A library school student's Christmas

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The title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, aiming to describe my Christmas.

I haven't particularly enjoyed Christmas for the past few years, mostly because I am older and it's never so much fun as when you're a child. At least I get to relax though from the 'pressures' of working life. This Christmas there wasn't even room for that though as I was faced with three assessment deadlines in January, the first of which was on the 4th. Two of these assessments were group presentations (mentioned in my previous post) and whilst, once upon a time, these used to fill me with dread, I wasn't concerned about these assessments in the slightest (well, maybe a little). My biggest worry was an exam for the module Working with Information. There were two reasons for my concern: firstly, I am not very good at exams; secondly, it is a ruddy difficult subject.

I am used to writing essays about literature so moving on to a different assessment type on strange computer-mathematical-science 'stuff' was daunting. I spent the whole of my Christmas break (except New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) revising for it. Even Christmas Day. The snow set me back, forcing me to  go to work on my two days off as other members of staff couldn't get in. I spent a lot more time revising for this exam because I thought it would be more time-consuming for me to learn a whole module's worth of information than three to four minute scripts for the presentations.

The three-hour exam was sat on January 11th and it wasn't so frightening as I had imagined. Except for the first question which was on logic and set theory, which I'm not very hot on, all of the questions made sense to me and I was able to answer them all without getting stuck. I just have to wait and see whether I managed to earn at least 50% (fingers crossed). 

Now, I have nothing to do until term two starts, which is actually next week. There is no inter-semester break, which I am not best pleased about. I would very much like a rest but I don't think I shall be getting one. There are, of course, five days before lectures start again so I shall make the most of those by drinking, eating, shopping and sleeping. A good plan, I think.

Advice to prospective library school students

I am horrified to see that I haven't written a post for five weeks (and one day). What's more horrifying is that I have been aware of my absence for some time now but have done nothing about it.

I like to think that my silence reveals a lot about what is going on at the moment but, from the reader's perspective, I fear it suggests I haven't been bothered to write anything. Admittedly, that is the case but I haven't bothered to write anything because there really hasn't been any time. I thought I was being ambitious in setting up this blog and giving myself the aim of writing at least one blog post a week. I have failed to achieve this goal horribly.

Why have I been so busy? Too much university work to complete combined with too many hours at work (28.25 per week to be exact). On the day I handed an assessment in for the module Information and Library Management, the tutor gave us the specification for the next assessment. I didn't actually look at it for at least a week, in denial that there was yet another assessment that needed completing. The specification is to do a group presentation and, similarly, there is another module on the course with the same requirement. The groups have been purposefully created so there is a mix of part-time and full-time students. The presentations aren't assessed until January but I have discovered a definite full-time/part-time divide between students whilst preparing for them. 

For the part-time students, their next assessments are these two presentations. For the full-timers, up until last week, there were another two assessments to hand in. Needless to say, my concentration and effort went on researching and then writing the 5,000 words these assessments demanded. During that time, I received many emails from fellow team members with updates on all the research they had completed, PowerPoint presentation slides and scripts. I, on the other hand, had done nothing. Or very little, at least. Every week our groups had a meeting to share our progress. I turned up with a very small amount of information to make it look as though I had done something productive. 

My sensitivity on this subject stems from jealousy. Jealousy that part-timers have half the number of assessments to hand in, half the amount of preparation to do for lectures, and less information filling their brain to saturation point. I don't wish I was doing the degree part-time because I'm half way through the year already, whereas if I were a part-timer, I would have another year and a half to go, which is just depressing. If anything, I would like to have fewer hours to work, (and by 'work', I mean my job.) Twenty eight  and a quarter hours per week is really pushing the limit and I would suggest to any prospective library school students that they seriously consider doing fewer than that. People frequently say how impressive it is that I manage to fit everything in. At a job interview earlier this week I was asked whether there is a clone of me doing the other half of my work. I have been asked before how on earth do I cope? I don't, really, is the answer. I am grateful to my parents, who are probably reading this, for taking many a phone call from me and also @simonabond for not rising to my argumentative ways. I don't dislike library school. In fact, having filled in evaluation forms for the various modules, I have come to realise how much has been shoved into my memory over these three months. I just think that all future library school students should be advised to make a wise decision when it comes to balancing university work with a job (or jobs, as the case may be).

The unsuccessful funding applicant

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The other day I read a blog post by @theatregrad, in which she describes her current life as a library school student. She was a successful funding applicant and is able to complete her library school Masters full-time without having to work. There is one sentence that struck me, which is why I am writing this post: "I wonder how the people who do work or commute or have relationships and families cope [with studying]." I don't have a family but I do have a relationship, have to commute and work. I shall tell how I, the unsuccessful funding applicant, cope with completing a full-time library degree.

Firstly, I think the saying 'money makes the world go round' is true. If you have money, whether it is just enough to pay rent, bills and food, or whether there are thousands of pounds to spare on a new car or house, your world goes round quite nicely. If you don't have money then your world stops. You can't pay your rent so you have nowhere to live. You can't go to a supermarket and buy food so you go hungry. So if you don't manage to get funding for your degree, then you need to find some way of getting it. In my case, having to work.

