I thought I’d continue the tradition I started last year and end 2009 by posting a reflective blog post about the year.

It’s been a year full of ups and downs, mainly ups thankfully – although at times it’s been difficult to focus on the positives, I’ve learnt a lot this year about myself.

This time last year I had recently started my first professional librarian job, and one year in I’m really enjoying it – it was definitely worth all the hard work completing my Diploma. I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects such as improving the way we manage inductions, sharing information about our information literacy provision via an online shared calendar, communicating with our users via online technologies such as social media, and an evaluation of a collection leading to a lot of weeding and rearrangement of one of our rooms. It’s a part time position which has also given me the opportunity to also develop other areas.

I’ve learnt a lot more about marketing thanks to my work with my boyfriend at Cookies and Java, and this has given me inspiration for my MSc Dissertation. I had hoped I’d complete it this year to be honest, but life took over and my new target is the end of next year (this may also be too ambitious, we’ll see!).

I’ve also been able to spend time focusing my efforts on researching areas which really interest me, and I’ve done a heck of a lot of professional reading this year – books, journal articles, conference papers and blog posts. I’ve also attended conferences (highlights include the CoFHE Conference, New Professionals Conference, The Library Show and Middlemash – which I still need to write up!), training events, and participated in a number of other events online.

One major achievement for me this year is that I have spoken at two events, the New Professionals Conference and the CILIP Graduate Open Day. I was incredibly nervous but must have enjoyed it since I’ve volunteered myself for more! I’m really glad I decided to give it a go and am particularly thankful to my boss who encouraged me to go for it, and to role models such as Meredith Farkas for their inspiration and advice to push yourself that little bit further.

I’ve authored and co-authored more journal articles and it’s been really exciting to see my name in print. I’ve also continued to write posts for this blog, and really enjoy sharing my ideas and particularly getting comments back from readers. As I touched on last year, blogging has become integrated into my routine and is a really useful avenue for reflection or sharing ideas; it’s something I have also encouraged others to do this year.

My professional network has grown so much in 2009, particularly with other UK librarians and new professionals, and I think this is a massive highlight of 2009. The growth of popularity of Twitter has contributed enormously to this, and there are a number of new UK librarian bloggers too. I’ve also been able to meet a number of these people face to face this year which has been great (I was particularly starstruck when I met Phil Bradley at the Library Show), and I hope to meet more in 2010.

Being more connected with the librarian network in the UK has made me excited about what the future might bring for the profession, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to be a part of that change. The New Professionals Conference was a really positive event – there was so much enthusiasm and energy and it was great to meet other new professionals. Many of these, including myself, are now becoming more active in the future of the profession by becoming CILIP activists or even just making sure their voice is heard – the CILIP 2.0 event earlier in the year showed just how much people evidently have to say. CILIP’s Big Conversation in 2010 will hopefully bring some exciting ideas (although I share other’s worries that the initial invitation seems elitist).

I’m looking forward to the challenges of 2010 – for me personally that will include my MSc Dissertation, marketing responsibility for CILIP West Midlands, speaking at the CoFHE/UC&R conference, and possibly starting my Chartership. There will also be new challenges within my job role due to a restructure, and within the library profession as a whole with the changes in society, the economy and education. All I can say is bring it on, here’s to 2010! Happy New Year everyone

Due to the nature of my career history so far (numerous temporary contracts and moving campuses), I have changed jobs a lot in the last few years. In just over four years at my current place of work I’ve had five interviews, five different jobs (four in the same job role but different locations and contracts), and worked at three different campuses. I’m now in my first professional post which I started just over a year ago.

I’ve become pretty accustomed to moving around and having different jobs, so having a permanent librarian job is a bit of a novelty. However, it’s got past that twelve month period now and although a lot of the time I still feel like the new girl (I hadn’t worked at this campus before and many of the staff have worked here for a long time), part of me is wondering where I’m supposed to go next. I guess it’s because I’m so used to changing jobs, and also because by nature I’m very reflective (need to get myself registered for Chartership really to make the most of it!). I think it’s also maybe because I’m at the beginning of my career so am still very keen and enthusiastic!

Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoy my job and there’s a lot I want to learn and improve upon, but there’s a side of me that’s ready for a new challenge. I have my dissertation which I hope to begin soon (I sent my proposal off recently – see my recent blog post) and as mentioned I’m hoping to start my Chartership also, and I’ve just become part of the CILIP West Midlands committee – I guess those things should challenge me!

I think I’ve just come to realise that my work side is very different to my personal side where I’m pretty averse to change, maybe they balance each other out?! I suppose it’s a good thing for me that we will be going through a restructure soon, hopefully it will bring with it new challenges.

