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Slide Notes

Hello and welcome to my presentation about my career to date, which I delivered to a group of current students at the University of Sheffield's Information School in December 2014.

In the presentation, I wanted to give the students an impression of what I'd done before I came to library work, my experiences of the MA in Librarianship, and the jobs I've had since. Also, I decided to talk about the learning opportunities I've had over the past five years and how I've used them to develop professionally. Finally, I offered some pointers, things I've noticed that might be useful to people looking for a first professional post.
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MA to present

Published on Nov 18, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

MA to present

Tom Kistell, Information Adviser, SHU
Hello and welcome to my presentation about my career to date, which I delivered to a group of current students at the University of Sheffield's Information School in December 2014.

In the presentation, I wanted to give the students an impression of what I'd done before I came to library work, my experiences of the MA in Librarianship, and the jobs I've had since. Also, I decided to talk about the learning opportunities I've had over the past five years and how I've used them to develop professionally. Finally, I offered some pointers, things I've noticed that might be useful to people looking for a first professional post.

Before the MA (education)

  • PGCert European Historical Archaeology (2007-8)
  • BA (Hons) History at Sheffield (2003-6)
  • A levels in Biology, English, History and Spanish (2001-3)
I took the MA in Librarianship course at the Information School from 2009 to 2010, graduating in early 2011. Before I came to the MA, I had a fairly conventional academic background: GCSEs, A levels, undergraduate degree. I started an MA in archaeology but decided that I wanted to be a librarian instead, so finished the first semester and then left to try and get some experience of library work!

Thinking back, I didn't know that much about working in libraries at that point. I knew that it involved organising things, particularly books, working with people, and using IT. At first, I hoped that my degree would help me get into libraries quite easily but soon realised that relevant experience and qualifications were what I needed, hence applying to study librarianship.

Before the MA (jobs)

  • Leisure, North-East Derbyshire District Council
  • Waterstones
  • Education & environment projects, Sheffield City Council
  • Libraries, Sheffield City Council
This is an extremely cut-down version of my employment history; my family like to claim that I've had every job that exists! Not true, but I've certainly worked in lots of places doing various roles. Most of them had certain things in common though: working with the public, dealing with information, planning and running training, and writing.

My job as a Library and Information Assistant in Sheffield public libraries stood out from all the others; it was the most enjoyable I'd ever had and I decided that I wanted to make more of it, turn it into a career. Before getting into libraries, I'd thought that it might be something I'd enjoy and a couple of years' experience confirmed that. Speaking to colleagues and reading online, I realised it'd be difficult to progress from library assistant to librarian without a professional qualification, so I started looking into library schools and postgraduate courses.

MA in Librarianship

  • AHRC funding
  • Module choices
  • Social stuff - LIPSS
  • Working at ScHARR
Having read about courses at several library schools - Aberystwyth, Manchester Met, UCL and Sheffield - and attending a couple of open days, I decided to apply for the MA in Librarianship at Sheffield. It seemed like the right mix of library and information, traditional and new. At the time, I was set on a career in library work, as opposed to information or knowledge management, so I ruled out the other postgraduate courses.

I applied for a place on the 2009/10 course and was accepted! At the time, I was thinking about studying part time and working alongside the course so I could afford the fees. However, staff at the iSchool encouraged me to apply for an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) professional preparation master's scholarship, so I did and was delighted to be offered a fees bursary and a living stipend as well. This meant I could take the course full time in one year, taking advantage of department events, such as lectures from professionals and visits to library and information workplaces.

When it came my module choices, I decided to keep my options open. There were some compulsory modules, including Libraries, Information and Society, Information Literacy, Information Retrieval, and Management for LIS. My electives were Digital Multimedia Libraries, Academic and Research Libraries, and Public Libraries. Also, I decided to take two not-for credit modles: Computing for Librarians and Cataloguing and Classification.

Mine was a very sociable course group! There were 33 of us, I think, and we often got together for drinks or something to eat. It helped that we worked in groups a lot of the mine and went on visits to libraries together, so we got to know each other well. We even had LIPSS - Library and Information Postgraduate Social Society, I think it stood for - with dedicated volunteers who organised social events as well. A lot of us still stay in touch now, helped by Facebook and Twitter. In my case, I work with two others from my MA group.

Another thing worth mentioning is my job in ScHARR - the School of Health and Related Research - that I had alongside the MA. It wasn't very many hours, around 10 per week, but it gave me a chance to work on an interesting systematic review project to do with alcohol pricing. I worked in the Information Resources Group and carried out literature searches to support the project. The post only lasted for three months but it gave me experience in a new area, having never worked in higher education or health or research before. I gained knowledge there that I'm still using five years later, e.g. about health databases. It was also something really good to put on my CV and gave me an advantage later when it came to applying for posts in health information.

