Getting used to a new catalogue interface

If you’ve been used to using the same catalogue interface for the last 10 years, the idea of learning the vagaries of searching a new catalogue interface could be quite daunting.

This was the position I recently found myself in. I wasn’t daunted, but I was conscious that our new catalogue didn’t quite operate in the way as our old one, and often didn’t produce the results I would have expected. So, I wondered how other library staff were getting on with it: Did they find what they were looking for? Did they find searching easy? Did they wonder about their unexpected results? Were they frustrated by anything? Did they like the new interface? Did they think our users would find it easy to use?

So many questions!! Wouldn’t it be good if we could pool our knowledge and share our searching hints and tips with each other, to minimise the re-inventing of wheels, and to give all staff access to the same knowledge. How would this best be done? A stand up and talk lecture? Booking a lecture theatre and allocating each member of staff a pc on which to try things out? Compiling a written list of hints and tips, and circulating this to everyone? Hmmm. And then it came to me!

The cataloguers had spent rather a lot of time using and getting used to the new interface in relation to the changing cataloguing standards (i.e. from MARC21 to RDA) and so perhaps we were the ones best placed to host a sharing event! So we did! And it worked really well!

This is what we did: We offered an open day with a difference!

We sent out an email invitation to all library staff:

Dear All,

On Tuesday 11^th February, the Bibliographic Services Office will be hosting a

Catalogue interface familiarisation event

This event will take the form of an “open house”, between the hours of 10 and 4.

You are invited to come down to our office on Tuesday 11^th Feb, anytime during the hours of 10 and 4, when you are not on front-facing duties, and bring your catalogue queries and questions, likes and gripes with you!

You will be able to share any worries and concerns, as well as any comments and questions you may have, with any member of the team. We will do our best to address any concerns and answer any questions on the spot, but in the event that we don’t know the answer we will investigate and get back to you as soon as possible after the event as we can.  

If you are not at work on this day, or you work evenings/weekends, I will be available to answer your questions on the evenings of Monday 10^th Feb (5-8) and Wednesday 12^th Feb (4-6.30), in the LGF Office.

We look forward to seeing!

Lynne

And followed this up with a reminder at 10am on the day of the event:

 

Just a quick reminder that this event opens today at 10am and continues throughout the day until 4pm. Everyone is very welcome!!

Lynne

Each member of the Bib Services team was available between the hours of 10am and 4pm to answer any questions that anyone who came down brought with them. We also invited one of our colleagues from the library IT side of our operation to come down and help answer questions. Having an extended drop-in time meant that most people were able to come along, and could fit their visit around their scheduled front-of-house activities without having to excuse themselves from the rota, and likewise Bib Services staff could still undertake their own rota duties but there would still be some of our staff available throughout the event. Front-of-house duties can be a difficult obstacle to overcome when sessions are offered that are potentially of interest to all members of library staff – someone has to staff the desks/counters!

So, the idea was that when people arrived in the Bib Services office they could chose who from the Bib Services team they wanted to talk to, and they could chose if they wanted to do this on a one2one basis or as a small group (no more than three people to a group). This meant that people could choose to talk to people in the team who worked at a similar level (e.g. Information Assistant to Information Assistant), or to people they already had a good relationship with, or people who they thought might be better able to answer their questions. 

Also, when visitors arrived, they were greeted by a member of the team who gave them a sheet of hints and tips that had already been compiled, and offered them bribes, sorry, I mean sweets! Each member of the team also had a plate of biscuits or a bowl of sweets from which visitors could help themselves. In the event that no-one was immediately available to greet, there were also some games and things to do on the  “welcome desk” so that no-one needed to feel left out.



"Reception desk" - a couple more games were added later!

As well as the email publicity, we placed a poster on the staff noticeboard, and a poster on the office door, and a welcome poster above the “welcome desk”. One member of the Bib Services team very kindly offered to go around all the other offices and remind people that the event was taking place, and personally inviting them down to take advantage of our offering. This actually proved to be the most successful part of the advertising: Nothing quite like the personal touch!

We also sent out a reminder at about 2.15pm:

Just a reminder that the catalogue familiarisation event finishes at 4pm today, but there’s still plenty of time to come down and share your likes and gripes with us!!

Hope to see you shortly if you haven’t already come down.

Lynne

For the whole day there was a buzz in the office like I’ve never witnessed before! And, judging by the feedback forms we received after the event, it seems most people not only had their questions answered, and learned a bit more about the new catalogue interface, but they also seemed to enjoy the event!

Some of the strengths of the event, as evidenced by the feedback included:

• one2one attention
• the informality
• convenience of drop-in
• expert help and advice
• ease of asking questions

We had about 25 visitors over the day, and received about 68% of feedback forms returned, and out of a possible score of 340 points we received a healthy 298.

At the end of the event we sent out a thank-you message, and a suggestion about what might happen next:

Dear All, 

Many thanks to those of you who came down to the LGF Office and took part in the catalogue familiarisation event. As I suspected, we in Bib Services learned a lot from you, and I hope you learned enough from us to make your visit worthwhile.

