Reflections on the first Bristol LISNPN meet-up

Many of you reading this will be familiar with the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN), and will also know that around the country LISNPN admins and members arrange LISNPN meet-ups/socials. I’ve been wanting to arrange one in Bristol since I moved here 7 months ago, but only recently got myself organised enough to set it up. We had our first Bristol LISNPN meet-up last Thursday, and I’m pleased to report that it was a great success!

Ten people came (which was luckily the size of the table I’d reserved!), and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Quite a few of us knew each other, but there were also some new faces, and some great conversation ensued. Everyone seemed enthusiastic about the idea of another meet-up sometime, and there were quite a few people who would have liked to come but unfortunately weren’t able to make it this time, so I shall definitely be organising more in the future.

I thought I would share some tips for anyone thinking of arranging a LISNPN social, or anything similar:

• Reserve a table if possible. Even if you are going on a traditionally quiet day during the week, you never know when a pub might be unusually busy, due to something as simple as a work do from a nearby office, so take some of the worry away by making sure you’ll have somewhere to sit. I knew that this particular pub was usually fairly bustling, so I decided that this was a must, and, while I could probably have grabbed us a big enough table when I got there early, it was good to know that whatever happened we should at least have somewhere to sit! Obviously you will need to make a guess at how many people are attending. I created an event on LISNPN (anyone can do that) to which some people RSVP-ed, and I knew from Twitter that several others were planning to come, so I took that number and added a few on to allow for people who hadn’t responded online, or who might be brought along by confirmed attendees on the day. Don’t be afraid to ask people to RSVP to the event you’ve created on LISNPN, or let you know if they’re intending to come on Twitter or some other way – you’re the one doing all the work!

• It’s ideal if you or someone else who is intending to arrive early has a phone that can connect to the internet. It’s not like meeting up with your friends – you won’t have phone numbers for everyone and you need to allow for people who make last-minute decisions to come – so it’s useful to have Twitter  and LISNPN available, just in case anyone needs help finding the venue or needs to get in touch for any reason. I tweeted when I arrived, half an hour or so before the official start time, and included a picture of the LISNPN sign that I’d made for the table, to let people know what to look for and to reassure them that I was there and the meet-up was happening!

• Make a sign or two for the table(s)! It can avoid the awkwardness people might feel at having to approach a large group of people who may or may not be the group they’re meant to be joining! In the near future I am planning to make some LISNPN signs and upload them to LISNPN for people to print out if they want them for socials.

• Think hard about your venue. A pub is the best place, as we’re not in a position to pay for room hire or anything like that, and meet-ups happen in the evenings usually. Think about space – are there tables big enough for a large group, and is there likely to be space to spread out a bit if more people arrive than expected? Also think about people who may be coming in from outside of the town/city where you’re holding the social; it’s very easy to forget how difficult it can be for an outsider to find their way around your city when you’re used to living there, and remember too that they won’t necessarily know the short-cuts. I suggest you try to hold the meet-up somewhere which is a straightforward and fairly short (15-20 minutes max I would say) walk to the nearest main train station. Perhaps if you anticipate problems you could offer to meet people at the train station at a certain time and walk with them to the venue?

• Don’t expect to please everyone! If you ask for suggestions during the planning stage you will get lots of conflicting ideas. People who work locally might prefer after-work drinks, people coming from further away will want time to get there. People will have their preferred pubs. Obviously not everyone will be able to attend on the day you pick. You just have to do your best! I put out a Doodle poll asking people to select which day of a particular week would be their preferred date, and then went with the date with the most votes, and I suggest you do this, especially for your first one. That way, you’re trying to cater for as many of the potential attendees as possible (and it can also help when you’re trying to work out how many attendees you might get). I asked for pub suggestions on Twitter, but ultimately used my own judgement about location etc. to choose one. I opted for a 7pm start to allow those from outside of Bristol to make their way there, deciding that local attendees who didn’t have time to go home first could find plenty to amuse themselves with in town if necessary! Just use your judgement and make decisions as the organiser.

