What's in store for 2013?

Over the last couple of months I’ve written about half a dozen blogs – in my head, that is! Interesting topics keep whizzing into my head, but before I’ve had time to commit them to a blog, something else has whizzed in to replace it! Oh for more hours in a day, more days in a week, more weeks in a month etc.!

2013 is already proving to be a year of change, a year of development and a year of trying to keep up!

We have team open mornings coming up shortly, but before that we are considering (by which I mean evaluating and adjusting) our team delivery plan. This is no mean feat: in order to evaluate and adjust, we need to measure if we’ve come up to scratch against the current plan, and only once we’ve measured can we then think about evaluating (have we done what we said we would, and if not, why not, and what do we need to do to achieve our goals) and then adjusting if the plan seems unrealistic, i.e. overly optimistic or if we are considerably exceeding our goals!

Once we’ve done that we can then use our READ-ability Initiative* and PIC Project* to draw colleagues in to see what goes on in a Bibliographic Services team: Some things they’ll be aware of, some they’ll know quite a bit about, but I’m pretty sure some of what we do will come as a big surprise!!

And hot on the heels of all this comes our RDA planning, training and implementation! Not much to worry about there then!! Following the excellent CIG e-forum on RDA, we at least have a reasonable idea of what to expect with RDA, and our next cataloguers’ meeting will be an RDA-themed one, at which we will certainly have plenty to talk about! As for training, well, we have a plan for several layers of training: specific, detailed training for cataloguers; slightly less detailed stuff for other Bib Services staff, but with a specific focus for information assistants who directly support the cataloguers; and a session much more focused on changes to OPAC for colleagues in the rest of the library. Phew, we are going to be busy!

That will probably take us up to Easter! I’m trying not to think beyond that; to do so would probably cause meltdown!

On a personal level, I’ve decided not to take part in the Six Book Challenge. A recent blog post from Woodsiegirl persuaded me that I really didn’t have to take part. Last year I read a trilogy that I had been meaning to read for about 30 years, and was so surprised/disappointed/upset as this experience completely changed my view of the area in which I grew up to the extent that I’ve almost stopped reading: I’m sure this wasn’t what the Six Book Challenge intended!

You may have noticed that the cataloguers’ wiki has only sporadically been updated recently. This is something I’m not happy about, but has come about for a variety of reasons: I’ve been finding interesting snippets to add whilst I’ve been using my tablet, but as yet, I haven’t discovered how to copy/paste useful links so that I can pick them up on my pc; work has been really busy, so finding time to update the wiki whilst at work has been almost impossible; and I’m doing a course at the moment which, as I’m sure you can imagine, is taking up more of my time than I anticipated. I am adding just a few links at a time, but do have every intention of updating more frequently soon. I’ve also reduced my Twitter activity a bit too as I was finding far too much stuff of interest and getting soooo side-tracked!! No doubt, I’ll soon start to miss the interaction, especially with those wonderful cataloguing chums who know all about RDA!

Ok, that's all for now as I must go and do some research!

*Planning to share more detail about these in a future post. 

   

From Discoverablity to READ-ability

Enhancing records to aid discoverability

In my last blog post I was concerned with how users could discover the wealth of information that is contained in the huge variety of resources we have in our library, and suggested that the catalogue  - be that the library catalogue, the institutional repository, or the archive catalogue – could be the perfect discoverability tool!

This all lead me to thinking about what our cataloguers do and resulted in the READ-ability Initiative, which I launched at out last cataloguers’ meeting just before the Leicestershire schools half-term. This was positively received, and is now due for release at the Bib Services team meeting next week, before being presented at more senior level. I will explain more about the READ-ability Initiative in a future post, as this is not the topic of my blog post today!! 

Today I am focussing on a Tweet I posted a couple of days ago that said something like:

“Doing the desirables often makes it easier and quicker to do the essentials. This makes desirables often essentials.”

I can’t quite remember what sparked off this thought, but when I thought about it today, I realised it applied quite nicely to the READ-ability Initiative. So, having all our name headings authorised, having copious, authorised subject headings, are all desirables that we have not achieved (and, of course, probably never will because as soon as you authorise one heading a new one comes into your system!)

However, if we have a programme of retrospective work that includes spending time authorising name and subject headings in records for material we already hold, then this makes the process of cataloguing new stock coming in somewhat quicker and easier because the more authorised headings we have the more likely it is that the heading in that record for that new book/CD/DVD etc. that has just been received is already in our authority file, thus making the new stock cataloguing process quicker and more efficient.