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.

I was pleased to be able to attend CoFHE Mid-West/UC&R’s recent event “Tell us what you want (what you really, really want…): Library surveys and promotion on a shoestring”. The morning session looked at ways of getting user feedback through surveys and focus groups, and the afternoon focused on marketing initiatives to promote academic library services. Despite an interesting journey (Kassam Stadium is very hidden and not easy to find from the bus service out of Oxford), I managed to find my way there having found other delegates on the same bus!

Following tea, coffee and biscuits (and allowing time for presentations to be converted to the correct Word format!), the day began with a presentation from Anne Rowlands and Stephen Cullimore from Barnet College. They shared their experiences of using surveys and shared some good practice about the structure of a questionnaire, when and how to do it, and the types of questions to ask (e.g. open, closed, free text). At Barnet College they were interested in getting user feedback about their Learning Centres and devised a short 4 question survey which automatically loaded when users logged onto a PC (once for each user). Using this method they gathered 2600 responses; a higher response rate that the general student satisfaction survey at the college. Some of the data may shape the future of the service, although Anne stressed the importance of using a trial period (e.g. if students request longer opening hours) to assess and evaluate whether the change is feasible and if real use reflects the views expressed in the survey. Anne and Stephen hope to further their work to ensure they reach a wider audience (their current feedback was only from those who used the PCs in the Learning Centre in a certain period of time which could have skewed their results). They also hope to use the data to feed into “You say, we say” displays to demonstrate the importance of user feedback.

The next presentation was about focus groups, by Jan Haines from Oxford Brookes University. Jan’s talk was particularly interesting for me as I’m interested in learning more about how focus groups can be used and how to run them. She discussed the advantages of a focus group – qualitative, subjective feedback where the group can build on other’s ideas and are often more willing to talk than in an individual interview. Jan recommended using focus groups when you require in-depth information on a particular area, and using a group who share something in common. She went on to share some advice on the who, what, where, and when of planning and focus group as well as some advice on publicity and promotion, what to do on the day (before, during and after), and how to analyse the data and provide feedback to users (both those involved in the focus groups and those the decisions may impact upon). Unfortunately, despite all this research and forethought, Oxford Brookes still struggled to get participants for their focus group, highlighting how difficult this methodology can be (this issue was also raised recently at Middlemash, where Owen Stephens and others shared their experiences of lack of interested participants and no shows in their own focus groups). Jan’s presentation was really interesting and certainly gave me a lot to think about in practical terms of using focus groups.

We broke for lunch at this point – excellent variety although sadly a lack of labels (people are always interested in a food report so wouldn’t want to miss out that important point!). The afternoon session was handed over to Terry Kendrick, who was previously a librarian and now combines consultancy work with employment as a lecturer in marketing. His credentials certainly made him appropriate for a marketing event about libraries, and he didn’t disappoint.

Terry began with some basic principles of marketing, and a particularly eye-opening task. He asked us to think about the last time we studied for a course and asked it to think about the main reasons for doing it. He separated us into two groups; those who were passionate about the subject and just wanted to learn more, and those who were interested in the subject but mainly did it to get a qualification. Needless to say, the majority of the room (including myself) moved to the latter group. Terry then pointed out that if libraries market themselves by talking about all their “stuff”, our message will only interest the small minority that are incredibly passionate and always want to know more. If we want to reach the other group, we need to tailor our messages for their needs – being able to save time for example, or improve grades. This message really stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since – as both an undergraduate and postgraduate student, I didn’t use the library that much. I use electronic resources, and as an undergraduate I spent a lot of time in the library to use the PCs (in the days before internet access in halls of residence!), but I didn’t take advantage of many of the library services that were no doubt available to me. I’m now analysing our marketing far more – how would I market to someone like myself?

The afternoon was packed full of lots of activities and sharing ideas for marketing initiatives, with a particular focus on word of mouth marketing. Terry stressed the power a good testimonial can have in terms of marketing, particularly if the message is from someone that users see as having similar needs to themselves. We need to give our users a reason to talk about the library and build active communication channels to enable these interactions. One such example of these is the frequently seen “Share this with a friend” type features on the web (for example, I use ShareThis on my blog – but can you do this on your library website and online catalogue?).

