Studying?! by J.Salmoral

When I should have been writing my dissertation in 2009 I wrote a few articles for publication, but in the last 12-18 months my writing has pretty much stalled apart from blogging which I continue to do on a regular basis, and occasional articles for regional newsletters (because I’m on committees and sometimes get asked to write something up for the newsletter). Most of my publications have been in newsletter and magazines – I’ve only been through the peer-review process once and it was an event report so not as rigorous as a research article.

Writing is one of my focus areas for my Chartership, and something I’d like to improve, particularly with publishing my research in peer-reviewed journals (or professional journals). There have been some interesting discussions on the value of peer-review recently on Twitter and blogs, and it’s something I am still deciding my view on – I see the value in sharing via a blog (mainly for the currency and immediacy factor), but for research articles the longevity and kudos of a peer-reviewed journal make it far more appealing. I’m keen to support Open Access and would rather publish in an open access publication that I could also link to via my blog, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

In order to try to get back on track with writing, last week I attended the first of a two-part workshop on Writing for Publication. Below are my notes from the day (probably only of use to others who use lists – sorry!):

I know a number of people said they were interested in viewing it so I’ve included the details below. I have also added it to my publications page.

Strategic marketing in academic libraries: an investigation of current practice

Purpose
The purpose of the research is to investigate strategic marketing in academic libraries, incorporating elements of organisational orientation, strategic planning, and processes and procedures to support these.

Aims and objectives
The aim of the research is to build on existing literature, extending the knowledge of current practice in a relatively unexplored area within UK academic libraries. The objectives of the research are to identify key considerations for strategic marketing in academic libraries; to critically evaluate current theory on the subject; to explore current practice; and to formulate recommendations of best practice.

Methods
A mixed methods approach was chosen, using survey and case study strategies. An online questionnaire was used identify trends in current practice, whilst telephone interviews enabled more detailed exploration. A geographical sample, university libraries in the West Midlands, was chosen due to convenience. All nine libraries were invited to participate; one chose to opt out whilst one did not respond. This resulted in seven libraries participating in the questionnaire, with five of those also participating in an interview.

Results
The key considerations for strategic marketing in academic libraries emerging from the literature included market orientation, marketing planning and customer relationship management. Results showed that though market orientation is seen as a useful approach for libraries, the topic is relatively unfamiliar to librarians. Responsibility for marketing
planning varied across the libraries interviewed, though all but one utilise groups to bring experience from different areas of the library. All participating libraries have some form of marketing plan and engage in customer relationship management activities, however formal procedures and embedding into service planning was not evident.

Conclusions
Strategic marketing in academic libraries is of clear relevance to today’s economic situation, and the research highlights the need for raising awareness of such issues and considering implications and barriers to practice.

The item record is available in Aberystwyth University’s Cadair repository with the full text PDF linked from the item record.

EDITED TO ADD: This is likely to be my final blog post before Christmas this year, so I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! If you feel like doing something fun over the festive period, why not enter the Festive 24 Things 2011 quiz?

Pass with distinction

I didn’t expect it to take me 5 years to complete, but I’m glad I stuck with it and finished (if you read my earlier blog post about Belbin’s roles you’ll note that I’m a completer-finisher by nature so not finishing things really frustrates me!). Although I grew to dread working on the course (particularly the dissertation which dragged for 3 long years!), I do feel proud to have completed it and to have come away with a distinction.

I got some very positive feedback on my dissertation which I’m really pleased about – especially given the fact that I’m a researcher in my day job now! I am now contemplating repurposing it into a journal article, which is something I might look at in future (it was on strategic marketing in academic libraries). I believe a copy will be added to Aberystwyth’s institutional repository (Cadair), so I’ll post a link to it once it’s online.

For now though it’s time to celebrate!

I decided to do Library Day in the Life a little different this time round; partly because I’ve been busy, and partly as I’m not sure verbatim accounts are the most interesting thing to write or read. So instead I’ll be writing a summary of what I’ve been up to this week (using Nirvana, my to do list, to help me as I can check my logbook to see what tasks I’ve finished). My work life and professional interests often cross over so this list includes some pure work tasks, and other professional related tasks such as committee work and studying.

