NOT a Framework 5 post: inclusive practice project

So...I've discovered the reality of the inclusive course I am doing - which is, yes, I have a project to do that connects my learning with summat real. Always maintain this is the better way to learn by doing it on the job, but it's caught me out a bit.

It's not so much the 'what' of the project for me but the 'how'. How best to demonstrate that everyone's views matter; how to best to establish success criteria which gains buy in from everyone. And oddly how to do this in an environment where there are huge changes happening; for example, flexible working, new management systems, new and more training, new strategies - change, change, and more change.

There are tried and tested techniques in a trusty 'toolkit' that I have by,  but here's the thing - they don't all work! We're not all robots, and we can't always expect things to work out as we imagine.  And we all hear things so differently. If you listen to a presentation you will hear one message if you are someone who generally feels empowered, compared to someone who is distressed or anxious or defensive or someone keen to see change, or who feels entitled, or has a can-do attitude.

This is all about being 'inclusive' - how do we ensure that everyone understands the success criteria for the project in the same way (will we ever all actually even think of it as 'success'?) and so how can we ever measure whether it has been successful? Obviously the project should benefit someone or something, but agreeing on whether that someone or something needs this happening is debatable.

The reality is - I need a project. The next reality is a member of my team has suggested one - so I'm in facilitating mode, not driving mode. Next challenges......tackling outcomes and outputs remembering that we WILL have a whole range of hidden opinions and attitudes which are creating barriers to success. Next reality......working REALLY hard at finding a message that strikes to the hearts of everyone........

Framework 5, Thing 2: Resource Discovery

Task 1: Summarise the current competency into 40-50 words

Current Competency description (taken from Framework) :

“Developing skills relating to resource discovery leads learners to understand that the search process encompasses both the sources themselves, as well as the means to access those sources. Learners understand that resource discovery is likely to be a non-linear, iterative process where they will engage regularly with finding and evaluating information from a wide range of sources to satisfy their research question. In addition, it entails understanding specific formats and types of information appropriate to the discipline. Resource discovery requires flexibility on the part of learners to pursue alternative avenues as understanding develops.”

My version:

Successful resource discovery is dependent on the context and purpose of the search, the ability to understand the usefulness of content found, and an awareness of the limitations (self-imposed or otherwise) of the search process. Context influences where, what and how ‘search’ may happen.

Task 2 Stories

How I got distracted assuming that because I don’t understand tech stuff, those who do must always be right.

This involved trialing a software system, specifically when I was researching how to download citations into a Word list. Stages of the story went a bit like this:

• Watched as a current user demo’d how to download citations into a referencing tool from a piece of software - we'd been hoping that it would work seamlessly. It didn't.
• Consulted tech expert locally
• Tech expert investigated and comes back with a solution - I accepted the answer although it didn’t solve the problem
• Conversations return to this issue some months later - still not ideal that there is not a satisfactory solution and it may hold up development
• In an idle moment I start searching on google for more information
• I find information from another University and from the software system suppliers – generally decide to trust both sources as University has been using software for some time and supplier owns the product so not entirely sure why they would lie.....
• But can’t understand the supplier tech stuff. CAN understand the University approach as it is a version that is created for students, so look to test their solution
• Ask a current software user to trial the technique
• Bingo......

 

How I got distracted using the internet when face-to-face research discovery was better

• Have a free second hand toddler bed delivered; no mattress
• Find out from previous owner that toddler bed was originally from JLs
• Go onto JL website in lunchtime at work (having successfully remembered to think about needing to buy one) to source mattresses
• Conclusion of initial search - size of bed is important! But I do at least have an idea that costs can range from 60-300 pounds and that there might be other questions I need to ask
• Measure bed and return to website....no better off really
• Resolve to go into JLs and look at REAL mattresses
• Go in, armed with measurement, discuss pros and cons with JL staff, remember to ask mother of toddler if she has any preference/reason for choosing one rather than another; consider cheaper rather than more expensive as will only be used a few times a year.
• Consider options for delivery as opposed to collection depending on my time.
• Sorted - toddler may come and stay whenever he wishes.

Learning points? Persistence vital, definition of 'authority' in the specific instance must always be critically checked out, recognize what the most useful set of information is before beginning searching, and the iterative process may take you in different directions; perhaps also knowing when you have enough information for the task in hand ie when to stop and say enough is enough. 

