Sunday 24 June 2012

My first month as an Academic Librarian

I've been in my job just over a month now and here is a list of things I have been doing:

  • Meeting the team
  • Learning how to use Coutts Oasis and ordering books
  • Reviewing book lists on Talis Aspire
  • Watching webinars to try to understand Talis Aspire
  • Meeting my school's academic staff and administrative team and making lots of plans for the next academic year
  • Trying to fulfil those plans for the academic year
  • Helping lots of PHD students with enquiries
  • Meeting the school's library reps and trying to persuade them to rethink the length of their reading lists
  • Frantically trying to review potential journal and book archives due to a sudden influx of cash and not wanting to buy the wrong things.
  • Trying to learn about what my students are studying and what they and the staff need
  • Learning about the Research Excellence Framework
  • Learning about the institutional repository and a bit about open access
  • Providing information skills sessions on literature searching for Masters students
  • Providing information skills sessions on database usage for international students
  • Being involved in an open day
  • Finding my way round the campus
  • Attending a Sociology and Communication social
  • Attending Equality and Diversity training
  • Trying to learn about raw data and the databases which provide it - Bloomberg, Reuters 3000, Datastream etc so I can help students.
  • Being joint lead on a project reviewing the above databases (with the other joint lead about to go on maternity leave)
  • Learning about Summon - a tool which is supposed to search all the resources
  • Training on Blackboard Learn (every institution I have worked for has upgraded or migrated to a new virtual learnign environment. At my last place I was training people how to use Moodle 2.0, here I will be adding content to the new and shiny version of Blackboard (when I persuade the staff to let me)
  • Being involved in two social media projects 
  • Learning how to find things in the Library of Congress System having always been familiar with Dewey.
  • Planning September's induction of the new students

There are other things which I can't remember and there is still a lot to learn and a lot to do, however, despite the exhausting commute (which I hope to shorten soon) I am enjoying the challenges. I was also named as a LISNetwork Rising Star, which gave me a real boost of confidence and for which I'm very thankful. It is a steep learning curve but those are often the best.