Roots and Routes

This post is my contribution to the Library Routes Project which has the admirable objective of seeking to document why librarians got into the profession and the career paths they have taken subsequently.

Above: Exeter University

Back in the heady days of 1992 as I was approaching the end of my second year at Exeter University I began to seriously think about the career options open to me after I completed my Theology degree. No the priesthood wasn’t on the list (in fact the course had ultimately confirmed my atheism as Theology at Exeter was about enquiry and philosophy as much as it was about Christianity). By that time librarianship had only ever been vaguely on my radar. I had never felt very comfortable in the University Library there and definitely wasn’t a model user  – I certainly paid my share of short loan fines! However, perhaps a spark of something came out of my pleasure at mastering the Libertas library system and realising ahead of my peers that I could ensure I had the books I needed by booking specific slots of time up to a week in advance. I’ve always been very organised so this came naturally to me, I just had to plan my essay writing early and around book availability. Sounds a bit sad I know but this was essential for our poorly resourced subject (I did go out and have a good time as well).

Above: Exeter University Library

Over the summer break I decided to find out about the graduate trainee schemes available but had no real clue as to what librarianship was about, in fact in many ways, if I’m honest, it felt like a very safe and therefore very viable option to this rather gauche 20-year-old.  Unfortnately this meant that I became one of those idiots who had no clue how to communicate why I was interested or what the profession really entailed. Yes I did mention ‘love of books’ in my interviews and no it turned out I didn’t know the difference between cataloguing and classification when asked! After two interviews and several rejections including one from the Bodleian Library trainee scheme (particularly amusing in retrospect as I later found myself selecting interview candidates for their scheme!), I was no further forward, although I was at least starting to realise that I’d need to communicate my interest much more eloquently.

And so, there came the dreaded return home and an increasing feeling of desperation. After a relatively short time I decided that my best course of action was to offer my time on a voluntary basis to Stafford central lending library and thankfully they accepted. This was the turning point. I was very lucky as just a few weeks down the line a vacancy came up and I applied and duly got the library assistant post on offer – not I’m sure because I had suddenly developed a lucid understanding of the profession, but rather because of the hard work I had already put in. As much as I was grateful for the post and the myriad duties involved in a large and busy lending library, I quickly concluded that the public library sector was not going to be my cup of tea. How well I remember the unbearable stickiness of the items recovered by the book recovery officer, the weirdness of some of the patrons (“Yes I really DO want to register my son for the Library as “I am Jesus Christ”, is that a problem?”) and the time we made national news when our head librarian fell down the lift shaft while demonstrating lift safety!

Above: Stafford public library (the welcoming building on the left). No I Didn’t work there in the Thirties (!) but the library has now moved and I couldn’t find a recent photo.

The next step was applying for my Masters course. I was  intent on choosing Loughborough due to its reputation for being more cutting edge and technologically-oriented than others. The only problem was that I had very little cash – my hours had been cut mid-year due to county council cuts, so I would HAVE to get a bursary in order to take the course. However, his time around I must have been sufficiently prepared at interview as I was awarded one and soon it was goobye Stafford, hello Loughborough.

Above: Loughborough with blue sky (presumably added in Photoshop)

Looga-barooga, as everyone calls it there, is not the most alluring town in the British Isles. Not only was it consistently grey and windswept (think Skaro) but there were sporty people all over the place making you feel permanently guilty for being a) unfit and b) alive. Thankfully the course was excellent, and its hard to believe now, but as part of my course I used the Internet and Windows for the first time (Demonstrator: “No – you can’t possibly break it Andy… er… what have you done? Could you move to that other PC please?”) Despite being briefly had up on a charge of collusion during the course (by then I had a girlfriend on the same course and not thinking about the consequences we stupidly worked on one assignment together – a very easy classification exercise) all went swimmingly. Most importantly I discovered that I definitely did want to become a librarian, specifically in the academic sector.

