Just back from an excellent production of the Scottish play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. Well worth the trek across the country. Very well imagined and designed, with the witches replaced by children. The Porter stood out with a very funny 'knock knock' scene while Macbeth's visions were nicely matched by Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking. Congratulations to the company for a super show.
Friday, 26 August 2011
Monday, 22 August 2011
Thing 9 - Evernote
I can understand how this might be useful, but I have yet to try it out for myself. I've downloaded the app onto my phone, but not quite sure how it works. Off for a play methinks.
I may revisit this later on.
I may revisit this later on.
Thing 10 - Routes into Librarianship, or, My Library Life So Far
I am one of the many people who fell into librarianship. I had just graduated from Leicester University with a BA in English and felt much like Princeton in the stage show Avenue Q:
("What do you do with a B.A. in English?" 2003, Avenue Q: the Musical, Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx)
After returning home due to lack of funds I was roped into helping set up a Library Access Point (LAP) in my home village. LAPs are small libraries which are managed and staffed by volunteers in partnership with county councils. We opened our LAP in October 2003 and I started volunteering on the Monday afternoon and Saturday morning slots. I answered the advertisement for a Graduate Library Trainee at the Classical Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge and came second. So I carried on volunteering and learning to drive. By this point, I was thinking that library work was for me, partly because I wasn't qualified to do anything else, and I didn't want to be stuck in admin for the rest of my life.
Luckily, in January 2004, I got a letter from Classics offering me the trainee post as the trainee had left to study for a PhD. So I came in too late to join the other trainees in most of the library visits and in setting up CATALOG so I felt my year was less like a traditional traineeship and more like a contract library assistant job. I learned MARC21 cataloguing, classification, serials management and conservation. I helped students. I watered the plants. Nearing the end of my traineeship, I didn't know if I wanted to do a Masters in librarianship. I was toying with doing a PGCE and then I thought I'd get some more library experience once my trainee year was over.
A year in the wilderness doing library volunteering and lots of different temp positions (admin again) and I stumbled upon my current job, which I've now been doing for five and a half years. During this time I've seen the library change from an overstocked out-of-date book repository to a bright, welcoming, up-to-date working library. I've also seen my job and its various roles shrink as print journals have decreased and more library services become automated and online. This is undoubtedly a good thing for our users, but it means that I have grown out of my role.
I applied for the MA/MSc Information & Library Management at Northumbria University and studied by distance learning, which was hard, as I was also working full time and there just aren't enough hours in the day. I did enjoy my studies, although I found the lack of interaction with other students quite isolating (VLEs and forums only really work if everyone uses them). After many frustrating hours and some sleepless nights, I passed my dissertation and I'm now looking to move on to a professional post. If anyone sees such a post in Cambridge, please let me know.
What do you do with a BA in English?
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college
And plenty of knowledge
Have earned me this useless degree.
I can't pay the bills yet,
Cause I have no skills yet.
The world is a big scary place.
But somehow I can't shake
The feeling I might make
A difference to the human race.
("What do you do with a B.A. in English?" 2003, Avenue Q: the Musical, Music & Lyrics by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx)
After returning home due to lack of funds I was roped into helping set up a Library Access Point (LAP) in my home village. LAPs are small libraries which are managed and staffed by volunteers in partnership with county councils. We opened our LAP in October 2003 and I started volunteering on the Monday afternoon and Saturday morning slots. I answered the advertisement for a Graduate Library Trainee at the Classical Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge and came second. So I carried on volunteering and learning to drive. By this point, I was thinking that library work was for me, partly because I wasn't qualified to do anything else, and I didn't want to be stuck in admin for the rest of my life.
Luckily, in January 2004, I got a letter from Classics offering me the trainee post as the trainee had left to study for a PhD. So I came in too late to join the other trainees in most of the library visits and in setting up CATALOG so I felt my year was less like a traditional traineeship and more like a contract library assistant job. I learned MARC21 cataloguing, classification, serials management and conservation. I helped students. I watered the plants. Nearing the end of my traineeship, I didn't know if I wanted to do a Masters in librarianship. I was toying with doing a PGCE and then I thought I'd get some more library experience once my trainee year was over.