• Don’t just advertise the meet-up on Twitter and LISNPN – send round emails at work and speak to people whom you think might be interested; although a lot of us are on Twitter and LISNPN, not everyone is, and we want to be inclusive!

I think what I will do differently next time is to try to make the decisions and confirm all of the event details a bit earlier than I did this time; I only did it with about a week to spare, and, even if people have been involved in discussions about it, we’re all very busy and it’s easy to forget about something unless it’s confirmed – if you leave it too late, you might lose attendees. I think I put off making final decisions for a couple of reasons; still being fairly new to Bristol, I felt like I didn’t know enough about suitable pubs, and because I have organised things like social events very rarely, I was worried that I’d do something wrong, choose a bad day or bad pub, and/or that nobody would turn up! However, the success of last week’s meet-up has boosted my confidence in both of these aspects, and so next time I will feel more able to move quickly with the organisation of the event. I  absolutely encourage you to go ahead and organise a LISNPN meet-up in your area!

Making the most of library school - after you've graduated

This is a blog post that I have been planning for a while, but was waiting for the most appropriate time to write it. I’ve decided to do so now, as a couple of weeks ago, some of my research was published in a peer-reviewed journal, Reference Services Review. This article was co-authored with my MA Librarianship dissertation supervisor and based on the work that I did for my dissertation. We started working on it a few days after I finished the MA last September, so I’ve waited a while to see my name in print! The whole process has been a great experience; I’ve had bits and bobs published before, but never in a peer-reviewed journal, and never a case study like this, so it was all new. It’s also been an exhausting one – finding the energy to return to my dissertation after spending all summer on it and working out how to turn it into an article, trying to finish the version to be submitted at the same time as moving to an unfamiliar city and beginning my first professional post, going back to it again to make the suggested revisions that came out of the peer review, and all the time, knowing that there’s a possibility it won’t even be accepted for publication in the end! It has all been worth it though, to see my work published, in the official journal format, in a journal I used a lot for my coursework and dissertation. It has also given me the research and writing bug: since finding out it had been accepted for publication, I’ve upped my blogging and, as I mentioned in my last blog post, successfully had a paper accepted for the New Professionals Conference (which includes some of my own, albeit very basic, research). I’ve also made getting published and presenting at conferences one of my objectives for my Chartership PPDP. So, hopefully, it is the start of something exciting!

Obviously, my attitude had a part to play in getting to this point. I worked hard on my dissertation, expressed an active interest in the possibility of publication, and then put in the effort when all I wanted to do was give my brain a rest, get back into a sensible sleeping pattern, and forget about research methods! But a lot of the credit has to go to my dissertation supervisor, not only for all of the work she put in as co-author, and sorting out the submission process, but for her continued support throughout the time she was my supervisor. She helped me formulate my ideas, gave me a kick up the bum when I was refusing to do my data analysis because it scared me, read through drafts of chapters, liaised with various people when I wasn’t getting anywhere with them, and suggested publishing the research. And that’s just the dissertation; there was of course the references for job applications, which were often requested from her at short notice, I’m sure, and the support and encouragement offered both when I failed to get jobs, and when I secured one. If not for her support, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to even attempt writing a journal article. If she is reading this, I hope she understands how much I appreciate what she has done for me, and continued to do after I finished the MA; her support did not end once I ceased to become her student, and that meant a lot to me.

At library school, if you do a dissertation, you get a chance to carry out your own research, to the extent that you might not get again, or at least not very often, in terms of time to carry out the research, access to people and resources, and, most importantly, the support of a supervisor who is an experienced researcher in your area, and who really knows their stuff. This is what I meant when I gave this blog post its title. If you are at all interested in writing for publication, or even just think you’ve discovered something that should be shared with the LIS world, I encourage you to suggest the possibility of co-authoring a piece with your supervisor, and to do it as soon as possible after you’ve submitted your dissertation, while you’re still in a writing and research frame of mind and it’s still fresh in your head.  It will be tiring, and may feel like the last thing you want to do, but I encourage you to make the effort; the final product will be worth it. I already know of at least one blog post and a couple of tweets which have engaged with my article, and that is just as rewarding as the actual publication, as it shows that we have made some kind of contribution to the LIS research and practitioner landscape. 

