#CPD23 Thing 10 – Train in Vain?

I wrote about my route into libraries last year. If, like me, you enjoy a good origin story or want something sunnier than this post, you might like to read that.

My graduate traineeship was undertaken at The University of Northampton in what was then its Information Services department – a converged library and IT service. Really, it has ended up being a reboot of my entire life. You know like in the last Star Trek movie where they established a new continuity and rejigged the tone and scope? Or when Doctor Who came back in 2005 and it was sort of different? Or how the Buffy movie was sort of fun but it didn’t really get legitimately great until the TV show came along and really focussed and refined its ideas? Or some other reference that shows that I’m not just some sad genre nerd?

Andrew, the pre-graduate trainee years.

Well, anyway, that’s what happened. I look at it as the year where a series of paths crystallised in front of me and my character and skills started to really emerge. It was a fantastic year where I got to just do everything: cataloguing, enquiries, team-teaching, marketing, open access and repositories, even a bit of archive work. It gave me the kind of workplace freedom I couldn’t dream of ever having again, but at no point did it feel shallow and I wasn’t being spread too thin because it all came together. I ran around two campuses and to various conferences, Linda Blair possessed by the spirit of libraries, but everything made perfect sense and was given a wider context. I got a good feel for where everything fitted in.

Unfortunately, during its recent restructure the university axed the graduate trainee role. It’s understandable from a number-crunching, dollar-signs-for-eyes point of view. But it’s dispiriting to see an institution throw aside such a great leg up programme that had actually been utilised by my line manager at the time (and she’s now responsible for the institutional repository, no small feat), and it’s not as though libraries don’t benefit from having an eager beaver all-rounder to muck in wherever they’re needed.

And of course, without my trainee year I wouldn’t have been at UCL this past year either – another experience that has really shaped me and which I feel privileged to have had. I think the MA is hugely useful in forging your library career: even if it does turn out to just be a piece of paper (heresy!), the experience itself has really pushed forward both my knowledge and my interests. Prior to moving to London I would have said I liked cataloguing, but now I love it. I would have said writing a policy sounds like a nightmare, but now I know it’s actually not so bad and that I’m capable of it. I wouldn’t have mixed with archivists in one of their modules, I wouldn’t have been pushed to spend the summer eating ice cream to soothe the brain pain of a dissertation, and I wouldn’t have met a very lovely and inspiring group of peers.

I said I felt privileged to have studied at UCL, though, and I mean it. It feels as though library school is becoming a pursuit of the privileged, open only to those who can afford to splurge thousands for the recompense of a possible career in libraries – which is an awesome prospect, but not one traditionally known to feature swimming pools full of gold coins a la DuckTales. The raising of fees is in line with everyone else, and it’s in line with the way higher education is going in the UK, but that doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t soften the blow that it will have to the diversity within our profession in the future. It doesn’t make me less worried that such extortionate prices could actually damage esteemed library schools and see them become dinosaur graveyards. My lecturers have been awesome, and the last thing I want is for them to be edged out by more competitively priced training options.

Photo by Omar Bermadez Corona (Flickr).

If you’re considering a trainee year, I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re considering postgraduate study, I’d recommend it, I’d say to keep your eyes peeled for alternative modes of study, and I’d say that price might be a deciding factor in what you do and where you do it. Both a traineeship and library school present you with a bevy of mentors, role models, and professional friends. Both are a lot of fun. It’s not the only route open to you, of course, and I’ve met some hardcore folk who put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into a variety of other roles and pursuits instead. It’s true that certain paths are more clearly signposted than others, but this is something that we need to rectify as fees increase and the profession changes. There’s a whole lot of uncharted territory on the map and I’m intrigued to see what lies there. Especially when there are toll booths being erected elsewhere.

If you’re looking for more discussion of the financial scariness of postgraduate study, YOU’RE BLOODY CHEERFUL AREN’T YOU. Uh, I mean, others have written about this as well and you’d do well to have a gander. Annie makes an interesting point about distance learning courses being potentially more manageable money-wise, but perhaps this would be at the expense of locking out some learning styles. Siobhan’s experiences are a good read, and she too ponders what the alternatives might be if the current route into the profession fails us. And Jen has made a spreadsheet – I repeat, she has made a spreadsheet.