• Attended a half-day internal training session on our competencies framework for the library – this is something we are going to be using as part of our reflection for our annual performance reviews to analyse our strengths and things we need to improve on.
• Packed up my office – we’re moving offices again but we don’t know where to yet so we’ve been moved to some temporary classrooms as others needed our office. It’s the second time we’ve packed up and moved in less than a year!
• Worked on some data for an evaluation project – we’ve been working with one of the JISC Activity Data projects to help them evaluate their project. We’ve gathered data from the service itself and from surveys and focus groups we’ve had with project stakeholders. To finalise the report I created the relevant data tables and charts to accompany the figures.
• Attended Handheld Librarian V – one of my interests at the moment is how libraries can utilise mobile technologies, so I attended Handheld Librarian which is an online conference. It’s great in that it means I can attend without the cost of travelling to America, however the time difference meant it was a late night – the conference was 4pm-11.30pm UK time!
• Attended the Handheld Librarian V virtual expo – the day after the main conference, there is a virtual expo with booths from a number of suppliers. Some were closed when I tried to check them out, but I did get to watch a great demo of iBallz!
• Registered for Library Camp UK 2011 – Twitter exploded (well, the librarian corner of Twitter anyway!) on Wednesday when Library Camp UK 2011 in Birmingham was announced. It sold out in less than 24 hours, and there were 175 tickets! There’s now a waiting list so I made a donation via the website to enable more people to attend.
• Blogged about my experience at ALA Annual 2011 – I used a Tumblr blog for the conference but wanted to also share the main points on this blog
• Applied for ALA Emerging Leaders – I’m keen to support our professional organisations, and when I was at ALA Annual 2011 lots of people recommended the ALA Emerging Leaders program which is for young or new professionals. It introduces them to ALA as an organisation, provides the opportunity to work with others at a similar stage in their career (on a project for part of ALA), and helps them move into a committee position. It’s a great program and some really incredible people have been part of it in previous years. I’m keeping everything crossed that I get a place, but there’s a lot of competition!
• Contacted someone who is interested in joining the CILIP West Midlands committee - Last week I spotted a blog post from someone in the region who is keen to join the branch committee. We’re always looking for more committee members and have a vacancy for secretary at the moment so I promised I’d send some information about the committee and what we do. I love being part of the committee and would encourage others to get involved in committee work – it’s good for developing skills, making a difference, and it’s really rewarding too.
• Organised an informal meetup of library people for a quiz in a local cafe next week - at a meet up a couple of weeks ago, a few people seemed interested in doing quizzes. I love a good quiz so when I found out about one in Birmingham next Monday, I got it organised. Hopefully we’ll have enough people for a team or two.
• Blogged about the LIS DREaM event – I attended the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) project launch conference last week and blogged the highlights on my work blog
• Blogged my Thing 5 for CPD23 on reflection – I’m a bit behind on this but really enjoying the programme, and the reflection was a good one, particularly as I’m hoping to Charter at some point so will need to hone my reflective writing skills
• Had a conference call with colleagues – one of my colleagues is semi-retiring to go part-time so we had a call to discuss some of the work we’ve got coming up and how we are going to organise it. We also all have loads of leave to take – it seems like one of us could be off every week from now until Christmas (and there is only 3 of us!)
• Submitted my MSc dissertation – this is definitely the most exciting thing I’ve done this week; I finally got my dissertation completed and sent off. Organising printing and binding as a distance learner is tricky, but in the end it has worked out best for me to get it printed and bound at Aberystwyth so I just had to send off my signed declarations. So all being well, yesterday was the last day of studying for a while, and it feels lovely to have a clear desk and a much clearer mind (I even bought and built a VegTrug ready to start growing some veg!). I would like to Charter though, and have even managed to find a fool mug lovely person who is willing to mentor me next year. I may set up a wiki to start collecting material between now and then, but my focus has very much shifted from academia; I’m planning to spend my free time supporting professional organisations through committee work and other professional involvements (oh, and some non-professional activities such as crafts, growing veg and hopefully seeing more of family and friends).