I’m sure there are other ways in which we can make the most of library school after we’ve graduated, and I may write further blog posts on this topic. I would also love to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, I reiterate my encouragement to make the most of the opportunity to create something useful and/or original at library school.

Time and life management for a new professional, or why I haven't blogged in ages!

I have been neglecting my blog recently. I haven’t posted anything in ages and I’m not even checking my stats or comments. My excuse is that I have been extremely busy in the past few weeks. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have witnessed my whinging about moving house, which happened two weeks ago. Additionally, I have been working on finishing my Chartership PPDP and starting to collect evidence, and I have been lucky enough to have my paper proposal accepted for the CILIP New Professionals Conference on 20^th June, meaning that I need to have my paper written by the end of this month. On top of all this, things have been busy at work, which is fairly demanding at the moment. Our campus is closing and transferring to the main campus next summer, so work has begun in earnest on the moving of the library, and I’m currently working on how we are going to transfer the journals, as well as the usual day-to-day work, which must continue while we are still here. As well as all of this, a colleague at my grade has just departed for a new role at the main campus, and will not be replaced, so her work needs to be covered; this means that the journals management aspect of my role is going to expand into a more general acquisitions management role, and, of course, there will be shared tasks such as enquiry desk work for which her contribution will need to be covered by those of us remaining. So you can perhaps forgive me for letting my blog slip down my to-do list!

Taking on the additional workload at work has made me think about time management, and how I am going to have to get really good at it in order to keep on top of things. At the same time, being generally busy has made me think about life management. I’ve realised that I am neglecting a lot of the non-library things that I used to enjoy. Hip-hop dancing makes me feel happy and relaxed, but I’ll admit that I haven’t tried very hard to find a class in Bristol since the one I did try got cancelled. I used to be quite a good trombone player, and loved playing in a jazz band and orchestras, but my trombone has become a piece of furniture that is shifted with each house move and placed in a corner. I was always an avid reader, but I’ve been on the same book for about a year now; not because I’m not enjoying it, but because I just struggle to find the time to read anything that isn’t a LIS journal or “Building your portfolio”. I used to write poetry, but that folder hasn’t been touched for years, even though with the life experience I’ve acquired since, I expect my ability to write good poems has improved.  That novel I’ve always planned to write remains non-existent. When I last worked full time, during my graduate traineeship, baking cakes on a Saturday afternoon was my chill-out activity of choice, but I don’t think I’ve done any baking since the yummy cherry and white chocolate muffins I made for my colleagues when I left that job nearly two years ago. I’ve started to make friends in Bristol, but have recently turned down a couple of social invitations due to wanting to get on with stuff at home. And luckily, my boyfriend is a librarian, otherwise I think he would have had enough of me and my constant talking about libraries/Chartership/paper-writing a long time ago (also, luckily for him, we are in a long-distance relationship, so he is only exposed to this in person about once a month!)!

I think I am going to make time management one of my objectives at work and in my Chartership PPDP. I’m already fairly good at it, I think. I use my Outlook calendar to block out time for tasks and make a to-do list. However, I think I’m going to have to get better at it, as my to-do list morphs into multiple to-do lists for the different areas in which I work, and the various to-do piles of things on my desk grow (my colleague leaving means there is now a spare desk opposite mine, but I don’t think spilling over/dumping things on a second desk is the most effective time management technique, as tempting as it is!). My line manager has suggested that it might be worth attending a time management course, which I am definitely going to do if possible; I think it’s good to get someone else’s perspective on what works and what doesn’t, and also  to discuss ideas with others. I’m also going to investigate online tools. I’ve signed up for Nirvana after reading Library Reflections’ blogpost about it, so I’ll see how I get on with that; I know that some other librarians have blogged about that and other similar tools as well, so I’ll search out those blogposts. I think I may just have to try lots of different methods and techniques for time management at work until I find something that works really well for me. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