After the MA

  • Environmental projects, Sheffield City Council
  • Office Manager, Parkhead Consultancy
  • Office Manager & Info. Service Co-ordinator, Sheffield Mind
  • Counter Services Assistant/Senior Help Adviser, Sheffield Hallam University
  • Information Adviser, Sheffield Hallam University
I finished the course in late 2010. The effects of the global financial crisis were being felt by then and it was affecting the library and information jobs market. Lots of employers were holding back on advertising their vacancies, anticipating cuts in the near future. I applied for several public library posts that came up but wasn't offered an interview; there were probably a lot of experienced candidates to choose from. After that, casting my net wider, I managed to get through to interview for an NHS librarian post and an information management job in a children's charity, but cuts in public funding meant that both recruitment processes were cancelled before the interviews could take place.

Finally, in November 2010, I managed to get a temporary job working in the environmental sustainability department at Sheffield Council. This was because I still had a casual-basis post in Sheffield public libraries and was able to apply for secondment to contracted positions elsewhere in the Council. It wasn't exactly a professional information post, but the salary was reasonable and it turned out to be a great learning opportunity. For instance, my team were responsible for co-ordinating the work of a private insulation company, which taught me a lot about contract management. Still, it was a temporary contract so I looked around for other ways to use my skills and found a maternity leave cover post managing a small medico-legal practice, Parkhead Consultancy.

Before moving to Parkhead, I'd worked in health only very briefly (see ScHARR) and wasn't that knowledgeable about the sector. I knew a little bit about the NHS and still less about private health companies. The firm was very small so my job was varied: I line-managed the admin staff, had responsibility for the medical records, co-ordinated the doctors' clinics, provided technical support, and various other things. It was the first time I'd ever formally line-managed other staff or had responsibility for a building, experience that helped me get my subsequent post at Sheffield Mind.

My role at Mind was an interesting combination of operations and information management and information. I had responsibility for managing the building as well as line-managing admin staff and reception volunteers. Also, I was the HR officer and a member of the management team. These managerial duties sat alongside my information work; I was responsible for monitoring and reporting, and some aspects of communications. For example, I wrote copy for the charity's website and print publications. Although I did enjoy the challenge and variety of the job, it was stressful and the different parts didn't seem to fit together very well. After nearly a year in post, I found it no less stressful and it felt as though the information side had been overwhelmed by the management, so I decided to move on. Sheffield Hallam University were advertising for library assistants. I decided that returning to libraries and getting experience in a new sector would be worth the significant pay cut, so I applied and got the job.

More accurately, I got two jobs: two temporary posts of 18.5 hours per week each. A year after leaving my casual-basis post in Sheffield public libraries, I was back working in a library and loved it! I was part of the customer services team, working on the helpdesk at our main library and co-ordinating holds (reservations) while off-desk. Then, only three months after I started at SHU, an internal vacancy came up, a part-time Information Adviser (assistant librarian) post in the team responsible for user experience, self-help, and communications. I submitted an application, making the most of what I had learned about HE librarianship from the MA and drawing on experience from public libraries and charity information. It was mostly to get experience of applying for a professional post in an academic library, so I was pleased to get through to interview and even more so to actually get the job. This left me in an interesting position, working on a temporary contract as an assistant (SHU Grade 4) for the first half of the week and as a permanent librarian (Grade 6) for the second half.

Information Adviser, SHU

  • Duty Adviser
  • Self-help resources
  • Induction
  • User experience
  • Web development
This is my current job. It's the most enjoyable I have ever had. It's challenging and my work is different from day to day, week to week. It has lots of different aspects that I could talk about, so I've picked a few areas to focus on here.

Duty Adviser - the library helpdesks at SHU are staffed by assistants now, not librarians. We take it in turns to act as Duty Adviser, the on-call librarian for both libraries. To enable us to support students and staff at both campuses, we work over the phone, on instant messenger and by email. We don't meet with students face to face, but there will soon be a webcam and audio enabled computer at the helpdesks to allow students to have a video chat with the Duty Adviser.

Self-help - I am a member of the library's Self-help Group, staff who work to develop help materials for students and staff. This includes writing for the library webpages and the staff intranet, contributing to leaflets and help sheets, and posting on the student-facing blog. I am currently working with another member of the Group to update our library glossary.

Induction - I am also a member of the Student Induction Group. We produce material to be used by staff introducing new students to the library and resources to be used by students themselves while they're settling in.

User experience (also known as UX) - each month, we invite students from different courses and levels of study to attempt a series of activities to test the library webpages and electronic resources. For example, we recently piloted a new library chat tool and wanted to find out from students where they would expect to find it. The findings are always interesting and we hold regular showcases to inform library staff.

Web development - I arrived in the team with very little web experience, really just the basic training on Dreamweaver that was part of my master's. My first piece of work when I started in post was to redevelop the staff intranet, so I had to pick things up quickly! During the past two years, I have learned how to use LibGuides content management system to produce library guides and Confluence for our knowledge base, and have become quite confident with Dreamweaver.

A bit about restuctures

  • Temporary to permanent
  • Promotion - Senior Help Adviser
From May 2013, I had two jobs at SHU, one as a temporary Counter Services Assistant (Grade 4) for the first half of the week and the other as a permanent Information Adviser (Grade 6) for the second half. The customer services team had undergone a restructure and, at the start of 2014, I was given the opportunity to apply for a permanent post in the new structure. I decided to go for a Grade 5 vacancy, 'Senior Help Adviser' and got the job! This demonstrated something to me that I'd like to pass on to anyone else anticipating a restructure or service review: change can bring opportunities to switch from a temporary position to a permanent one, and even for promotion to a higher grade. Also, don't be put off applying for a job that you want because you think you're not experienced enough. Experience from other workplaces and sectors counts as well; it doesn't matter how or where you got your skills.

