I haven’t really had anything good to say about libraries for a while, the one I work in or nationally. I’ve been keeping quiet so this doesn’t become one long rant.
I always knew I should have done this anonymously.
Anyway onto the good stuff.
Info Junkie just posted about the 23 things learning programme which is kind of strange as I’ve been asked to do some Web2.0 training for staff and am hoping to use exactly that programme. I’m just in the process of putting a project plan together which I will then take to our senior management team. I’m going to sell it along the lines of the Frontline reader development training where staff were given an hour or so a week to work through the online course.
Of course the next step is to get the IT department to unblock all the sites that I will need to use to put the programme together and that could take a while.
Our library is a Europe Direct Information Centre (amazingly, not as boring as it sounds), this week we’ve had visitors from Sweden and Denmark who have come over to have a look at what we offer to children and young people. I was there to talk about all the web stuff, especially Flickr and the blog.
Sometimes it’s nice to sit and chat about what you do, it reminds you of why you do it, despite the daily petty frustrations.
The morning was mainly about working with young people though, so it seemed quite timely that this letter about children’s librarians appeared on the Bookseller blog this afternoon.
It will be interesting to see if a certain library campaigner links to it.
The afternoon was taken up with uploading photos of the bear with some famous authors onto Flickr. Go take a look.
I am quite jealous. I’m trying to work out a way I can get to YLG conference next year – if only for all the freebies.
Earlier this year we got a lovely mention in the Better Connected review of local authority websites, ‘really excellent library pages’ was the phrase used I think.
I made myself remember this when today I had to spend ten minutes on the phone to a (fairly) senior member of staff who couldn’t even get to the library homepage.
Then I had a conversation with a colleague who visited another library authority this week, where the community librarians communicate via IM.
I’ve been doing one of my least favourite jobs for the past couple of days. If three other people are away simultaneously, then I have to look after the general library email inbox. Mostly it’s fine – just forwarding emails to the right person and deleting the spam – but it also means renewing books that are overdue and letting people know how much they owe us.
I don’t normally come into contact with fines, I’m an information person really, and when I do work on the public desk, it’s usually in reference, so fines don’t come into it. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I really hate the fact that we have to fine people. It seems so much money too – Four books, two weeks overdue can cost nearly £10. You can probably buy the books for that on Amazon marketplace.
I know all the arguments for fines (I followed the discussion on Lis-Pub-Libs) I just can’t help thinking that we should be making it easier for people to use us, not more difficult.
It’s been ages. I’m a bit rubbish at this, so I’m going to start again and try and get better.
I noticed my last post was just before we got the results of the job evaluation that all council’s have been through. It wasn’t great news, although I did better then some. It was the creative rewriting of my job description afterwards that upset me the most and made me not want to work in libraries for a while.
Everything’s almost back to normal now and I’m quite enjoying my job again. I get to do this and this for a living (amongst other more boring things) so it’s not all bad.
I’ve been busy with other things like holidays and beaches and moving flats amongst other things. But now I’m very nearly settled (no shelves yet, so haven’t unpacked any books, only then will it feel like home) I have an Internet connection again and hopefully will now be better at updating this than I used to be.
I know I’ve done quite a lot library wise over the last few months, but for now I can’t remember any of it, so instead here is a good video on YouTube: Information R/evolution. It’s done by the same person who did Web2.0 …The Machine is us/ing us which is also very good.
In other news, it appears you can now use tags on wordpress.