And that was my week pretty much – not as much time spent travelling this week (last week I was in London on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday), so lots of time working at home to catch up with everything and get everything in order so that I can enjoy my week off this week.

Sax 1 by chickadee

(Post title will probably be lost on you if you haven’t been watching Treme on Sky Atlantic, but my boyfriend has been singing it constantly the last couple of days!)

I mentioned in my post at the start of the year that I wanted to attend more conferences this year, and in particular my first international conference. I’ve now stopped jumping around ecstatically and can share the news that I’m going to ALA Annual in June this year (it’s in New Orleans hence the Treme and jazz references!).

Why ALA Annual?

For those of you that don’t know ALA Annual is the largest library conference with around 20,000 librarians usually attending! I just cannot imagine that many librarians in one city.

I learn so much from attending conferences and events and love talking to other people within the profession – the largest conference I think I’ve attended until now was LILAC last year which had around 250 delegates. It was actually at this event that the seed was planted about attending ALA Annual. I really enjoyed speaking to international librarians and spent a lovely evening with a Canadian librarian at the conference dinner. She suggested that I might enjoy ALA Annual and said this year’s at New Orleans should be a really good one to attend. Since then I’ve been putting various things in place to try to get to ALA Annual. I hope I can meet up with her and buy a drink to thank her for giving me the motivation!

I joined the American Library Association (ALA) last November, and have been really impressed with what I get for my membership. There’s loads of information available for first time attendees of ALA Annual so I’ve been reading all about it whilst trying to source funding. Earlier this week I heard back from my application for John Campbell Conference/Travel Bursary to let me know that my application had been successful (I’ll be using this bursary and support from my employer to fund the trip). I am so thankful to have been given this opportunity and I’m now planning so that I can to make the most of it.

Plans for the trip

I’m really looking forward to hearing from international librarians about innovative developments in the LIS sector, and can’t wait to meet lots of librarians. I’ve been following many American library bloggers for a number of years now, many for longer than I have UK library bloggers, and I might finally get to meet some of the people behind the blogs. I may be too starstruck to say hello though!

As part of my application for funding, I also proposed a brief study visit to further my research in strategic marketing in academic libraries. Much of my literature review was based on US literature as there hasn’t been much into this area in the UK so far. ACRL released a study into marketing in academic libraries a few years ago which has been really useful for my research, but I’d like to know if things have changed at all since then. I’m hoping to speak to people at the conference about my research (and maybe even find people to interview), and I’m also hoping to plan a visit to a local university library. I’m particularly interested in visiting Louisiana State University libraries, so am ideally looking for contacts. If anyone can put me in touch with them I’d be very grateful! Also, if you are attending ALA Annual and interested in marketing academic libraries, please let me know – it would be great to chat to you (and if you’re attending and not that interested, I’d still love to meet you!).

Does anyone have any tips for attending ALA Annual? There’s so much to sort out and I don’t know what are must-do things! So far my schedule includes:

• Conference orientation sessions (NMRT or International, unfortunately they clash which is a real shame as had hoped to attend both)
• Gaming evening
• Tweetup
• Book Cart Drill World Championships – check out the video of last year’s winners!
• Walking tour of New Orleans
• International Round Table Reception Evening

I will of course be blogging and tweeting the conference (hopefully I’ll be able to use wireless access at the conference) so I’m sure there will be lots more blog posts about this before, during and after the conference. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contain my excitement so please bear with me!

