the library worked (or didn’t) helped to identify things we should be looking at reviewing. Plus, she left us a fab marketing plan to use in future!

Also, KM the Assistant Librarian has been the brightest point in the year. She came in to a situation where I was drowning in workload and struggling to keep things to the high standard I expected the library to provide. She immediately started taking on responsibilities, without me having to task them to her, and I quiskly learned that could trust her to do the work to the same level (or higher) than I would have done it myself. She is a wizard with spreadsheets, and she’s built on the excellent work of KB, to bring order and clarity to the budget spend, renewal dates, predicted invoicing and all sorts of things that were just impossible for me to get to. She’s rapidly developed advanced research skills (she already had a good headstart with her law background) and can do pretty much anything that comes in as an enquiry. She has almost certainly saved me from having a breakdown this year, because I was able to begin taking time off, and know I wouldn’t just be coming in to all the work I’d left, plus more that had built up when I was off. I was able to discuss plans for the library, and her input helped shape them in a way that was right for the service and our work capacity. If KM hadn’t come in, I don’t know how I’d have got through this year. And now she’s going to be able to continue her work, as she will be covering my librarian role as I step away from running the library service to temporarily take on a new role.Together with KB, the Assistant Librarian who will return this month, they are going to be an amazing team in the library, and I’m really excited about what they’re going to be doing with the service when it’s in their hands!

Next year promises to be equally hectic, with me taking on responsibility for creating a new library service within the organisation.This will involve getting the library location fitted out, ensuring the resources are there for the library staff, integrating the existing LMS with the new service, creating a user portal for each element of the service (existsing and new), recruiting the new staff, training the new staff, communicating to the organisation what is going on, and anything and everything else that comes up.

I am quite sad in some ways about my new role, as it involves stepping away from the day to day work of the existing library service, in order to oversee the creation and management of an equivalent service to meet the needs of the other part of the organisation. I’ve never been in a library role where I didn’t have responsibility for doing legal research or user training, and I don’t know how I’m going to cope. The research work is one of my favourite parts of the job, so it may be something I’ll really miss. Or maybe I’ll enjoy the policy work more – one of my tasks in the new role will be to develop and implement service-wide policies: collection management, stock selection, disaster management, stock insurance policies…

And I have a lot of other stuff to do to: I have an ILM qualification I’m close to finishing but I can never find time for (other than at home and weekends, which is not how a work-based qualification is meant to work), the Informed award that I’m involved in, and I’m inching closer to getting my Fellowship portfolio together. So I’d like to get those cleared off my plate so I can focus on other things.

So, 2017 – I can do this!

* The turnover wasn’t because of me, it was because one person went on maternity leave, and a different job opportunity that came up for the first maternity cover person, meaning they needed to be replaced by a third person within three months.

When mentoring malfunctions

Mentoring’s one of the standard activities that you’ll come across in the information profession. We’re very caring and sharing like that, wanting to support people in their professional development.

As you start your career as an information professional, you’ll regularly hear the advice: get a mentor.
Or, as you advance in your career and seem to be doing well, you’ll be advised to become a mentor.

This is fine: yes, both being mentored and being a mentor can be excellent relationships, and very useful for both parties involved. But…..mentoring relationships are like any other relationships: they can go wrong. And they can go wrong in a whole lot of ways.

I’ve heard of mentors and mentees whose relationships have malfunctioned due to mismanagement, wrong focus, disinterest, and inappropriate behaviour. Like any other relationship, bullying and abuse can happen in mentor/mentee arrangements, but it can be very difficult for the participants to escape the relationship.

However, this seems to be the side of mentoring that isn’t ever discussed. There’s plenty of guidance and information out there to help you with finding a mentor, or to help you to get involved as a mentor, and to tell you how positive a relationship it will be. But there seems to be no guidance for when either the mentor or mentee want to go their separate ways. There’s also no discussion (other than in whispered asides, or confidential chats with trusted contacts) that identifies those participants in mentoring relationships who should really not be allowed to participate in any others due to their actions. This can leave those who’re stuck in a bad relationship feeling that it’s their fault that it’s not working, as it seems to work well for everyone else.

So, what are your options if, as a mentor or mentee, your relationship isn’t working? Well…you can confront the person causing the problems, and get the issues out into the open. That might work, but it might also blow up in your face, and cause all sorts of further problems. So it doesn’t seem that direct confrontation is the best way to manage failing relationships. Additionally, if you’re a mentee you’re often in a position of vulnerability – your mentor is likely to be further advanced in their career, has a lot of professional contacts, and will be well respected. You might feel you won’t be believed if you tell anyone about the issues. As a mentor, you may feel that others will think you’ve let down your mentee if the relationship isn’t working, and it could impact on your professional standing.