General life management is a bit trickier. I don’t really want to be using that online time management tool to sort out my evenings and weekends too; “8pm-10pm – watch rubbishy TV” is a bit OTT! I think I just need to be sensible. I’ve been trying to do this since I moved house; in the past couple of flats in which I’ve lived, I’ve only unpacked the bare minimum, leaving the place looking a bit like a storage facility, but this time I really want to create a home in which I can take pleasure, so this week, I have been persuading myself to unpack in the evenings, rather than work on my paper. I’ve nearly finished now, and I think it will be worth the effort. With socialising, I think it was sensible to turn down the invitations recently, as I did have stuff that needed doing, but I don’t think I should turn down any in the near future, as it is important to have a break and spend time with people. I’m going to make more of an effort in this area, instigating the socialising rather than just accepting invitations from others, and I am definitely going to arrange a Bristol LISNPN meet-up soon. And with the other stuff; well, again, I think it’s a case of being sensible and realistic. I don’t currently have the time to become a competition-level hiphop dancer, become a great jazz trombonist, or create a prize-winning poetry collection, but I could make more of an effort, even if it’s just reading a book in bed at night, or making time one week to try another dance class. I need to remember that, as good as it is to be involved in and engaged with your profession, it’s also important that I remain a well-rounded person who my friends (particularly the non-library ones!) still want to spend time with.

I don’t want any of this to be interpreted as whinging. I love my life at the moment, and I wouldn’t change anything about my professional involvement; it’s exciting and I feel incredibly lucky. This time last year things looked a lot bleaker; I was struggling with my dissertation, there were no jobs available, and I couldn’t have imagined that I would be doing everything that I am now. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on time and life management. I would love to hear any suggestions/comments. And I will definitely arrange that Bristol LISNPN meet-up soon!

Copyright for library staff, and a bit of networking

Yesterday I attended a course run by AULIC (Avon University Libraries in Cooperation) on “Copyright for library staff”, led by library copyright guru Graham Cornish. I have recently been given responsibility for copyright issues in my campus library (although there is a librarian responsible for copyright across the whole library service, so I’m in no way alone on it, happily!), so when this course came up I thought it would be helpful to attend, as I knew nothing about copyright, and we recently had a somewhat complex enquiry from a student wanting to use AV material in her dramatic performance, demonstrating that it is something that we need to be aware of. 

The course lasted a whole day, during which Graham took us through copyright and how it applies to us, clearly and thoroughly. He began with an overview of copyright - what it is, what the various laws are, what is covered by copyright, what rights owners/authors have, and the concept of fair-dealing – before moving on to “library privilege”. He explained the various licences under which libraries run their operations, discussed the issues that arise in the digital world, and all along encouraged us to ask questions, which were all answered. His knowledge of copyright and how it works in and affects libraries was breath-taking. I now feel that I know a lot more than I did, and, importantly, that I know where to find the information that I’ll need to answer copyright queries. 

Something that the course really demonstrated to me was how important copyright is in academic libraries, and how much it affects our whole operation; it’s not just a case of putting up a poster telling students they can photocopy x% of a book.  Copyright impacts on every aspect of the day-to-day workings of a library, from inter-library loans to storing past examination papers digitally, and I feel now that it is really helpful to have some knowledge (or at least to know where the find the relevant information) of copyright, whatever role you have in the library. I shall certainly be taking what I’ve learnt back to work with me – I and a colleague are planning to write a basic guide to AV copyright at some point during the summer – but I also think it will be useful for my work in a broader sense, in helping me to understand how the general operation of the library works.

I also wanted to write about a little bit of networking that I did afterwards. I didn’t speak to many people during the course itself – I think the layout and size of the room wasn’t very conducive to networking – but I did meet someone who I follow and have spoken to on Twitter. I ended up going to the pub with them and a couple of other people it turned out I also follow, some other colleagues/ex-colleagues of theirs, and someone who I met at the Chartership course a few weeks ago. When it comes to networking, I am a firm believer in using purely social events, such as going to the pub, and talking about things other than libraries (on Twitter as well as in real-life), to make friends, rather than simply acquiring “professional contacts” in a more formal, exchanging-business-cards-at-a-conference way; I look forward to seeing them again, and I shall definitely get on with arranging that Bristol/South West LISNPN social!