• Complete my MSc dissertation – so it’s obvious that my motivation has slipped on this as I have favoured speaking at conferences and writing for publications and blogs, however this year I must complete my MSc as I have a deadline of September 2011 (a whole 5 years since I started my course in 2006). I’ve finished paying for it now too, so it’ll be worth the effort to complete the qualification. I am really interested in my topic area (strategic marketing in academic libraries), I’ve just been bad at bringing it to the top of the priorities as it didn’t have to be done, but now it does.
• Attend more conferences – whether it’s speaking or attending (I gain a lot from both), I really want to get out there this year and attend some great conferences. I learn so much from attending events and chatting to people, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to do more of this in 2011. I’m currently exploring and applying for funding, so we’ll see if anything comes of that. I would particularly like to attend ALA Annual this year so a lot of effort/planning is going into that (keeping everything crossed I can organise funding), and I’d also love to go to CILIP Umbrella as I haven’t yet been to the biennial CILIP conference and it would be great to attend.
• Implement the Getting Things Done system at both my home office and at work - I’ve always been keen on using to-do lists and calendars to manage my time, but I’ve recently been learning more about the GTD methodology and would like to properly organise both my workspaces at home (I often work from home) and in the office (we’ll be moving offices soon so this will be a good opportunity to get properly set up).
• Participate in Library Day in the Life – many people have asked me what I do in my new job and it’s very difficult to describe, so I’ll be participating in the Library Day in the Life project again this year to hopefully share a bit of what I get up to nowadays. It’s a really great project to get involved in so I’d encourage anyone reading to consider joining in too, you can read all about it here and see some of my previous Library Day in the Life posts.
• Continue to blog - obvious one this, and I don’t imagine it will be a difficult one for me. I find blogging so incredibly useful to gather my thoughts, get feedback from my peers, and reflect on what I’ve learnt. I contribute to a number of blogs now, and the number continues to grow, but I hope to continue blogging here as my main area for sharing my thoughts and experiences. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it is I’m genuinely passionate about and what drives me to do the work I do. I think my blog changes direction to reflect my interests, but I like having the space to share these thoughts and keep a record of them.

Those are the main things I hope to achieve in 2011, let’s hope I manage to achieve them. If you have any resolutions you’d like to share (I know for some people this acts as a motivator), please feel free to add them in the comments.

So what did 2010 bring? Well, I certainly satisfied that itch I mentioned this time last year!

It’s been a good year for attending events – the highlight for me was getting the sponsored student place for LILAC 2010. I absolutely loved the conference and spent a very enjoyable 3 days chatting to librarians from different countries about their experiences with information literacy. I always learn a lot from attending events, both from the formal sessions and from the conversations at the event, and this was particularly true at LILAC. I met some fascinating people and was able to chat with American and Canadian librarians (such as Sarah Faye Cohen who has always been an inspiration, and a lovely Canadian librarian who I chatted to throughout the dinner evening); these conversations really helped improve my understanding of issues common to many librarians.

I also attended my first UC&R/CoFHE conference this summer, for which I had two presentations accepted. I spoke about using social media to build your professional network (this was primarily aimed at new professionals), and I collaborated with Emma Illingworth to present on your library brand and the student experience. This was something of interest to both Emma and I, but not something we had much practical experience with – our presentation seemed to generate further interest in the area and marketing in libraries seems to be really taking off now (including an interesting book proposal from Ned Potter).

The major change of the year for me happened in late summer, when I applied for a new job at Birmingham City University. I was delighted to be offered the job, and started work as a researcher at Evidence Base in August. I was ready for a new challenge and that’s certainly been realised! I haven’t written much about my new job but I am really enjoying it so far. It’s very different to my previous role, involving working as a researcher for a self-funded department which is part of the university library (it used to be part of the library school). So far I’ve been involved in research and evaluation work for library/information community, including working with JISC projects. I’m looking forward to starting back after a relaxing break and beginning some new projects as well as utilising my skills to develop Evidence Base’s web presence and hopefully run some events.

Through my new job, I’ve been able to attend some different types of events and was invited to speak to school librarians about how they can help prepare students for university. I really enjoyed the event and have been invited to speak to a different group of school librarians about the same topic next year. I was also invited to a UKOLN organised event for the cultural heritage sector focused on social media. I used a case study approach to demonstrate how problems at my workplaces have been addressed by utilising social media.

