I recently completed a CILIP consultation survey on the value of a Body of Professional Knowledge (BPK). The consultation is one stage of CILIP's Future Skills project - a project which will "review CILIP's qualifications and ensure every member gets the recognition they deserve from their employers and society for a unique suite of highly valuable, relevant and endurable skills." (CILIP, 2012) The existing BPK came out in 2004, just after I had begun the second year of my BA library degree. One of our tutors was involved in its creation so it was discussed in a lecture (and I think we may even have had a small assignment on it). Its aim has been to establish "the unique knowledge which distinguishes library and information professional from other professional within other domains" (CILIP, 2004). For anyone who hasn't seen it you can view a copy here.
When I first saw it in 2004 I found it very hard to understand. Visually I found it hard to relate the description with the diagram of the core schema because of the way they had chosen to emphasise certain words. Some were in italics, some were in bold and there is no clear connection between how these are chosen and the key words/phrases from the diagram. Having studied it since during my chartership, and again now, I find it easier to comprehend. However, when the first question of the consultation survey asked "What does the current BPK mean to you?" I'm afraid I ticked "hard to understand". As a general overview of the areas involved within the profession it's not bad, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone new who wanted to see at a glance what knowledge and skill-set is required.
The second question in the survey asks "What are you looking for from CILIP BPK?" The existing BPK identifies the following areas of knowledge:
- information organisation, e.g. classification schemes, taxonomies and subject indexing
- information dissemination through publishing
- information generation controlled by information need and user behaviour and facilitated by operations such as metadata, hyperlinks, abstracts, tags, etc.
- information resource management including acquisition, cataloguing, storage and disposal
- information service provision including information retrieval and portal/website design
- profession-related policies, laws, codes of practice, etc.
- generic/transferable skills of computer and information literacy, research, interpersonal skills, marketing, management, training and mentoring
It is time for the BPK to be updated - there are new skill-sets relating to information technologies, digital literacy and web2.0 that have since developed and the main areas outlined above can be teased out more. I think the BPK needs to be multi-purpose. It should outline the key areas but then be more specific so that individuals, organisations and employers can use it as a basis for the specific skill-set a professional requires. That way it can then be accessible and useful to those within the profession and be used as an advocacy tool to promote what we do.
I have chosen to take part in this year's Library - Day in the Life, an event whereby librarians offer up a day or week of their lives to show what their job is really all about. I was all prepared to begin on Monday but, unfortunately, was off ill so I'm afraid I did absolutely nothing work-related that day! Therefore, with my week already gone to pot(!), what follows is a detailed account of my Thursday the 2nd February.
I began my day at one of our smaller sites, Anstee House Learning Space. The Learning Space houses our resources for fashion and textiles, EFL and media and film. The fashion and EFL stock are well used so I spent my first hour giving it all a good tidy and checking for strict Dewey order - what a fun start! ;)
A call from my manager prompted me to double check the 18 certificate DVDs over there. We need to keep them off the floor so that they are not available to under-18s. Unfortunately, an enterprising colleague had recently tidied our office and I found them all shelved back in the main DVD collection! I took them all out, made sure they were clearly labelled and added a circulation note to each advising of the location and issue restrictions. Next I went through a pile of EFL reading packs (book with accompanying CD/s) that had been left for me that needed turning into composite loan items.
My last job before 11am was to finish preparing the staff timetables for next week and upload them onto our intranet. At 11 I took another barrier count reading (the first had been at 9am - we take counts at The Learning Space at 9am, 11am, 3pm and 5pm to identity and monitor busy periods). I had a total of 42 people through the door with only 3 of them coming up to the desk so it felt like a quiet morning. (This week we're keeping a log of all enquiries to capture the number and types of enquiries we receive.)
Between 11 and 1 I dealt with a delivery of resources transferred from our other sites and sorted through my emails and tasks list. I'm generally very organised but if I start to slip things can get out of hand very quickly! I also had a lot more enquiries but they were mostly regarding topping up print credit. The number of in-depth assignment enquiries we receive is definitely declining. The cause of this I'm not sure - are students able to find more online?; are assignments becoming less academic, particularly with the increase of vocational courses offered?; are students themselves changing and just not wanting to ask for help?; or is it us? During our interactions are we probing less into the work they're doing and therefore not instigating in-depth help from our end?
My last hour at Anstee was quite noisy - we have very thin walls and a class in the room next door were playing music quite loudly!
After an hour for lunch I attended a senior team meeting from 2.15pm to 4.00. I contributed to discussion on ways of managing students waiting around for their PC bookings, a proposal to change the loan period of staff DVDs and some collections topics. For the last hour of the day, in addition to adding my meeting action points to my tasks list, I was timetabled on the enquiry desk. A large portion of that time was taken up with helping a group of hairdressing students pint out a revision pack. My final task was to prepare my list of priority jobs for Friday. These include: going through the Tadio Times and identifying relevant programs to record and add to stock; Heritage housekeeping; check the processing status of new stock.