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NOT a Framework 5 post: Minorities

Currently undertaking a course on inclusivity at work, I have found myself thinking a lot about the topic of minorities and I reckoned that as I was using my blog for Framework 5 reflections, that I would do the same for this course. So here are some thoughts about day 2 of my course.

During day 2 we found ourselves in a section called ‘supporting performance’; as part of this we discussed minorities under the overall heading of ‘how being in a minority can affect our performance’. The little exercise that accompanied this section was very thought provoking and challenged me.

We were asked in the workshop to discuss with our neighbour about a time when we felt we were in a minority and how that made us feel. I was intrigued at the stories I instinctively chose to talk about. Really small scale examples were shared for the most part, and the activity was very reactive (we had no prep time for this). So nothing hugely life changing - although I have wondered since. The benefit of doing this was it made me think that I CAN relate to some of the experiences of being in a minority, although in many ways this also can only be a brief insight. Some of the examples of being in a minority that I used on the day/or I might have used:

• Being one of just a few ‘British kids’ in an all American School
• Living in a country where white British was a minority group, and caught in the middle of a civil war
• One of 30 women students in a student population of 400 in the first year of women at a previously all male Cambridge College
• Being a Christian in the UK today

Each of the above has had/has an impact, not perhaps the impact that ethnic or sexuality minorities might face, and not dismissing any of the experiences that other minorities experience in any way, but still important to acknowledge. They have produced reactions in me which have changed me in some small scale or larger scale way, and in some instances can occasionally become tiring to keep in balance and to maintain a positive view about so that they do not impact the workplace.

It has been said (on the internet) that the word minority is a group of people that differ in some way from the majority of the population. The really interesting part of the workshop discussion on minorities for me however, was about how a whole range of behaviours are experienced and displayed, and just how many of them might be due to a person experiencing being in a minority - and not just the more obvious minorities. I imagine that perhaps in a similar way something about how I behave is related to being part of minorities through my life – as in the examples above. There are both negative and positive behaviours that I think I see in myself that I might attribute to those minority experiences. A key difference being that at least two of my examples were ‘short-lived’, and so different, even if they still had some kind of impact.

I hope that I am more mindful of how being in a minority, any minority, can have an impact on how people react, how they behave in a meeting, how they respond to others. I’m aware too of how my own minority experiences can impact my behaviour and how to respect myself as well as others.  I’m also aware far more than before that there are a multitude of behaviours resulting from being in a minority. 

But to finish my rambling thoughts on this - sometimes the experiences of being in a minority can obviously be problematic, but sometimes they can be brilliantly positive, it doesn’t always have to be challenging and draining, but can also be uplifting and special - and just keeping your eyes on the positive can have a huge benefit.

Framework Five: Thing 1

Types of information I seem to regularly handle: 

There seem to be a lot of forms to fill in during a working week - all sorts and shapes and sizes. Ensuring that the right information is to hand and that I have understood the question is important. If I need a payroll reference then I know I can usually find it in one of two places; if I need to know what an hour of work for a temporary employee on a particular grade is likely to cost us, then I need to know where to find that and to have some numeracy skills (along with my trusty calculator) to establish the cost, knowing that I also need to add that magic thing called 'on-costs'. 

Fluency in this aspect of my work seems to feel like it could be about constant practice bringing a sense of familiarity or speed of action; but there is also that additional nuance about understanding the context of each form and what language or tone, or crucially what specific subset of information, is required for each case. I'm not over-stating it to say that I have churned out many a business case for new staff, replacement staff, temporary staff (it's a function of my role), and with 20 or 30 or more business cases now behind me, I would say I am fluent (and usually successful - I know, I should be careful in what I say) in producing them. I can assess the key points, I understand the broader employment landscape within which to situate my arguments, and the basic facts of what, who, & how much will it cost, are now my daily bread and butter. In other words it really doesn't take very long to spit one of these out. 

My fluency in this task has certainly shifted from moderately inept to moderately good. The changes that I can chart in this process are about becoming comfortable in what, and how, I write; I know where to find the information I need quickly and speedily, I know who to ask for help (the finance division adviser I have is just a perfect star - no question is too basic or unconventional). I have kept and stored some of the examples of cases that I have written in the past, especially the successful ones of course. If I were organised enough I could write notes on the unsuccessful ones marking up what to change for 'next time'. That would certainly be another way to help my future self.....

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

I'm a Fellow: a story of meanders and the occasional ox-bow lake

Yesterday a beautiful certificate arrived in the post. It made me think a little about 'success' and what that means and, inevitably, what it doesn't mean.

