The MACHINES are Coming! Recent advances in library technology

Earlier today I did a session on technology and libraries, for the Prison Libraries Group at CILIP HQ. Prison Librarians are extremely limited in their access to technology - essentially they operate under the same restrictions as the prisoners, so not only can they not use Twitter, they can't even Google it at work! Here is the Prezi I used - it's a whistle-stop primer of recent advances, and while normally I try to make my presentations stand up on their own I'm afraid this one is really only the bare bones and I filled in a lot of gaps with what I was saying. (Works best on full-screen mode.)

 

The Machines Are Coming: Recent Advances in Library Technology on Prezi

I had a really good time even though I had to leave early due to starting my new job tomorrow. It reminded me again how diverse our roles are, and how two people called 'librarians' could go for years potentially without doing the same stuff. Having to make sure certain prisoners don't get access to fiction which glorifies the very crimes they are incarcerated for is not a Collection Development decision I'll be needing to make any time soon. And having to retain the catalogue in my head because not only is it not online but there isn't even a card catalogue is a skill I'm glad I don't need - I'd be really bad at that...

For the delegates

So for anyone who was there today, here are the links I mentioned that I'd include in this post:

• Click for the SCONUL Focus issue with the technology timeline
• Click for the guide to starting a blog
• Plus click this for another seperate presenation on libraries and technology and if you're interested, click this for all the guides to technology-related library stuff I've ever written, in one place...

- Thanks for having me, I had a great time! And especially thank you to Sibylla for inviting me. :)

- thewikiman

What's the key to a good interview - beyond the usual truisms we all know already?

There are myriad sources of advice for interviewing well, available online. A lot of them say the same things - anyone who turns up late, doesn't dress to impress, isn't attentive and engaging, only asks questions about things like the pay, or mumbles, frankly is probably not going to be the type of person who even knows they need advice on interviewing well. So what are the things you need to think about when going for a decent job, up against good people are who aren't going to make obvious mistakes? I have a weird relationship with interviews - I always think they've gone well, but I never get the job. My first library job in customer services, I didn't get it but was put on a call-back list for next time they had a position. My second job, as a Project Assistant, I came second and I only got the job because the successful candidate pulled out. On the JISC project I just completed, I was encouraged to apply and was the only person they interviewed - so short of putting my feet up on the desk and listing 'a penchant for theft' among my weaknesses, I was pretty much guaranteed to get the job. In between all that, I had two unsuccessful interviews (at York University) and one application that didn't even GET an interview, and prior to even working in libraries I had two unsuccessful interviews for researchy roles (thank God I didn't get those) - and in all of these cases, I thought the interview went well, because I don't get nervous for that sort of thing and I work so hard on preparing that I remember to make all the points I want to make, and I make them.

I finally broke this cycle a couple of weeks ago, when I interviewed successfully for a maternity cover at York - it's in basically my ideal job for now, the role I've been aiming for since I knew I wanted to do this as a career. I'll be the Academic Liaison Librarian for Music (where I did my MA, and know all the academics really well) and for Film, Theatre and TV Studies - that's all one Department, with a fabulous new £24 million building, below:

So anyway, I got to thinking - what did I do differently this time than before (one of the panel had even interviewed me previously when I'd not got a job, which was lower graded and far less competitive) and what advice did I take into the interview that I found really useful?

Here are some things I did differently:

• I wore a tie. I've not worn a tie since school, as I don't like them much - I don't wear them for weddings or job interviews, normally. I really wanted this job, so I figured I'd sacrifice my tie-related-principles in this instance… Did it make a difference? Maybe it did, I like to think my experience and ideas clinched the post though…
• I went in with a better idea of what was really important about the post. When I wrote the Essential Advice for New Professionals blog post a while back, one of the most interesting things that came from the Comments that people wrote on it was the idea that not all Essential Criteria are created equal. Yes, they are of course all essential and therefore very important - but some of them will constitute a huge part of the job and others only a little. So it's important to have lots to say about the most essential of the essential criteria. I spent a good deal of time thinking about this beforehand, and talking to people I knew within the organisation who might know useful things. (Big thanks to Tixylix who pointed out the importance of working out which criteria are more vital than others!)
• I revisited the feedback I'd had from my previous unsuccessful interviews. We all know how important it is to get feedback - how often do you actually read it again after you first receive it? In particular, the last interview at York (in an academic liaison assistant role) had had a lot to do with Information Literacy involved with the post. When they asked me about info lit in the interview I said everything I wanted to say - when I didn't get the post I was really disappointed as I actually thought I was over-qualified for it. But when they gave me the (very constructive) feedback, I realised they were completely right, and that I hadn't done nearly as well as I thought I had. I'd talked about Info Lit, demonstrated an understanding of it, listed my experience - but I’d not said anything innovative, original, or ideas based. Much of the role was about devising Info Lit programmes, so of course they wanted someone with a little creativity - I'd not shown any. So this time, as the role I've just got is also heavily Info Lit based, I was ready to hit them with some actual IDEAS, not just a summary of what I've done. (By the same token, I did just give them a summary of what I'd done in other areas - there's no point in explaining how you're going to take over the world in an area for which you won't actually have any responsibility if you get the job.)
• I had to do a presentation. Previous roles haven't been high up enough to require this, but I made the most of it. We only had 5 minutes, and we weren't allowed slides or anything - but we could use handouts. In that situation, there's so little opportunity to make much of an impression, you have to use what is available to you, so I made good handouts. I had six anonymised quotes from academics that I’d spoken to when researching the topic (actually five, plus one from Andy Priestner) that related to the points I was making, and one of those quotes was from one of the academics on the panel. I think this went down well (could have backfired of course…) as it showed I'd done my homework - and it was directly relevant, not just crow-barred in there. So I think making the most of whatever opportunities there are open to you is important.
• I left them with a CV. In Higher Education, everything is application form based. York's system is all online, and there is a fairly strict character limit so you literally can only just fit in what you need to say - as a result, lots of stuff I’d done wasn't on there. So I asked if they'd be interested in a CV so they could see all the other things that weren't on the form.
• I tried not to JUST answer the question so much. By which I mean, every question in an interview is designed to assess you against set criteria – I tried to work out which of these criteria a particular question was pertaining to, and address that, rather than just the specific question. In the public sector there are no real spontaneous questions and nothing is asked without a purpose – they have to do everything incredibly fairly and openly. So there’s a grid of criteria, with questions that relate to those criteria, and each question you get asked will result in the panel writing down the evidence that shows you meet that criteria. Each question is given a score, then the highest total score wins. It really does seem to be that explicit and that simple – so you have to be hitting those criteria. It’s a question of asking yourself, what do they ACTUALLY want from me with this one..?
• I answered the questions like the panel hadn’t ever seen my application form. I have a suspicion that application forms just get you the interview, but are then forgotten about once the interviews happen (and you get the job almost entirely based on the interview). So when I was asked a question I answered it fully, at the risk of repeating what they’d already read, rather than risking them not remembering what was on the form. ...

On top of this, I prepared answers for around 20 questions – there was only 1 question in the interview where I had to truly think on my feet. For what it’s worth, I had examples ready for:

1.  Prioritising workload

2.  Prioritising resources

3.  Knowledge of resources

4.  Working under pressure

5.  Managing a budget

6.  Creative problem solving

7.  Handling a difficult situation

8.  Delivering bad news

9.  Effective written communication

10.Effective oral communication

11.Information Literacy pedagogy

12.Recording and analysing user feedback

13.Working well in a team

14.Something outside of work that might help me in the role

15.Short-term plans

16.Medium-term plans

17.Questions to ask the panel

18.Why I wanted the job

19.Why I’d be good at it

20.Strengths and weaknesses

A lot of these came up, either directly or indirectly, so I was pleased I put the work in. Incidentally, back in the day when I had exams (A-levels and that sort of thing) a lot of people said things along the lines of "no point in revising on the day - if you don't remember it by then, you never will." I find this to be utterly misleading - personally I found reading my crib sheet right up until the 5 minutes before I went and announced myself was really valuable.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. What would you recommend people know about interviewing, that goes above and beyond all the usual stuff you can easily read online?

-    thewikiman

Thinking of submitting a paper for the New Professionals Conference? Here’s some unofficial advice.