A year in the wilderness doing library volunteering and lots of different temp positions (admin again) and I stumbled upon my current job, which I've now been doing for five and a half years. During this time I've seen the library change from an overstocked out-of-date book repository to a bright, welcoming, up-to-date working library. I've also seen my job and its various roles shrink as print journals have decreased and more library services become automated and online. This is undoubtedly a good thing for our users, but it means that I have grown out of my role.
I applied for the MA/MSc Information & Library Management at Northumbria University and studied by distance learning, which was hard, as I was also working full time and there just aren't enough hours in the day. I did enjoy my studies, although I found the lack of interaction with other students quite isolating (VLEs and forums only really work if everyone uses them). After many frustrating hours and some sleepless nights, I passed my dissertation and I'm now looking to move on to a professional post. If anyone sees such a post in Cambridge, please let me know.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Thing 8 - Google Calendar
I've been using Google Calendar for about 4 years now, since I changed to Gmail. I like the fact that you can share calendars with other people and set up email reminders for appointments and events. You can also get mobile access with android phones, meaning you can't possibly miss anything.
The downside is that you no longer have the "I forgot" or "previous engagement" excuse if you share your calendar with others.
Although these tools are a great way of organising your life and ensuring that appointments aren't missed, I wonder if we're becoming too reliant on technology to do all the reminding for us and forgetting how to use our brains to do it.
I will probably use Google Calendar more once I've got used to the new smartphone and no doubt it will help me keep on track when I start to get busy in the Autumn.
The downside is that you no longer have the "I forgot" or "previous engagement" excuse if you share your calendar with others.
Although these tools are a great way of organising your life and ensuring that appointments aren't missed, I wonder if we're becoming too reliant on technology to do all the reminding for us and forgetting how to use our brains to do it.
I will probably use Google Calendar more once I've got used to the new smartphone and no doubt it will help me keep on track when I start to get busy in the Autumn.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Thing 7 - More networks & professional organisations
Oh dear, it had to come along at some point. This is where I have to try not to rant about the unfairness of CILIP's membership fee structure. It's hard enough trying to pay all the bills and fill up the car with petrol without being fleeced for membership of a professional organisation as well.
http://www.cilip.org.uk/membership/cost/pages/subscription.aspx
I don't see how it's acceptable for full time library assistants earning just over £17,500 to be paying the same amount per year as Library Service Managers or University Librarians who probably earn £50,000 per year.
Let's do some maths.
At £189 per annum, a library assistant earning £18,000 will be paying CILIP 1.05% of their gross annual salary.
A student loan is repayable at a rate of 9% over £15,000.
For national insurance, gross earnings between £139 and £817 per week are charged at 12%.
Under £35,000 income tax is charged at 20%
Average Library assistant gets £1500 per month gross.
- tax at 20% = 300
- NI at 12% = 180
- Student Loan at 9% = 135
- CILIP membership = 18.90
I haven't added pensions, as these are variable, but this leaves a net monthly salary of approx. £863.10. Add rent or mortgage repayments, fuel, utilities and food, and there's very little left, if any.
Let's have a look at a Head of Library Services on, say, £50,000 p.a.
£4166 per month
- tax at 40% = 1666
- NI at 12% = 499.92
- CILIP membership = 18.90
Net monthly salary of approx. £1981.18. Nice.
I'm assuming that a head of service doesn't have a student loan, but if they did, the rate of 9% would deduct £375 from the monthly salary on top of the deductions listed above.
Anyway, the CILIP membership fee is 0.378% of the Head of Service's annual salary, compared to 1.05% of the library assistant's annual salary.
I think those in better paid positions should be subsidising those wanting to get on in the profession. Lower the fees for those earning under £20,000, raise them for those earning over £50,000, have a sliding scale in between which goes up in £5,000 increments. CILIP would still get the money, just in a fairer, more Robin Hood sort of way.
