Improving reading lists

We are currently in the pilot year of a brand new reading list system. Not just new for us, new to the world - we were one of the first to sign up for PTFS' Rebus:list system. I'm going to be presenting on our experiences so far at the CPD25 Reading List event on 17th January - apart from worrying that I'm going to be the weakest link, I'm excited about this as the rest of the program looks very interesting and I hope to learn a lot.

Reading List systems are one thing - and they can be just that, a system - but the key aim for us is to improve the student experience and that means also keeping an eye on the wider picture: what sort of list is most helpful to the students? How do they use a reading list? What *is* a reading list? I have lists that vary from one book to 12 pages (reduced to 9pt font!) of references for one module. What's a student supposed to do with that? There's no clue on the list.

We have started a literature review to gather evidence for some of these questions but it became clear that this is also an issue being tackled at other universities. Here are some resources I found:

• A project report from Loughborough University (PDF) which looked at the reading habits of students. p26 onwards is particularly useful for reading lists, with the wish for more guidance and better organization emerging as a key issue.
• An excellent presentation from Northampton University (PDF) includes some great quotes from students. This one in particular is oh so very true! “It does make me chuckle when I get the odd reading list and I look and I think: typo, spelling mistake, error, and then we get penalised!” (Year 2 student)
• Trinity College Dublin have some good advice on reading lists on their website but their 2008-2009 audit results are also interesting, with comments again about prioritization and annotation. I liked their emphasis on accessibility/inclusion concerns too.
• It also sounds like there is a project going on at Edge Hill - look forward to hearing about that hopefully at some point!

Does anyone have any more examples or know of research been done at their institution?

The big question for me is how to widen this debate to academic staff and engage them in looking at how we can best help students to get hold of and read the right things. I think gathering evidence from the students could be a key persuader. I am hoping we can find a way to incorporate this into the launch of our new reading list system.

"Managing Your Online Presence" update

We ran this course again this term, this time with much more success (i.e. it ran!) and it was a fun class. As well as those who attended, I had a lot of email enquiries about future dates and we are running it next term as part of Employability Week.

Before the session ran, I checked the content and found that Facebook has altered its privacy tools, removing the extremely handy interactive tools that we used to recommend. The URL still works (annoyingly) but if you click on the link to "Preview your Profile" you now get a page not found error... The way to preview your profile is now done from your Timeline. There is a little settings icon which has a "View as" option.

You can choose the Public view or the view of a specific friend - you have lost the ability to view as "Friend of friend" which used to be handy. I can see that this must have become unwieldy as the greater levels of customization for items and lists but it's still a great shame to have lost this option.

"Preview your Public Search Profile" also takes you to a Help page with fresh instructions on the (much more complicated) way to do it. Having followed those instructions, the resulting page has a very plain URL:
https://www.facebook.com/samantha.oakley?p
Perhaps one can just use that URL as a short cut, replaced with your own username? Maybe someone can try it and let me know!

Anyway, all this meant re-vamping our teaching materials and I noticed today that another change to Facebook's privacy settings is being rolled out imminently so that will mean another update. The ever-changing Facebook privacy mess is a pain - it's tough to help our students monitor their online profile on a regular basis with inconsistent tools.

Thing 23: What next?

Wow I've made it! The final Thing! Enough of being giddy, I need to get on with it...

Gaps in my Skills:

• Management experience: see my Thing 21 about this. I have no real idea how to get any additional experience - I have done some managing staff but the bit I need is the real serious stuff: appraisals and the like - the sort of thing you can't get outside a real management role. Yet every manager must have started somewhere so I live in hope!
• Cataloguing skills: I'm working on this one! I'm doing cataloguing so technically I am getting experience but I definitely need to get some foundation of knowledge about what I'm doing!
• Welsh: always important for any job in Wales. I have just re-started learning Welsh, mostly motivated by my children going to a Welsh school, and this would also be useful at work. The uni is trying to strengthen its Welsh language provision so it is quite a hot topic right now.
• Social Research skills: I'd like to work up to doing some evidence based library research one day. For this, I need social research methods - a total blank in my current knowledge but something I can read on, maybe even find a MOOC... No time at the moment but perhaps something for next year.

We do have an appraisal process once a year where this kind of thing gets logged and I do have some of the above down for the current year so hopefully will make some progress. 

Reflecting on the programme:

Short answer: it's been good!

The best things for me have been...

• Starting this blog: I will try to keep it going now it's already 6 months old!
• Connecting with people: I've really enjoyed the cross-commenting on blogs & having a common purpose shared by so many at (roughly) the same time. It has encouraged me to comment more on blog posts generally.
• I've tried some new tools and revisited ones I've been using already - it's also reinforced my conviction that some of the tools ARE worth persevering with (Prezi - I'm going to get to you one day soon!)
• The whole series of Things is very useful in terms of the training we do for researchers - many of the tools we have used crop up in our teaching too.

I don't have any negatives really. Perhaps some of the Things were not so relevant to me right now - I'm mid career, not seeking to change job any time soon, for example. It's always good to refresh one's thoughts on these things but I preferred the Things that pushed me in more relevant directions. 

Thing 22: Volunteering

I have been reading around this Thing for a while before I actually tried to write anything. I find myself sitting on a fence: I think the idea of volunteering for experience is a good one but it excludes those who can't manage to sustain themselves financially while they do it and that is a very bad thing. I hate the idea of cutting back on paid librarians to staff libraries with volunteers but if that is the only option on the table, isn't it better than nothing? When do you accept defeat and seek damage limitation? No easy answers to these questions for me.