Librarian swagger: what we could learn from hip hop’s braggarts about playing the game

Warning: contains swears, and any advice should probably be completely ignored

This does not make you a librarian. (Image by ex.libris)

I’m often inclined to see the reality of a situation, and as a result I try to remedy its harshness with optimism. Case in point, the reopening of a library thanks to squatters recently, which @AbbyBarker and @ElizCro rightly suggest makes a mockery of the professionalism previously required of public library services – “are we playing librarians now?” asked Elizabeth, which rather starkly exposes the naive assumption by many that this is a game easily played.

Pride & Shame

It’s World Pride in London this coming weekend, so I thought I would once again put on my queerbrarian hat. Last year I talked about the immense pride I had in libraries as bastions of equality and diversity, as places where divides could be closed and everyone could be included. I typically like to stay positive. But today I won’t be putting on much of a smiley face, because today is not great and a growing number of institutions and individuals are deciding to stand on the wrong side of history and build a legacy of hate and oppression. Today I’d like to talk to you about why you should be angry.

Photo by Duncan C, Flickr.

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention

You might believe that there’s nothing left to fight for, but let’s consider the London that’s been awarded World Pride this year. The London who just re-elected Boris Johnson as mayor, a man who failed for so long to provide an LGBT manifesto, who likened gay marriage to interspecies marriage between men and dogs, and who in the past attacked Labour’s “appalling agenda [of] encouraging homosexuality in schools.”

This is in a Britain where the Minister for Women and Equalities is Theresa May. In case you’re not aware of what an insidious and disingenuous friend of Dorothies she is, her track record includes voting in favour of Section 28, against equalising the age of consent, against gay adoption rights, and against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. She has also repeatedly failed to vote on gay issues. So you’ll have to forgive me if I find it a little bit galling that she’s also made an “it gets better” video full of crocodile tears for the people who live in fear of violence or discrimination, because a lot of that discrimination is because of people like her.

Section 28, by the way, was also championed for years by one David Cameron, who only reversed his position when he was running as leader of the party in a general election. Make of that what you will.

I extend this warning to everyone, not just those of you who aren’t straight white Christian men in gainful employment – these people aren’t your friends and they are not your allies. Too many of us make the mistake of thinking that our specific privileges will render us immune to their poisons, but this is wrong. And do not, I repeat, do not be fooled by their kind gestures and benevolent posturing. They require constant nagging in order for anything to get done and for progress to become a continuous process rather than an occasional treat.

 

It’s a library, not a giant closet

If you’d really like to despair, there’s also the story of Peter TerVeer which will hit closer to home for librarians – he claims that his dismissal from the Library of Congress came after work-related stress due to anti-gay discrimination by his supervisor. This story is still developing, but I’m disappointed by LoC’s failure to make a greater stand and come out in support of the LGBT community in the wake of this.

If Storm Troopers are more progressive than you, you’re in trouble. Photo by Boss Tweed, Flickr.

Over in Georgia, Shorter University recently required all employees to sign a statement rejecting homosexuality. When gay tenured librarian Michael Wilson explained that he felt the requirement unreasonable, this was taken as a letter of resignation.

And in Utah, a group of parents who complained about a picture book featuring a family with two mothers have successfully had the book removed from school library shelves. An Illinois school district has also stopped using The Family Book in its anti-bullying curriculum because of a reference to same-sex parents (“some families have two moms or two dads”) – a move which, of course, oozes the compassion and acceptance one would expect when teaching children about why bullying is wrong.

This is not okay. We’re information professionals and it’s the Turing centenary. Imagine a world where Turing had seen the latter half of the twentieth century and gone on to further his research! Too bad Britain had him chemically castrated when his sexuality was brought to light after he was a victim of crime. Too bad he was later found dead after a suspected suicide by cyanide (this is currently being questioned and may have been an accident, but it’s irrelevant – minority individuals play with fire because self-harm, masochism, and “better off dead” is what we’re taught).