So, in a nutshell, I'm not joining CILIP because it's not good value for money. It shouldn't be a bar to getting on in the profession, and no amount of proselytising is going to make me change my mind. So there.
[Maths help provided by Percentage calculator: http://lachie.net/maths/percent.html]
[Deductions from http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/about.php]
http://www.cilip.org.uk/membership/cost/pages/subscription.aspx
I don't see how it's acceptable for full time library assistants earning just over £17,500 to be paying the same amount per year as Library Service Managers or University Librarians who probably earn £50,000 per year.
Let's do some maths.
At £189 per annum, a library assistant earning £18,000 will be paying CILIP 1.05% of their gross annual salary.
A student loan is repayable at a rate of 9% over £15,000.
For national insurance, gross earnings between £139 and £817 per week are charged at 12%.
Under £35,000 income tax is charged at 20%
Average Library assistant gets £1500 per month gross.
- tax at 20% = 300
- NI at 12% = 180
- Student Loan at 9% = 135
- CILIP membership = 18.90
I haven't added pensions, as these are variable, but this leaves a net monthly salary of approx. £863.10. Add rent or mortgage repayments, fuel, utilities and food, and there's very little left, if any.
Let's have a look at a Head of Library Services on, say, £50,000 p.a.
£4166 per month
- tax at 40% = 1666
- NI at 12% = 499.92
- CILIP membership = 18.90
Net monthly salary of approx. £1981.18. Nice.
I'm assuming that a head of service doesn't have a student loan, but if they did, the rate of 9% would deduct £375 from the monthly salary on top of the deductions listed above.
Anyway, the CILIP membership fee is 0.378% of the Head of Service's annual salary, compared to 1.05% of the library assistant's annual salary.
I think those in better paid positions should be subsidising those wanting to get on in the profession. Lower the fees for those earning under £20,000, raise them for those earning over £50,000, have a sliding scale in between which goes up in £5,000 increments. CILIP would still get the money, just in a fairer, more Robin Hood sort of way.
So, in a nutshell, I'm not joining CILIP because it's not good value for money. It shouldn't be a bar to getting on in the profession, and no amount of proselytising is going to make me change my mind. So there.
[Maths help provided by Percentage calculator: http://lachie.net/maths/percent.html]
[Deductions from http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/about.php]
Thing 6 - Online Networks
LinkedIn
Right, just resurrected my LinkedIn profile, which I briefly set up in June 2010, then promptly ignored. At the moment, I don't know how much I'll use it, as I'm not one for spending hours online in fora and discussion groups. This is another public network where visibility is either a blessing or a curse. If you put all your information online, then people can find you, which is both good and bad. If you want to enhance your professional network, LinkedIn may be the way of getting yourself out there. But, if you're not aware of the Settings which are all defaulted to send you advertising, you could just end up getting spammed.
Anyway, I've asked a couple of people I know to be part of my network, and joined some groups. Let's see how long it takes me to get bored of this one.
Facebook
I've been a member of Facebook for ages, and it holds very few thrills for me any more. I'm an admin for a community group page which we mainly use for promotion and advertising, and somebody else does that for me now, so I probably look at Facebook once a week, on average. I don't think I'm missing much by not looking every day. The novelty has worn off for a lot of friends as well, who no longer post as much as they used to.
LISNPN/Librarians as Teachers Network/CILIP Communities
I've joined the New Professionals Network, and faffed around with my profile (not as easy to customise as my blog, which is a bit annoying, considering the points made in Thing 3 about branding) and wondering whether it will be worth it. I'm not a teaching librarian, so LaT holds no interest for me. CILIP communities seems very much like LISNPN - same old, same old (probably more of the old). I'm not joining CILIP just to access a message board (and I'm not joining CILIP full stop because it's too expensive).