After a near miss at a Theology college in Birmingham (thank the gods I didn’t get that one – or should that be God?!), I secured my first professional post at an Oxford college (called Templeton) despite a very nervy interview. The college specialised in executive education so it was run and looked like a posh hotel and I had got there too early and the atmosphere  had freaked me out a bit.  Initially the post was 40% cataloguing – something that still amuses me to this day – and involved no staff supervision, however, after a year or two I was promoted (in name only – Templeton were good at that) to Deputy Information Centre Manager and my time spent on staff supervision increased while the cataloguing reduced.

Above: Templeton College and an airport lounge yesterday

After 5 solid years there, two signficant things happened, the Information Centre was refurbished and turned into an airport lounge (or something very like an airport lounge) and we were informed by the Dean that we were not performing. On the contrary, I knew that I was definitely performing, as were the rest of the team and damn well, if not innovatively. The real problem was that the College was haemorrhaging money and they were on the look out for soft targets (heaven forbid at that time if any of the usually power-suited fellows approached you in a friendly cardigan – it was a sure sign that you were about to be told you were for the chop). The arrival of a new librarian who neither liked me nor understood what it was to be a librarian in the new millenium was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and I trotted across Oxford to the new business school instead.

During  7 eventful years at Said Business School (above),  I had the freedom to really find my feet professionally and was given the opportunity to develop, teach, build, recruit, design, promote and, perhaps most importantly, to start to learn the dark art of staff management. By 2007 I’d been a Deputy for around 10 years and had realised I could only give more, and also get more out, if I was in charge – something that becoming Chair of BBSLG (now BLA) had helped me to discover. There’s only so long that you can defer, especially when your skill-set is improving all the time.  Again my luck was in when the Head Librarian position at Judge Business School (below) was advertised at an opportune moment.

I’ve been in post here for two years now and, though I say so myself, I have achieved a great deal in that time, indeed in terms of services now offered, the Library is almost unrecognisable. My job is challenging and fascinating in equal measure, especially given the current economic climate and the unfailing pace of technological change.

Looking back I can see that I was very fortunate to join the profession at a time that has meant that my interests and strengths have almost developed in parallel with the changing role of the librarian. I couldn’t and wouldn’t have wanted to be a librarian twenty years ago, but as it stands now it’s unquestionably the career for me.

Andy

What a difference 24 hours makes…

OK, so I’m a complete convert, after our misfire library induction yesterday I was feeling much less keen on the hands-on and longer session approach, but today its  a completely different story. I guess that the main change today was that  the PCs were already set-up in our portal so there was no way that the students could go wrong to start with. Also, the inclusion of the sentence ‘out of courtesy to presenters please don’t update your Facebook profile or read your email’ completely did the trick and we had an attentive audience, even in the 2pm after lunch sleep-slot! In both of today’s sessions the students listened, interacted, understood and were generally fab human beings. I could have hugged some of them for asking what, if I didn’t know any better, seemed like perfect planted questions! One more session to the fourth and final MBA stream tomorrow and I feel like I’ve finally cracked MBA induction. Only taken me 15 years.

The best thing about it is of course that  those who attended today’s sessions are as equipped as they can be information-wise at this point in the course, and as a result dbase usage, enquiries and footfall should theoretically increase. I’m a happy chappie – can you tell?! I would be happier but I now have a whole day’s worth of emails ahead of me before I go home.

Andy

That same old induction problem (after the fact)

OK, so those of you who read my post earlier today, here’s how the new hands-on and longer session style went down.

Negatives

• There were inevitable technical problems at the start of the session – students not having sourced or brought with them the passwords required to access our portal. Also some browser issues.
• My lovely powerpoint session froze for no good reason right at the start.
• The Lab we were presenting in had just been refurbished and it took us a while to work out where the dimmers were and how to up the mic volume.
• Some of the databases behaved slower than usual - THEY KNEW!
• We didn’t have hands-on for all databases due to group password and simultaneous user ssues .
• A lot of the students inevitably strayed into Facebook, email and other sites during the session.
• The students were obviously tired from having being talked at alot already today.
• Overall, it didn’t feel as professional and seamless as I’d have liked.