And it’s not just the LGBT community that some libraries are failing – this week’s Twitter outrage at a Barking library’s computing charges has been an eye-opener for some as to how some public libraries are actually widening information divides and turning their backs on a growing underclass who rely on free local IT access.

We’re not “mostly harmless” anymore

This month sees a vote in Ukraine that could drive homosexuality underground. And here’s a handy map of where you might be imprisoned or executed because of your sexuality, courtesy of ILGA.

World pride? Give me a break. The world’s got a long way to go before it can pat itself on the back. You can help by staying informed and involved, though – please don’t think I’m hating on Pride attendance or celebrations! Anything but! I’ll be there and I’d urge you to attend any local events that come your way, regardless of what you do or don’t identify as. None of us can afford to shut up.

 

As always, all the love. You’re awesome, so why not shout about it?

CPD23 Fast-forward – Things 6, 7, 8 & 9

The fast-forward continues today with a bumper crop of things 6, 7, 8 and 9 – whoa! I’m just about caught up.

 

Image by Hector Parayuelos, Flickr.

 

Thing 6 – Online networks

I wrote about online networks last year, and my opinions on the biggies haven’t changed much. I recently updated my LinkedIn profile, having left it to stagnate for a while (it’s a network that lacks the dynamism I’d like from my semi-professional conversations), and while I’m still not sold on it as a great online network, I do think it’s a good way to keep a little black book of professional links and it helps when considering your skills, experience, and ambitions. I do worry that I’ll reveal a certain level of generalism through it, however – I’ve not yet nailed anything to the sticking pole in terms of my career goals and am quite open to exploring multiple routes at the moment. But is that perhaps suggesting a lack of single-minded dedication? Are employers looking for bloody-minded specialists, and does LinkedIn’s more ‘open resumé’ feel bring with it the problem of trying to please everyone all the time?

Still it’s better than the alternatives. Facebook, uh oh oh.

 

I know this is the case with every online service, but Facebook is a privacy nightmare. The way they change their policies and default settings without publicising it is gross, and it can reveal incredibly harmful information that puts people are risk (imagine being outed to abusive family members because Facebook has suddenly opened previously private areas of your profile up to them without telling you and it’s up to you to readjust your settings). I don’t intend to use it to network professionally. It’s a very transparent data mining operation for advertisers and nosy employers. And Mark Zuckerberg is a tool.

I’d sooner use whitespace Google+, and I do intend to use it a lot more if only because it gives me a clean start where I can organise my networks better and set up alerts for topics that interest me instead of being spammed about Farmville and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by a secondary school classmate who uploads a picture of her drooling baby every half hour.

Thing 7 – Real life networks

I wrote about EMALINK last year, which was an invaluable experience. I’m a Londoner now, however, and my ‘network’ has largely been Twitter-based or based around UCL. I think there’s a lot of mileage in the more informal meetups and relationships that grow organically outside of organisations, and I think that the increasingly relaxed atmosphere will help those of us who might not relish face-to-face networking when amongst more esteemed delegates or group members.

That said, without things like EMALINK and the generous conference allowances and visits of a graduate traineeship, I do find it harder to get around and talk to professionals these days. I’d like to start making more use of things such as LIKE, which I know some of my colleagues at UCL have attended recently and really enjoyed. I also said last year that I planned to join CILIP, and then I never got around to it. However, today’s news that CILIP has updated its volunteer policy warms my heart, and I’m becoming increasingly aware of the good work they can do, so I intend to remedy my lack of membership right now.

Thing 8 – Google Calendar

I still use Google Calendar! It’s super easy to sync with both iCal and my phone, and I have shared calendars with friends. It’s very handy and keeps me connected, though I did find it difficult to sync with Outlook at work last year and I’m not sure I care enough to go to such lengths for interoperability.

I don’t really have much to say about Google Calendar that I didn’t already say last year. It beats Facebook’s events app, which is an ugly place where invitations go to die. I also quite like using my paper diary. There’s a ritual to it that makes me feel like I’m getting stuff done (even if I’m not).

Image by Scott Fitzgerald, Flickr.