Opinion
The trouble with all of these online communities is that you really have to be in love with them to make them work. I'm far from overwhelmed by online networks, and maybe it's because I took off my rose-coloured spectacles a long time ago and hid them in a filing cabinet in a dark cellar behind a door with a sign on it saying "beware of the leopard" (apologies to Douglas Adams fans for paraphrasing). I am far from believing that getting involved in professional networking will enhance my career prospects (because at the moment, library staff are lucky if they have jobs, let alone careers) and I have too full a life outside of work to be doing work-related stuff at home.
I am the person at the party who prefers to stay in the kitchen next to the gin rearranging the fridge magnets, so all those carefully crafted profiles will probably lie dormant until somebody nudges me to use them.
Right, just resurrected my LinkedIn profile, which I briefly set up in June 2010, then promptly ignored. At the moment, I don't know how much I'll use it, as I'm not one for spending hours online in fora and discussion groups. This is another public network where visibility is either a blessing or a curse. If you put all your information online, then people can find you, which is both good and bad. If you want to enhance your professional network, LinkedIn may be the way of getting yourself out there. But, if you're not aware of the Settings which are all defaulted to send you advertising, you could just end up getting spammed.
Anyway, I've asked a couple of people I know to be part of my network, and joined some groups. Let's see how long it takes me to get bored of this one.
I've been a member of Facebook for ages, and it holds very few thrills for me any more. I'm an admin for a community group page which we mainly use for promotion and advertising, and somebody else does that for me now, so I probably look at Facebook once a week, on average. I don't think I'm missing much by not looking every day. The novelty has worn off for a lot of friends as well, who no longer post as much as they used to.
LISNPN/Librarians as Teachers Network/CILIP Communities
I've joined the New Professionals Network, and faffed around with my profile (not as easy to customise as my blog, which is a bit annoying, considering the points made in Thing 3 about branding) and wondering whether it will be worth it. I'm not a teaching librarian, so LaT holds no interest for me. CILIP communities seems very much like LISNPN - same old, same old (probably more of the old). I'm not joining CILIP just to access a message board (and I'm not joining CILIP full stop because it's too expensive).
Opinion
The trouble with all of these online communities is that you really have to be in love with them to make them work. I'm far from overwhelmed by online networks, and maybe it's because I took off my rose-coloured spectacles a long time ago and hid them in a filing cabinet in a dark cellar behind a door with a sign on it saying "beware of the leopard" (apologies to Douglas Adams fans for paraphrasing). I am far from believing that getting involved in professional networking will enhance my career prospects (because at the moment, library staff are lucky if they have jobs, let alone careers) and I have too full a life outside of work to be doing work-related stuff at home.
I am the person at the party who prefers to stay in the kitchen next to the gin rearranging the fridge magnets, so all those carefully crafted profiles will probably lie dormant until somebody nudges me to use them.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Thing 5 - Reflective Practice
Reflect on what you've done so far...
Reflective Practice seems to be an integral part of learning. It is also how we continue to learn: from experience, from mistakes, from life in general. "On reflection, I shouldn't have" is a common enough start to a confession of stupidity or admission of wrongdoing. After all, five minutes on the naughty step is enough time to think about your actions and what you've learned from them.
Here are some reflections from my life so far:
"I must be more careful when running down the stairs"; "I should put salt on icy decking before attempting to walk on it"; "I should try not to exacerbate a repetitive strain injury by playing The Sims 2 on my laptop for 6 hours".
There are many more, these are just a few that sprung to mind. On reflection, they're all about preventing personal injury, so make of that what you will. I'm not particularly accident prone (I think) but I am more likely than anyone else I know to do something dim and unintentionally harm myself. It's a miracle I'm allowed out of the house.
Anyway, to get on to what I'm supposed to be rambling about, so far I have enjoyed exploring or rediscovering the things so far. I have also enjoyed reading other people's blogs and feeling part of a wider community of librarian learners (something which I felt was lacking during my distance learning Masters). The necessity to post every week (or at least on every "thing") has encouraged me to write more, and therefore reflect on what I have done. I think I've followed "What? > So What? > Now What?" rather than "Plan > Do > Review" during the cpd23 course, but the second of the two does form the basis for many other projects I am involved in (mostly out of work).