Fortunately, savings were able to pay tuition fees but there is the small problem of general living costs. Ideally, I would have one job with a decent wage that would let me work three days a week, the other two days spent at university. The ideal is not always reality, however, and I have ended up with two part-time jobs that take up the majority of my days.

For three days of the working week, I work 8:30am-3:30pm at one library. I then work 4:50pm-7pm at the other library. So nine hours and ten minutes (if my maths is correct) of my day is spent at work. The hour and twenty minutes between shifts is spent cycling to the Law Library to squeeze in some university work. My hour's lunch is spent over some journal article or book chapter. I often get up at 6am to get a little work done then too before I travel to work. By the time I get home in the evening, have cooked tea and eaten, it is approaching 9pm and my brain has shut down ready for sleep so I rarely do any work then.

The other two days of the working week are spent at university. The journey is two hours from door to door, and that's assuming the trains are not delayed. The train journey there is during lunch so, once again, I eat food whilst reading for university. The train journey back is very much the same except I don't eat.  The lectures are from 2:30pm-7:30pm with an hour's break in between, in which I eat dinner over some other journal article or book chapter. I take advantage of the morning off and do university work then too.

So that's my working week. Not very varied. The weekend is not much dissimilar. I have to work Saturday from 8:45am-1pm. Then the rest of Saturday and Sunday is spent doing university work. @theatregrad also explains that "having nothing to distract me from staying on top of the workload is great." I haven't actually struggled to stay on top of my workload, despite how busy I've been. I haven't handed any assessments in late and I've done all the preparation required for lectures. With my time scale though, I only ever have time to complete the essential reading for lectures. Suggested reading is impossible to complete, especially when I have reading to do for assessments so I can actually write the things. The only way it could be done is not to sleep. But I like sleep. Very much.

So that is an example of an unsuccessful funding applicant's student life. Those spare moments where I'm not at work are spent studying. And this has to be completed without completely neglecting one's boyfriend, friends or hobbies (in my case, hobby).

It doesn't always work that way though. I am definitely experiencing a mid-term lull where there is little incentive or motivation to do university work. Then there are those occasions where I decide to go to the pub just to see people rather than get some much needed sleep. Then I spend half the weekend in London and actually forget about university (not for the entire evening but the majority of it). Then there are days where I have to work extra hours at my first job so, rather than having an hour's gap between jobs, I have to go straight to the second one. And then there are those times when I write blog posts, telling myself this is not wasting time nor procrastinating.

I don't mind being busy. I like it, in fact. Those few weeks where I didn't have a job were quite dull and completing job application forms or going for job interviews was not my ideal way of keeping busy. There is, though, a fine line between having just enough to keep you going and having so much to do that you never rest, the latter of which I am experiencing.

I'm not sure how other students who are working plan their days but this is how I do it.

My reasonably average day

Rather than attempt to come up with something witty and intelligent about what I learned at university, I have decided to record my reasonably average day. The following was noted on Monday 1st November.

06:45-08:00 After about nine hours of heavenly sleep - wake up, shower and all that jazz.

08:00-08:20 Cycle to work on wonderfully empty roads via Tesco to buy smoked sausage meat.

08:20-08:30 Arrive at work, put lunch in fridge and put excess baggage in locker.

08:30-09:15 Check in journals and process them, as well as informing one supplier they have the wrong address.

09:15-09:20 Try to find one single circular red sticker to stick on a journal. Finally manage to find one.

09:20-09:30 Deal with reader enquiry - someone returned twelve books but the catalogue says they are still loaned out. 

09:30-09:55 Cover desk and classify/process a Legal Deposit book.

09:55-10:00 Delve into the depths of the stack to return a journal.

10:00-10:25 Attempt to figure out an inter library loan request from America for a thesis our library holds. Decide it's best to ask colleague.

10:25- 11:55 Shelving with an intermission to sort out previous inter library loan.

11:55-12:10 Stupidly start dealing with another inter library loan five minutes before intended lunch.

12:10-13:00 Lunch over Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly.

13:00-14:00 Cover desk whilst colleague takes lunch and attempt to do some reclassifying in between reader enquiries. Learn what is meant by 'black box' after interrogating a student about their books.

14:00-15:00 Intended to do some reclass but visitors to the department were blocking my way to the material so I did more shelving, or, tidying up the students' squirreling attempts.

15:00-15:20 Swarms of students arrive having finished lectures and, predictably, the PCAS (photocopying, printing and scanning) machines have a tantrum and die. Enter my 'expert' skills, the off-on trick.

15:20-16:40 Go to the Law Library to amend a messy essay for university on collection management and development.

16:40-19:00 Cycle to and work at my second job. I do some foliating of letters from the 1930s and assist with an interesting enquiry (a cataloguer from Lambeth Palace Library suspects an item they are cataloguing  is a satire on the Church of England rather than a true story of a man hanged for piracy and it is my job to scour our documents for these 'pirates' names).