So, that was my Thursday! For anyone who is interested this is what I did at the beginning of the week:
Monday - I was off ill so did nothing work-related!
Tuesday - created a basket of stock requests with our suppliers; put up the posters I had created to promote our LRC eResource of the month and LGBT history month; DVD keywording (we do regular batches of DVD weeding and I want to go through the titles I identify to keep and review their keywords to try and encourage their use); morning shift at our Richmond Road Resources Centre (art, design and music); and 2 hours on the enquiry desk in the afternoon.
Wednesday - finished developing a feature page on Moodle promoting our resources supporting National Apprenticeship Week; created a display celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth in the Reading Zone; trialled Classroom Video's streaming option and compared quality with a physical DVD; timetabled 1 1/2 hours on the enquiry desk, 1 hour on the help desk and 1 hour in the HE Centre.
On Monday 19th we had our College Staff Improvement Day. To begin with we listened to a keynote speech given by Professor Bill Lucas entitled: Making more even in challenging times: developing adaptive intelligence in resilient organisations. In it he spoke about his 8 rules of change.
Rule 1: Change is changing; which essentially means that change is becoming more frequent and the previously believed models of how change occurs amongst people are outdated.
Rule 2: Real change is internal not external; I agree with this point - a 'real' change is not going to fully take place until all the individuals involved complete a transition process and become willingly accepting of the change.
Rule 3: Slow down; don't dissolve into panic at a time of change but control the process and manage the change instead of allowing it to manage you.
Rule 4: We can all change the way we see the world
Rule 5: We can all learn how to change more effectively; view change as a positive force rather than allowing it to have a negative impact on your outlook which can, in turn, endanger your views on other areas of your life.
Rule 6: No one can make you change; but, despite putting up a fight, over time, you often come round to accepting the change anyway. I see it in my colleagues and I know I'm guilty of it, much to the frustration of my fiance!
Rule 7: Sometimes it's smart to resist
Rule 8: Use the brainpower of those around you; work together and change will be more effective!
Further discussion about these rules of change can be found in Bill's book: rEvolution: how to thrive in crazy times.
I think as an LRC team we manage change pretty well. However, within the organisation I have seen instances of sudden reaction to change rather than taking the time of effectively manage the change process. I would not like to be in the shoes of our senior management team - trying to calmly and effectively manage change across an organisation of our size must be very daunting!
My first workshop of the day was led by our Director of Student Services and was called Motivational dialogue and target setting. Aimed at teaching staff he facilitated a group discussion about how to get more out of their one-to-one sessions with students and how to improve the likelihood of the student reaching their targets. A large part of the session, however, was given over to discussing study skills: what skills to our students need, whose job is it to teach them those skills and when should they be taught? It was very interesting to hear the views of our teaching staff. For example, the assumption that students come to us having learnt these skills at school, whereas in reality this is often not the case. A lot of the tutors feel that study skills is a whole subject in itself and that they don't have the time within the syllabus to teach it. Some tutors, for example those who teach A level, feel that it isn't their responsibility when the students have their own group (form) tutor. I can understand this argument - as an A level or GCSE student you wouldn't want to be taught the same study skill by each subject tutor as it would be confusing. It would be better to be taught centrally within your form.
Whose role is it then? Is it the LRC's? We go so far as creating online interactive guides using Xerte on a range of study skills. They are designed for students to use independently or tutors can recommend them as ways of helping achieve targets, such as improve personal organisation. I was lucky enough to have an opportunity at the end of the workshop to demonstrate our Xerte guides and they went down well with the tutors - most likely because they helped take the onus off of them. To create them we read advice on particular study skills from books and sites of other colleges and universities. Does that now make us qualified to teach study skills? We need to reach a whole-College decision about how study skills are taught - does it happen during induction or at regular times throughout the course and who is responsible for delivering them?
My second workshop on UCAS did not end up having the focus we thought it would. Therefore, the only thing I came away with was an amazement at how inconsistent the application process is between the different faculties and the way in which certain parts happen so inefficiently (such as printing out the electronic form at one stage to pass on only for it to become electronic again at the final submission!) just because it's always been done like that. (The purpose of the session, as it turned out, was to devise a logical timeline to be adopted by the whole College that governs when each stage of the process happens, how it happens and by whom.)