Positives

• We took the students straight into our portal – none of that ‘you can go in yourselves after the session’ malarkey.
• We gave them much more info than usual about our main databases.
• They asked a lot of relevant questions.
• They all came back after the coffee break!
• We felt they understood our main messages about the library service focusing on databases, business information and training and teaching rather than traditional aspects.
• The lab was a comfortable location for the audience and if they got bored they could get on with their own thing (!)
• Most of them chose to join the optional tour after the session.
• It was definitely an interactive experience.
• The debrief conversations brought us closer to the IT team!

So all in all, not too bad.  Hands-on is definitely more exhausting for the presenter, but its ticking lots of learning boxes that a straight lecture just doesn’t. I’ve got some clear ideas about how it can be improved for the next 3 streams who have the same sessions with us (most importantly logging on to the portal in advance) and we won’t be beset by new room issues next time around, so the only way is up!

Andy

That same old induction problem…

Its that time of year again and that same old question of how much or how little to say in student inductions. This year here at Judge Business School with our new MBA class we’ve decided to try something completely different to the usual 45 minute lecture theatre presentation come lecture, followed by library tour. Not only are we increasing the length of the session to 2 hours (plus an essential 15-minute break in the middle) so we can demonstrate our key databases but we’re also making as much as we can hands-on.

I remain to be convinced that is the best approach given that its their first week and many of them will be quite understandably distracted by other things, but this does respond directly to comments from last year’s MBAs that they wanted more than just a snapshot of the databases at the top of the year and I’m never going to turn down allocated teaching time.

Another important change is the decision to bill the first session as ‘Business Databases’ rather than ‘Library Induction’ in order to see if the level of enthusiasm and engagement is affected in any way.

Glazed and/or pleading faces will seal the fate of this new initiative!

Andy

Inspector Morse and faculty/librarian relationships

Last week I attended CILIP’s Umbrella conference in Hatfield. It was a bit of a flying visit, with my primary purpose being to present a talk on faculty engagement, specifically with respect to information literacy and librarians teaching. I’m always looking for a hook to hang my presentations on and this time I chose the TV series Inspector Morse, because like Morse and Lewis  I’ve spent the majority of my working life dealing with the foibles and idiosyncracies of academics at Oxford University.

My rather tongue-in-cheek presentation asked whether Oxford academics were really as awkward, pompous, sex-mad, disturbed and murderous as Morse would have us believe. I also mused that some faculty I have worked with would probably have rather cooperated with a murder enquiry than with the idea of librarians teaching alongside them in the classroom! I also stopped off along the way to see how I’d developed as a teacher and how with confidence and increased freedom, arising from the trust and support I had gained from relationships with faculty, I had been able to provide ‘point of need’ teaching  to which students have truly responded.

I was lucky enough to be joined by two other preseners Carol Webb and Chris Powis for this ‘Information Skills for Life’ hour and despite the relative absence of communication between us before the event, I felt that our respective presentations gelled nicely. The main reason for this was that we all agreed on the importance of emotional engagement and the building and developing of relationships with faculty/teaching staff. One of my slides was headed ‘Relationship’ in a large point size and was there to prompt me to hold forth about the importance of putting all the theory that has been expounded about faculty/librarian collaboration to one side and just getting out there and building relationships with faculty, by: having coffee with them; passing the time of day; and essentially treating them as fellow human beings! Chris took this one stage further by getting the audience to consider in small groups how we see faculty, and how we think they see librarians, and ultimately drawing out the fact that we hold on to a mass of prejudices and preconceptions that are very effective barriers to the development of relationships. He also commented that if he had used slides – the clever sod dispensed with a presentation and got the audience to do all the work (only joking Chris!), then he would have put the word relationship in a bigger point size than even I had done.

