Places and spaces

On Friday, three of us went to have a tour of the refurbished LRC of our nearest FE college. Considering my post on reflection, I figured I had better start reflecting! The college is a similar size with similar courses and part of the same university network as us.

Points of interest for me included:

• Study/meeting 'pods' to accommodate about 15, equipped with comfy seats (no tables) and plasma screen
• Two silent study rooms (room for about four in each)
• Loads of tables and seating of different types
• HE room with HE book stock, computers and desks; could be booked for classes (athough not permanently timetabled) but used as an overspill area otherwise
• Signs on tables with QR codes to sites of interest- the links of which are changed regularly
• Very small area with actual books, although tall and very full bookcases
• Small staff desks (rather public) with no sort of workroom

I asked my colleagues which one feature or idea struck them most and my line manager had picked up on the general attitude towards social spaces and food. Drinks and cold food are allowed and the variety of seated areas meant it was an obvious place to sit and have a snack. The smaller LRC (they have two) had computers on one side of the room and a comfy breakout area on the other. There was a suggestion that giving students this freedom means they are less likely to rebel - which I think is probably true. We currently allow bottled drinks only, although this is a rule that is constantly ignored and we have discussed taking a more relaxed attitude in September.

My other colleague liked the HE room in which specific HE stock was kept. Our HE books are currently filed amongst other stock, but marked with stickers and only HE students can borrow these titles. Whilst some FE students get disgruntled at not being able to borrow everything, up to now I've been against the idea of having a separate section. Most HE stock should be of a level higher than FE students will want to use, but HE students can still benefit from some of the other stock we have. The complaints we do get are helpful to see where there is overlap, and where necessary additional copies can be bought. Books aside though, the room was a great resource and I'd love us to have something similar, especially if we could have control over the booking (and use it for library training sessions!). A request for a separate study space often comes up in the HE library survey, and whilst they currently have a very small 'HE area', it's not really suitably sized or designed.

The thing I liked most was the open-access PCs. There were about 30 on a mezzanine level, available on a first-come, first-served basis with no bookings allowed. A couple of library staff were based on a desk nearby, but weren't involved in any computer allocation. Whilst this doesn't seem like anything special, it isn't something we manage easily. Our (generous allocation of) computers are constantly booked out by teachers for class use. This causes problems in that a) students act like they would in their classroom and don't recognise that the library is a different environment and b) we turn away students coming independently to study. I feel this latter point is a real problem, especially when a booked class doesn't turn up, half turns up or turns up and obviously have no interest in doing any work. I also feel that when we have multiple classes in we are basically disguising the problem that we don't have enough computers in classrooms.

All in all it was a really interesting visit although I'd like to have gone when it was busier (I think we possibly got a false impression of noise- it was really quiet!).

Thing 6 - Online networks

OK, so I've had a Facebook account for a long time. I like it, use it often, but only personally, and have no intention of changing that. It's interesting watching the 'war' between social networks: Before Facebook I used Friends Reunited, but have rather abandoned that now. I consider myself too old (!) to have joined Bebo or MySpace. There was a lot of talk about Google+ coming too late when it was launched, and admittedly, whilst I tried it, no-one else I knew leapt on the bandwagon so I saw little point in replicating information. I read a suggestion this morning that Facebook won't exist in five years - that may well be so, things evolve - but it's top of the tree at the moment.

As an individual then, for me Facebook is not relevant to professional networking. I have, however, just registered myself with LinkedIn. This was partly out of curiosity and partly out of worry: Whilst I'm still reluctant to put too much information 'out there' (at the end of the day anyone can register and even without registering view info about me), I hate to think that I might be sending a negative message to prospective employers or similar by not having a profile at all. That aspect is actually something I'm uncomfortable with: I love a lot of what the Internet has given us, and like to think that my use of certain sites and tools is a personal choice which can have positive outcomes, but that shouldn't mean penalising those that don't use them.

As regards Reid Hoffman's "MySpace is the bar. Facebook is the backyard BBQ. LinkedIn is the office.", all I can say is that it reflects my different approaches to the latter two sites at this current time, having been too put off by peeking my head through the door to even enter the bar :-)

I wasn't aware of LISNPN, and might find it useful although it struck me a little like it was focused around graduate trainees. I will certainly bookmark Librarians as Teachers, although I don't do much in the way of teaching. As a CILIP member, I have dipped in and out of Cilip Communities and will continue to do so...

Thing 5 - Reflective practice

'Reflective practice' always makes me think of the last sheet of A3 paper in HE or CDT projects at school, where we had to write an 'evaluation' (imagine the bubble letters).

Anyway, I know where our books on reflective practice live at work; I recognise the key names; I'm just not very good at doing it formally. We are a small team at work and whilst I'll contribute to review discussions and often find myself thinking or saying to colleagues "that worked well" or "next time I will...", I don't write a lot down.

However, I am going to try and change this. I liked Electric Silverfish's post about making notes throughout the day and summarising them at the end and the example given by Graduate Library Trainee. I'm going to try and keep electronic notes and compile them into a professional journal. I think it will benefit me in several ways, not least by helping to remind myself why something did or didn't work previously rather than me go through it again (I'm thinking particularly about the configuration of our OPAC here, which I have wasted many hours on!).

 

Twittering on

I've already blogged about Thing 4, but (due to the large number of positive blog posts from others) over the last week have been pushing myself to understand Twitter more and think it has been worth it!

I spent the evening shift on Tuesday lurking around #uklibchat. I'd seen it mentioned and was just trying to get my head around how it worked. Basically, it's run using Twitter and everyone contributing adds the hash tag #uklibchat so that the conversation can be tracked. This sounded rather chaotic to me, but the website suggests using a Twitter client in order to search for the tag and follow the conversation. I've been using my iPad so tried downloading the apps for the clients suggested. Sorry Hootsuite (too many columns!) and Tweetdeck (designed for iPhone) but after a search for other free Twitter apps I've ended up using Echofon.

The ability to save searches had previously escaped me, but for the chat it worked really well (ignoring the many retweets). It meant that my screen was only filled with relevant tweets, whereas I'd been imagining having to filter them out from my main feed. I didn't feel I had much to contribute to the topic (leadership) this time round, but enjoyed reading what others said and I look forward to future sessions.