Hence the idea that doing the desirables helps with the essentials and therefore desirables are actually essentials!!

Discoverability

Promotion is part of discoverability, but it is only a part!

Libraries are vast sources of information, contained in a variety of formats, shelved in a variety of ways and locations. So how do [potential] users find the information they need?

In our library we have many different locations, from collections housed in different buildings (including an off-site storage facility), through collections in the basement (hard-copy journals, media items, missing pages/offprints, the archive and the rolling stack) the ground floor (short loan items), the first floor (reference section and Dewey sequence 001-615) to the top floor (Dewey sequence 616-999, oversize items, pamphlets and vulnerable items in secure glass display cabinets). How on earth do we expect users to be able to navigate through our valuable information resources when we spread our stock throughout the buildings in jigsaw-like fashion? If you have the picture, it’s easy enough to do, but if don’t have that useful aid, what do users do, and how can we help them?

The online catalogue

The catalogue is a huge part of the library’s public face; it needs to be clear, accurate, easy to use and reflective of the information resources that are available. At collection level, some of our resources are discoverable through their site code on the online catalogue (e.g. Law Library, Short Loan Collection), whilst some through their sequence (e.g. Reference, Media, Special Collections), and most are discoverable by old-fashioned serendipity – walking the shelves, finding something that catches your eye and turns out to be relevant!!

But what of title-level discoverability, or content discoverability? This is where, I believe, lies the strengths and skills of the cataloguer. An online catalogue can only ever be as good as the cataloguers who got the information onto it in the first place! If that information is wrong, sloppy, or partial, or the access points are too few or badly assigned and aligned then that title/content discoverability will be compromised.

As cataloguers in my workplace, we all recognise the importance of access and consistency, but we know our catalogue is far from perfect, so we are working on cleaning up our data, thus helping to ensure successful discoverability for our users  

We currently have a couple of projects on the go to enhance the discoverability of our resources by ensuring that we have adequate/copious/excessive authorised subject headings in our records, and that all our name headings are consistent according to our chosen authority list. Our jury's still out on the value of the 505 and 520 fields (at least until we get an OPAC display we have more control over), but couple our enhancement work with cataloguers answering users’ questions when on frontline enquiry work, and you have a recipe for success, at least for the regular stuff – if you’ll pardon the expression!

Other collections

However, not all our collections are catalogued on our library management system, and therefore they don’t appear on our online catalogue. The institutional repository uses different software, but, as cataloguers are involved in helping to create entries, it is possible, to a certain extent, to ensure discoverability through naming conventions, use of consistent keywords etc., where possible using the same conventions that are used in our catalogue records which can help to make more things more easily discoverable. 

The other area where information discoverability can be enhanced is in our archive collection. Again, consistent naming conventions, keywords and classifications all help users to find the information they are seeking, and if these are consistent with records in our other systems then this can help to link disparate collections of resources and therefore information.

And that’s what we want to do! Help our users to access information held in our resources that will help them to achieve their degree, their postgraduate qualification, or keep up with developments in their chosen field.

As cataloguers, I get the feeling we do all this with little thanks and little recognition, from colleagues, of the skills, time and effort we put in. We may hide in the basement, and we may not shout out about our achievements, but our work is omnipresent.

Quick post about CIG12

CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group conference,

10-11 September 2012, Sheffield University

The value of cataloguing

The CIG conference this year was organised around a consideration of what was believed to be the value in cataloguing, and this, naturally, also covered the value of the cataloguer and his/her skills, and how these might be changing and developing. In these challenging economic times it was simply amazing to see over 100 cataloguers (a manifestation? Jardine) gather amongst friends, to consider their role.

The conference was a mixture of longer presentations and short, lightening talks, all on issues of interest to the cataloguing community. The four main themes in this 2-day conference were:

1. Working with new standards
2. Working co-operatively
3. New challenges for cataloguers
4. Developing working practices

Grouping talks into themes helped to ensure that a wide range of topics were covered. These included:

• RDA;
• cataloguing in times of change and in times of austerity;
• institutional repositories;
• collaborative working;
• historical perspectives on cataloguing;
• shelf-ready;
• re-classification;
• high visibility/marketing of cataloguing and cataloguers;
• the changing role and the development of cataloguers;
• special library work.  