A book that I have at work and fish out every so often and read snippets from, and which has made a significant impact on me, (in conjunction with attending one of his amazing lectures on how to be a successfully busy person) is 'The Heart of Success' by Rob Parsons - one of the most humble, but successful, people I have come across. Depends on your definition of success of course.........

If I had to point to the things that I consider to be 'real' successes in my professional life - the things that I remember instantly, without having to dredge my memory at length to find them - they are often small and rather insignificant. Here are a few:

• working alongside someone and making a difference to them, and to their workflows
• really useful conversations with academics when making a cup of tea, or by the photocopier
• shelving books when it's not in my job description, but I can call anyone on it because it is a strategic activity (staff management, collection management, space management, I could go on)
• making time as often as possible for a 30 minute walk at lunchtime
• meeting close professional friends for regular sanity checks
• taking the time to visit a contact where they work and knowing how useful that was to both of us

When I started to write my application that resulted in this rather beautiful certificate, I was a little unsure about whether it would be good enough. But when I started to plot the things that had happened over the last 10 years on a timeline, then I found more confidence. It made me realise that one of the keys to 'success' for me is stickability and commitment, but dovetailing that with an innovative style. If you constantly change too many parameters you never have time to truly reflect and evaluate. I created two sorts of timeline to help me unpick all of this - one for fun using tiki toki. The other I defined as:

 "Publications Bibliography: deliberately starting with early work, and progression to most recent work, in order to demonstrate the changes over time and how areas of writing and presentations were influenced by other factors, both internal and external to the workplace. A story of meanders and the occasional ox-bow lake."

Ultimately of course as I consider that in the foreseeable future I can happily give up work and devote myself to other (important) things, you realise that success at work is probably overrated (it's dead nice to have it while you're there, don't get me wrong).Trite though it may seem, 'you can't take it with you'! And chances are the minute you leave work the next person in will change a lot of what you have done. 

So bottom line - what's success about? I would probably say that it's about making 'work', work for you, it's about being confident of your skills and using them to help the people who most need it, and it's being confident that little tiny successes are sufficient! We don't need to conquer the world, just try and do our best.

But in any case, thanks to CILIP for being a professional body that encourages librarians to be successful!

How much of a difference does it make?

Attended another great ALISS event ('Doing more with less') yesterday and listened to a presentation on using the Inspiring Learning for All framework to set objectives and evaluate outcomes. The presentation was concerned with how setting objectives and evaluating them by using this framework ensured that you could demonstrate impact. It made me think.....

The other presentations informed my thought processes:

• What if your team was cut in half overnight and you had to displense with all those lovely 'added value' things that we do. What would our final list of priority activities look like?
• What if you had a staff culture of being research practitioners - so that significant changes were underpinned by research (ideally disseminated research as a further 'test' of solidness).
• What if you constanly played with yet another new techie tool ...

Bottom line - how much of a difference would these all make to a student? What, of all the things that we do - the workshops we run, the TLC we provide, the resources we make available, the study space we make available - actually have an impact? How much of a difference does it make and is it remotely possible that we could evaluate and measure this in such a way as to create the sort of impact that a senior administrator in a University could immeditately understand.

So - currently my thinking goes a little bit like this.

• I reckon that we still don't have much of a clue about the enormous LACK of impact we have on students. They are wrapped up in their own worlds which, let's face it, doesn't put the Library anywhere near the top of the priority list.We need to disintangle those things that we hold dear from the service we offer, so that at the very least we focus on those (possibly few) things that make the most impact - although see the next point about being a bit canny about what this might be!
• There are some easy quick wins that we can do that really do work and are impactful. Lets be known as responsive and do away with the need to have things signed off in triplicate.
• Impact should be specific. If we are known to be friendly and approachable that is lovely and reassuirng. But we need to ask oursleves what that friendliness and appraochabliity means for our students/academics in terms of their teaching and research activities - that's the information that will make an impact on our managers and on the University.
• Many of us have not had to lose over half of our staff and decide what our priorities are - we have not really needed to consider what things are having the MOST impact, we carry on inventing new and better ways of doing things because we like doing it, we like playing and tweaking. How about if we stopped, asked ourselves a question about what we are doing first and then conducted a very short bit of reseach to INFORM our decision before jumping? (Yes - I shall now put the external book box return to one side until we can find out what impact it might have....)
• I implemented the Kirkpatrick model of evaluation recently for some training and found it very useful. It became much clearer what the impact of the training was (not all what I thought it would be) and I have used that to summarise the outcomes of the training when talking to senior management. So impact information should be shared. It's no point keeping it a secret.
• And then the real killer question to myself was - how could we actually demonstrate/document the possible impact on a student that attending a library workshop might have. And even if we can do that, do we ever weigh up the time and resources we put in to the workshop against the impact it has had. Questions that need some research!

