Today I read the news that libraries in my hometown of Peterborough will have their hours cut in order to make savings to the council budget. Following Ange Fitzpatrick’s lead I thought I’d write about my own public library experience.

My story begins in Werrington Library which is sadly one of those affected by the cuts in Peterborough. When I think back I can paint a pretty life-like picture of the library in my mind. We’d arrive and lock up our bikes under the overhanging brick entrance. I always thought the main entrance to the building was rather sinister, no matter what the weather it was cold and dark, but once inside there was a homely smell of tea and biscuits coming from the community centre on the left. We would turn right though into the library itself, through the metal swing gate. From there it was just a short hop and a skip up the steps to the children’s area where Captain Pugwash, Asterix and TinTin were awaiting me.

When we were small my sister and I would go to story time (Michelle Obama was not one of the readers in Werrington) and as we got older we took part in the summer reading scheme. I was a slow reader and so never managed to fill up my sheet, my sister however ate books and I’m sure my parents valued the savings they made by taking her to the library rather than a bookshop for her fix.

By my teenage years I had caught up with my sister in the reading stakes. I’d progressed from the Hardy Boys to Point Horror and from there to Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series. As soon as I was done with one, there was another in the series to read. This is where the library really came into its own for me, there’s not enough money in the world, or space on my bookshelves for my crime fiction habit.

Now, although I’m a long way from those days in Werrington, I’m still using my local public library in the same way. I very rarely buy books any more. I prefer to borrow from the library because it’s more opportunistic; you take your chances on what will be on the shelves when you go in. Sometimes though if I’m really keen to read something I’ll place a reservation and I don’t begrudge the 85p I have to pay if it means I don’t have to go to the central branch to pick it up.

Image by  The U.S. Army. Licenced under

Today I have been in my current job – Academic Support Librarian for Business at the University of Warwick – for one year. What better way to celebrate than with a cake?

by  Caro Wallis

I’m in quite a reflective mood and so decided to write this blog post about what I’ve done this year and where I am professionally one year on.

Starting at this point in the academic year proved to be really helpful. Enquiries die down a bit in term 3 so I wasn’t too overwhelmed during the first couple of months and then I had the summer vacation to get to know people in my department and plan for the new year. Having come from a very similar job previously I didn’t have a lot of work to do familiarising myself with the resources and so answering enquiries was fairly straightforward. My main priority therefore was building relationships with both support and academic staff at the business school.

First up were the programme managers and I think I can say at this point that these are my strongest relationships – they keep me in the loop with activities on their courses, we have procedures in place for reading lists and have an open communication channel about training, especially for new starters.

I have found it more difficult to build relationships with the academics. 6 months ago if you’d asked me how I felt I was getting on with this I’d probably have said poorly. However, in the past few months a couple of projects I’ve been working on have helped to change this. The hardest part is making that first contact. But once it’s established and you’ve shown how you can help it’s really about keeping the momentum going.

One of the reasons I particularly wanted to move to Warwick was the fact that it has one university library. I was previously at Oxford where the library services are fragmented. I love the fact that all library staff are in one building (with the exception of the small team in the Learning Grid). I think this goes a long way to help build a sense of community. I was able to meet most people within my first few weeks just walking around the building. Getting to know so many people helped me to immediately feel that I belonged.

People have been asking me today whether the year has gone quickly. It’s absolutely flown by. All at once I feel like I’ve been here forever, in that I’m settled and involved in work and projects across the library, but also that I can’t quite believe it has been a year already.

Recently I have come to realise that I can’t go on holiday without visiting a library in the area that I am staying. What can I say, I’m drawn to them. I find it’s always a useful experience to see what is going on in different libraries.

I’ve just come back from a few weeks in New Zealand and my library of choice on this trip was Wellington Central Library, one of the Wellington City Libraries.

One thing that I was immediately impressed with was the use of space. It is fairly open plan but the choice and placement of furniture creates natural zoning. This is especially evident on the ground floor where there’s a multimedia area, comfortable reading lounge and childrens space all interspersed with the library collections, issue and enquiry desks. It sounds cluttered but it really doesn’t feel that way. It defintely had an atmosphere that made me want to stay all day.

The second thing that jumped out at me was the signage, and in particular the Path Finder navigation leaflets covering a range of topics including Searching the Catalogue, My Library, Business Information and Government Statistics. These were prominently displayed on stands around the entrance to the library, the catalogue PCs and staff desks. Crucially they were also placed in relevant positions on shelves.