.....

(A lot of this applies to conference proposals generally.)

CILIP have announced details of the 2011 New Professionals Conference, which takes place in Manchester at the University, on June 20th. The Hashtag is #npc11 if you want to discuss it on Twitter etc.

There is currently a call for proposals to present, and I can't recommend highly enough that you do this if you're within 5 years of having joined the profession. You have till April 15th to get something in. All the details are on the CILIP website.

Why present?

It’s a brilliant experience! It takes you out of your comfort zone, it connects you to your peers, it gets you into the conference for free! It’s completely worth doing – I guarantee you’ll feel differently about the profession afterwards, more positive, more energised and more excited.

Subject matter

Important disclaimer: I was on the organising committee last year and involved with choosing the successful papers, but I am NOT involved this year, so these views are just my opinion and are in no way official. Kay?

The most important thing about the subject matter is making it appropriate to the context of the conference. So for example, something about the value of libraries generally might be really interesting and really entertaining, but it might not be as useful for this particular conference as something which the delegates can take away and apply to their own lives, and to their own careers. Think about the utility of what you're saying, and the 'take-homes' that the people watching your presentation will get from it.

Be explicit about the value of your presentation. You have 300 words to play with – I’d probably use 250 to talk about the topic, and the last 50 would start with the phrase ‘this paper will be beneficial to new professionals because…’.

Get a second pair of eyes on it before you send it off – another opinion is almost always helpful.

Format

Same disclaimer as above - this is my opinion, and is certainly nothing official or endorsed by the organisers.

I think, personally, the formatting of your proposal really matters. The organisers of this event are volunteering and doing it on their own time, so there's not always the luxury of a huge amount of time to discuss the proposals. There'll probably be more than 40 decent ideas, and it takes a long time to get through that much stuff. So anything that’s poorly put together is already heading towards the 'maybe' or 'no' piles rather than the 'yes' pile. Of course the content of the proposal is by far the most important thing, but that oft quoted scenario of 'two otherwise equal candidates' actually applies quite often in this type of situation, so don't put yourself at a disadvantage. Poor formatting shows a lack of attention to detail, and a lack of understanding of the assessment process. For what it's worth, here's what I would do if I were submitting:

• Send a PDF - Word docs are only fit for emailing to people if there's a chance the recipient may need to edit it.
• Don't use Times New Roman, use Calibri, Arial or similar, and make it a normal rather than tiny or huge font size.
• Include your name, a short bio and your email address in the document (this does not have to fit into the 300 words - make it clear which section is which). You may have also put some or all of this stuff in the email you send it in, but the chances are the panel will be printing out all the documents and getting together over coffee to go through everything - they don't want to be making notes or printing emails. Put everything in one place for their easy reference.
• It goes without saying, proof-read it to death. Read it out loud to catch mistakes, and don't rely on the spell-check - I still find myself having used the wrong their / there / they're from time-to-time… Americanised spellings are another thing spell-check might not catch.
• Send it to someone whose opinion you trust, and get them to check it over too.

And if you do get accepted…

You’ll be asked to write a ‘full proposal’ by June. This is really just to check you can follow up on your promises and deliver a full paper. It doesn’t have to be written to a journal standard of prose and referencing. When I presented in 2009, I wrote mine up all formally and then a week before the conference, I started to practice delivering it and realised that I’d have to completely rework it. I couldn’t read it out loud as it was (that would have been rubbish) and I couldn’t even just split it up into notes (the tone and phrases were suitable for being read alone, not said out loud to an audience). So don’t beat yourself up trying to write the full proposal – it’d be more productive to write the notes you plan to learn or speak from, and then turn THOSE into the full-proposal, not the other way around. More tips on presenting for first time speakers are available elsewhere on the blog.

All just my opinion of course. :) Here's another one - last year's Best Paper prize winner Bronagh offers her views too.

Good luck!

-    thewikiman

Learning from the Orteig Prize - the sky is the limit for libraries!

It was from this Freakonomics Radio podcast, which I've refered to on this blog before and which provoked a huge number of comments, that I learned about the Orteig Prize. It's a really fascinating story, it inspired the LISNPN competition mentioned in part one of this post, and who knows what else we can learn from it - so bear with me while I go through the events of the early 1920s.