Part of my presentation dealt with encountering a situation where you might be starting from scratch at your workplace on the faculty relationship/teaching integration front, as I had done here in Cambridge, back in Autumn 2007. At Oxford, I’d had the cushion of having known the same faculty for years, first at Templeton College and then Said Business School, at Cambridge they didn’t know me from Adam.  My main approach at Cambridge  (see slide above) was as follows:  1. To make it clear from the outset  (as early as interview) that I was seeking to teach and train not simply to curate and protect; 2. To shamelessly declare my teaching credentials by referring to the fact that I had received a teaching award from Oxford University for my lecture/workshop series on effective literature searching; 3. To engage with faculty by embarking on a faculty consultation exercise – partly to find out what their information needs were, but also to make my agenda, abilities and interests known; 4. To ensure that via meetings, email and other forms of communication that I was always ‘on message’ about the potential for the library service’s teaching role and its value and relevance; 5. Identifying latent teaching opportunities e.g. the plagiarism problems at Cambridge which strengthened importance of our provision of plagiarism avoidance lectures; 6. And finally, of course, actually proving myself to some of them as a teacher by making that initial teaching conribution so that faculty are reassured that this was something that I could do and be trusted with. The result of the above approach was that after only 18 months I was teaching on all programmes.

Returning to the question of prejudices, and indeed stereotypes, I took each of the typical characteristics of the faculty as portrayed in Morse in turn and commented on how this tied in with my own experiences. The message being that, of course, reality is far more palatable, surprising and interesting than fiction. There were a few imponderables, such as whether Oxford faculty were sex-mad. I revealed that I have only been propostioned once (a fact of which Chris was profoundly jealous!) but didn’t really like to say whether this qualified  the faculty member in question as ’sex-mad’. However, I did conclude that as I had  not stumbled across any dead bodies during my time at Oxford we could probably cross murderous off the list of attributes!

Andy

Drop the pilot: why business librarians should not give in to Harvard Business School Publishing’s new scheme

As Chair of BBSLG (the British Business Schools’ Librarians’ Group) which comprises some 200 academic business librarians and over 100 libraries across the UK and Ireland, I have recently spent a considerable amount of my time complaining about an outrageous and precedent-setting pilot scheme dreamt up by Harvard Business School Publishing. For a few years now HBSP have been requesting payments of as much as £15k pa from several UK academic business libraries simply for the privilege of making persistent links to HBR articles on reading lists and VLEs.

The links in question are being made to EBSCO’s Business Source products (which provide HBR in full-text), however, it is Harvard rather than EBSCO who have approached librarians directly for additional payment.  Thus far these demands for extra monies, which are being requested on top of the EBSCO subscription, are, as mentioned above, merely part of a ‘pilot scheme’, however, HBSP plan to roll it out to all EBSCO subscribers in due course. 

Thus far, all UK librarians who have been offered the ‘opportunity’ to pay this additional sum have unsurprisingly turned it down, and as a result have recently had the ability to make persistent links to HBR turned off by EBSCO. This move has been greeted with a mixture of fury and disbelief  for a number of very good reasons:

1) The majority of UK business librarians make persistent links to HBR, and yet  only a handful of Universities have been selected to pay more now. Why should only a handful of libraries pay for a practice still in operation at other institutions?
2)  The ability to persistent-link has always been part and parcel of an EBSCO subscription. How can an additional fee be justifiably levied for what is considered to be a basic web experience rather than an added extra?
3) How can EBSCO justify turning off the ability to make persistent links to HBR at targeted institutions, when the links are still turned on and being used by EBSCO subscribers at other institutions that have not been targeted?
4) Why are EBSCO not protecting its customers from Harvard approaching them directly? As subscribers we have a relationship with EBSCO not Harvard. If Harvard are after after extra monies for access to their material then surely they should demand it of the aggregator not us? It seems a particularly odd strategy on EBSCO’s part when one considers that before now they have maintained uniformly excellent relations with their customers.
5) If HBSP get away with this practice, what’s to stop other journal publishers following suit? And what then is the purpose of paying a subscription to a journal aggregator if you’re having to pay additional fees to individual publishers on top?