I think it's easy to think of Reflective Practice as something you only do when studying, but we do it all the time. Mostly in the pub. With a gin and tonic. And some chips.
Right, I'm off.
Reflective Practice seems to be an integral part of learning. It is also how we continue to learn: from experience, from mistakes, from life in general. "On reflection, I shouldn't have" is a common enough start to a confession of stupidity or admission of wrongdoing. After all, five minutes on the naughty step is enough time to think about your actions and what you've learned from them.
Here are some reflections from my life so far:
"I must be more careful when running down the stairs"; "I should put salt on icy decking before attempting to walk on it"; "I should try not to exacerbate a repetitive strain injury by playing The Sims 2 on my laptop for 6 hours".
There are many more, these are just a few that sprung to mind. On reflection, they're all about preventing personal injury, so make of that what you will. I'm not particularly accident prone (I think) but I am more likely than anyone else I know to do something dim and unintentionally harm myself. It's a miracle I'm allowed out of the house.
Anyway, to get on to what I'm supposed to be rambling about, so far I have enjoyed exploring or rediscovering the things so far. I have also enjoyed reading other people's blogs and feeling part of a wider community of librarian learners (something which I felt was lacking during my distance learning Masters). The necessity to post every week (or at least on every "thing") has encouraged me to write more, and therefore reflect on what I have done. I think I've followed "What? > So What? > Now What?" rather than "Plan > Do > Review" during the cpd23 course, but the second of the two does form the basis for many other projects I am involved in (mostly out of work).
I think it's easy to think of Reflective Practice as something you only do when studying, but we do it all the time. Mostly in the pub. With a gin and tonic. And some chips.
Right, I'm off.
Thing 4
Thing 4 is investigate Twitter, RSS feeds and Pushnote.
OK, I've been using Twitter for a couple of years and I either use it a lot, or not at all. I can live without 140 character status messages, much as I feel I can live without being on Facebook every day. I think I may have moved on from the excitement of the initial discovery of social networks.
That's not to say the Twitter is a bad thing. I do find it useful for keeping up to date with what other library people are doing, although most people I follow don't tweet that often, so you do get the same people popping up in your feed. And it's not that user friendly. I followed someone and added them to a list so that I could filter their tweets into a feed of like-minded people. I got bored of them, so I unfollowed them. They're still on the list and they keep appearing in my feed. Very annoying. I'm tempted to delete the list and start again!
So I still tweet from time to time, but I don't have anything that exciting to say, and who really wants to know?
RSS feeds, now, have really saved me a bunch of time. Our network at work is slow, and the cpd23 blog is very large, with lots of embedded content. So I can't access it from work, unless I want to crash my browser. Step forward Google Reader, which takes out all the extra formatting and snazzy Web2.0 stuff to give me plain text simplicity for all the blogs I follow, and RSS feeds for 23 things, and TOC alerts for some LIS journals. I'd forgotten I'd set up these feeds, but now I think I'll use them more. Using Google Reader to manage blogs is great. They're all in one place and you get notifications of new posts without having to navigate to the blog. Of course, you lose all the lovely backgrounds and colour schemes that eeryone has worked so hard on, but it's the content I'm interested in, not the style, so I don't think that matters once you've decided to subscribe to a blog.
Pushnote, I can't see the point of. I don't trawl the internet looking to comment on websites. I can mention them on the blog, or on Twitter. Besides, you have to download a browser add-on, and it only works on selected browsers, so I can't do that at work because I don't have administrator rights.
I've just got a smartphone, so I'll be trying out the mobile versions of Twitter and Google Reader and trying to keep up to date on the move.
Monday, 8 August 2011
Thing 3 - Online Personal Brand
That last post went on a bit, didn't it?
Personal online brands are interesting things to investigate. Good luck finding me - I appear to be pretty invisible to the wider world due to my extremely protective privacy settings. Facebook is personal, but even my Facebook friends can't see my address or telephone number. I do have librarian friends on Facebook, but it can be problematic if they are your colleagues - don't become friends with your line manager!
