Staff Development Week

Just a relatively brief post to record this year’s staff development week...

In February 2013 the college in which I work formed a ‘Federation’ with another college. Senior management are very clear that this move is the strongest way of securing a thriving fiture for the college considering the £260 million cut from FE by the government. The senior team is also very vocal that this is not a merger but a partnership which will save both colleges money due to shared services, procurements, vacancy management, financial bids and strategies etc (each college has since save £750,000). There is only one other FE Federation within the UK so the future is unknown for such a venture. As expected, this has generated a certain amount of uncertainty for staff and activities within the staff development week tackled this.

@VoicesLibrary curation

Last month I was luckily enough to be a weekly curator of the @Voices Library Twitter account. This is a project allows different library staff to take over the account for a week and post library-related tweets to approximately 1000 followers. I’ve followed it for a while and when I saw an invitation to apply I jumped at the chance!

I used my week to tweet about the role of a Systems Librarian and what it’s like to work in a further education college library. Initially, I was quite nervous apprehensive that none of the followers would interact with my curation. If I’m honest, I feared my tweets would bore people to sleep! I need not have worried – it was a great experience.

MyPC user group

Image by kerolic

Last month I attended a user group session for MyPC, held at Bournville College. I found the West Midlands user group session of 2012 (blogged here) to be very useful, and the same is to be said for the 2013 session. I left the session having made 6 pages of valuable notes and action points!

MyPC is a computer booking system, which allows optimal usage of computer resources. It allows learners to book in advance or drop-in, and runs reports outlining usage patterns. Several local colleges were represented and it was interesting to hear how we all use the software differently.

Two year anniversary

Image taken by Leo Reynolds

My boyfriend believes that blogging is mostly self-indulgent waffle-tosh of little value to anyone else. Usually I disagree with him on this topic, but I’m afraid this post may well prove him right…

 Last week marked the second anniversary in my current job. It gave me cause to ponder the last two years and all that has happened since I left my last post. I found redundancy to be a very traumatic experience and hope I never have to go through it again. It affected me in all manner of ways I didn’t think possible; the majority of these are too personal to share in a public blog, but I admit I found it distressing and fundamentally sad. I refused to take redundancy lying down and treated finding a new job like going to war – I was determined to succeed and go out fighting. I managed to secure a new post within 10 weeks but will long remember the feelings of sheer relief and utter elation. When I received the call telling me I was the successful candidate, I’m embarrassed to say I actually jumped with joy!

JISC RSC W.Mids

I’ve recently realised that I’ve not yet blogged about my attendance at the learning resources forum held by JISC West Midlands RegionalSupport Centre. It was hosted by Bournville College on 25^th  March 2013 – so this post is somewhat late, but better late than never!

Image taken by C!...

The programme for the day looked quite exciting; the main draws for me were Jo Alcock (from BCU) speaking about mobile technologies and Liz Wyman (from Newcastle-under-Lyme College) speaking about sourcing accessible formats. In addition to this, library staff from the host college presented about establishing a rebrand of the service.

I made plenty of notes during the day and returned to work with plenty of ideas to explore. Some of the tools Jo demonstrated we already make use of in the library (Foursquare, Bit.ly and QR codes for example), but I developed an awareness of various online tools I hadn’t previously heard of. Poll Everywhere could be utilised during our user education sessions as a way of ascertaining immediate feedback, and my curiosity has been sparked about how library use augmented realities. This is something I know very little about but am keen to learn more. Jo also spoke of roving within the library using tablet devices. Whilst this is probably more applicable to multi-level university libraries than a single room FE college library, the team in which I work has spoken about how we could take the library elsewhere on site, possibly by setting up a portable helpdesk (of sorts) in the refectory.

Liz’s presentation related to something of which there was very little awareness of amongst delegates. The Publisher Lookup Database allows libraries to have electronic versions for individual learners who have specific needs. It sounds a wonderful service and I hope this is something we are able to offer in future. On a personal note, I feel our assistance towards learners with special needs is the library’s weakest area; I am sure there are plenty of unexplored ways in which we could offer more support and I think this would be an excellent start.

Bournville College's learning zone.

Last – but not least – was the presentation from the host library. Bournville College is a new build built on the site of the former Longbridge Rover plant. Amanda Braund took us through the considerations of establishing a new library environment and rebranding it the ‘learning zone’. It is always interesting to hear ‘behind the scenes’ tales of a different library service, and this was no exception. It warmed the cockles of my heart to know that we are not the only library environment to have had issues with learners misusing sofas!

The day ended with a section called ‘delegate show and tell’. We each had to discuss initiatives which had worked well and not so well. It was an informal way of sharing general ideas and thoughts (good practice and not so-good practice!). I spoke about the library’s annual report (which generated a few enquiries) and our registering for CoLRiC’s peer accreditation scheme.

This was the first RSC forum I’d been to, and I hope it won’t be the last. Not only did I learn a lot from the presentations, but I also left with a list of action points to explore. The day provided a networking opportunity as I met up with a few familiar faces I’d seen at other library events. I got so much out of this day and simply couldn’t believe the event was free! If, like me, you have previously thought ‘shall I go, shalln’t I go?’, you should definitely go – it’s a great opportunity for sharing good practice.