Another key message I took from the afternoon was the importance of how we contact users, with what message, and when. This is something I am particularly interested in – I support the work of my boyfriend’s marketing business two days a week, and it leads to some interesting conversations. I come from a more service-based environment, mainly B2C (business to consumer), whereas my boyfriend mainly works in the B2B (business to business) market, primarily supporting products rather than services. One of the things we agree on (yes, despite these differences a lot of our ideas about marketing are fundamentally the same!) with regards to marketing is the growing importance of relationship marketing. Terry emphasised elements of this by pointing out that if the library sends mass emails, people may well see this as an intrusion, and if it is not relevant to them at that particular moment (highly likely!), they will begin to think of the library brand as one which is an irritant to them and not very helpful. Over time, this can have a massive effect on the brand perception of the library, and we therefore need to think very carefully about the messages we convey, how, and when. In particular, we need to make sure they are relevant and timely.

As you can probably tell, I got a lot out of the training event and would thoroughly recommend going to one of Terry’s sessions if you get the opportunity. A lot of the areas covered have stayed with me and made me think critically about our own marketing efforts. The morning sessions were also very interesting, particularly as they each focussed on a certain technique common to library marketing research. I also met some fantastic people – the table I sat on had some fascinating conversations, both from an FE and a HE perspective, and it was really interesting to share our thoughts and experiences and discuss new ideas to improve marketing within our institutions. Many thanks to CoFHE Mid West/UC&R for organising such an enjoyable event!

A couple of weeks ago I attended my first CILIP Branch and Groups (BNG) event on behalf of CILIP West Midlands branch. The events are held throughout the year by Kathy Ennis and Lindsay Rees-Jones from CILIP Membership Support Unit. This event was titled “Marketing: getting your message out”; many of the delegates were responsible for marketing within their branch/group.

It was my second visit to CILIP HQ, although I still needed my Google Maps app to navigate London and find my way from Euston station! There were around 15 delegates, and it was good to have the opportunity to discuss activities within their branches and groups as well as in their day jobs, which represented a wide range of sectors and roles.

After a quick drink and opportunity to network, we moved upstairs for a brief introduction to the day from Kathy and Lindsay. The day began with a keynote speaker, Elizabeth Elford, who currently works at the British Library. She presented an overview of marketing essentials and shared some innovative marketing campaigns, and is happy for her presentation to be shared – I will update this post when I get a copy. UPDATE: Elizabeth’s presentation is now available online.

Elizabeth presented us with a useful acronym when planning marketing activities – RSVP (Relationship, Strategy, Value, Professional). The main points to bear in mind are to get key people on board in developing the marketing strategy to focus marketing efforts to specific audiences, use powerful, simple messages, and give a professional edge by using designers, writers and photographers where possible. She also recommended Robin Williams’ The Non-Designers Design Book when budget or time doesn’t allow for this!

We then had the opportunity to work in small groups to think about the branches and groups we represented and what our main marketing message is. This was a really useful exercise – a lot of ideas emerged through talking to others and it helped refine our marketing strategies.

Elizabeth also discussed online social marketing and shared some examples of successful online marketing campaigns such as Obama’s presidential campaign which utilised social media, combining marketing, PR, branding, customer service and the web. She discussed the benefits and risks of online social marketing, and demonstrated how library services and related organisations are currently utilising social media.

The presentation sparked discussion on marketing methods and we moved on to share our experiences, both good and bad. It was a really interesting discussion and was evident that there is no right way to market something – it depends on what you are marketing and who to.

We broke for lunch along with the opportunity to network and discuss the day so far, and then it was time for some practical work. The afternoon activity involved us working in groups to market an event such as those held by CILIP branches and groups. After choosing our key markets, we needed to decide on a main message, key points to convey, and which methods to use to achieve this. We were given magazines and carrier bags to inspire us, and it was great to do some creative work! The activity reinforced the importance of group brainstorming to develop marketing strategy, messages and methods.

Throughout the day Lindsay and Kathy were actively involved and shared some great ideas as well as keeping us informed of CILIP developments and the support available to branches and groups, including some of the features of the new website. It was an excellent day – a great opportunity to share experiences, meet other CILIP activists and learn about how to support the work of your branch or group.

Just a brief post to highlight a new(ish) feature on Wordpress.com blogs which you can use to link your blog posts to your Twitter account.

I talked about the importance of linking your online accounts at my talks at the New Professional’s Conference and the CILIP Open Graduate Day earlier this year, and at the time recommended using Twitterfeed to help you link your blog posts into Twitter. This is still a great service and works well with all RSS feeds, but if you just want to link your Wordpress.com blog(s) to your Twitter account(s), you can now do it directly from your Wordpress dashboard.

I was going to run through the process of doing this, but I found a great page on the Wordpress support pages which includes screenshots for each stage, so rather than re-invent the wheel, here’s the link.

