Team leadership

This is a retrospective post regarding a course I completed during the Summer. I didn’t blog about it at the time as I felt I needed space to distance myself from it and take time to digest and reflect upon the information I’d learnt.
In September 2011 I enrolled on an Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) qualification in first line management. The sessions were delivered 6-9pm on Tuesday evenings for 30 weeks, and this is partly why I wanted to distance myself before blogging about it. I leave the house at 7.15am and after a full day at work followed by the course and a round trip commute of 65 miles, it’d be 10pm before I’d return home. I found it exhausting, and therefore wasn’t always in the best of mindsets where this course was concerned. I must admit this was the main factor in my decision not to enrol on any evening courses this year, despite feeling I would benefit from studying the course at the next level.

Systems integrations – ups and downs

Image by James Cridland

One of the achievements I am most proud of in my current role is the integration between the LMS and the computer booking system. As Systems Librarian, it is my responsibility to manage the systems we use in the library and earlier in the year these two main systems were integrated.

In March, I attended a MyPC user group session. Whilst there, I met Sue Walsgrove who works in the library at City of Wolverhampton College and operates an integrated Heritage and MyPC system. I arranged a visit and spent an afternoon grilling her about the nitty-gritty of integration. During the Easter half term break, I secured the services of an IT Technician and we set about linking these two systems. It took the best part of a week to complete, most of which was trial and error. We followed guidance from ISOxford and ITS; both covered the same steps but were incredibly different! After a necessary remote access session with ITS, all that was left was altering the settings to establish the access management limits we required.