As you might imagine, I have made copious notes and it is going to take me quite some time to work through them all, but I think it will be well worth me reminding myself of things that were said that, for me, ranged from being interesting, through useful, to vital!

So, really I suppose I’m using this particular blog post as a *note to self* and to serve as a reminder of the main things that struck a chord with me, and things I want to follow up. If I get time later, I will report back on selected talks in more detail. So, there are loads of things I want to read up about, there are hundreds of things I want to think about (see my previous blog post on my learning style: This will explain my need to procrastinate!), and there are some potential quick wins, things I think I can start to do more or less straight away.

My action points are to:

• Read the JISC Impact Data blog (I should have done this already as we were a partner institution in Phase 1!)
• Check our new books listing is working and appropriate
• Investigate that stats course!
• Make sure no.3 child uses the library before he goes to uni and it’s too late!
• Decide whether or not to upgrade legacy records when convert to RDA (or maybe the LMS supplier will be able to affect this automatically?)
• Refresh self by reading up on Cutter/Paris principles, FRBR
• Consider the (hidden) cost of (not) implementing RDA
• Consider the cataloguing axiom (discoverability rather than rules) and importance of cataloguer’s judgement
• Investigate Google Refine, Web 3.0
• Consider the rhizome!
• Consider the weeding of videos (in relation to rarity)
• Checkout membership of COPAC
• Participate in the CIG RDA e-forum
• Check progress of our order for toolkit, checkout the “essentials” webinars, the RDA website (LC training is available to us) and Lauren Bradley’s googledoc checklist
• Look out for CILIP VLE, CIG NACO funnel, cat23 (take up that offer of podcasting training)
• Discuss RDA with lots of different people (e.g. suppliers (records, shelf-ready, LMS and RDN), partners, colleagues and library management)
• Checkout library typos of the day
• Consider the idea that “Good enough isn’t good enough”
• Investigate automatically getting our theses records from DORA to the library catalogue
• Get our process instructions onto wiki/libguides etc.
• Measure the “backlog” in book costs (£s)
• Avoid smug tweaking of catalogue records
• Consider the idea that global changes equal consistency
• Consider turning our team delivery plan into a service-level agreement
• Consider the idea of the “do something different day”
• Remember that cataloguing is about increasing access and discoverability
• Remember that implementing RDA is the first step on a road that will lead our data to “play nicely” with other data.
• Checkout the LMS user groups/meetings
• Re-investigate OCLC Classify
• Think about inside-out cataloguing – promoting stuff that our institution produces
• Gather usage stats for streamed videos

Maybe I'll have managed to do all this by the time of the next major CIG conference in 2014! See you there!

Post Script: Remember to check those useful RDA links!

A personal Belbin

What Belbin means to me

On returning from my first maternity leave all those years ago, I found myself wondering who I was, what I wanted, where I was going  - and all those other confusing feelings experienced by new mothers returning to work! Shortly after this return, the library merged with various departments within the university and a series of training courses was set up, with a view to networking members of the new Division of Learning Development and providing essential staff development sessions, and it was at one of these courses that I first encountered Belbin.

I’ve always been interested in personality type quizzes and was game for having a go at the Belbin quiz. Interested yes, but mostly they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about my personality! Belbin was different though, being less about personality and more about working styles. For years I despaired of myself in working situations – why would I sometimes have loads to say, other times nothing, why was I sometimes positive, other times negative, why did I sometimes take charge, other times hide in the corner? I’ve no idea how other people viewed me, but I certainly saw myself as a moody cow!  Till the day I did the Belbin quiz! It was so enlightening I remember rushing into the office after the course exclaiming that I’d finally found out the meaning of life, the universe and everything! Let me explain!

There are 8 [in 2012 there are now 9] basic Belbin types; if you get a high score for a type this represents your predominant style, while a low score indicates a type that you rarely use. So, like most people I was expecting to get a high score, a low score and lots in the middle, so that I could honestly say that I was one particular type. However, things just didn’t turn out like that! While other people doing the quiz revealed their scores to the group – highs, lows and lots in the middle – and usually found they agreed with the results, I was sitting re-calculating my scores, hoping they’d come out a different way, because I couldn’t quite work out why they’d gone wrong – except they hadn’t! My scores range from a massive 12 to a very low 4! (Just as a comparison, some of my team have done this quiz more recently and one member’s scores range from 0 up to 32!)

