Notes on an essay

Earlier this week, I turned in my first academic essay in over a decade. Back in September, I started a part time MA in British History, and I've been really enjoying my return to being a student so far. Now that the first module is done, it seems like a good time to reflect on how the experience is informing my library work.
1) I knew this in theory when I applied for the course, but full time work and part time study makes mastering time management a key core skill. Fortunately, I've spent the time since I was last in the classroom building up those skills and habits and routines, and a toolkit that includes reflection and re-evaluation which means I am in the habit of asking myself "is this tool / technique / habit still working for me", and adjusting my course as needed. Knowing myself and my work patterns has been a huge help as well. Now, here's hoping I can keep this up!
2) Talking of tools, Zotero. I may be just a little in love here. Not just the being able to keep track of citations, although *not* having to hand type pages of footnotes and bibliographies is, of course, great, but actually for keeping track of readings and notes along the way. Having everything rationally and flexibly grouped together, and being able to add notes and metadata and attach files, and have the whole thing sync to the cloud and work on every machine I use, regardless of OS ... I ended up with a folder for class readings, and one for my research essay, with an entry for every book / article / website used, which had the biblio, the pdf for articles and the book chapters I had ILL'd, and a note in which I had typed up my notes on the item, and also kept any quotes I might want to use (with page numbers, bien sur). It's building out of my old notes system, which was to keep a giant Word doc for each class, with all my notes and quotations and citations, out of which I could C&P ingredients for an essay, but far, far more flexible. As I am already into my next module, and there are a couple of books that overlap, I'm just adding a second note for "notes with focus X" and appreciating having my existing work easily to hand.
Did I mention it integrates not only with Word, but with Open Office? And behaves on linux? And it's free? I would plan on using this for my next personal research project, and possibly for CPD stuff, as well as for academic essays. I met Zotero briefly during CPD23, but didn't really have a reason to dig deep enough into it to really see how it could help. The other options I considered for the module were Evernote and Google Drive, and while I'm still a Google girl in general, I'm happy with the choice I made. Zotero is a tool I'll be recommending to students in the future.
3) ILL librarian's are *awesome*. Although it's important to ask specifically for the notes when it's a book chapter with endnotes. (Neither part of this is news, but having first-hand user experience very much re-enforces it)
4) I have even more sympathy than I did before with the students who respond to being told something is available as an ebook, with a sigh and asking if there's any way of getting it in paper. Access to a text is better than no access, hands down, but format does matter, and so many of the academic ebook services are, frankly, a pain to use. You have to be online to use them. They're expecting you to be on a desktop or laptop, and may or may not handle the screen you're actually using, let alone an e-reader. They've disabled copying text, so you have to hand-type the quote despite the fact that it's right there, in a format that is inherently copyable. There's the log-in hoops to jump through, and getting timed out at annoying moments. The notes and the text may not be hyperlinked to each other, and flipping back and forth is fiddly. The load time for each page - and the fact it won't just go ahead and load the rest of the chapter in the background - made me want to grind my teeth, and then there was the particularly charming moment where one e-book platform decided that the time it took me to hand-copy a quote was evidence that I was done now and "check out" the ebook to another user, leaving me suddenly facing a "this book is being used by someone else - check back later" notice in the middle of a sentence. (That last one was the subject of some rude words, not least because if the book had been available in any other format than a £75 hardback with a 3-week lead time, I may well have purchased a copy for myself!)
5) Electronic access is wonderful. Even given all the above, I'd take e-access over none any day of the week, and the range and depth available is fantastic. E-journals particularly are just a thing of joy, and there are some types of (basically narrative) history where my personal preference is to buy an e-book and save my spine from carrying the hardback back and forth on the tube. Ditto institutional repositories and Ethos. Worlds of riches!
6) Research skills help - obvious, but true. Time spent mastering advanced searches, subject bibliography tools, and going on library introduction sessions was time well spent, but not time that you'll want to spend as the deadline approaches. I'm not sure how to get this message across to students who haven't experienced it yet, but I'm surer than ever that it's a message worth trying to send.
7) Related to the above, doing those induction sessions was a great reminder of how confusing and intimidating unfamiliar institutions can be, even if you're familiar with the type of institution, and how much of a difference a friendly face can make. The value of every interaction in creating an impression of your library, from the signage, to the website, to the front desk to the in-depth conversation. How much it helps when people act like human beings rather than automatons. That making explicit the expectations about the use a space or set of resources helps people meet them, but may also make them feel safer in the space, and thus more comfortable (and more able to learn).
8) Research as play to steal a phrase. This stuff is fun. Deadlines, not so much, but the process - even the writing and the editing - can be.
I won't find out how I've done in this essay for several weeks, but I really hope I passed, mostly because I'm really enjoying myself, and I want to carry on doing this!