However, in my opinion, the most important argument against HBSP’s scheme is that the primary reason which they cite for this cost recovery process is a clause in EBSCO subscribers contracts which states that access to articles within the product is for ‘individual, private study’ rather than for teaching purposes. Is accessing and reading an article cited on a course not individual study? Where does teaching begin and study end? Where do you draw the line? Harvard are of course drawing it at a point which conveniently supports their argument, but their definition is highly debatable.

Given the level of bad feeling around this issue, EBSCO’s Gareth Smith has agreed to speak on behalf of EBSCO in an open forum session at the 2009 BBLSG conference in Dublin in a few weeks time and subsequently feed back our views both to his company and to Harvard. The correspondence received thus far from HBSP suggests that they will stand firm and I consider it imperative that we do the same.

Andy

N.B. Visit Paul Stainthorp’s UoL blog to read a post on the same issue.

Gender-alisation

To say I was put off by the pink butterfly that adorned the course outline for the training I attended this morning is something of an understatement, especially as the course in question was focusing on gender awareness and its impact on teams. The trainer was also using the strapline ‘developing female leaders’ which quite frankly led me to question whether I should be there at all. Thankfully I quickly discovered I wasn’t the only male attendee.The course leader, an American living in the UK who has recently written a book which essentially deals with career success for women working in ‘a man’s world, began the course by asking us all to generalise about what we thought our respective genders did well and what we thought it did badly. There was a tangible level of concern from both male and female participants (who incidentally came from across the University of Cambridge and weren’t just librarians) at being encouraged to generalise, but the purpose was – we were assured – to recognise the ‘grain of truth’ that sits behind the generalised stereotypes. So, as you’d expect, we soon had a list in front of us of declaring that women were more empathic, caring and sociable and men were more decisive, competitive and single-minded. However, as we were a pretty switched-on and PC bunch, we all felt duty-bound to heavily-couch these generalisations and made it clear that we felt that both men and women could be all these things and that it was more about personality surely?  A particular bete-noir of mine was raised by another male attendee: the oft-quoted stereotype that men can’t multi-task. He, like me, believed this was utter nonsense. I’m quite sure I couldn’t do my job if I wasn’t able to multi-task and resent this generalisation. The course leader conceded that yes, men and women have far more in common with each other than they have differences (and that some men can indeed multi-task) but was more interested in the extant differences.

A table was now presented of male and female stereotypical attributes that she postulated derived from the way we were brought up, played sports and behaved at school:

MEN                                   WOMEN                      
Hierarchy-oriented    Flat structure-oriented        
Clear leader                    Happier with even standing (power dead-even rule)
Goal-focused                  Relationship-focused
Accept conflict             Avoid conflict
Single-minded               Multi-tasking

I looked through this list and saw that I could quite happily tick on both columns on some line: yes hierarchy-oriented, a clear leader, goal-focused, accepting of conflict and, on occasion, single-minded, BUT I am also relationship-focused,  avoid conflict if its not necessary (especially if its going to waste my time unduly!) and, as I’ve already said, could represent my country at the multi-tasking Olympics.  This made me question the vailidity of these generalisations again. While on the subject of how I became hierarchy-oriented and all the other male attributes I’d say that it has much more to do with age and experience as a manager and leader than family dynamics during childhood or how I played sports at school!  If my experience of school football was directly relevant then I’d have zero-confidence and be ticking  the female atributes only and I’m not. So where does that leave us? And what does this say about me and the other male attendees most of whom also identified this crossover. Well the course leader believed that we men had learnt to adapt as we had all worked with women over a period of time and moreover that the best managers pick and choose from either the male or female column dependent on the situation. Although I could understand her argument I wasn’t convinced by it. What of nature/nurture? Might I be a good multi-tasker because of my genes?