My score of 2 x 12s, 2 x 11s, 1 x 8, 2 x 6s and 1 x 4 had me perplexed. What was my dominant style? Interestingly, I don’t seem to have one – I could almost equally be any of the Belbin types (except perhaps for the type that scored 4). Great – so I’m a Jack of All Trades, and master of none! Wow – I’m a wishy-washy, fickle type who flits from one type to another! On the flip side – I’m versatile, I suppose. This explains how I can be so different in various situations – instinctively I will fill in the gap and be the missing type in a meeting, or, I will choose to be a particular type for that situation – not moody at all, just responding to the other types around me.

Of course, the dilemma is how do I improve my score of 4? As I see it the only way to increase that score is at the expense of some of the other scores, which, given that they are all so low, makes it a difficult decision – have I ever had the urge to be more extroverted, enthusiastic, curious or communicative – nah. Probably not worth it then!

As for the three clusters of types, my average scores suggest that I fall into the ACTION-oriented roles firstly (average score 11.5), followed by the CEREBRAL-oriented roles (average score 8.5) and finally the PEOPLE-oriented roles (average score 6). The typical features of my 2 x 11s is quite contradictory – highly strung, dynamic and outgoing, compared to sober, unemotional and prudent – as are some of my other close scores. Goodness me, no wonder I get confused sometimes!! And no wonder, also, that you never know quite what you’re going to get when you enter into a discussion with me!

At our recent team away day, we again looked at Belbin, and initially I was surprised to find that my scores had changed a bit! The range is greater: I now go from a 4 up to a 15. Nevertheless, the scoring is very similar to previously and again, they are all very close (4, 5, 7, 9, 3x10, 15) meaning I am still a jack-of-all-trades! Interestingly, now I think about it I think I can see that my 15 has increased because the person I work most closely with at work scored a 0; our styles are complementary, and as long as we both recognise this then we can work together harmoniously, with only the odd moment of despair!

Again, interestingly, I still fall firstly into the ACTION-oriented roles, although the average score dropped from 11.5 to 10.5. However, PEOPLE-oriented roles has moved from last to second place, its average score going from 6 to 8, and, therefore, CEREBRAL-oriented roles have moved to last place, the average having gone down from 8.5 to 7.5 These are not huge changes, but they are enough to make me reflect that these really are based on working styles and some of these I have adopted because of the way my role at work has developed and changed over the years.

For more info on Belbin team roles you could look at this website, for more on the categorisation of the roles, this summary is good, and for an update, the Belbin website is great, as is their comprehensive review, showing the latest thinking, and the actual questionnaire is also available from them (for a charge).

I'd be very interested to hear from you if you've know your team role preferences - especially if you're a cataloguer!

Reflections on reflection

If you happened upon my previous post about my personal thoughts on levels of competence, as discussed by Sheila Webber in her blog post on cpd23, then you will see where I am coming from with this post!!

Although I realise I lack confidence in my ability to do just about anything, this is really the only self-awareness that I have gained over the years! Rather pathetic really, because, if I was more self-aware then I’d be able to work on those areas where I’m not so good and become a better person.

Over the years, however, there have been illuminating moments where I have realised a bit more about myself. The first of these was when I did the Belbin team-working questionnaire and realised that I really had no preferred role and so was really a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades (I thought I'd blogged about this but can't seem to find it now, so perhaps I didn't!).

More recently, I have done another short questionnaire that has helped me to become a little bit more self-aware. Now, please don’t ask me why, given my lack of confidence, but I decided I’d like to investigate what it meant to be a mentor within the profession, and to that end I enrolled on the CILIP PTEG mentoring course. This was a day-long event that concentrated on the skills needed in order to mentor a CILIP chartership, or ACLIP candidate, and along the way we did a short questionnaire on learning styles.

I’ve done learning styles questionnaires before, but those were to do with whether you were an aural or a visual or a kinesthetic learner; the one we did on the mentoring course was along the lines of the Honey and Mumford one. Now, this was illuminating! Although, if I think about it hard enough, it shouldn’t have been illuminating, I should already have known what my preferred style was!

Anyway, in short, it turned out I was 4 parts reflective, 3 parts theorist, and 0 parts activist or pragmatist. I’m sure I’m not breaking any confidences if I say that the room was full of about half and half – that is half reflective/theorists and half activists/pragmatists, with one or two folk having a sole predominant style – and, knowing this, it was interesting to be more aware of how we all interacted.

