Associate CMALT portfolio

 Long time no see! I have been busy - working evidently but also studying as I am now doing the dissertation part of my MA in English at the University of Nottingham. Quite happy about that. But my writings on this - and other non-professional stuffs are happening elsewhere on the web, on my Oxford Paris and other things blog

 

Anyway... I am now working on building a portfolio for Associate CMALT. 

CMALT stands for Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology. It is something many learning technology professional go for. It is also something considering for librarians if you have anything to do with learning technology, which I believe you do often.  

As stated on the ALT website learning technology is defined as the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can be used to support learning, teaching and assessment.

Communication, information, related technologies? Yes, definitely something most librarians deal with, sometimes on a daily basis. As it is not something I do full time, there's a pathway called the Associate CMALT which I believe is more relevant. 

So this is something I have started working on, helped by the CMALT guidelines and by a few CMALT portfolio found online (please note that once you are registered, you have access to a lot more help and support)

David Hopkins

 Dr Lee Fallin

Lorna Campbell 

M Hawksey

Dr Sally Quinn

Phil Martin 

Sharon Boyd 

Sonya McChristie 

Stephen Pyne

 All of the above are CMALT portfolio not Associate CMALT but nevertheless... super-helpful!

So of course you read some bits of their CMALT portfolio and you fall into despair: everyone's so intelligent, ready to get everything, knowing everything... but no... it takes time to build a portfolio, so I'm sure I can do this, but I don't have to do as much as it is the Associate CMALT, so fewer points to cover. That counts for something right?

 

HUG conference in Birmingham

 So yes, yesterday, on a very hot day, we had the HUG conference in Birmingham

(me, on my way to The Priory Rooms where the conference was taking place... in fact, I was walking in the wrong direction... found it in the end...)

first of all yes, very happy that we had a conference at a Quaker's space... (all Irish descendants, wherever they are in the world, will always be grateful to them, as well as to the Choctaw people of America... not sure what I'm talking about? Check history... anyway, we're not here to speak about the Irish famine)

The day started with a talk by Emma from HeritageCirqa on the new look of the catalogue Loook4. It's offered to all customers who are hosted by HeritageCirqa... I'd love to have it frankly but still awaiting decision in my work place.

Then we had a 'managing your overdues' session as it is something always nagging us, especially towards the end of year. 

Everything can be automated on the system of course which could save some time. Having said that, because I work in a rather small library, I like to see who is about to be late for returning a book. 

Maybe it's silly, what happens if I'm not well? If I'm too busy etc...? 

I could also make the most of recall, a clever way to contact all the people from a class but selecting only those who still have borrowings. Great when it's the end of term. 

Many tips were shared for dealing with very late offenders (I was quite interested to hear as I have one of those at the moment...) when one tip I'm going to execute... which is to text... also appearing in class (provided of course that you've obtained the Tutor's permission) can do wonders... Let's see if it works. 

In the afternoon, after a delicious lunch (and oh! the pain au chocolat in the morning, I forgot to mention!) we had a speed dating session. Very fun game, going from one table to another and each time we were asked one question. All around the same theme: how do we encourage our people to use the library? New users, existing users, remote and experienced. It was a great occasion to share ideas and experiences. 

There were library staff from all over sectors: Further education colleges, Higher education, specialists libraries... there were also a few non-British staff which was great!

And the day finished with a talk by on 'Inheriting Heritage' by a very energetic Olivia, aka MissOliviaReeds (I have to admit her social media are wonderful and I hope she'll get an award for showing so much passion for reading in FE)

Interesting talk... I thought I had a pretty rough time in my work place when I started but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. Yes, it's shocking but there are places where no handover is being done or even written! HeritageCirqa can provide each new manager documents as well as a chat/help session online. A handover is important, as well as a calendar of tasks... it is a document I modify all the time. 

These are the types of documents I wish I had received when I started my new job!

HUG!

 Well today I went to my first HUG meeting. It is very different from what my best Californian friend does, that is hug people, though I felt like hugging people as I was quite happy.

HUG stands for Heritage User Group and they have two meeting per year.

https://www.hugonline.co.uk/ 

This was the winter meeting and yes, it's snowing outside so perfect description.

I could not go to all sessions but I went to most. It's not every day, being a one-person library that I can speak and exchange ideas with other librarians who also use Heritage Cirqa.

Hence me wanting to hug people. 

Now of course I have a to-do-list to recreate in order to make sure I will make the most of it. 