Difficult behaviour and good customer service

Difficult behaviour is something that anyone working in any kind of role where they interact with customers will experience, and libraries are no exception (I shall say now that I use the phrase “customer service” when referring to libraries – I know some don’t agree with the use of the word “customer” but, in my sector at least, our users are our customers). I’ve experienced argumentative, upset and aggressive users in pretty much every library job I’ve had. I’ve been thinking about this this week for a couple of reasons: over  the past couple of weeks I’ve dealt with a few argumentative to mildly aggressive users – it’s a somewhat fraught time of year for students, with coursework and undergraduate dissertation deadlines looming – and on Thursday I attended a course about dealing with aggressive behaviour. I feel fairly confident about dealing with such behaviour, and my main concern is ensuring that I continue to deliver good customer service even when I have to say or do something that the user doesn’t like or agree with. I think that the balance between being firm, and being abrupt, can be a delicate one, and that it’s important we don’t let our behaviour be influenced by the aggression or emotion that we’re facing. I hoped that Thursday’s course would help me to ensure that I continue to get this right.

Although I’d already covered a lot of the material in previous training, the course was indeed helpful. It was useful to share and discuss experiences with members of staff from other areas of the university, and the trainer gave some really good advice. The tip that I am definitely going to remember in future is to try to ensure that you don’t cast the user as unreasonable: for example, rather than go straight in with “you can’t do that here”, start with “I’m sorry, you might not have seen the sign, but you can’t do that here” (even if the sign is massive and obvious!). I’m going to use this one if I have to speak to students about noise levels in quiet areas, or phone calls in the library. And of course, we presume that the user is just ignoring the rule or being thoughtless; perhaps they genuinely haven’t realised that the library is any different to a shop or other public space where they could use their phone? Either way, I think this tactic could help to avoid situations becoming difficult.

Something, however, that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, was the suggestion from many of the other course attendees, and the trainer, that we should, when dealing with  a user who is acting aggressively, tell them that we won’t be spoken to in that way. I realise that in some situations we may need to take such a step to attempt to stop a situation escalating, and also to begin protecting our personal safety, but I do think that this must be used carefully. I often watch the repeats of Airline on weekday evenings (don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into a post about my terrible television viewing habits!). If you’re not familiar with Airline, it was a reality television programme about airport staff. The check-in desk staff, as you’d probably guess, have to deal with difficult behaviour on a daily basis. Sometimes this is dealt with very well, but at other times I am appalled by the level of customer service offered, and often this is when a member of staff refuses to continue to speak to a customer, because they perceive the customer to have been too rude to them. For me, that is patronising towards the customer, and is only going to cause the situation to escalate (and on Airline it pretty much always does make things worse). Obviously, if the customer has been threatening violence, or throwing personal insults at the member of staff, they should say something about the customer’s behaviour; but there are surely better ways to explain that they need to treat you with respect than to simply refuse to talk to them. I have never  asked a user to speak to me more politely, or told them that I won’t continue the exchange if this doesn’t happen, and I have had some fairly hostile words thrown at me (not in my current role, however). Perhaps this is a case of me being too “nice”. Or perhaps in the past I wasn’t confident enough when dealing with such behaviour, and if faced with it now would find myself explaining that I won’t be spoken to in that way. However, I still can’t help feeling that this is one example of how we need to be careful that we maintain a good level of customer service when dealing with difficult behaviour. 

I expect that we will experience further incidents of difficult behaviour as we head deeper into a very busy and stressful time of year for students; I’m hoping that the course, and the reflections that it has provoked, will help me to deal successfully with incidents that come my way.

Perhaps Chartership isn’t that scary after all!

As some of you might know, I’ve been thinking about Chartership for a while – since I started my job back in November in fact. I’m always looking for the next thing to do to develop and progress, and Chartership seemed like the logical next step. After a couple of months of reading and re-reading the Chartership instructions and information on the CILIP website, and panicking about the whole finding a mentor business, the various acronyms that kept cropping up, and the sheer scale of the thing, I recently decided it was time to jump in at the deep end, and send my registration form off then start the hunt for a mentor. 