I use a separate email address for social networking to prevent the flood of spam that you inevitably get from signing up to websites (a lesson learned from the early days when my university email account was blocked due to a build up of unsolicited mail - I reached my quota of 5Mb over the Easter vacation) and I use pseudonyms to prevent my real name from appearing on my blog and on Twitter. Protecting my identity may seem paranoid, but I think it protects your right to freedom of speech as well. Having said that, Twitter is completely public, as I don't protect my tweets, and having run teaching sessions for colleagues on how to use Twitter, several people in my organisation know who I am anyway (@pinklibrarian).
So if you search for me using Bing (only for research purposes, mind, as I have a Google account attached to many things which would skew the results), the first two pages are a London-based wedding photographer (not me). Unsurprising, as she has her own website. Then there's a firm of recruitment consultants (also not me). Next is a press release from Thames Valley Police reporting a death in 2010 (definitely not me).
Hit 3 on Page 3 of the results is http://www.catalog.group.cam.ac.uk/founders.html (this is a vague reference to me, from 2004, when I was a trainee at the Classical Faculty Library - I am not in the picture).
So I searched for my name and "library" and discovered a comment I posted on Jo Alcock's blog in 2008 that I had totally forgotten about: http://www.joeyanne.co.uk/index.php/2008/04/05/what-makes-a-librarian-a-librarian/
(In case you're interested, I got a new bathroom and then did my Masters)
There's also a really old Libraries Information Bulletin from Cambridge University (also about CATALOG), but nothing about me since. I was not overly surprised, as my online presence is pretty heavily protected. I do feel that now may be the time to branch out into the wider world of library people on the web and try to get involved more in online discussions.
I suppose if a potential employer were trying to find information about me online, they would be hard pressed to find anything bad. However, they would also find it hard to find anything good! So I shall be trying to blog more often, and I have now linked this blog to my twitter feed. Both share the same profile image, background theme and colours. The photo was taken by my good friend Geoff Durrant (http://www.right-image.com/) at my wedding. It's quite a good representation of what I look like (although I will never again get such perfectly curly hair) and I'm wearing pink, which seemed appropriate, bearing in mind my pseudonym.
Notice I've not mentioned my full name at all in this post? Still can't get out of the habit of protecting myself online.
Personal online brands are interesting things to investigate. Good luck finding me - I appear to be pretty invisible to the wider world due to my extremely protective privacy settings. Facebook is personal, but even my Facebook friends can't see my address or telephone number. I do have librarian friends on Facebook, but it can be problematic if they are your colleagues - don't become friends with your line manager!
I use a separate email address for social networking to prevent the flood of spam that you inevitably get from signing up to websites (a lesson learned from the early days when my university email account was blocked due to a build up of unsolicited mail - I reached my quota of 5Mb over the Easter vacation) and I use pseudonyms to prevent my real name from appearing on my blog and on Twitter. Protecting my identity may seem paranoid, but I think it protects your right to freedom of speech as well. Having said that, Twitter is completely public, as I don't protect my tweets, and having run teaching sessions for colleagues on how to use Twitter, several people in my organisation know who I am anyway (@pinklibrarian).
So if you search for me using Bing (only for research purposes, mind, as I have a Google account attached to many things which would skew the results), the first two pages are a London-based wedding photographer (not me). Unsurprising, as she has her own website. Then there's a firm of recruitment consultants (also not me). Next is a press release from Thames Valley Police reporting a death in 2010 (definitely not me).
Hit 3 on Page 3 of the results is http://www.catalog.group.cam.ac.uk/founders.html (this is a vague reference to me, from 2004, when I was a trainee at the Classical Faculty Library - I am not in the picture).
So I searched for my name and "library" and discovered a comment I posted on Jo Alcock's blog in 2008 that I had totally forgotten about: http://www.joeyanne.co.uk/index.php/2008/04/05/what-makes-a-librarian-a-librarian/
(In case you're interested, I got a new bathroom and then did my Masters)
There's also a really old Libraries Information Bulletin from Cambridge University (also about CATALOG), but nothing about me since. I was not overly surprised, as my online presence is pretty heavily protected. I do feel that now may be the time to branch out into the wider world of library people on the web and try to get involved more in online discussions.