I don’t have a solution for this problem, but please feel free to leave comments and make suggestions of your own. Have you been in a bad mentoring relationship yourself? What would you suggest could help when problems arise? Do we need more involvement from professional mentoring scheme arrangers, maybe by creating compulsory review points during mentoring arrangements, when participants can step back from/leave the relationship, with no explanation needed? Should there be some professional penalty for abuse of mentoring schemes? Should there be a whistleblowing option for these schemes, so vulnerable participants can flag up the actions of the other participant, and trigger a review from the scheme arranger?

How can participants in mentoring relationships get out of them when they go wrong, and how can people who are acting inappropriately in a variety of ways in mentoring relationships be prevented from continuing to do damage?

Too close to the problem to see the achievements

Sometimes, you have so much to do, that you can’t see what you’ve actually done. I’m feeling very much that way at the moment, so I thought I’d make a public list for myself of all the work and professional things I’ve done since taking up my role in mid January. Then maybe I’ll feel less like I’m just not very good at anything. It’s worth a try. Although for obvious reasons, I can’t publicly say much about the baddest/hardest stuff, but…it’s in there. Maybe it’s not explicit about how hard it’s been, but it’s there.

So: what have I done?

Service management and development

  • Replaced someone who ran the library for 21 years, who retired 3 months before I started, and gave me no handover information.
  • Got 6 weeks of company/training on the library from an assistant, who then retired, leaving me as the only person in the organisation who knew anything about how the library actually worked.
  • Done the assistant librarian and librarian job simultaneously, while not really knowing anything about them, for a few weeks.
  • Trained the assistant librarian (who is awesome) to do their job…which I didn’t really know how to do myself, due to it not being my job. So we figured it out together. Painfully.
  • Trained the assistant librarian to do legal research, from the basics on to complex work – again, luckily, they’re awesome!
  • Learned about the organisation I work for, its history, and its coverage – I had only worked with civil law before, so I had to learn about criminal law from scratch.
  • Learned how to use the LMS for managing stock and circulation items.
  • Realised our LMS contract was coming to an end and the product was too costly, so worked with suppliers and Procurement to implement a new LMS (work in progress).
  • Decided that the current catalogue data was too unreliable/inaccurate to import to the new LMS, and made the decision to recatalogue all stock from scratch on our new LMS (work in progress).
  • Chosen and adapted a new classification system to reclassify all our stock to (work in progress).
  • Reviewed my job description, and the assistant’s job description, and updated them to actually reflect what we do.
  • Learned how to use the internal appraisal system, to manage assistant’s development needs and professional development plan.
  • Created a structure for management of emails and materials coming in to the communal library email account, and being stored there for access by both staff.
  • Contacted every supplier of anything to the library, to update the account manager details to me. Sometimes not very successfully (Bloomsbury Professional really, really like sending email to my predecessor, no mater how many times I contact them about it, and they assure me it’s now accurate).
  • Supervised the assistant librarian in their review of where every looseleaf that we buy goes to – we’ve cut any surplus spending on unfiled/unused copies.
  • Begun the process of asking for my job grading to be reassessed (work in progress).
  • Had a lack of support/accurate information when I needed it and asked for it.
  • Begun working my way through a datadump of 10 years worth/200 folders worth/800-1000 network files and documents, to learn about how the library was run prior to me starting here.
  • Researched the history of the creation of the library to determine who my actual users are meant to be.
  • Worked with other departments to determine what others thought the library did, and for who.
  • Created a Service Description, to describe and define where the library (and 3 satellite library locations) is located, what the library staff actually do, and who our users are.
  • Made sure everyone I speak to knows that they are welcome to use the library, work in the library, and there are user desks/pcs available for them to use here (backed up by a variety of smaller, subtle marketing activities like making sure sweets are available at the service desk).
  • Managed access to users of a group-access subscription service, and attended user group meetings. 
  • Attended a disaster planning event, and a practical training workshop, and used the knowledge from these to partially draft a disaster plan (work in progress).
  • Attended an event in London of creating a digital strategy for the library, which gave me lots to think about regarding how to develop the service (work in progress).
  • Worked with other departments to start redeveloping the library space on one of the intranets.
  • Reviewed every subscription we take to assess usage/relevancy, and cancelled any inefficient/underused subscriptions.
  • Attended induction training (local and corporate), attendance management training, change management training, criminal awareness training, and civil awareness training. And completed many hours of compulsory e-learning training. So much time away from working, in training! 
  • Created training materials on library resources for internal staff who provide cover for the library staff, and provided day-long training to multiple individuals.
  • Begun plans to implement the internal staff training on library resources across the wider organisation.
  • Written endless business cases, with the content ranging from internet filter proxy settings to professional organisation memberships.
  • Maintaining my part of the building – reporting and getting replaced lights that are out, broken/malfunctioning doors, splintering desks, spillages in the coffee area, splatters on the external windows etc.
  • Established good professional relationships with other libraries in the vicinity.
  • Attended an introduction to bookbinding course, to get the skills to understand how to do basic book repairs.
Oh, and of course, around all this, I’ve done my normal work of dealing with sourcing legal materials and doing legal research! Which, despite what people who come in think, is actually taking up a large amount of the time the assistant librarian and I have available – we suffer from the traditional misapprehension that, if we’re not working for an individual at that point in time, we must not be working at all. If only!
Professional activities
  • Visited multiple professional libraries in London and Edinburgh, including the equivalent service in London.
  • Hosted the meeting of a local professional group, and given a group tour of the workplace.
  • Been involved in a multitude of relevant professional groups, and attended meetings at a variety of locations, from the National Library of Scotland to the Royal Botanic Gardens.
  • Given individual tours of the workplace to at least 20 professional contacts.
  • Undertaken an Institute of Leadership and Management qualification.
  • Registered for Fellowship with CILIP, and begun compiling my portfolio for that.
  • Successfully revalidated my Chartership.
  • Seen one Chartership candidate successfully submit their Chartership portfolio, and taken on another mentee.
  • Co-managed the Informed website, and written information-issue articles.
  • Maintained this blog (it’s been a little bit neglected, as a lot of my writing/focus has been on Informed instead).