I have only done a little volunteering in recent years (I did a lot as an archaeologist back in the 90s!) - at the moment I do a few bits of work for our local community woodlands society. I do that because I like the woods and want to contribute something to the local community, however small. For me, the important thing with any volunteering is to be realistic about what I can manage and only offer to do things that I can fit into my limited spare time. I find it easiest to do web-based stuff - not attending meetings or events so much unless the kids can come along too.

Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview

It may be taking a while but I'm getting there...Thing 21!

I'm not super-motivated with this, I must admit, as I have no intention of looking for another job any time soon but of course one can never feel totally sure that a terrible axe may fall on one's current job in the current climate.

I have been keeping an Evernote note on my job achievements / things I've done for a while now and I had a recurring to-do task to update it fortnightly. It only took a minute so not particularly onerous. (A recent changeover from Remember the Milk to Wunderlist has meant this stopped - now reminder back in place!)

I think getting my current job was the greatest success of my career as I was up against incredibly tough competition and didn't rate my chances! I did use a lot of the advice about job applications - I stuck right to the criteria and showed how I met it all - plus I used the lessons from a day course on Presentations to create something I was happy to present and so did it with a bit more confidence than usual. I also wanted it really really badly so I did a huge amount of preparation.

For me, the one thing I always lack - and I think this would be an issue if I went for another job one day - is management experience. I did manage staff way back in about 1998 & 2001 but not for long - maybe a year at most. I never did appraisals or anything like that, it was just in terms of managing their workload and delegating tasks to them. This experience is not something I can see myself getting in my current role and it always seems impossible to progress to a management role without it (chicken / egg scenario). Therefore it feels like a particular hurdle I will never get past :o(

Thing 20: Library Routes

I've learned to love my routes. It's been a long, winding road that has actually ended up back where it started - when I was in my late teens I wanted to be a librarian. So much so that I took a Saturday job in Oak Farm Library and spent half my weekend shelving books, issuing them on little cardboard tickets and coming home feeling my hands needed a good wash. All for a real pittance of pay, especially once bus fare had been deducted. Still, I enjoyed it - the company was good and, as Saturday jobs go, it wasn't a bad one.

Next thing that happened was I fell in love - with my degree. I followed my heart and did Ancient History and Archaeology, specializing in Egyptology - and did well enough to go straight on to a PhD. You could do that in those days. Looking back, it was a mistake in many ways, even though I met my own condition of having to secure funding (thank you AHRC!). I knew nothing really of research so it was very uphill: there was very little in the way of support or research-skills training and, worst of all, I was so GREEN! I didn't have a clue about getting published, networking, or anything at all to take me beyond those 3 years. I loved my subject and I loved studying but I also spent a lot of time working as a barmaid to pay my way. I'd say, until now, that was my favourite job - I like customer service and I was lucky enough to work in the most beautiful spot in the whole wide world.

So after that, I looked around for a "proper job" - anything - I was broke! Applied for various graduate posts only to wind up as a trainee Computer Programmer for a company that liked non-tekkies for our "people skills" - the rest they taught you on the job. I spent a total of six years living in London, working in financial institutions in the City a lot of the time, learning various coding languages. And, yes, it felt a monumental struggle and I never felt like I was very good at it. The skill I learnt the quickest was how to find something someone had already done, try to work out how they'd done it and copy it before anyone noticed I didn't really have a clue.

That life took its toll. My heart wasn't in it and I had never wanted to move back to London. It felt like a wonderful release to get a job back in Swansea again but that turned out to be such a job from hell that I ended my IT career for good. After taking off on a wonderful road trip round Scotland, I came back and was both glad and lucky to a get a job on the issue desk at the University library. Yes, it was a huge pay drop from my IT days and, yes, it was worth every lost penny in terms of happiness and quality of life! I did that for nearly 2 years before heading off to Aber to do the library masters and my career as librarian was finally back on track, some 20 years later.

I can see now that everything I have done has been an enormous help in being a librarian. I have a research background, even though it was a long time ago, and the "Dr" doesn't hurt when you're dealing with academics. You never lose tekkie skills - it's about having a confidence and an understanding of how things work, not specific systems or languages - and I believe these are essential for library work anywhere today. Even being a barmaid was invaluable - providing good customer service often under pressure and with the occasional difficult customers.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else now - I love working at a university, I love Swansea and I have fantastic colleagues. I know how lucky I am to be able to say I love my job - I never forget the horrors of my London days (stress, long LONG hours, bankers). I don't regret the long road it took to get here. Who knows where it will lead next?

Thing 19: Integrating Things

My breather for Thing 19 turned out to be oh-so-much longer than a week! But it is the busiest time of the year so not unexpected... Now I come to reflect back, I'm feeling a little downhearted as I'm not sure I have made that many changes to my ways of working so far. I think this is partly due to the fact that I was already using some of the tools a lot (Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote, Screencast-o-matic) but it was good to know that use of these was recommended. Then there are tools that I do want to use better (Google Calendar, Prezi, Mendeley) but I just haven't yet had the chance to develop this use. The timing of the course has been bad for me as I was on holiday for a chunk of August, then we start getting really busy with teaching after that. Excuses, excuses....I'll blog if I get there!

I do think however CPD23 has changed my way of thinking about networks and events and getting out there more. I find I'm scanning event announcements quite eagerly to pick my opportunity to get out and about. I also look with regret at the network meetings I can't go to in Wales! I sincerely hope I WILL be going to the ALIS Wales conference in November as long as work will to pay (pretty please!) and look forward to meeting other Disability-support staff there.