I suppose if a potential employer were trying to find information about me online, they would be hard pressed to find anything bad. However, they would also find it hard to find anything good! So I shall be trying to blog more often, and I have now linked this blog to my twitter feed. Both share the same profile image, background theme and colours. The photo was taken by my good friend Geoff Durrant (http://www.right-image.com/) at my wedding. It's quite a good representation of what I look like (although I will never again get such perfectly curly hair) and I'm wearing pink, which seemed appropriate, bearing in mind my pseudonym.
Notice I've not mentioned my full name at all in this post? Still can't get out of the habit of protecting myself online.
Friday, 5 August 2011
Thing 3 - Personal brands
I should know a bit about branding - it fell into my Masters dissertation like poo from a pigeon, and once it was there, it was hard to get rid of (very much like pigeon poo on my car). However, considering library brands is a bit different from considering your own personal brand. After all, a library is a business, a service, an entity, a building, a concept, whereas I am just me. I haven't ever considered that I might need to "brand" myself to project a particular image, although we all do it to some extent in the way we dress, our hairstyles, even the way we talk.
Dress and personal appearance is a bit of a minefield in the library world. The following questions have been raised not just in the service I work in, and form part of the debate over personal vs. professional.
Is personal appearance important at work? I would say yes, as staff represent their employer to their customers. A pride in one's own appearance implies a pride in one's work. A sloppy appearance could indicate a sloppy attitude at work. First impressions are important: how many people wear a suit to their interview? How many of those then continue to wear business dress once they have secured the job?
Should there be a dress code in libraries? Is it important to wear a shirt and trousers/skirt in order to be professional? Are jeans ok? Does smart = good at your job? Where do you draw the line between personal expression and ensuring that staff represent the brand?
Newcastle City Libraries introduced a uniform for staff, which has become the norm, and created a team spirit that was lacking before. A lot of libraries identify floorwalkers and customer services staff with brightly-coloured sashes to easily enable identification. I wear a branded lanyard with my ID badge attached to identify myself to staff, students and security personnel. In this context, is the clothing worn incidental?
Does a service user treat you differently based on the clothing you wear? Sometimes in an Academic Library it is difficult to distinguish the staff from the students as casual dress is the norm. Does this create a more friendly atmosphere where students can easily interact with the staff without feeling intimidated by suits? Or does it make it harder for students to find a staff member because their clothes make them blend in with the students?
Does anyone know the answers to these questions? Does it really matter?
Whether or not you believe it is right to judge on appearances, most people do it. How often have you been walking down the street and noticed an unfortunate wardrobe choice (all-over leopard print, anyone?) or a teenager with his jeans held up just under his bum and made a value judgement about that person? Yesterday my husband asked: "Does [X] own a top that's not a vest?" in reference to someone we know who represents the "chav" brand.
In considering what makes a brand, libraries should consider their staff as being part of the package, as they represent the human element in the organisation. Face-to-face interactions with customers advertise the brand and its values only when it is clear that library staff are representing the library. How does the library see itself? Businesslike? Casual? Friendly? Stern? Scary? Do the staff represent this in their personal appearance? If not, why not?
Library people are brand ambassadors: for the library service they are employed by; for the profession; for themselves. The "Librarian" brand conjures up many images (twinset and pearls or tweed jacket with leather elbow patches are the stereotypes that most often spring to mind). Considering how we as library folk represent the brand to others is worthy of more attention.
Dress and personal appearance is a bit of a minefield in the library world. The following questions have been raised not just in the service I work in, and form part of the debate over personal vs. professional.
Is personal appearance important at work? I would say yes, as staff represent their employer to their customers. A pride in one's own appearance implies a pride in one's work. A sloppy appearance could indicate a sloppy attitude at work. First impressions are important: how many people wear a suit to their interview? How many of those then continue to wear business dress once they have secured the job?