 So - as ususal too many questions but a great challenge to try and be smarter in what we do and how we do it.

The Space Time Continuum

Some very cool new ideas for helping libraries to re-think their design of spaces were presented today. What totally appealed was the scalability of some of the ideas. The bare minimum for a low intensity work space was brilliant. We only need a lamp and a cushion and we're there. The high intensity option would be pretty impossible where I work, but I can see shades of grey and I get the point. I loved the idea that we need spaces which can be flexibly arranged so that more people can easily be packed in during exam revision time.

I especially liked the use of terms like primary, secondary and tertiary to describe types of work. Despite my query at the presentation about the impact of disciplines on the space designs, I can really see how this classification is pertinent to all subjects.

So there are several things that I wonder about. Given the size and complexity of the project it was going to be impossible to include other things alongside the space research, but I wonder how 'teaching and learning', the invisible library user and 'time' fit into all of this.

1. Teaching and Learning
Do subject librarians know enough about how their academics teach which impacts how their students study and learn, to then be able to translate that into relevant designs for space in their libraries. In Cambridge, I guess that we might. So I know that the Cambridge English degree is all about practical criticism; it's all about close reading of primary texts and an enormous part of the fresher induction is that teachers want to know ASAP what the student's 'voice' is - right from the start. What do THEY think?! Contrast that to my dim memories of a social science subject where theories had to be understood and learnt and applied in the right context - I don't suppose that it is massively different now. Academic teaching style in Cambridge differs - in English the 'singleton' supervision is much desired and fought for by college teachers as essential. For engineers or geographers, small groups are the norm. Do these types of things impact HOW someone studies and learns? What paraphernalia they need? Or do study needs ride above the wave of teaching differences? How should we be designing teaching spaces in libraries? The project definitely gives a nod towards how expertise is shared by library staff, though the glass box consultation room feels a bit too much 'on show'. I think that I would have to retreat to my relationship management mantra on this and say that library staff can teach 'on the hoof' wherever they are, but that it is knowing the user that is really important to enable that to happen. But many of us would advocate that some type of defined 'teaching space' is helpful.


2. Which brings me to a second point expressed by the project team themselves. What about all those students who don't use any library space that we think they could or should or might? Does it matter if they don't? Are we in danger of designing for those who are already IN the library at the expense of those who are not? A crucial bit of UX work at EFL by Helen Murphy showed that one group of students come and use the library to gather resources, but will never write an essay there. They infinitely prefer their college room for this task. Is this a problem? No. Should our designs think about them? Yes - probably. They use the library to borrow books and that's ok? Does this justify the intense focus on study space in libraries by the project. Perhaps all we need is a 'landing zone' and all the collections easily available? Or perhaps we can just send all the items a user wants to their room and save them the trouble of needing any library space at all? I'm definitely not advocating one or the other, but designing library space must also always be about designing space for this type of functional activity.

3. Finally a third point - one which might change the use of the study spaces for all sorts of reasons, and that is 'time'. In Cambridge we are woefully behind the HE library trend and for the most part do not provide access 24/7 (exception are some colleges, and a few faculties/departments with swipe card access for a few), and not on Sundays, and certainly not year round! SO my question is (and that is all it is, I have no solutions) is what would happen to the use of study spaces if they were available 24/7, or on Sundays, or...or....Anecdotal impressions from Cambridge Colleges are that without the 'invigilator' there, noise levels go up, rules get broken etc. Some people probably leave, others might arrive looking for a different type of working space. When so many of our students spend the wee small hours finishing that weekly essay, what would change if they did this in a library space? Would they come at all? I don't know. But I do wonder if 'time' should be included in a project looking at how people use space.

I am amazed at how much data was gathered and analysed in the project about space. I can't imagine why anyone would ignore the findings and the design opportunities. It would be wonderful if equal attention were given to the aspects described above - then I would challenage anyone to suggest a more robust and useful template/model for future library design.