I was lucky in that the first mentor I emailed was happy to take me on. She works in the same sector but in a different university – after taking advice from various people on the pros and cons of having a mentor in the same organisation, versus one from outside, I decided that it would be more helpful to select a mentor who didn’t work for my university, in order to avoid the risk of inadequate explanation or evaluation in my portfolio due to them understanding the context behind things. We had a telephone conversation earlier in the week, which was very successful – we seem to be on the same wavelength and I entirely trust in her abilities as a mentor – and we decided to progress with the mentoring relationship. 

It’s been a fairly Chartership-filled week, as yesterday I attended a “Preparing for Chartership and Certification” course run by the CILIP West Country Career Development Group. Attending one of these courses is, I believe, a requirement for Chartership, and I decided to do it sooner rather than later, in the hope that it would help to make everything make sense to me.  It was a really useful day; a good mix of presentations outlining things like the assessment criteria and the types of evidence that can go in your portfolio, group activities such as identifying skills and sources of training together, which I found really helped to get me thinking about my own skills audit and Personal Professional Development Plan (PPDP), and opportunities to network with the other attendees – exchanging contact details with people working in other types of library or information service may potentially be helpful in arranging visits to other libraries, which will contribute to our understand of the wider profession, one of the Chartership assessment criteria.

I won’t write a detailed account of the day, but I will share just a couple of the many useful things that I found out:

• Your local CDG Candidate Support Officer (CSO) can help with pretty much anything to do with your Chartership, from helping you to construct your PPDP, to resolving problems in the mentor/mentee relationship. I knew from my own involvement on CDG committees that each had a CSO, but I was unaware of the extent to which they can offer help and advice. I fully trust in my mentor’s ability to help, but it’s good to know that there is someone else who can cast a second eye over my PPDP, or can answer any questions that I feel are too daft to put to my mentor! You can find your local CSO on the CILIP website.

• Blogs can be used as your evaluative diary. We were told that keeping some kind of diary, in which you evaluate your recent activities, will be really helpful when it comes to writing the evaluative statement to go with your portfolio, and that we should use whatever kind of diary or record works for us, including blogs. I suspected that my blogging would be useful in keeping my reflective/evaluative writing skills up to scratch, but I thought I would need to record things in a separate space for Chartership; it was good to find out that I can continue to blog about what I’m doing as a means of evaluative recording, as this is the format that works for me, and I don’t want to completely separate things off as being “Chartership” activities – everything I do over the next year or so will be contributing to Chartership.

The main thing that I realised after the day was that, in fact, I’m actually doing a lot of the things required for Chartership already; keeping records of activities like the teaching that I do, and other things that I get involved with, as well as a “staff development log” of in-house training that I attend and what I’ve gained from it, reflecting upon and evaluating activities and events through blog posts, collecting evidence i.e. feedback from teaching sessions, furthering my professional involvement through committee membership and publishing work in the professional press, and ensuring I develop my understanding of the wider profession and my place in it, through reading about what is going on in mine and other LIS sectors, and keeping up-to-date via blogs, mailing lists, and Twitter. So now, Chartership doesn’t seem like such a huge, scary prospect! Yes, it’s a big thing, a long process that will require hard work, enthusiasm, dedication and organisation, but I feel now that it is completely do-able for me. This weekend I shall start work on my initial PPDP draft, and I am looking forward to getting stuck in and getting on my way with Chartership. I really encourage anyone else in my position to just go for it – get registered, look for a mentor, go to a “preparing for Chartership course” (list here, or keep an eye on the events page on LISNPN), and don’t be scared or intimidated – as I discovered, you’re probably in a Chartership frame of mind already.