Should there be a dress code in libraries? Is it important to wear a shirt and trousers/skirt in order to be professional? Are jeans ok? Does smart = good at your job? Where do you draw the line between personal expression and ensuring that staff represent the brand?
Newcastle City Libraries introduced a uniform for staff, which has become the norm, and created a team spirit that was lacking before. A lot of libraries identify floorwalkers and customer services staff with brightly-coloured sashes to easily enable identification. I wear a branded lanyard with my ID badge attached to identify myself to staff, students and security personnel. In this context, is the clothing worn incidental?
Does a service user treat you differently based on the clothing you wear? Sometimes in an Academic Library it is difficult to distinguish the staff from the students as casual dress is the norm. Does this create a more friendly atmosphere where students can easily interact with the staff without feeling intimidated by suits? Or does it make it harder for students to find a staff member because their clothes make them blend in with the students?
Does anyone know the answers to these questions? Does it really matter?
Whether or not you believe it is right to judge on appearances, most people do it. How often have you been walking down the street and noticed an unfortunate wardrobe choice (all-over leopard print, anyone?) or a teenager with his jeans held up just under his bum and made a value judgement about that person? Yesterday my husband asked: "Does [X] own a top that's not a vest?" in reference to someone we know who represents the "chav" brand.
In considering what makes a brand, libraries should consider their staff as being part of the package, as they represent the human element in the organisation. Face-to-face interactions with customers advertise the brand and its values only when it is clear that library staff are representing the library. How does the library see itself? Businesslike? Casual? Friendly? Stern? Scary? Do the staff represent this in their personal appearance? If not, why not?
Library people are brand ambassadors: for the library service they are employed by; for the profession; for themselves. The "Librarian" brand conjures up many images (twinset and pearls or tweed jacket with leather elbow patches are the stereotypes that most often spring to mind). Considering how we as library folk represent the brand to others is worthy of more attention.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Give me a little more time...
Well it's pretty obvious that I'm quite a long way behind on this whole cpd23 thing. Thing 11 has just been posted, and I'm only just beginning to start thinking about Thing 3 (having postponed for a while Thing 2).
This week in the library we are taking the opportunity to do our annual stock audit, which involved scanning the barcodes of every item on the library shelves. "What fun!" I hear you cry! Well, actually, it beats sitting around waiting for a library user to ask you to share your pearls of wisdom with them, and after we've sifted through the reports and fixed any catalogue errors, we'll have a better representation of what's on our shelves than we had before.
So I may not have time to post anything on Thing 3 - Consider your personal brand until later in the week. I hope my tardiness is matched by other participants. Based on my experience of other people's blogs over the past couple of weeks, this may indeed be the case.
This week in the library we are taking the opportunity to do our annual stock audit, which involved scanning the barcodes of every item on the library shelves. "What fun!" I hear you cry! Well, actually, it beats sitting around waiting for a library user to ask you to share your pearls of wisdom with them, and after we've sifted through the reports and fixed any catalogue errors, we'll have a better representation of what's on our shelves than we had before.
So I may not have time to post anything on Thing 3 - Consider your personal brand until later in the week. I hope my tardiness is matched by other participants. Based on my experience of other people's blogs over the past couple of weeks, this may indeed be the case.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Things to do...
So, the trawl is done, but I don't really have any comments to make. I know that this whole "experience other people's blogs" thing is designed to get us to comment on what others have written, and therefore to get more involved with the blog community, but I think I'll just stay a "lurker" for now.
Actually, I don't really like the term "lurker" - it has very negative connotations and makes me sound like I'm standing in an alleyway wearing a dirty mac.
There's nothing wrong with reading other bloggers' content and not commenting. Surely the use of a pejorative term such as "lurker" discourages new bloggers?
Actually, I don't really like the term "lurker" - it has very negative connotations and makes me sound like I'm standing in an alleyway wearing a dirty mac.
There's nothing wrong with reading other bloggers' content and not commenting. Surely the use of a pejorative term such as "lurker" discourages new bloggers?
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