19:00-19:30 Sit in a graveyard eating tea.

19:30-21:00 ring at St Thos.

21:00 21:45 Royal Blenheim

21:45-10:30 Cycle home and sleep!

Too much information combined with complicated search engines

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All has been quiet on the blogging front. I started my second job a fortnight ago, which means working 8:30-7, and Saturday mornings. Sadly, university work became a priority over blogging.

University is actually going well. I emerged from the mathematical lecture understanding what had been explained and able to go home and relax, rather than tear hair out for hours attempting to fathom nonsense. The first two assessments are progressing well, which is nice to know. What isn't nice to know is there's another two assessments that haven't yet been started on.

One of my assessments is on improving awareness and use of web 2.0 tools in the library I work in and results of the survey I distributed shows that, just because these sites are available for libraries to promote their collections and services, without promotion they will never get consulted. Many of the people who completed the survey commented that using web 2.0 tools complicates things - what is wrong with using the main library page for all sources of information? Can there not be a list of new books on the library page, rather than navigating to another website such as LibraryThing or Twitter? Others commented that they just use Google because it's an easier database to search, despite the amount of information the library provides for them. As well as making these services available, libraries need to make sure they market them, otherwise people will not know they are there to use. Once people know they are there to use, they are unlikely to do so if it is too complicated, which means libraries then need to educate readers in how to benefit from the service. This still sounds like quite a lot of faff though when all people want is a basic and easy to use search engine/database. The sheer wealth of information makes finding your way through it complicated, and libraries aren't providing simple search engines to help, which makes you realise exactly why they don't use our services and opt for easy-to-use alternatives.

Libraries in the Modern World

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I actually had a very good couple of days at uni this week. In the Working with Information module we were taught binary codes (which we were apparently taught at school once upon a time but it completely escapes my memory), set theory, and efficient and compact coding. This wasn't actually explained in relation to libraries but I imagine (in layman's terms) it might have something to do with managing and representing information in an efficient manner. Correct me if I'm wrong because I have an exam to do on this.

I mentioned reading Libraries in the Modern World by Brophy in a previous post which created a stimulating discussion in the lecture because of the author's blatant opinion that libraries are coming to an end because librarians are not capable of adapting to the changes in the modern world, ie. technology, and as a result, will perish. Admittedly, he states that the points he makes are "deliberately presented as threats and deliberately couched in provocative terms" (17). Still, it's enough to rile anybody up who knows the effort librarians put into changing.

His fundamental purpose is to make people aware that change is occurring right now and that libraries need to change to keep up. He assumes, however, that there will be no counter-revolution and that technology is definitely the future (understandably). He also generalises libraries, making no distinction between the different types (academic, public, government) and, therefore, assumes that all libraries are equally at risk from the exact same threats.

He bases his assumptions that libraries will wither on the fact that "past experience would suggest that [libraries] are more likely to allow another market player to capture the market" (17) and that at the moment, although libraries are trying to change, they're not doing it quickly enough to keep up with the changes in technology. I think the main point from this, as an argument against Brophy, is that libraries do have the ability to adapt to those changes going on around them and they are going to adapt as they have done in the past, for example, from card catalogues to OPAC. He states that "libraries can seem to be falling victim to these [web 2.0] changes, unintended casualties of the information revolution" (8), which insinuates libraries neither want to or have put any effort into using web 2.0 to help promote themselves, their collections and keep in contact with their readers. Libraries could have ignored this new interactive information sharing facility deciding to maintain their traditions but they have embraced it because they know the difference it will make, and that is what libraries will continue to do.

And this is just the beginning

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So the first week of uni is complete. It wasn't as bad I thought it was going to be, although I was imagining hell itself. Things were pretty easy going with discussions about learning skills and studying skills, the history of libraries and key issues. 

The most interesting lecture, for me, was Working with Information (WWI),and yet it was also the most daunting as I was confronted with binary codes, HTML, document formats, digitisation and so on. All quite foreign to someone who studied English. 

For two of the modules (which are not WWI) we have already been set our assessments and it is the WWI module that has given me inspiration ... for one of the assessments, at least. Something along the lines of how once upon a time (not sure when exactly that is) information was quite sparse and hard to get hold of. Now, we have an abundance of information, so much so we're not entirely sure how to go about accessing it and what to do with it, which affects librarians as information changes format, ie. print to e-resources. As an example, I have been creating hyperlinks in Word for the DPhil reading list at work. A number of the items are only available as an e-journal but for the entire of today the server was down so I couldn't create these hyperlinks. Neither could any of the PGCE students access their set reading. Print copies seem the favourable option in this scenario but, as another example, three copies of one book that had their status as 'available' were all missing and have not yet been found either. In this case, an online version is best. It seems that either method of making resources more widely available has its faults, which may be a fault of our own in that, perhaps, we have become too used to having things, whatever they may be, readily available and information won't ever be constantly accessible to everyone, no matter how hard we try.