Plenty of good tips for stocktaking, but it also reassured me that I do not do too badly. I could do better, that is less efforts in moving books and yes, perhaps use TestData in order to refresh my memory.

As with the session on keywords, I ought to go back to all course programmes, perhaps ask Tutors, and see what the searches are on the catalogue (that will also pick up mispelling of words, so perhaps I could ask a 'did you mean' as if I were Google. Cool.)

 

                                           "Hug" by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

 

 

Cracked it! Global change, global delete and command line report

 All at once! (after about 10 hours and two ibuprofen)

I really thought it was important to learn how to move readers up a year, and as the library is not quite for a school, I couldn't do this change (or maybe I could but found it rather terrifying). In any case, there are many levels and many different courses so it may have proven impossible.

I decided to work with saved lists but I didn't want to spend time adding reader one by one, so the best way was to retrieve information from command line report: information for each class' students. I saved everything in my reports which means next year it's not going to take me 10 hours!

I also tried, and succeeded at global delete: a class that finished in June and in which all students returned their books. Same again, I retrieve the information for each reader thanks to command line report, placed that saved list name in the global delete and voila! Magnifique non?

So far, I find it far too scary to use the criteria and rather work with saved lists. Having said that, perhaps I will need to use global delete from time to time, after trying it on the Test Database first. 

Sure I could have asked for help in the HeritageCirca community, but I really wanted to fully understand what I am doing, and in any case, I had a good look at the help provided before as well as several helpsheets (Command Line beginner and advanced, moving readers up a year, global change) and of course trying everything in the Test Database before-hand.

I'm really happy with command line report as I will continue learning how to use it in order to get precise information on what I really need. 

When I say cracked it of course I mean I have cracked it enough for what I wanted to do, that's the whole point.

Egg crack

by wiredcanvas

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

Finished le stocktake!

 Vive la France! (?!?) or rather Vive la Reine! (just in case my new citizenship if not enough... don't throw me out!) or.. vive moi.

 

"Queen Elizabeth II" by Harwich & Dovercourt is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

Really happy with that, I finished the stocktake last Monday, perfect timing as we had a meeting yesterday and I was able to provide some accurate information about numbers of missing books etc. 

Pleasant also to know that when the catalogue states it is available, or missing, it is exactly reflecting the reality of the shelves. 

I was quite appalled to see so many books not catalogued at all! Well at least we go some extra-books then, as they did not "exist" before. What took the longest time was not the scanning of barcodes but all the corrections done to the cataloguing records. I'm not saying it's perfect now, but it is getting close to a proper catalogue now.

I can't believe it took that long! I had at first planned two weeks and a half in the middle of summer to do this, but really glad I have done it earlier. It took, more or less, the whole month of June to do this first stocktake.

I'm really glad I did set up a Missing Event for each stocktake I did. Easy then to gather a whole list of missing books from the Reports menu (Accessions with a 'Missing' Event). Then you save this reports as a favourite so you're ready for next year!

In memoriam Chris Fowler

 Today's post is not about work I do in the library. It is to celebrate the memory of Chris Fowler. She was one of the best subject librarians I know, Arts subject librarian at Brookes University, and I would, from time to time, have a look at her pages. She would always encourage her students to this and that exhibition. I would also at times see her in Jericho, about to go to the Phoenix Cinema there to see an art film.

She was my first librarian mentor, encouraging me to go to library school, and like her, I choose London Metropolitan to study for an MA. Like her, I was a library assistant at Brookes, and was working while studying. Well I suppose we all do it to a certain extend, but it is always so great to have someone giving you that example. It really helps.

She was always passionate about her profession and I very much hope I continue to be so.

It is quite a shock she's gone so soon.

Anyway, enough of me blabbering, here is her Tribute page so that you can donate and get information about the ceremony.

Doing the stocktake (oh yeah)

 As it is exam week and almost no one uses the library right now, I have started the stocktake.

I fully understand what it means to have a "stable" stock... mine is so unstable it crumbles... a good occasion though to clear up some wrong shelfmarks, and also, quite simply to check the shelfmark is the same as the classmark! 

As I'm still pretty "new" to the job (about one year in) it's also a great occasion to see the stock in details and I am amazed at discovering books I thought we did not have anymore, or we did not have at all. This helps me then when I give students recommendation for this and that book. 