Thing 9 – Evernote

More like Evernot, am I right? I’m just kidding, but I don’t use this nearly as much as I expected to, and much like Read It Later, it’s an application that I intentionally limit my use of to stop myself from forever filing away things I don’t think I have time to read just now. It’s not even that Evernote is bad (it’s really not), it’s just that my phone isn’t quite smart enough for the experience of using it to be particularly fluid and it’s not worth the effort while there are other tools.

I’ve also recently experienced the burn of collaborative tools going wrong due to their reliance on everyone wanting to collaborate. Sure, you can use Evernote on your own – and I do – but it can also work well as a collaborative tool through shared notebooks. For a recent group project I suggested that we share our ideas and work via Evernote and/or Google Docs, which seemed brilliant to me because I already use those things. Unfortunately, my colleagues didn’t – and indeed, why should they be expected to use everything I do? – and so my attempts to get the ball rolling ultimately failed and I ended up subjected to round-robin email threads again. Which are the worst!

Even as a way to keep track of my own academic research it’s taken a backseat, as UCL libraries are soft-launching their Explore discovery tool, which I actually really like using as a filing cabinet of articles. And that’s before we’ve even got to reference managing applications.

I like you, Evernote, but we need to work things out.

CPD23 Thing 5 – Reflective Practice (and some oral history)

I was going to gloss over this, having written about it last year. I think the very act of blogging about one’s profession is reflective practice, as is the CPD23 program, and I think that I’ve been encouraged to be reflective on the MA LIS  (where most practical assignments require post-mortems and analyses). But I know that falling out of the habit would be instrumental in upping the intensity of chartership should I later choose to walk that path, and I’ve been meaning to talk about my experiences of taking a module designed largely for Archives students, so I’m going to take this opportunity to do so while actually considering the framework that I reflect with.

Image by Brian Talbot, Flickr.

My main concern when reflecting is that I’ll blether. I am a bletherer if you get me going. This actually means that reflective practice is all the more important, I think, because it forces you to pare down your thoughts and get to what’s important. I sometimes find that visualisations and flowcharts needlessly complicate processes, hindering them with excessive structure and scaffolding, but in this case I think Dr Ali Pickard’s four identified stages of reflection are helpful:

• New knowledge and learning
• Personal reaction
• Problems, difficulties, and challenges
• Action taken (I’d also add the idea of future recommendations here)

In looking at this for guidance on what the key points are, I’ve adapted it into a reflective piece below with headings used to direct myself and keep on topic. The whats – that’s the descriptive parts – are coloured blue, followed by the sos, where I actually analyse, discuss, and relate to other experiences. Any next steps I’ve identified are coloured green, for go! These are essentially future recommendations but instead of simply being tacked onto the end, they’re threaded into the writing to show their necessity.

 

Image by Carbon Arc, Flickr.

The Oral History Project

What happened?

I took a module on Oral History at UCL’s Department of Information Studies. This was a new module based in the research interests of the lecturer, and though focused on archive activity, was left open for other students within the department. I took it because I wanted to do something slightly different as one of my optional modules and because although it sounded interesting, it was largely alien to me. The class spent a term learning about and discussing the creation, preservation, curation, and management of oral histories, with guest speakers and in-class exercises to improve interviewing techniques and project management skills. At the end of term we each submitted a short oral history project: a project plan, audio files, transcripts, summaries, catalogue records, consent forms and a reflective essay.

What did I learn from the classes?

Firstly, it was a good opportunity to talk to archivists about their course, their careers, and their concerns. This was useful as it helped me to understand the work of other professionals who we’re closely aligned with and yet don’t always understand. During my work placement at The Bishopsgate Institute this year it was notable that archivists and librarians were working together and sharing projects, each bringing different skills and concerns to the table. As services transform under pressure, I think it’s a good idea to widen one’s network and understanding and I plan to do that with further volunteer work at Bishopsgate.

I also learned about different formats for storing audio. From wax cylinders to digital via minidisc, this was great because it built upon lessons learned from an earlier Collection Development & Preservation class. We like to talk about future-proofing and preparation a lot, but a trip to the British Library showed me that I had a lot to learn about what this means for audio. I was interested to learn about the problems certain file types can cause, and how even they can become preservation issues (due to proprietary restrictions to access). I’d like to follow this up by reading more around the topic and hopefully getting to work with more audio-visual collections in the future.