Reflections on my first solo teaching session

Last week, I had my first chance to do a teaching session by myself. I have taught before – during my graduate traineeship, many of the librarians kindly involved me in their classes, giving me the opportunity to demonstrate search techniques, databases, the library catalogue etc. to groups of students, and to help out in hands-on sessions, and since I have been in my current role I have observed classes and taught jointly with a colleague. This, however, was the first time I would be standing up in front of a class and giving a whole session by myself; two sessions actually (the same one twice in a row to two different seminar groups). To make it all even more new, one of my colleagues was coming in to observe the first session; I have never been observed before (I’ve never done enough in a session to be worth observing before now!). While I was excited – the teaching aspect was one of the things that first attracted me to academic librarianship way back in my undergraduate days, so it’s been a long wait to get to this point! - I was also extremely nervous. What if the students got bored and started talking to each other over me? What if the tutor accompanying them was totally unimpressed with what I was demonstrating? What if I got something wrong, or one of the searches didn’t work as it should? What if they ask me to demonstrate a database I’d not used before, or to perform a search that I hadn’t tested? What if I talked too fast or gabbled, as I usually do when I’m nervous and there are a load of people looking at me? What if they all said “the librarian was rubbish” (or worse) on the evaluation forms they filled out in the end?

As it turns out, the sessions went absolutely fine – I’d even go so far as to say that they went well! Here is what I learnt about the aforementioned things that were making me nervous:

• Most students will pay attention in a session directly related to their assignments, even if they’re not particularly interested in learning how to refine their searches, or even in the assignment itself! They are paying a lot of money to go to university and most of them want to do well. Library sessions are teaching very practical things – in this case, demonstrating a list of databases that the students had been asked to gather primary sources from for an assignment – and, while you can make the session more engaging by doing things like showing the students the most clever and helpful bits of the databases , and inviting them to ask questions or start a discussion, it does really come down to a) how interested they are in doing well and b) whether they can see how what you are showing them will help them achieve this. I very much subscribe to the theory that library sessions relevant to what students are studying at that time are the best kind, and I made sure that I emphasised at the start of the session that the reason they were here was so that I could show them how to use the specific databases that their tutors wanted them to use for their forthcoming assignment, not just so I could show them general search techniques.

• It’s OK to talk slowly! Knowing that I am prone to gabbling, I made a conscious effort in the first session to slow down and think about what I was saying. As the session progressed, I realised that this was fine! Yes, the students were sitting there, looking at me expectantly. But they weren’t about to start heckling me if I let a couple of seconds go by without speaking; what they were expecting was an informative and helpful session, however I chose to deliver that. By speaking slowly and thinking about things, I was able to give them clear explanations of what I was demonstrating. It also made me feel considerably more relaxed, and by the second session I was feeling completely happy and comfortable with what I was doing.

• Don’t panic if you’re asked to perform a search that you haven’t practised! Yes, the reason we plan searches before teaching sessions is to enable us to demonstrate certain features of databases, or how to refine searches. But as I mentioned earlier, it is generally agreed that sessions that are relevant to what is being studied are the most effective and successful in engaging the students. This is also a chance to be really helpful; one student had tried a search for her topic in one of the databases already, and had found nothing. I was able to show her how she could use different keywords and refine the dates of her search, and we found some useful material. Also, most students understand that not every database will yield something for every search, and that you sometimes have to spend quite a bit of time refining or changing a search to find anything (this can even be the case with Google!), and so they won’t think you’re useless if you can’t produce a list of perfect, full-text search results, straightaway!

• Analysing feedback can be really helpful. We ask students to fill out short evaluation forms at the end of every session. I was tasked with analysing the forms from my sessions and the other sessions that week. Although it can be time-consuming, I do think it’s worth sitting down and doing a content analysis of the feedback (even if it brings back memories of analysing dissertation data!), to work out how many people said what. Flicking through the forms, you might see lots of mentions of how useful learning search techniques was, but if you do a proper analysis, you might, for example, find out that the most commonly made comment within that was that they found learning about wildcards and truncation the most useful aspect of the class, which can inform future sessions. 

The feedback from my sessions was overwhelmingly positive, with many students saying that the databases had been clearly and effectively explained and demonstrated, which I was really pleased about due to my efforts to speak more slowly and not to gabble nervously. The students appeared to have found the session helpful for their work, which was really rewarding. I’m sure I will continue to learn more about teaching the more that I do it, and I really am looking forward to the next time.