- Meeting the team
- Learning how to use Coutts Oasis and ordering books
- Reviewing book lists on Talis Aspire
- Watching webinars to try to understand Talis Aspire
- Meeting my school's academic staff and administrative team and making lots of plans for the next academic year
- Trying to fulfil those plans for the academic year
- Helping lots of PHD students with enquiries
- Meeting the school's library reps and trying to persuade them to rethink the length of their reading lists
- Frantically trying to review potential journal and book archives due to a sudden influx of cash and not wanting to buy the wrong things.
- Trying to learn about what my students are studying and what they and the staff need
- Learning about the Research Excellence Framework
- Learning about the institutional repository and a bit about open access
- Providing information skills sessions on literature searching for Masters students
- Providing information skills sessions on database usage for international students
- Being involved in an open day
- Finding my way round the campus
- Attending a Sociology and Communication social
- Attending Equality and Diversity training
- Trying to learn about raw data and the databases which provide it - Bloomberg, Reuters 3000, Datastream etc so I can help students.
- Being joint lead on a project reviewing the above databases (with the other joint lead about to go on maternity leave)
- Learning about Summon - a tool which is supposed to search all the resources
- Training on Blackboard Learn (every institution I have worked for has upgraded or migrated to a new virtual learnign environment. At my last place I was training people how to use Moodle 2.0, here I will be adding content to the new and shiny version of Blackboard (when I persuade the staff to let me)
- Being involved in two social media projects
- Learning how to find things in the Library of Congress System having always been familiar with Dewey.
- Planning September's induction of the new students
There are other things which I can't remember and there is still a lot to learn and a lot to do, however, despite the exhausting commute (which I hope to shorten soon) I am enjoying the challenges. I was also named as a LISNetwork Rising Star, which gave me a real boost of confidence and for which I'm very thankful. It is a steep learning curve but those are often the best.
It sounds a busy role - but a very interesting one! Hope it all continues to go well :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Cara, there is a lot to do and it's completely different from my old job so a lot to learn but I'm very glad I applied for it. Trying to pack in as much experience as possible before the end of the contract... It sounds like you've been learning a lot too.
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