We were encouraged to continue to generalise and to feel comfortable doing so (something I don’t think we achieved as a group for the duration of the session) as the course leader presented in some detail further examples of differences between men and women. Firstly, that women apologised and thanked more than men in order to get work done and that conversely men more often only apologise if they are clearly in the wrong, or thank someone if they have gone out of their way. Once again I felt like I was a bit of a thorn in the course leader’s side as I volunteered that I thanked and apologised all the time in my day-to-day work and that if I didn’t I would have a very unhappy, unproductive, if not mutinous team. However, once again I was asked just to accept that I could see ‘a grain of truth’ in the stereotype, which I kind of could, but by this time in the training I had kind of decided it was easier to agree with the thesis being forwarded rather than appear to continually thwart it!

What next? Communication in meetings: Men are more likely to repeat and dominate with their ideas, while women are more likely to wait for a turn that never comes; Men make more declarative statements, while women  ask more questions. Although we could  all see some truth in this, I couldn’t agree that it is always thus and felt that personality was again more relevant than gender. Next up was Self-Promotion. Now here I finally felt some resonance, especially with the table she presented:

MEN                                                                      WOMEN
‘Talks up’ self                                                     ’Talks down’ self
Wait for someone to challenge them      Wait for someone to “raise” them
Use ‘I’ talk                                                           Use ‘we’ talk
Use declarative statements                        Use questions and hedges
Seek recognition                                             Wait for recognition
Point out what they think they know     Point out what they don’t know

I felt that the above was generally true, with the proviso that I use the ‘female traits’ where and when appropriate. This section of the event led on to some discussion around the lack of advancement of women as leaders and the idea that women do not promote or value themselves enough when it comes to going for a promotion/a higher-paid job etc. I have to say that this has been my experience and that many women I have managed have needed considerable encouragement to recognise their worth and ability, and have generally underestimated what they can offer. Furthermore, in librarianship in particular, given the number of women in the profession, there is an imblance when it comes to the ratio of men in senior positions. There is just no arguing with that. 

After taking it in turn to nominate areas of discussion that had sparked with us (I chose greater recognition of a specific point, not mentioned anywhere above, that when women are being told a list of positives and negatives about themselves then they are more likely to discount the positives and concentrate on the negatives – apparently evidenced through lots of research) the course was over.  It is actually a two-part course, but I’m understandably loathe to relinquish my holiday in Southwold to attend the sequel.

So what did I learn? Well to be honest, very little, other than the fact that I didn’t much like talking in generalised terms or to make assertions based on supposed gender traits. I may manage a team of all women but I feel that I am experienced enough as a manager to lead them using male- or female- designated traits and moreover to regard them as team members first and female employees second. I’ve always worked with more women than men and probably always will and have no misgivings about this. Occasionally when birthday cake is being dished out and there is cooing over presents I can actively feel the testosterone being leached out of me, but having said that there  is at least one women on my team who doesn’t go in for that either.

In conclusion, concerns about ‘gender-alisation’ aside, I know one thing for sure: I’d much rather not go to a course branded with pink butterflies all over the shop, and I suspect that goes for as many female attendees as it does male!

Andy

Open All Hours

In February of this year, Judge Business School Library service went over to 24/7 opening, with members having access outside of staffed hours via swipecard. We decided to try this out for a number of reasons:

• To finally succumb to demand. This had been requested by students for many years via  the staff-student committee and the annual library survey. In fact, in the 2008 survey it was the most requested improvement, cited by 29%  of respondents.
• Because as a business school that considers itself to be world-class, arguably we could no longer justify the limited opening hours  of 9am to 7pm.
• In order to provide a more flexible and customer-focused service to our users.

The main argments against the move to 24/7 were as follows:

• the security of the staff area (specifically the lack of lockable cupboards and shelving at the open Library Desk)
• the fact that we only had a self-issue terminal so users couldn’t return books after hours
• the fear that materials would be removed from the Library without being loaned
• and finally, the possibility of more food and drink debris and the related need for more cleaners

Thankfully the first two points could be easily remedied with a bit of cash injection for furniture modification and a self-return module for our existing 3M terminal, while the second two were always going to be more ’suck it and see’.