The module also made me consider ethical and legal issues, something which I’d previously done in Management classes. I was writing a legal issues essay at the time, and this kind of crossover between modules helped to foster the joined up thinking that’s key to bringing everything together. It was also a sore reminder that these issues are a minefield and are getting more dangerous at the moment. To keep myself up to date, I’m currently looking to find more current awareness services that will fill me in on any developments to things like copyright (especially digital copyright) and the handling of sensitive materials.

What went well during my project?

I felt that the project benefitted hugely from the project plan and test runs. I was apprehensive about interviewing and actually quite nervous about my voice being recorded, but this was another example of why planning is key to success. I constructed bibliographies to research relevant topics that might arise during the interviews and I did a couple of practice interviews using different technologies and set-ups in order to optimise output.

I also found transcription a quicker task than we were warned, largely due to experience of transcribing interviews from my time as a student music journo in Hull. I looked to successful oral history projects like The Queens Memory Project (who visited us in class) for pointers on how to lay out documentation in a way that was relevant without being time-consuming (e.g. their summary sheets, which include key points and time stamps for quick recall).

Image by Fey Ilya, Flickr.

What problems were faced, and how were they solved?

Initially I planned to do a life history interview with a friend, but family problems began to arise with them during the project and it became clear that there are always unforeseen complications. While they did not definitively say that they wanted to back out, I felt it my ethical responsibility to reassure them that alternative interviewees could be sought. The original interviewee then backed out and my plan B was initiated. This was useful in highlighting the responsibility that we have as professionals and as researchers, and it was reassuring that I had already considered other possible projects for the module in case of emergency.

The second go at the project involved Skype interviews as the interviewees were all abroad. This had been tested, but technology is a tricky one and other people’s internet connections and hardware ended up causing problems. This helped to show how communication is vital, not just in developing good relationships with others, but in overcoming problems – by working together and testing out different setups, we were able to continue with the interviews and edit them together after the fact.

What would I do differently next time?

Next time I would probably choose interviewees I could talk to in person, as this would hopefully speed up the signing of paperwork and decrease the chance of technical problems. Because I’d be using different kit, I’d want to do a new set of practice interviews first and get to grips with different recording hardware – while I can call on what I learned in classes, I’m aware now that we can’t account for everything and the best way to identify every problem is simply to do. I also found it useful to talk to other people in the class and share experiences with different methodologies and equipment, and I’d like to develop that in future practice by consulting wider networks of colleagues and peers.

So what are the key actions to be taken now?

As already identified in green, here is where I plan to go with this:

• Volunteer further at the Bishopsgate Institute to develop understanding of archives work and how it intersects with libraries.
• Research audio collection management and preservation further.
• Add more legal current awareness services to my current reading.
• Develop professional networks in order to share best practice

As expected, while oral history may not have appeared immediately relevant to my career, it has led me to develop key skills I might have otherwise left underdeveloped. I’d actually like to get involved with similar work again – interviewing, transcription, audio management – to test those waters further and because when it came down to it I really enjoyed the module.

How do you go about reflective practice? I’m interested to see what frameworks and techniques other people use.

Libraries of the Screen: Doctor Who

To lighten the mood a little, I’ve been thinking of doing a regular feature on the presentation of libraries on screen: films, TV, video games, the lot. I know a lot of us are big on the geekier fandoms (hands up if you’ve ever demanded that your partner starts calling you ‘khaleesi’), so I figured this would be a chance to nerd out and discuss the things that really matter. And by the things that really matter, I’m talking about the people who live in your telly.

Doctor Who (1963 – present)

Look at those dates! While Doctor Who hasn’t been on the air consistently during this period – the most notable hiatus being the Dark Times of the 1990s – it has always survived in some form, and because I like messing with canon I’m also going to be considering stories from comics, audios, and novels.

CPD23 Fast-forward – Things 2, 3, and 4

Having started down the CPD23 road last year, I’m just now gearing up to jump back on the bandwagon and start roughly where I left off. Here, then, is the start of a whistle-stop tour of the Things I’m fast-forwarding, with some consideration for the shiny new things that have been added this year.