I have also been busy with CILIP West Midlands commitments as Marketing Officer. My role includes managing our online presence (Twitter, blog, Flickr etc.), producing monthly email updates, and communicating with our users wherever possible to understand their needs and how we can meet them. As we are a relatively small committee, I’ve also taken on additional responsibilities including event organisation. We worked with The Birmingham Salon to organise a successful debate involving both library and information workers and the general public (focused on the new Library of Birmingham), and in November I organised and chaired a Hustings event for the CILIP 2011 candidates (Vice President and Councillors). This was quite a stressful thing to take on with all the governance that must be adhered to (and especially as I’ve never chaired anything before), but I’m really glad I did it – I developed a number of new skills, and we got some great feedback too which was very pleasing. We utilised online streaming and were able to include questions from outside the room which worked really well, and is something I’d definitely like to do again in future.

I also joined the American Library Association (ALA) this year (my membership card came through this morning!). I’m hoping to be able to get involved with the work of ALA and have joined the New Member’s Round Table – hopefully I will be able to attend a conference to get a flavour of the international perspective.

With all this going on, unfortunately progress on my MSc dissertation has slipped slightly. I did finalise my topic (strategic marketing in academic libraries, focusing on the West Midlands region) and completed a draft of the introduction and literature review, but am still finalising the draft methodology (thankfully my new job has helped develop my research skills which I’m hoping will help speed things along). The dissertation will be a major focus for the next few months.

In my personal life, I finally learnt to drive this year and have adapted to gluten free life (I was diagnosed with coeliac disease on 31st December 2009). I’ve also been cross stitching more and more in my free time – it keeps me sane by relaxing my mind and is something I hope to be able to continue.

The year ended with a new project which I really enjoyed – Festive 24 Things, an online advent calendar which I did with Damyanti Patel. I’ve always wanted to do a 23 Things style programme and this was a great introduction to that.

So, what are my hopes for next year? I think I’ll leave that for a resolutions post tomorrow. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2011!

The time has finally come – I just can’t put it off any more! I’ve been taking a break from studying whilst I settle into my new job, but I can’t really use that excuse anymore as I’ve been in this job for over a year now.

I’ve been researching ideas for my dissertation for a while now, and have been spending a lot of time reading, researching and thinking – now it’s time to do some real work. I’ve been talking to lots of people about my ideas; I must mention special thanks to Sarah Oxford from University of Worcester who I visited in the summer (for a totally different reason!) and really inspired me to start properly thinking about my dissertation and continue research in a similar area to her own.

I have finally narrowed down my topic to marketing in HE libraries in the UK, although I’m still refining the methodology. Having worked on a part-time basis with my boyfriend and his marketing business, I am interested in the strategic marketing side of things, as I feel libraries should probably be doing more of this. I’d like to find out what, if any, market research UK academic libraries are currently involved in, if they have a marketing strategy, and who holds responsibility for the direction of the marketing.

I’m also interested in innovative marketing methods, and hope to do a case study approach for a few of these. I would like to know more about how academic libraries in the UK are currently using social media, so one of these may be good as a case study (e.g. a successful library blog/Facebook/Twitter account) but from a marketing point of view rather than a technical point of view.

I submitted a dissertation proposal earlier this month but haven’t heard anything back yet. The working title is “Marketing UK Higher Education libraries: a current perspective”. I imagine there will be some alterations and suggestions for improvement, but I hope the research area is agreed in principle and that I can be assigned a dissertation supervisor soon. I have to be honest, I have found distance learning difficult – it’s great to be able to work at your own pace and when I was really keen to work through the Diploma everything was fine, but it’s been isolating at times, especially when home life or work life takes over and you lose motivation for studying. I went to the research study school to prepare for the dissertation in September 2008, which seems like a lifetime away now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to start work on my dissertation properly next year, and if you work in a UK academic library (and particularly if you have responsibility for marketing!) I may well be in touch begging for help!

This may well be my last blog post before Christmas – if so, Seasons Greetings to all readers and I hope you enjoy the festivities whatever you get up to.