Secondment

  • Information Adviser (Collaborative Partners Project)
Yes, that's me. Having been Senior Help Adviser/Information Adviser for about a year, I applied for a secondment to work on a project to do with partnerships and become an Information Adviser all week. From January to the end of July this year (2015), I am responsible 'for developing online resources to provide support for associate member students at partner colleges within the LIS collaborative model'. That's from the job description. SHU has partnerships with colleges locally, elsewhere in the UK, and internationally, validating courses for them. My job is to work with our faculty librarians to make sure the correct library resources are available for these partner students and my particular area of work is developing the library websites for them. A couple of years ago I had only a basic understanding of web editing. Now, I'm doing it for half of my working week and really enjoy it. My point is that it's always worth shadowing colleagues, going on training courses and watching tutorials online (lynda.com is brilliant if your institution subscribes). You never know where it'd lead.

Training and development

  • CILIP Chartership
  • Library Camp
  • SHU events
  • Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn
  • 'LIS Discussion Group'
I'm registered for Chartership with CILIP but haven't done that much work towards it yet, to be honest. Four years after finishing my MA, I decided that the reflection required for Chartership would be beneficial. However, I have had trouble finding the time during my working week to sit down and think about recording my professional development. My intention now is to find about an hour each week, probably on Fridays, to do something related to Chartership. I hope to submit my portfolio before the start of the 2015/16 academic year.

Library Camp (http://www.librarycamp.co.uk/) is an unconference. There's a Library Camp UK every year, as well as numerous local versions as well. The premise is that there are no keynote speakers or presenters. Everyone who signs up as a participant can propose a topic for a session and that session will be run if enough people like the sound of it on the day. The proposer of each discussions starts it off and then takes part as a regular participant, with everyone else having an equal voice. Library Camp is lots of fun - always accompanied by Cake Camp - and a chance to meet people who work in library and information from all sectors, as well as a few others who are just interested in libraries. For example, a font designer with his own personal library came along in 2014.

I find that conferences and workshops at Sheffield Hallam are great for meeting academic staff in the faculties and also talking to colleagues in the library whom I don't work with personally very often. I've realised that it doesn't matter if these events don't have a library or information focus. Teaching and learning are linked really closely to library resources, and I've decided to pursue a teaching accreditation for staff who aren't primarily teaching academics. It's called AFHEA (Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy).

Social media is perfect for networking with professional contacts. My use of Twitter comes in peaks and troughs; I often tweet the key points from a particular session when I'm at a conference for the benefit of people who can't be there but I might tweet once a week or less the rest of the time. Facebook is more for friends and social things, but I do use it to keep in touch with the people I met on my master's. LinkedIn is something I use less, although I know it's handy for finding out which institutions people work at and what they specialise in, so I keep my own profile reasonably up to date.

LIS Discussion Group is an informal gathering of staff in the library at Sheffield Hallam. We meet roughly once a month to discuss an article or blog post about a particular topic, e.g. how librarians can support democracy. The things we discuss don't have to be exclusively about academic libraries, but they've always got some link to libraries or information. The group is a really good way of encouraging librarians and assistants to mix - they often attend separate meetings - and have free discussion.

Tom's top tips

  • More than 'library' & 'information'
  • Changing sector can be exciting
  • Don't discount part-time jobs
  • Take on projects to gain skills
A few things to finish off with.

Don't limit yourself to jobs with the words 'library' or 'information' in the job title. For example, my first job after finishing the MA was called 'Assistant Project Officer', but required information skills and taught me a lot.

Switching from one sector to another is slightly scary - there are always going to be differences in the terminology and the way things are done. Having said that, there's the potential to discover things that you really enjoy doing but didn't know existed before. Also, don't sell your skills short when moving across. I went from a professional post in a charity to an assistant role in an academic library, but that was more to do with the vacancies at the time and my desire to leave a stressful job.

Having one job is the most straightforward way of working, but it's fine to have two for a while. Some of my colleagues even have two half-time positions by choice because they enjoy the variety. The advantages: lots of chances to develop your skills and to work with other people. Disadvantages: diary management can be quite difficult, with invitations to attend meetings and training in 'the wrong half of the week', and the need to keep up with happenings in more than one team.

On the 'Information Adviser, SHU' slide I mentioned how weak my web skills were when I first started in that post. The short-term project I took on to redevelop the library's staff intranet pages gave me practice using a content management system. More than that, I got interested in how webpages looked and then wanted to know more about the code underneath. By the way, the W3 Schools website is a great resource for HTML tutorials. I use it all the time if I'm not sure what a line of HTML means. I digress. My point is that I think it's a good thing to put yourself forward in areas where you lack skills or knowledge. You'll have to learn quickly!

Good luck!

Being a librarian is excellent. Enjoy it! Thanks for reading :)