Digitalist life in the library

Team away day

This year I had the enviable task of organising the team away day. Last year we went on a whole day team building course which was met with little enthusiasm and didn't produce any results as the team as was soon disintegrated (of the 8 who attended there are only 3 of us left). This year I wanted to do something completely different. What most other teams in the library service do is visit another library in the morning and then spend the afternoon doing something social as a team so I took this as my brief. I set up a visit to the Business and IP Centre (BIPC) at the British Library for the morning, lunch at Belgo Centraal and left the afternoon open.

Whenever I organise anything for a group I always get nervous beforehand in case all does not run smoothly. Well, nothing ran smoothly on our away day but thankfully all events were beyond my control so in an odd way it actually took some of the pressure off! First off our train was cancelled at Reading due to a fatality on the line. We managed to get to London on another route but arrived an hour and a half late as a result of stopping at every station between here and timbucktu.

Thankfully our kind hosts changed their plans and pushed our visit three hours back so that as soon as we set foot on London soil we were able to get some much needed lunch. The only problem was our favoured restaurant had a gas leak and had to close. By now we were beginning to think we were doomed to fail at everything we did. Luckily Belgo have multiple restaurants so we were able to walk to one just round the corner and as soon as we had some food inside us things started to look up.

We made it to the British Library on time for our appointment and had a really interesting couple of hours with the BIPC team. I was particularly interested in seeing how the range of our collections and services compared. I found that there were some quite close similarities in our resources and the attitudes and expectations of our users. Yet the services we each offer are vastly different and that in a sense is due the differing nature of our libraries. For me the really useful thing was seeing where the budding entrepreneurs among our students might go for information and guidance after they've finished their course. I have come away with some great ideas for the new range of guides we're currently working on and a deep envy for anyone who has a library space that can accommodate multi-purpose training rooms and a networking lounge.