Why am I a school governor?

Just got home from a day spent at the school where I'm a governor - we do two days a year where we visit in school, do lesson observations, training, hear presentations from members of the school team etc, and then top off the day with one of the regular governor's meetings. They're always long days, but so rewarding. This one was a somewhat awkwardly timed long day, as our summer school students arrive tomorrow morning, but I've come away inspired* and proud to do what I can to support an excellent school team.

Some of my colleagues aren't familiar with the term "school governor", and many of my friends were really surprised to discover that you can be one without being a parent or working in a school. I think this video advertising the role may be my new go-to answer to those questions, as it's a really nice, brief, intro (and the associated website is really useful if you're thinking about volunteering.)

When people ask why I became a governor, my first answer is that I think that learning is basically the most important thing that humans do, so I wanted to step up and put my time to supporting that. (I can also admit to a secondary reason: at the point when I signed up, it was a way of getting some CPD training that I didn't have to pay for out of pocket, at a time when I wasn't otherwise getting training opportunities. Fortunately, that's no longer the case.)

What I wasn't expecting was how much the work of being a governor itself would teach me and inspire me to explore.

To be honest, I lucked in to the school where I volunteer - many of my colleagues have long-standing relationships with the school in various ways, whereas I applied through the local authority's one-stop-shop and they're reasonably close to me and had a vacancy - but I have learned and continued to learn so much from being a small part of their community.

When else was I going to be involved in the recruitment panel for a CEO of a multi-million pound turnover organisation, or get up-close to change management, quality assurance, appraisal, and the quest for constant improvement somewhere that isn't where I work? The chance to contribute somewhere where asking good questions is the primary point of our presence, and to observe any number of teaching approaches in action. To experience a truly masterful chairman at work, to experience and experiment with team formation within a disparate group of people who don't get to be face-to-face very often, but all share a common goal, and to fine-tune all the skills that go with committee work and formal meeting etiquette?.

Not everything's directly relevant to my work life, but an awful lot of it is transferable to some degree. And I've played some small part in hundreds of pupils getting an really high quality of education, in an environment that values them as whole human beings. That's well worth a few days and a dozen or so evenings a year.

*Tonight's addition to my reading list thanks to some synchronicity between work and today's sessions in school.

The best laid plans ...

Just got back from a CILIP in London event on the topic "The best laid plans ...", which was essentially about not just dealing with change, but thriving on it, which is definitely relevant to me at the moment.

Ray Philips, from The King's Fund, was the speaker, telling stories about his experience leading their library through a whole raft of changes - a physical move, changing LMS, changes in management, which all sounds really familiar, now I think about it. (Two summers ago my big project was the move to a new LMS - Koha. Last summer it was the move into the new library space, and right now there's organizational re-structuring going on, and some significant staff turn over.)

It has been a remarkably affirming evening, in fact, talking with colleagues and listing to Ray, and remembering that - hang on - I am an agent of change! That's why, even though my job title hasn't changed in many years, my actual job is almost unrecognisable from when I started. The core of what I do - supporting teaching and learning - is constant, but the manifestation has changed an incredible amount. My goal is "better", through evolution, iteration, and inspiration, and change is pretty integral to all of those.

OK, so the LMS switch was change I sought, and the library move was change I was actively involved in, turning a potential negative into a positive outcome (a smaller library, but a better learning environment, plus space for more resources), whereas the current situation is more of the waiting for decisions from on high variety of change, but that doesn't automatically make it bad - and at the very least it will be different.

Change is not always positive, and even positive change can be exhausting and hard, but there are silver linings to be mined, and while there's life - and change is life - there's hope. (There, I've used my cliché allowance for the month!)

This evening's event did give me reason to pause and think about the small-scale change I'm involved in at the moment. One of our lecturers has revised his approach to his film class, and I'm supporting that by setting up a dedicated short loan dvd collection, which I've spent most of the last two days getting set up. Over the last couple of weeks I've taken several groups of students off on reflective photo walks, changing what we did and where we went each time. In the past month, I've changed how I presented at orientation, and the kind of orientation events I offered to both current cohorts of students, pulling on new ideas, and responding to the new realities and changes in the wider arrangements for those groups, and also had my LMS swap from an external hosting service to in-house support. So, in other words, change is everywhere, and in everything, and that's a good thing, because change is a pre-requisite for improvement.

I didn't come away from this evening's meeting with as many concrete new things to try out as I have from some of the other LIS things I've been to recently, but I have come away feeling energised and having had some of my core perspectives affirmed, so thank you, Ray and Team CILIP in London!

The only constant is change: let's try to make it change for the better.

* Photo by MICHALA LIPKOVÁ , used under Creative Commons, with thanks.