My third workshop looked at the way that KC Online (our internal site created using Microsoft Sharepoint) is going to go forward. It was basically a feedback session to find out what works, what doesn't and what we'd like to see happen. The one shining point was that our LRC blog on KC Online was used as an example of good practise of sharing information :)
On Tuesday 20th we had divisional training comprising of a workshop on behaviour management led by my colleague Catherine Taylor. We discussed the student behaviour guidelines and, in groups, came up with ten reasons why we roam. My group came up with the following:
- to provide a safe environment
- to provide assistance to students
- to encourage enquiries
- to maintain a quiet environment for study
- to keep the LRC tidy
- to ensure LRC rules are adhered to
- to build a rapport with students
- to support the help desk
- to look approachable
- to ensure efficient use of resources
To finish we each gave our tips for successful roaming. These included going in with a smile; being friendly; being open-minded and tailoring interactions to different students. One that I didn't mention is that I always begin an interaction by addressing the students as ladies and gentlemen (to show my belief that they can behave as such) - the more they prove me wrong the more they are addressed as guys and girls! It's very subtle so I have no idea if any of them notice! The tip that I'm going to implement is taking a moment to stand still and listen - take stock of the environment to identify what's going on at the beginning of your roaming session.
After all that training, what's the only thing that could happen next? ... ...Christmas party!
Here's a very brief case study of the usefulness of blogging and tweeting! Last month CILIP held an E-books Executive Briefing. There were several speakers from FE, HE and public libraries. Unfortunately we were unable to attend, however I was curious to find out what kind of issues were discussed and if anyone had some innovative tips for promoting their e-books.
First I contacted CILIP to see if there was an official write-up of the event or whether any of the speakers had made their slides available. They pointed me in the direction of Sarah Burton and her blog post: eBooks: Absolutely Fabulous? She gave a great summary of the event and the speakers.
Her post also mentioned the #ebooks11 tweets she had read on Twitter. Finally I could see the purpose of Twitter! In July I blogged as part of CPD23 about my VERY brief encounter with Twitter and how I couldn't see the benefits of using it. However, the #ebooks11 tweets directed me to another great write-up of the event by Nicola McNee. From both Sarah's and Nicola's posts I have obtained a good overview of the topics dealt with by the speakers and can make a more informed decision about whether I want to contact any of them for further info.
The Twit has now been converted! Whilst I shall never be a regular Tweeter I have proven to myself just how beneficial it can be!
In terms of what I would like to do our organisation does encourage personal development plans and we review these twice a year. As I mentioned in my Thing 10 post I am interested in taking the CMI management course that some of my colleagues have completed. One of my own personal development targets is to try and become more involved with the profession outside of my organisation. This builds on the themes of personal branding from Thing 3 so I will try and make my presence visible in larger circles.
I have found the CPD 23 Things a valuable training experience. Not only does its set up allow complete flexibility in the way you complete each segment, the topics cover a range of subjects and tools on very up-to-date issues. I spoke in my Thing 19 post about the most significant things I'll take from CPD23 and these still hold. Keeping up with other blogs
I have very much enjoyed this experience I look forward to the next 23 Things!
I undertook some voluntary work during 6th Form before I went off to study my undergraduate degree. I had already had some experience as I chose to work in the County Library for my 2 week work experience placement in Year 10. Both experiences helped confirm to me that libraries were where I wanted to work. As a volunteer I worked in my local public library on Wednesday afternoons for a little under a year. I began by manning the Summer Reading Challenge desk, giving children their stickers when they had reviewed their next book. Not very challenging in terms of my work, but very rewarding seeing the enthusiasm in the children. After that I was posted on the issue desk and shelving. Already an enthusiastic library user I didn't learn much from shelving but my turns in the issue desk gave me an insight into Library Management Systems and customer service. If you have the time and can afford to take on voluntary work I think it's a great way to gain experience and fill gaps in your skill set.
I found Maria Giovanna De Simone's Thing 21 post really useful and have taken several things away from it. I tailor each CV to the job I'm applying for, finding evidence for the requirements they advertise. I do each one from scratch, however. This means I often lose sight of my bigger skills set. I am now going to do what Maria suggests and indentify all my strengths, interests and skills, matching them up with my training and achievements in a separate document. I can then draw from this when fulfilling a job/person specification.
I'm also taking on board Maria's advice about how to demostrate your compatabiluty with the job description and person specification within my CV: "The requirements listed under job description must be address in the work experience section ... The person specification requiements must be addressed in the space reserved for additional information [either in] ... the paragraph that more or less says "tell us why you are applying, plus something you haven't told us elsewhere" [or] ... in the cover letter." Whilst I do have separate sections for work experience and personal profile I often mix and match job and person requirements within them making them difficult for an employer to easily identify.
Finally, I found the CAR acronym a really good idea for answering interview questions - Context, Action, Results - and will be looking at her suggested Further Reading (Jobseeker tips; Open cover letters; and What's the key to a good interview) for tips.