If you had any queries that we were unable to answer on the spot, these will have been passed to me and I am currently working my way through them, and at the same time using your questions as a basis for extending the FAQs we had already compiled. This may take me a little while though, so I hope you will bear with me.

If you came to visit us, I’d be ever so grateful for your feedback, and I have attached a feedback form in case you didn’t get one on your visit.

Many thanks for your support,

Lynne

A couple of days later I was able to email out to all staff a list of questions and answers that had been received on the day of the event. Where there were unanswered questions, or questions that needed further investigation, these questions were included with suggested action points.

Following the familiarisation event, a number of further questions were received and answered via email. But, I wanted to go further! In our world, the world of cataloguing and technical services, we are used to taking part in e-forums, and this was what I wanted to do next, to give people another opportunity to find out more about the new library catalogue interface.

Unfortunately, the timescale was too tight to create an email group of which all library staff would be a member, although the advantages of such a group would be that the email list would include an archive accessible to all. In the end, I used my own email account, and advertised that I would be at the end of my email to answer any catalogue questions, during a two-hour period on a specific day. As you know, with the ALCST and CIG e-forums, these are structured around a specific set of questions, but I decided against any specific format, and simply accepted any questions that were posed of me.

The event was publicised on email:

Dear All,

As a follow-up to the library catalogue familiarisation event of last week I would like to offer you a different opportunity to share your comments and queries about the catalogue.

On Wednesday 19th February, between the hours of 10am and 12 noon, I will be at the end of my email to answer any questions you may have, and to take your comments on the new library catalogue interface. As these emails will be coming in along with all my other regular emails, please adopt the subject line “library catalogue comments” so I can easily identify your email and respond quickly.

If you are not able to participate tomorrow, please do send your comments to me at any time to suit you, but be aware that, although I will respond, it may not be immediately.

I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow,

 Lynne

In the event, we had about 5 different library staff emailing a total of about 8 different questions. I answered all the questions myself apart from one, which I referred to the only other cataloguer who was in the office at the time. Again, all questions and answers were recorded and issued to staff, like the results of the previous events.

As with the previous event, questions were received after the scheduled event, and these were also answered and included in the feedback. Again, staff seemed pleased to be offered the opportunity to ask their questions in the knowledge that someone was listening and likely to provide them with an answer.

As a result of all this activity, the Bib Services team is planning to create an extended FAQ for library staff in the use of the new catalogue interface, based on the questions and answers that were received at the various events. I am also going to suggest that we create a new library email list that can be used like an e-forum, for discussion about new services etc..

Overall, I think the two activities were quite successful, and I would hope to run similar events the next time we move to a new service.

PS The box labelled “Open me!” on the “welcome desk” contained loads of different quotes about libraries, catalogues, and cataloguers!

  

Fun, games and objectives!

Or: The Team Away Day

On the last Friday before I went off on holiday for two weeks we had a team away day. When I say “team” I really mean the service area of which my team is a part, not just my team. It was quite a last-minute decision, so there wasn’t much time for planning, but we knew the focus of the morning would be setting the aims and objectives for the coming year! Hardly a topic for people to get excited about, but a real necessity, in the current climate, to articulate what we wanted to achieve over the next year.

For the first time ever, we went off-campus and hired a relatively inexpensive room in The Phoenix. This was a controversial decision: Some colleagues were appalled at the very idea of wasting time walking to the venue, others didn’t understand what the benefits of going somewhere else could possibly be, while others were ambivalent. To say anyone was excited by the prospect would be a gross exaggeration – except for me!!

As it turned out, the hired space was almost ideal, with three large round tables, an interactive whiteboard, coffee and tea on tap, and, best of all, patio doors that opened onto a decked area furnished with picnic benches and tables, which provided a break-out space for group activities.

I don’t know what you think, but I find objective setting meetings can be quite hard to run: It’s sometimes difficult to get people engaged in the activity, to see how what they do on a day-to-day basis contributes to the aims of the service as a whole and to the aims of the institution, so over the years I’ve tried different ways of involving people. I still remember the year I got it right and was rewarded with a bunch of flowers from the team: Never quite reached that level of success since, but it did give me the impetus to carry on doing things in my own style, so each year I try something different!

So, this year, I had a couple of days to come up with something new and different to complement the aims and objectives setting part of the meeting – and that was a tall order! I thought about things that had motivated me over the years, and tried to translate this into fun activities that would work for the team and get people enjoying themselves, but at the same time in the mood to consider their objectives.

Eventually I settled on a couple of games and a quiz, so we did two of these fun activities before settling down to consider our objectives, and then we finished off with the third one. And, during the whole of the morning, people were working on another quiz!

At first I think people were a bit sceptical about taking part in daft things, that seemed to bear no relation to their work, but once they’d relaxed into it, I think they could see the relevance and had a good time to boot. What worked particularly well was that there were three tables of eight staff, which was fortuitous as I’d already decided to divide the team into three groups, and rotate the games round the groups. It was interesting how the groups had divided themselves, and I felt little need to interfere with the composition of the groups. So, we had a table of men, with one woman, a table of women with one man, and a mixed table! All tables had a mixture of people from the three different teams that were represented at the meeting.