As far as I was concerned, and as I repeated at length to nay-sayers, if a few books did go missing, then in the grand scheme of things that wasn’t too important. What was much more significant was that the overall service would be vastly improved and expectations (particularly of our North American students) would be met. I also wasn’t too interested in exactly how many people would use the library after staffed hours, as the willingness to go 24/7 and the message that would sent about our service was far more important than the reality of use.

So 4 months down the line how has it gone? Well I’m pleased to say that very few books have gone missing, the Library is no dirtier than before and usage has been higher than I imagined, especially between 7 and 9pm and during the pre-lecture 7am-9am slot. As for the praise we’ve received, well, quite frankly its been embarrassingly good. In the annual Library survey, students variously described the new 24/7 opening as fantastic, excellent and even ‘heaven-sent’. To say that 24/7 has proved popular is something of an understatement.

All that and not one mention of Arkwright, Granville and Nurse Gladys Emmanuel. So to put that right:
     Granville: I’ve got the blood of poets and lovers in my veins.
     Arkwright: [as Granville leaves] Yes. And at least one electrician.

Andy

The average academic business librarian

I’ve recently updated and sent out a benchmarking survey to British Business Schools Librarians Group (BBSLG) member institutions with a view to gathering key information on their library services and the roles of the individual librarians that run them. The survey was first distributed in 2007 so it should prove very interesting to see how much has changed since then. The most easily digestible results of the survey will be a picture of the average BBSLG institution and the average BBSLG librarian.

Looking specifically at the latter, last time around the average BBSLG librarian:

• Was a chartered member of CILIP
• Had 23 years experience in libraries
• Has been in their current post for 7.6 years
• Spent most of their time answring ad hoc enquiries, developing and delivering training sessions and producing user support materials
• Spent almost as much time acquiring electronic resources as printed
• Managed and negotiated a budget
• Represented the library on a teaching committee
• Enjoyed a flexible policy when it came to accessing CPD
• Was involved in markting and PR activities
• And earned between 27,000 and 32,000 pa

Whereas the average BBSLG instiution:

• supported 278 MBAs, 1720 undergrads, 66 PhDs and 103 academic staff
• provided access to 32,000 business and management books
• provided access to 212 printed journals
• had 3.5 FTE full-time library staff
• had a ratio of 1 FTE library staff member to 29 academics/79 MBAs
• were either testing or using the following ‘new’ technology the most: blogs, openURLresolvers, fed search
• were giving more standalone lectures or tutorials than ones integrated into the curriculum
• spent most of their budget on databases
• formed the business section of an integrated University Library, rather than being a standalone library within a larger University libary service

The main additions to this year’s survey are some more social media options, as this has moved on a touch in the last 2 years (!), to find out how business librarians are using Facebook, Twitter and blogs and specifically the ratio of professional and social use. In addition there’s a new a section on how motivated individuals feel, the level of support they feel they receive from their institution and how challenging their post is.

The aim of the survey is to gauge the temperature of business librarianship as a whole as well as to assemble some hard data.

I’ll be posting top level (but non-confidential) results here in mid-July. The full report will be available to BBSLG members via the website.

Andy

Blog Post of the Month

Now that I’m up and blogging regularly, I thought I’d share my favourite blog post every month.

The post that really hit home with me this month was John Naughton’s ‘Blogging and intellectual craftsmanship’ in which he looks at an essay ‘On Intellectual Craftsmanship’ by C. Wright Mills from an entirely new perspective now that he’s blogging. Naughton muses on how Mills considered the most admirable thinkers to be those who did not split their work from their lives and how the best bloggers he himself knows also ‘display this reluctance’.

Personally this made me look again at how I’ve been blogging and gave me the confidence to open the door a bit more on my personality and opinions in my posts. As Mills stated in his essay: ‘Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files [your blog posts] and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape.’ This is exactly what blogging helps me to do, although I recognise that I’m very much a beginner in this medium. As Mills says, you should try to ‘write something at least every week’, maybe if I do this and seek to approach the medium more holistically, then I might blog that much better?

Like Naughton, I find the parallels with blogging in this 50-year-old essay quite fascinating.

Read the full post on John Naughton’s Memex 1.1

Andy