As I said above, this was one of those light bulb moments for me! It helped to explain how and why I find it difficult to work with people who make snap decisions; I can feel wrong-footed, steam-rollered over, lacking in intelligence and unworthy. However, I now recognise that really I ought to work towards being less reflective/theoretical as sometimes it’s important to make decisions and take action rather more quickly than I do.

That led me onto thinking about change, and my attitude towards it. I’ve always said I don’t much like change, but actually, it’s probably more to do with being given enough time to think about the specific change and the implications/ramifications/consequences/impact the change might have on me, on my work, on my workplace, on my colleagues and on the users! If I feel I haven’t had enough time to reflect on it then I can feel threatened by it and overwhelmed. Trouble is, there isn’t always time to think too long and hard; some changes have to be made quickly, either in response to something or to pre-empt things. 

As with most things, I guess it’s all about balance, self-awareness, and not letting styles get in the way of working, and not letting styles become levels of unconscious competence that drift into levels of unconscious incompetence – meaning yes, it’s good to think and reflect, and yes, I’m quite good at it, but if I think too long I’ll miss the action and miss the chance to get things done!

Of course, I can always find something that vindicates the way I am! Clutterbuck (2004) said:

“people … have less and less time to stop and think deeply … Deep, reflective thinking is as essential to the effectiveness of our conscious brain as REM sleep is to our unconscious. In both cases we become dysfunctional if our minds do not carry out the essential task of analysing, structuring, organising and storing.”

Julian Baggini, in an interview on Radio 4’s Start the Week, is also an advocator of procrastination as a way to achieve things. Contrast this to Malcolm Gladwell and his Blink theories, and maybe somewhere in between is the perfect solution!

References:

Clutterbuck, David. (2004). Everyone needs a mentor: fostering talent in your organisation. 4th ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Reflections on competence

Between Thing 9 and 10!

During her between Things post on cpd23, Sheila Webber talked about cpd in your later career, a topic that really grabbed my interest, not least because I’ve been in the profession a long time (31 years, if you must know!), and there have been many life events recently that have caused me not only to reminisce, but also to look forward!

Way back in the ‘70s when I started at university, for many of us this was the first opportunity to experience working with a computer. Actually, as I remember it, we were all terrified in our first couple of weeks when we had to do a test actually using the terminal (remember them? dumb terminals connected to a mainframe!) I’m not sure, but I got the feeling we were going to blow it up if we got the answers wrong!

Anyway, from those early days, the developments in IT have just kept on coming and coming and coming, as  - by a mixture of luck, judgement and training - have our capabilities to use it. However, I have always felt that there was something (well, actually, lots of things) that I didn’t know about but felt I should, but trying to identify what I didn’t know and get the training I needed to get to grips with these things has always been difficult. I’ve blogged in an earlier post about our team new technologies day, which went some way to providing some IT knowledge for team members, and I've blogged about why I took part in the original cdp23 programme, and it’s really for this reason, to keep up with IT developments, that I am keeping an eye on cpd23 2012.

Reading Sheila’s post, I was quite interested in the four levels of competence.

1. unconscious incompetence - while I was sure I’d passed the first level (no realisation that I was not good at something),
2. conscious incompetence - I thought I might have passed the second level (realisation that I was not good at something),
3. conscious competence - and really hoped I’d got to the next level, which was stopping being not good at something if I really put my mind to it!
4. unconscious competence - I quaked a bit when I read about “unconscious competence”; this suggests that one is brilliant at doing something without realising it, or having to think about it. Given my levels of confidence (i.e. complete lack of self-confidence) I thought it unlikely that I had reached this level of competence, but of course, I couldn’t help contemplating that maybe others thought that with the length of time I’ve been in the profession I really ought to have reached that level and therefore I needed to beware that I wasn’t slipping into competence level 1 in the eyes of others!

Taking Sheila’s advice, I should force myself out of any comfortable habits by self-evaluating, joining a peer-review scheme, or talking with critical friends, as well as setting up mechanisms to keep myself updated.

Sheila also wrote about the work of one of her PhD students, Eva Hornung, on how one’s view of cpd changes over time, and I am quite sure that I am in the stage that views cpd as lifelong learning! As far as I am concerned, life is one long life-long learning event, as my colleagues at mashdmu will confirm! Never a day goes by when I don’t learn something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am constantly reviewing what I’ve learned and putting it into action. If this were the case, I would spend so much time reflecting that actually, I’d never get anything done!!

Hmmm, now that’s made me think ... ! Reflections on reflection ...