The three activities and the individual quiz were:

1.      The picture match where I provided a random set of pictures and each person in the group chose a picture that they think was most like them and each explained in turn why they thought this. The rest of the group were then allowed to agree or disagree with the choice, and say why. The aim of this was to help people who didn’t necessarily work together often to get to know each other better, to foster trust and an appreciation of diversity.

2.      A word game where the group divided themselves into two teams and each team taking it in turns to define either a big word or a small word, big words earning a bigger score. This was a competitive game, and the aim was to help people appreciate the versatility of the English language and that whatever words they used for their annual development review were as valid as any others.

3.      The quiz was designed to discover people’s learning style so that, like the first game, people could appreciate that we are all different, but are working towards the same goals.

4.      The individual quiz was simply a list of acronyms for which the answer was the spelled out version of the name. Of course, the acronyms were all related to our area of work, or our organisation. A small prize of a memory stick was awarded to the person who scored the highest: The winner got 35/45.

The objective-setting part of the morning, led by the head of our teams, proved quite effective too. A list of suggested objectives, together with a brief description and the names of the lead people, had been circulated to staff earlier, so at the away day, people were asked to identify where they were likely to be involved and to suggest changes and additions to the aims. I am pleased to say that there were a number of changes and additions, and I think everyone came away with a clear idea of what their part in the team’s aims was.

Overall, I think people appreciated being away from the "office" and felt able to forget the day job and devote a period of time to what is fundamentally an important activity. For my part, I felt that sandwiching the objective-setting between some fun activities allowed people to relax into the objective-setting and feel more involved and able to participate fully. What we ended up with was a fairly comprehensive, but achievable list of things to do over the coming year, and hopefully, we each also gained an insight into what made each of us tick.

Opening the office doors

Just before Easter the Bibliographic Services Team opened its office doors and invited staff from other parts of the library to come and see what actually goes on in the team: A little bit of demystifying can work wonders for cross-library working relationships!

Our Open Day advertising was based around our READ-ability Initiative and our PIC Project, and ensured that we focussed on showcasing many of the things we do that other library staff perhaps didn’t realise we did! Previous open days have usually been based around the route of the book (from order to shelf), or journals work, so this latest venture was a bit of a departure for us.

Here’s the blurb:

Down in the fusty, dusty basement, cataloguing staff have their noses in great tomes of wonder - the manuals of AACR2, RDA LCSH and MARC21 and the Dewey classification schedules! True? Well, yes, at least partially!

We do indeed live in the basement, but it certainly is not fusty and dusty! We have windows – although they don’t actually open, and look out on to the pavement – and because of the fast throughput in the office, there is little in the way of dust! Although cataloguers by name, we do so much more, and we shook off our old mantle years ago – where were you when we moved to online manuals and online Dewey schedules, got involved in Twitter chats, mashdmu events and raised our heads above the parapet?

So come on down to our office and learn about:

·      our READ-ability Initiative - committing to improving the experience of students and other library users when interacting with the library catalogue and the library stock, helping them to find that elusive piece of information they need. It is about articulating and understanding what we do and how it can help users, and telling everyone!

·      our PIC Project - pulling together much of the work performed around cataloguing in Bibliographic Services, and recognises that much of this work helps to PIC!!

·      the more traditional activities associated with a thriving Bibliographic Services operation, like journals work, ordering, financial controls and much, much more!

Intrigued? Want to know more? Then abandon the arena of user activity and bound down to the basement to learn about the creation of metadata and keyword consistency to ensure discoverability of our resources!

We made an early decision to limit the number of participants to each open day to 15, given that there were five major topics we wanted to cover, and each demo would be around someone’s workstation. We also decided to go the speed-dating way – five groups of three people stopping at each of five demos, each demo being no more than 15 minutes long! This meant we could show more of what we do, but in less detail, so nothing should have been too technical!

The idea of only being able to share tiny snippets of what we do may sound a bit limiting, but the initial greeting and the final goodbye stressed the idea that nothing was too much trouble for us and if anybody wanted to know about more detail about anything they’d seen then we were happy to get a phone call, an email or a personal visit and would go into as much detail as required! Also, if there was something we hadn’t covered at all, we’d be happy to do more tailored sessions.

Every member of the team who was available in the office on the day of the open day (i.e. not on a service point, on leave, poorly, or not scheduled to be at work) had a part to play and showcased some part of Bib Services work to the visitors. My own role was simply to keep an eye on the time and make sure groups moved on as soon as their 15 minutes was up! That proved quite challenging and I’ve since invested in a handbell!

Party bag!

The office was fairly buzzing with activity and chatter for the 90 minutes of the open day, and it was pleasing to see people interacting and learning from each other. At the end of the session, each participant was asked to complete a feedback form and given a party bag – no, not a bribe, just a thank-you for coming gesture!

Judging by the feedback we received, it seems our open day was successful! Of the 11 feedback forms returned, 10 rated the overall open day event as “excellent”. Comments on specific aspects of the open day were also very positive, and some of the suggestions made by our visitors are currently being considered by the team, before we offer our next open day.