The Library June 2012

ContentsJune 2012 The Library P

Paula Barbato A Library …yes, but not as we know it!

Sally Houston Voice and Body Workshop Nicola Stephenson ‘The best laid plans…’ Ray Philips, Kings Fund

Merja Uotila On-the-job-learning-period at Goldsmiths Library

A Library… yes, but not as we know it!

In April I attended the fifth annual CPD25 event designed For Senior library staff and Library Assistants who supervise teams. The day focused on the current developments in Higher Education libraries. Discussions explored new ways to align traditional library services with the changing user needs and patterns of library usage.

The keynote speaker of the day was Angus Brown who leads the team responsible for the provision of issue (including membership), help desk and enquiry services at Imperial College London. Other areas of his responsibility include the marketing and promotion of library services, print publications and the library website.He also oversees study spaces and presentation of services and collections.

The presentation focused on how academic libraries have undergone significant changes. It examined emerging trends such as the increasing diversification of the student body, more student-centered learning and increasing use of information technology. Alongside this, the provision of a library service and the way information is organized and delivered has also changed dramatically in recent years. The areas highlighted included library service delivery, library usage, user needs and expectations, and how ‘library space’ should be used

effectively to anticipate and meet the needs of different user groups.

After the presentation the afternoon was divided into breakout sessions which involved discussing the following areas and identifying relevant strengths and weaknesses.

Automatic renewals

Strengths

Enhancing the student experience

Less administrative time spent dealing with staff & student requests to renew books and complaints in regard to overdue fines.

More flexibility for part-time students

Raising the libraries profile

Weaknesses

Less income from fines The amount of time for

requested books out on loan is reduced

Increase in numbers of ‘Spoon-Fed’ students

Ditching the helpdesk

Strengths Innovative technologies

allowing helpdesk staff to focus more time on other work

Subject specific enquiries should be diverted away from the help/enquiry desk where appointments with relevant staff can be made.

The human touch of being at the desk can move to other

areas such as library study skill sessions, tours and inductions.

To exploit self-service technologies by providing self-service machines and library catalogues.

To create more space within the library by acquiring a library hub where one member of staff deals with library and IT related queries.

Weaknesses Staff and student still expect

staff presence Personal contact is more

important than modern technology

Library staff may feel less confident in responding to IT related queries.

Less support for students with learning difficulties.

Although many alternatives were given as to whether or not the traditional library helpdesk should be replaced, staff felt that library space, staffing and further training in regard to IT queries needed to be taken into consideration

Overall, the day was quite insightful as helpdesk staff that interact with the public on a daily basis had a similar approach as to how a library ‘helpdesk’ should be run. It was decided that all members of library staff should be more flexible, have a much broader knowledge to all the library services, and above all else need to offer more consistent information and ‘hands-on’ service to ensure efficient customer care.

Paula Barbato

VOICE AND BODY WORKSHOPThursday 15th March 2012.

The Voice and Body Workshop was organized by Staff Development “… for staff with a frontline role within the University …” As most of the group came from the same department (not ours), it was reassuring that we couldn’t be the only ones who became stressed and lost our voices.

We shared similar aims in attending the workshop. We all wanted to:

deal with stressful situations where we lost control of our voices

talk to large groups of people without losing our voice

deal with a stressed individual and keep calm

Thought for the day.Eye contact is good, but when does it become oppressive? We experimented, and it’s true – too much eye contact was threatening. So, engage with your audience as you speak, but don’t make it too obvious.

Relationship between posture and breath control.We learned how we could improve our posture and thus help our breathing, by following the principles of Alexander Technique. Words associated with Alexander Technique are centred, grounded, posture, and breathing control. We did a wonderful exercise called ‘lying in a semi- supine position’ which basically means lying flat on the floor for ten minutes with the knees raised to 90◦, breathing slowly and getting really calm. While we could not envisage us

doing this in practice, it was a nice idea and it worked for us for the session. We were very calm after that, and this was the best part of the programme!

We re-learned the techniques of breathing properly. How many of us ‘shallow breathe’ (using only the chest) instead of ‘deep breathe’ (using the diaphragm)? Try breathing ‘properly’, and see how it feels. This was also very useful – something we could take away and practice.

Voice exercises.During the afternoon session we worked on our voices; this was the embarrassing part of the day but luckily was timetabled for when we had got to know each other a bit better. It meant we had to shout out odd phrases, hum mantras to exercise our throats – i.e. mmmmm-ahhh, mmmmm-ngngng, mmmmm-ngnor (try it in secluded places only) and do articulation exercises, such as saying these phrases ptk-pah, ptk-pay, ptk-por out loud to improve clarity of speech – all the while being aware that the room next to us had been booked for visitors to the Music & Computing Applicants Day. This latter exercise was the one we felt was the least relevant – funnily enough.

Things we took away from the workshop.The importance of breath control, eye contact, and presentation styles.The importance of deep breathing to control the voice.The exercises we were given on how to deep breathe.The importance of eye contact to engage the audience and enunciating properly to help being heard.