The last thing I want to comment on was attempts to engage different user communities. This poster in particular stood out to me:

So, if you happen to find yourself in central Wellington with some time to spare, I’d thoroughly recommend a visit. And if you can extend that visit to include a Flat White and an Afghan in Clark’s Cafe (situated on Floor 1) you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Last week I attended a symposium on Personalised Library Services in Higher Education. It was run by Andy Priestner (Library and Information Centre Manager, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge) and Libby Tilley (Librarian, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge).

Andy and Libby had an article, Boutique libraries at your service, published in CILIP Update last year and were subsequently commissioned by Ashgate to edit a book on the same topic. The purpose of the symposium was to explore the boutique model which had been set out in the article and develop ideas around the themes of each chapter.

The presentations from the day can be found on the Symposium page of the Personalised Libraries in HE blog and there is also a document of the tweets from the #pls11 tag. Below are my notes from the event. If you’ve read my previous post on making visual notes you will know that I am experimenting with a new note-taking technique. This was my first attempt at it and I’m a convert.

And so, on to my reflection of the event. In the first presentation of the day Andy and Libby introduced the model they had created and explained that there should be a balance in every library service between the following elements:

• Boutique or personalised services
• Collaborative activities
• Centrally managed activities

Their model also has the user as part of the mix and there was much discussion about where they are placed in the diagram. Many suggested that the user should be at the centre but, there was disagreement about how much the user is aware or affected by the internal workings of the library, their interaction is through the service provided.

Two questions I have found myself returning to after the event are

1. how we assess our users’ needs
2. how do we define and group our users

In her presentation Jane Secker highlighted the fact that surveys only go so far to assess user needs. Speaking specifically about researchers she said that to truly understand librarians need to become researchers themselves and experience life from the other side. At Warwick in the past we have run focus groups with students and I really feel it is only through conversations, not the one-way traffic of surveys, that we can really come anywhere close to understanding what our users want.

When talking about building relationships Chris Powis covered some of the ways we define and group our users. Whether it is by location, course, department or method of study we hit upon the age old problem of classification – many people will fit in to more than one group.

To provide a personalised service we have to do a certain amount of generalisation by group because it is simply not possible to meet everyone’s individual needs. I think what I’m looking for is a way to make our response and service flexible, perhaps the start of this is simply to undersdstand that our users approaches to work and study are changing. In my job I support many groups of MBA students and my default position has largely been to define them by their method of study; full-time, part-time or by distance. Now that we are all becoming more connected, more reliant on the Internet and used to the ease of access to information I think these boundaries are blurring; the full-time students are now just as likely to want, or expect, electronic access to materials as the distance learners for who this is the only means of finding information.

In my role as a subject (or liaison) librarian I think the main thing that I’ve taken away from the symposium is some new ideas for engaging staff and students and building relationships with them. This is then the starting point for developing a service that is tailored to meet their needs.

This week I have been doing my bit for the #savelibraries campaign. I’ve been watching it from afar for some time without getting involved but this week I have finally been able to add my contribution.

First up was an article for the Guardian Careers – Beyond books: what it means to be a 21st century librarian. I have been working on this with Katie Birkwood for the past 6 months. The idea to write an article about what it really means to be a librarian came from the comments on my Library Day in the Life Round 5 blog post. We wrote a pitch and sent it to Radio 4 and Guardian Careers. Then we waited. And waited. Finally I was contacted by the co-ordinator of the Behind the Job Title series and the rest as they say is history. At the current count this article has been shared 156 times on Twitter and 458 on Facebook. I call that a success and everyone’s favourite wikiman and father of #echolib calls it “a proper bonafide Echo Chamber escape”

  by  Phil Bradley 

Next was an article for the Open Rights Group Zine – Everybody loves surfing. For this, I was approached (via a comment on this blog) by the zine’s editor Iman Qureshi. The idea was for an article on how and why technology is valuable to libraries and library users. I refined this and started to think about how technology is changing the role of libraries. Given that the article was to be part a book themed week on the zine in support of the Bookseller’s Fight for Libraries campaign I used public libraries as my focus.

If you want to get involved and help to save our libraries a good place to start would be to attend a read-in at your local library this Saturday, 5th February. For more information about campaigns in your area visit the Voices for the Library website.