I’ve tested it out on one of my work blogs with our Twitter account and it works really well – you can edit the Twitter post from within the dashboard on your new post (in the Publish box on the right sidebar) and it posts almost immediately to your Twitter account after publishing the blog post. You can also use it with blogs with multiple authors and have just their authored posts going to their individual Twitter account which could be great for shared blogs.

Thought it was worth a blog post anyway, as it’s a somewhat hidden feature (well, I didn’t know how advanced it was anyway so thought others might not either!). At the moment this feature is just on Wordpress.com blogs, but the developers have said they are working on a plugin to achieve the same thing on Wordpress.org (self-hosted) blogs too.

There are many things I enjoy about being a librarian. As I’ve mentioned before, I find it particularly rewarding helping people utilise our resources to find the information they need. But a lot of the work we do as librarians isn’t really seen. Much of a librarian’s time is spent in an office sat in front of a computer screen – producing training material, managing web pages, communicating online with users, liaising with staff, reading list checking, finding out about new publications, researching and writing reports for projects, keeping up-to-date with developments in the profession.. etc. etc. So sometimes it’s nice to get out there in the shelves and do something that you can immediately see the effect of.

Weeding often seems to be a job that is put to one side, but it’s an important part of collection development. As well as keeping the collection current and relevant, it can also make life easier for users (and also keep costs down by reducing overheads required to heat/light extra shelving).

At my workplace, we have been doing a fair bit of weeding recently, and I have been doing a lot in one of my main areas of responsibility, the Teaching Practice Collection (materials for trainee teachers to use in lesson planning and whilst out on teaching practice). The collection contained some out-of-date teaching material, and this was my main reason for weeding. However, I soon realised that by weeding the collection it also made the relevant material much easier to find (not so cramped and easier to spot what you were looking for). Following a heavy weed, I was also able to remove some shelving and rearrange the area to create a room more conducive to study – room to prepare materials, work in groups, and spread resources out on tables. It’s a much better environment to work in now (not just a dark dingy room crammed full of books), and it seems that both the room and the collection is being used more as a result. I’m currently doing some research to see if usage has increased (and if so, by how much?), but I’m pretty sure it has and anecdotal evidence has shown that it’s easier to find things now – I certainly find it easier to use when I’m helping students find materials to use in their teaching.

From a personal point of view, it’s been a very worthwhile task, and although at times it has been a grotty job (some of the older material was way past its best and there was lots of sneezing!), it’s very rewarding to see such a physical difference to the shelves – I can certainly see the appeal of a physical job where you can see the fruits of your labour more easily!

How about you? Do you enjoy weeding or am I just odd?!

Last week I did something a bit different – I was asked a few weeks ago if I could be interviewed for a podcast about social media, and was pleased to accept. It was actually for a social media module at University of Aberystwyth, so I was especially pleased to be involved as I had provided feedback from my course that it had been a shame this had not been covered during my Diploma.

Nicole Schultz (who also has an interest in social media) is responsible for developing the module and she came up with the great idea that it would be good to include podcasts from a number of different angles of social media. She has already interviewed companies who are using social media, a web designer, and other aspects of social media, but she wanted to interview me about my use of social media – how I got into it, what I use it for, and tips to pass onto other students.

It was great to meet Nicole (I also picked her brains about my dissertation, will post about that soon), and I really enjoyed the relaxed nature of the interview. It will be made available as a podcast for students studying the module and I think it’s a good way to practice what you preach and actually get students using social media during the module. The recording device was great too – really small and includes USB connection on device to download straight to PC. If I do some interviews for my dissertation I’ll definitely be looking into getting (or borrowing!) something like that.

I’ve recently co-authored an article with Christine Rooney-Browne for Refer, the journal of the Information Services group of CILIP, which has now been published in the Autumn 2009 issue. Refer offer some of the material from their journal online at REFERplus, and our article is available in pdf format, please feel free to read and let myself or Christine know what you think.

The article, “Blogging: an opportunity to communicate, participate and collaborate on a global scale”, is written primarily for reference librarians, although the majority of the material is general in nature. It was an interesting article to write; much of the material we already knew through our research interests and the fact that we both already blog ourselves, but it was interesting to research further into blogging and particularly some of the blogs written by, or for, reference librarians. We found blogs used internally for teams of reference librarians to assist each other in their work on the reference desk, reference blogs written about library services for the general public, and I also mentioned a personal favourite of mine, Swiss Army Librarian, which features a “Reference Question of the Week” – I always enjoy reading the enquiries he has had and how he answered them.