Physical
  • Cleared 30 bags of rubbish out of my office.
  • Cleared 70 large crates of old books out of a basement room. Twice, as various people then wanted some books retrieved, so they needed unpacked, shelved, then repacked. Oh my, that left me so bruised and battered.
  • Cleared 20 crates (and still going) of rubbish from the library office and main library shelves.
  • Relocated 10 book trolleys that had been holding surplus materials out of the library.
  • Created two full surplus sets of 100 year+ runs of a series of law reports, stored them, then moved them. For other people.
  • Reshelved thousands of books in a satellite library, myself.
  • Visited the Aberdeen library once, the Glasgow library twice, and visited the other Edinburgh library monthly.

Other services
  • Drafted recommendations for another part of the organisation on where they need to recruit another librarian (plus two site visits to assess their current setup, and attending meetings to discuss this proposal).
  • Giving virtual and in person support to staff partially providing an element of library service elsewhere (this is not actually my job, but…) 
  • Given support where requested re the stocking with appropriate materials of a newly-created part of the organisation.
  • Written a report re feasibility of potential enlargement of certain librarian responsibilities (work in progress).
Hmmmm….maybe this does make it a bit clearer. I have actually been doing a lot. A hell of a lot. And I know there’s loads I’ve not even got on this list because I’ve forgotten. And there’s only me doing this (with, thankfully, a great colleague), but it’s really actually quite a lot for just me to be totally responsible for!

Another year, another new start

As 2014 changes into 2015, my employment will be changing too, as I’ll shortly be starting another role in a new workplace.

Unfortunately, in October last year my previous employer went into administration, and although it was quickly bought out of administration by another law firm, there weren’t any roles available for the library staff at the new firm. So it was time to launch into the job hunt again! I have the dubious honour of being the only person to have worked for the only two law firms in Scotland to go into administration, and at one point it was suggested to me that I could make a career out of approaching all the remaining firms and asking them to pay me not to work for them… 😉 I did think that once again, I would have to leave the legal sector to find employment, but some fortunate timings mean that I will be staying in the sector, although I will be moving away from working directly with solicitors. My new role is also a permanent one, and as stable as any job can be, which should hopefully mean that I can permanently retire my job hunting spreadsheet and recruitment site search terms!

So, what will I be doing for the rest of 2015? Getting to grips with my new role. Getting to know the people I’ll be working with, and for. Learning more about criminal law (I’ve been told this should be relatively simple in comparison to civil law, but we’ll see….). Finding out what role-specific groups I should be involved in, and what events I should be attending. Working out what sort of things I can do to improve the service (I’ve already muttered about investigating iPads/tablets ) and what new tools could be useful for the users. Being on best behaviour during my 6 month probation. Wondering if I’ll be allowed to have a fish tank on my desk….

The prospect is simultaneously both quite exciting, and quite scary – it’s more responsibility than I’ve ever had before, but I’m ready to go in and librarian my ass off! 😀

Onwards and upwards!