Keep disengaged, deep breathe and don’t get caught up in the other’s panic.Use pauses in presentations to your advantage. They allow the audience to reflect on what you’ve just said and prepare them for what you’ll say next.

All in all, it was a very useful day and worth attending, even if it was a bit embarrassing at times!

Sally Houston

‘The best laid plans…’ Ray Philips, Kings FundCILIP in London Evening meeting 12th June 2012

I heard about this meeting through Twitter. I don’t follow CILIP in London (#cilipldn) but someone re-tweeted it and that is how I found out about it.

Ray Philips talked about his experiences in libraries with honesty. When he was in public libraries, he hated the job. They would call him whenever a fight broke out. His return to libraries in a health setting via hospital administration has been fulfilling and successful and he is now the Head of Information Service Development at the Kings Fund. The Kings Fund is an organization funded by an endowment from King Edward VII concerned with leadership and dissemination of information within the healthcare sector. Ray’s aim was

to talk about his experience of change in the Kings Fund library and how to ‘cope with and take advantage of the unexpected or unwanted’. He quoted others who have said ‘don’t waste a good crisis’ ‘expect failure’ ‘he who resists change is the architect of decay’ - though Ray would change that to ‘MERELY the architect of decay’. We at Goldsmiths would possibly agree with Ray that change is a permanent way of being in libraries now. Ray talked of his attempt to change the function of an open space within the library to being more social and how this has failed because the archetypal image of the library as a quiet study space persists within his institution. His attitude to this failure is to bide his time and not to give up.

The circumstances of the Kings Fund library are possibly rather different from an academic library such as Goldsmiths. They need to create products to bring in internal and external customers and income. When their external customers are the NHS and they decide not to pay for one of the products any more (causing a loss of £60k of income) it is potentially disastrous for the King’s Fund library. They have had to look at providing such products for free and thereby bringing in far more customers for the library and ultimately generating income that way. Ray’s view is that every experience has its benefits. He wants his staff to spend at least 5% of their time developing personal projects. Those experiments are what can help change to happen. He has brought about change by consulting with his staff, promoting those with particular skills so that they are leading change

and therefore getting them to drive change.

I took some watchwords and personal slogans away from this talk. ‘Free services are powerful’. Demonstrate your ability as a team to work in partnership with outside institutions and you will be very valuable to your institution. Nurture champions in other departments within your institution who will speak up for you at committees. Open source software has great potential for developing services as you can experiment, it is flexible and free! Get your reach out – in other words, recognize that there are a wide variety of potential customers and adapt ways of contacting them. Twitter and tweeting are the way forward here.

Finally, one of the audience pointed out that libraries are the only department which is named after a room, rather than the service you provide. My question is do we want to be known as a multifunctional service, how would you achieve that and what would we call ourselves?

Nicola Stephenson

On-the-job-learning period at Goldsmiths Library

I am a Library and Information Services student from Finland. Since the beginning of my studies I had been dreaming of doing my on-the-job-learning period abroad. I expressed my interest and my teacher encouraged me to go. Soon I participated in my school’s program which assisted students in getting their on-the-job-learning places abroad. I was very lucky as Goldsmiths Library accepted my

application and I got a work place corresponding to my education. I started my internship in April and it lasted two months.

I had been at public libraries in Finland and had no experience of university libraries of any kind. I had been used to daytime openings only and that is why I was surprised at the library being open 24/7. It was even more surprising to hear the suggestion for widening opening times had come from students themselves. I guess some people are at their most productive mood at nights so I can see the demand but I keep still worrying for their good night’s sleep. During these two months I usually did morning shifts but once a week I had my late night. I think it was useful for me to get some experience of evenings too.

I worked as a member of Readers’ Services staff and did routine tasks like managing reservations, dealing with customers and shelving. DDC was new for me but fortunately there is a same kind of idea in it as is in UDC which we have in Finland. So shelving was quite clear for me but it took time as I did not know the order of the subjects. Customer service consisted mainly of ordinary situations like circulation and paying fines but I needed to do well in these familiar tasks in English. At first I was fumbling for words but gradually I grew better with my English thanks to the everyday practice. I got more courage to speak despite my English was far from fluent and also learned to appreciate my own language, Finnish, even more. Of course there were challenging situations in which I needed some help but there was always someone to turn to. I had

lovely workmates who never made me feel uneasy or ashamed. Instead they were really supportive and I genuinely felt I was relied on.

Most of our customers seemed to be polite and easy-going. Their friendly faces, good manners and cheery chatting were remarkable as I was used to serving customers with blank faces and very few words. I am going to miss not only the phrases like “please” and “I’m sorry” but also little polite gestures like opening doors. I think I will remember left-side traffic, delicious sandwiches, tea ceremony and bathroom taps for a long time. This journey strengthened my belief in my own abilities and made me respect different kinds of people. London twisted me around its finger so I hope to return this beautiful city and explore it even further.

Merja Uotila

Literary library

Last month’s Literary Library was written by Manuel Barreto – I apologize for the omission, Nicola.

The Library June 2012Edited by Nicola Stephensonn.stephenson@gold.ac.uk