As there is so much to be done still, I am doing one mini-stocktake at a time. This saves me:

Pain on my wrist

Stress for wanting to finish a very long section

and yes, there are still students demanding help and this is my main duty!

It's really working well, I'm scanning barcodes directly into Heritage stocktake thingie, and it tells me if it is outside the section, or if it does not recognise the barcode. I set these books apart and sort them out later. After searching for missing books, I ask the system to change their status to missing, and get a list, and do not delete this data. You never know... some books might come back, either misplaced on another shelf or returned before the summer. I have sent an email to all the full time students, so there's some hope there!

 

                                    "Library 1" by vastateparksstaff is licensed under CC BY 2.0. 

(I choose this photo because this is how my books look like on the shelves after the stocktake, still a long way to go but getting there!)

 

Preparing for a stocktake II

Guide used: Stocktaking Heritage Helpsheet HM46 + Webinar

 I am so glad I have tested the system twice. Yesterday I thought I would quickly scan books' barcodes into an excel file and upload into Heritage Cirqa. This, I suppose, could work well if your library was in a good state of affairs...

"Messy library shelves" by Nett E is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0. 

This is not the case here as the library was more or less abandonned for years. I recatalogued the whole library, but this was done in haste, and now it shows. 

So the tricky thing with uploading your barcodes into an excel (then converted as .csv file) is that you get data such as: "Error: ID not found in catalogue" This is on me I suppose, difficult to blame others: I have catalogued items but not double-checked that all the copies have their barcodes recognised by the system. Most barcodes are fine, there's just a few. So not great to use excel really as you find yourself doing what? Going back to the shelves to search for barcodes?

So today I tried the Heritage/Cirqa scan accession directly into the system. It's not difficult as I work on a laptop. Much much better! It tells you straight away if there is something wrong with a book, such as ID not found in catalogue, or you scanned the same book twice - happens a lot and will over the summer as I'm sure there will be visitors and extra tasks to do. You can easily pile up your books with issues and then sort them out in the system later.

The missing stock list prints in a good format making it easy to check the shelves. Then, if you find some of the books (hopefully that will happen?) you just scan the accessions numbers again, and rerun the missing stock list.

Now I need to discover more of the process of missing items, a good idea to add this as an event, that's for sure, as there will be many, many missing books and I don't feel comfortable just erasing this data. There is always, anyway, the possibility to not show missing items in the public catalogue.

Got it! The Heritage Cirqa Flagship programme

 Quite happy to have received confirmation that I have passed all the exercises to get the Heritage Cirqa Flagship programme. Very happy about that as it was quite difficult to do for some modules, some were perhaps easier, such as the keyword edit option... some were really difficult and also involved IT help for installing stuff. I feel a lot more confident now.

"File:Graffiti in Shoreditch, London - Victorious Churchill by Paul Don Smith (11154302434).jpg" by MsSaraKelly is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The reasons why I undertook this is that I felt I needed more training on the system, Heritage Cirqa is so rich in options, it's a bit like a lego, and you can really make it yours, i.e. a system totally adapted to your library.

The second reason is that I knew I would get a discount for further training, so always worth investing in learning.

And the third reason of course is that it is part of my CPD (in fact there was a CPD online course given by Heritage Cirqa which I found really inspiring). I belong to CILIP, the library association, and it is important to upgrade your knowledge all the time. I have to admit that given my recent work history (changes, unemployment and all that) I had not revalidated for quite a while! So thanks Heritage Cirqa for waking me up, as well as CILIP's mentoring emails, encouraging you to revalidate. How can you be a CILIP Mentor if you have not gone through the process yourself? You need to do this annually, it does not take much time, especially that CILIP's created a form for you to fill in. 

Fourth reason I believe is that I can show my line-manager a training that is structured and well-done. My line-manager is not a librarian so I hope it will make them understand that a library catalogue, nor a library, runs by itself... Not sure if it helped with my pay rise, but suddenly I got a pay rise so perhaps this particular training helped!

I would recommend you do this training (as I would recommend any person wanting to become a librarian to do the MA in librarianship) because:

- even if you know the system well, you may be doing things the 'hard way' and there might be easier and faster ways (exactly like being a librarian before an MA and after, trust me, I know what I'm talking about!)

-It takes away the fear, and there is always TESTDATA to try things on and it really boost your confidence you want to try things more

-It can be integrated in your CPD in fact it MUST be integrated into your CPD and you must be doing this every year. It is something you can speak about in details when you have your annual review with your line-manager.