The process of co-writing the article was a new thing for me – we used e-mail and a wiki to communicate, and bought it all together towards the end in a Word document. I’ve also been trying out Google Wave recently though (feel free to get in touch if you’d like to add me as a contact), and I imagine something like Wave would make it even easier in the future to collaborate in such ways. It was good to bring our different knowledge and interests together in the article and I’m really quite pleased with the result. Many thanks to Christine, whom it was a pleasure to work with.

I’ve just finished reading Paco Underhill’s book Why we buy: the science of shopping, which was recommended during Rachel Van Riel’s talk at the CoFHE conference earlier this year. It’s a fascinating book for anyone interested in marketing, retail or human behaviour. The version I read was the 2000 edition so there have obviously been more developments in the way we shop since then (in one chapter he talks about the futuristic way we may scan our own shopping in at the supermarket!), but a lot of the principles discussed I imagine remain. This is of particular importance now that we are experiencing the “consumer generation”

The main points I took from the book include the following (many of which are common sense but rarely considered):

• The transition zone – first few metres of a store require people to adjust to the lighting, temperature and other environmental factors and we therefore do not tend to notice much in this area
• Product placement is crucial – the area of the store it is located in, the adjacencies (e.g. Charcoal near BBQs), and the way it is displayed on the shelf (also the shelf level bearing in mind potential consumers – lower for children, not too high or too low for elderly)
• Flow of traffic can affect sales – queues may restrict browsing if there is little room, as may high traffic areas or smaller areas (due to a problem Underhill describes as “butt brushing” – being knocked into from behind, which is especially off putting for females)
• People will buy more if they can carry it around the store more easily and especially if their hands are free to rummage and touch
• People are more likely to buy something once they have touched it
• Correct placement of signs is extremely difficult – need to think about where people are likely to look, not just where there is space
• Sales aren’t the only record of how successful the store is (how many people browse but do not buy? How many begin queueing but give up after waiting? How many people are in different areas at a specific time? How easy is it to navigate? etc etc…)

It got me thinking about how some of these principles could be applied to libraries, and I can certainly see why Rachel recommended the book and where some of her research in libraries stems from.

I thought I’d share some of my initial thoughts on how the browsing experience could be improved in libraries:

1. Books facing out on shelves – preventing what Rachel referred to as “browser’s neck” (bending to read the spines). Outward facing books can grab people’s attention but can also help if someone is looking for a particular book; I frequently get students who are looking for “the green book on study skills, I’ll know it when I see it” and it’s a lot easier to find covers rather than spines.
2. Book displays – can be a useful way of increasing borrowing as you encourage people to touch the books, however also need to be aware that displays should not be perfectly neat as people could assume it is just for show and not to be touched or borrowed. Underhill recommended in some stores that employees purposely mess up some displays and found that their sales increased.
3. Bestseller lists – Underhill recommends large freestanding bestseller lists for bookstores and video stores; these could be used to good effect for book lists, particularly in public libraries (e.g. Richard and Judy lists), but how about lists of the most commonly borrowed books, recently received books or books on a particular topical issue?
4. Utilising queues with impulse borrowing/buying and information – queues are one place where Underhill recommends using information leaflets and boards for two reasons – to take advantage of everyone looking in a certain direction for an amount of time, and aso to help reduce customer perception of waiting time (anything over 2mins and customers will feel like it was a lot longer and can lead to dissatisfaction of service). How about some impulse bookmarks, bags, leaflets, marketing materials or stationary too? It’s certainly made me think about the other areas people may be waiting – for example utilising space outside study skills advisor rooms so that people have something to read whilst waiting (and we have a way of getting our messages across!).
5. Ensuring there are enough chairs around the building – generally I don’t think libraries are too bad at this but I have seen examples where all the seating is in one area and the shelves in another; there really should be somewhere to sit near the books so that people can examine them more clearly if necessary.
6. Giving people something to store their books in – this is something I’d particularly like to do as I know it’s a common issue for our students. Wouldn’t it be great if on the edge of the shelves (not at the entrance as people don’t tend to know if they’ll need one until they’ve examined the stock) there were a collection of reusable bags, like supermarket bags for life, that people could use to carry their books around the library (thus enabling them to carry more) and then offer them the option of purchasing when they borrow the books. I know I’d appreciate something like that and am sure I’d buy one that I could then reuse. I’ve seen some of our students bring reusable bags from public libraries and I think we’re really missing a trick by not having our own. This could increase revenue, make life easier for our users, and also market the service if people use them around campus.

These are some of the initial thoughts I had; I really enjoyed the book and would certainly recommend it – it’s given me a lot of food for thought! Are there any other things libraries can learn from retail, or any you have already seen evidence of? Please share in the comments, I think there is scope for really improving libraries by following the success of the retail environment.