Image by Brian Gurrola.

Thing 2 – Investigate some other blogs

I do this a lot. I’m a blog creeper. I like all of your blogs. Well done on your great blogs, everyone! Blogs. Some of my favourites, however, are:

• UCL student and art librarian Siobhan‘s very good with words, and she has lots of Right Opinions about the world, but she’s also a pretty badass cartoonist. I like to entertain myself with the idea that I’m a cool librarian simply by association with her. This is probably not the case.
• Annie of The Hobbit Hole is thorough. Really, really thorough. Her updates on what she’s been reading are great digests if you’d like to try and keep up with her.
• Orkney Library & Archives are everything I want to be and they like Tunnocks (winner!). So disarmingly weird and wonderful when it comes to discussing their work on various social networks that I wasn’t sure at first if it was a parody or not. We’ve a lot to thank them for when it comes to making us all seem like normal, funny people.
• YiWen Hon gets brownie points for coming to us from Glasgow, and she’s an incredibly enthusiastic information assistant who – like all of the people I’ve met this year on their way to traineeships or Masters courses – instills me with faith that there’s no shortage of really awesome people gearing up for a life of gin libraries and information.

If you’ve got to Thing 4 yourself you’ll hopefully have some amazing RSS reader set up as I do – it becomes hard to pick favourites when we move away from blogs as silos and towards a more comprehensive blogging experience.

Thing 3 – Consider your personal brand

I often have to overcome my feeling that there’s something dishonest and quite shady about the idea of tweaking one’s brand, but of course it’s an innocent process of merely maximising what truth you’d like to best publicise. We’ve talked branding until the cows have come home, and then the cows got really bored by all of our talk of branding and they went back out, so I’ll limit myself to saying that I think we need to keep an eye on the outer membrane of our big, gelatinous brands these days. There was mention at CILIP’s New Professionals Day of the many social networks that we really should be using, and I’ll be frank here and admit that there are some I’ll keep an eye on but otherwise won’t touch with a barge pole – Pinterest strikes me as hipster nonsense for your mum who likes to endlessly reblog photos of kitchen tiles and fun household tips, for instance.

Save your crumbs for a year and then eat a pile of crumbs

— The Fake Pinterest (@PinterestFake) June 19, 2012

It’s not just about the lack of interest though, it’s also the worry that branching out so much means that your brand extends beyond your line of sight and you can no longer control it. You know the scene in Akira where Tetsuo’s powers grow to such a scale that he can’t contain them and turns into a giant blob and everything is super terrible? Yeah. I worry what my neglected profiles say about me and how wide open they might leave me to things like hacking (I used to have a personal tumblr and when I ignored it for a few months I came back to see it had been filled up with dubious posts that most certainly weren’t from me). It’s one thing to survey the field and another thing entirely to spend your time running back and forth all over it.

Thing 4 – Current awareness (Twitter, RSS, Storify)

I still use RSS, of course, and I still use Twitter. I love Twitter and really think it can help humanise networks – I don’t even particularly like calling them networks, they’re much warmer than that. Also, I appreciate the early attempt at putting a bird on social media.

Storify is new to me, though. I’ve seen a few people using it recently, and I think it’s a great idea that evolves the concept of tweet archives into something more thoughtfully curated and easier to browse. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for something like this to take off, in fact! I’ve had a play about with it and the interface is quite lovely and easy to use. But I have noticed that when people use it they then barrage everyone with automated tweets about how they’ve been included in a new Storify, and watching it unfold can be a bit like being trapped in the eye of a storm as you watch everything whizz around you again and again. Annoying.

That said, I can see myself using it and think it will be an especially great way to catch up on conferences, workshops and teach-meets in a more exciting way that includes multiple voices and views. Has anyone tried using it in teaching yet? It might be a good way to collate student responses to assigned materials or classes they’ve attended – I know, for instance, that we’ve had hashtags for certain modules on our MA and could potentially Storify the course, our reactions, and our further reading.

Up next…

I’ll be whizzing through things 5, 6 and 7.