-If you are considering doing CILIP's chartership, revalidation or certification, it will really, really help! And it is definitely, at all level, a training you must include there.

Bye for now, I must work on my reading lists now... which can be included in the LMS by the way!

Added 'copied version' so that you won't pretend you have it if you don't...you cheeky librarians out there!

Time for a clean up

 Time for a clean up of the library, though reshelving should be done not long before the stocktake I suppose as books have a tendency to move. I always insist with the students to leave the books on the tables, that saves a lot of trouble.

I have allocated a hell of a lot of time for this stock-take, from 25 July till 10 August, all this for...1,218 books to process. But if you include reshelving before hand and testing, it is not that long. Also, thinking that I will be doing this myself, I will not spend 8 hours a day on this. I like my wrists as they are and do not wish to injure myself. So that could be about 4 hours a day. Which seems reasonable as there will be students working on their dissertation in the library so I have to be there to... offer database search help, Harvard referencing or kleenex if needed for a cry session.  

One easy think to do right now is to check for weird accession status code, there are some that I normally never use or no longer use such as quarantined item, in circulation or processing. Spent a bit of time yesterday getting lost in Heritage Cirqa (I didn't feel like checking a guide and strongly believe there's a lot to win in getting lost, such as browsing a nicely catalogued catalogue rather than searching etc...) coz I knew I had items with this status but I did not know what items. Found it now. So I will locate the items in question and then probably spend some time understand how to change their status. I'll get there!

This could (almost) be an autoportrait: wise, calm, getting prepared

"Orang-Utan" by Robert Schöller is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Preparing for a stocktake

 Not the first time I do this but I do admit it's been a while, and it was also, another system. I just went to my training online so hopefully writing this post will help me remember!

I remember last time I did a stocktake, what was really the issue was the lack of preparation. There was so much time wasted almost about records not well catalogued, not well placed on the shelves, issues with the shelfmarks etc...

There will be of course, such issues arising here but my main goal is to assess how many items have disappeared in this library, which was more or less abandonned for a few years. I inherited a catalogue which I corrected as much as possible by recataloguing the whole collection. But lack of time and the fact that some books returned were placed back onto the shelves without checking them, means there are surprises from time to time. And badly recatalogued items as well, it happens to the best (?) of us!

The key issue at the moment is that some items are showing on the catalogue but they are nowhere to be found. This stocktake will be helpful for a good clean up of this, so that what is showing on the catalogue is actually showing on the shelves. 

Ah great, Cirqa has just sent us a link if we want to rewatch the Webinar. Will do that. The wine I had for my birthday yesterday have somehow clouded the brain... 

They have also provided us with a check-up list, wonderful. The more prep you do, the more likely the stocktake goes your way!

For example I realise I have items that are in quarantine, some remain of the good old (horrible and new) covid days. These kind of stuff can be edited in advance 

Prep and testing as well... can you imagine scanning 100 books only to realise your scanner can't take it?!

"Scream" by Apionid is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

 

  Right, now for another coffee and then let's rewatch this training before it is too late (...my brain collapsing completely, the video access expiry date, and... students and staff queries.)

Still a librarian

 I thought I would start a new blog after the previous one, called The Language Librarian Oxford.

I am no longer a language librarian (though still learning language when I find the time...) but still a librarian.

I went briefly into FE in London and absolutely loved the experience, however it was not to be.... as 1) it was in London and I'm attached to this damp piece of land called Oxfordshire 2) it was a temporary contract

It's a very different role here compared with Oxford, involving regular "traditional" help for readers: referencing, study skills, database searches etc... 

There is, however, something similar to the Language Centre at Oxford University (what's the point of adding an hyperlink, there is no longer a library there, boohoo)... when I arrived the library had been more or less abandoned, on a cataloguing point of view. But contrary to Oxford University where you need to have a "shut up and take it" approach to a library system, I was able to chose the system myself. 

It was highly praised by the librarian at St Hilda's College (now retired) and, after a little "tour" of library system available, I chose the same, that is: Heritage Cirqa. 

I really like it because it is pretty much like a lego game: you only use what you want to use and can really tailor it to your library. Having said that, I'm not there yet but I'm getting better.

I've just done the Heritage Circa Flagship programme and I wish I could say it was easy but it wasn't, still I feel more confident now to change things to that the system evolves round the library rather than the other way round. 

Anyway, must go now, a small group of students has just arrived in the library!