A little history

In 1919, a New York hotelier called Raymond Orteig put up a prize of $25,000 (equivalent to over $300,000 today in pure inflation terms, but actually a lot more in terms of what that money could buy) for the first aviator to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, or the other way around. For the first five years, no one could claim his prize as the technology wasn't advanced enough. But in those five years people worked enormously hard, because that was an enormous amount of money.

Eventually, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh makes the flight successfully, and wins the prize. It took 33.5 hours in a single-engine plane (the Spirit of  St Louis) and was a minor miracle of good fortune allied with supreme skill, but he made it safely to France. Lindbergh was only 25 years old at the time, and he used the massive fame he now enjoyed to promote commercial aviation. He was obviously one of those polymathic people who just operate on a higher plain (no pun intended) than the rest of us - he later became a prize-winning author, an environmentalist (can't of been too many of them at that time), an international explorer and an inventor!

This was of course a fantastic achievement, but the existence of the competition catalysed massive progress in the aviation industry by loads of people, not just Lindbergh himself. In fact, $400,000 worth (in old money) of innovation happened from the combined entries to the competition - and Orteig only had to pay out once! The results of this expenditure were immediately quantifiable - the year before Lindbergh's flight, just 6,000 people travelled by air as passengers; 18 months afterwards there was 180,000 commercial passengers. Even in the months remaining in 1927, the year of his flight, applications for pilot's licences tripled and the number of registered aircraft quadrupled.

(Another ramification of the competition was, as you might expect with experimental air travel, a huge loss of human life. Many pilots died failing to win the prize. Hopefully a library equivalent won't place its entrants in such jeopardy...)

The Legacy

Apart from the 30-fold increase in commercial air-travel, which effectively gave birth the multi-billion dollar industry we know today, the prize had another legacy. Inspired by Orteig's competition, Peter Diamandis set up the X Prize Foundation. This offers a more modern prize of $10,000,000 to achieve huge goals such as commercial flight into space - again, far more than $10,000,000 is invested, in total, by all the entrants combined, so the field moves on apace. Not only that, but the Foundation themselves don't put up the prizes! They are funded by organisations and philanthropists, eager to making progress happen.

The LISNPN competition

As I'm sure you've realised, the LISNPN competition is a very (VERY) small-scale attempt to do something similar. We're offering prizes we think people will really value, and will be willing to work hard and innovate in order to have a shot at winning. Although entrants will retain full copyright of their ideas, LISNPN will be able to show-case ALL of them, and hopefully ALL of them should reach a new audience not normally involved with libraries at all. We're only giving out two prizes (again, put up by generous people who want to encourage the enterprise, rather than paid for from the - non-existent - LISNPN coffers) but hopefully the profession will benefit from lots and lots of advocacy efforts.

Are there other things we can do with competitons and libraires?

So is there scope for more library innovation on a much grander scale, adopting the Orteig prize principles? I think there must be. Other bodies must be able to run other competitions, the entries for which could be public-facing and progressive. I'd love to see one around technology in libraries.

And this links to another thing I've often thought, which is that libraries (certainly in the UK) don't appear to be as good at attracting philanthropy as other comparable areas. We need to be something that rich people and foundations think of when they're wondering where to put their money in a charitable way. Perhaps an innovation inspiring competition is a way to achieve this? What do you think?

In the meantime, good luck with the competition if you're entering.

- thewikiman

A competition to benefit everyone in libraries, not just the winners

LISNPN, the New Professionals Network, has just announced it's first ever competition and I am really excited about it.

You can read all about it on the network itself, but the short version is this: we want people who have entered the profession in the last decade or so to create a piece of library advocacy. It could be an article, a video, a slide-deck, an essay, a piece of art, a project, a campaign - literally anything that doesn't pre-date the competition. The only criteria is that it gets some pro-library ideas to people who wouldn't normally engage with libraries at all. The idea is to indulge in a bit of stealth advocising - to package up some library advocacy in something so intrinsically awesome that it reaches new audiences. Doesn't even have to be particularly stealthy - just reach new people.

The first prize is a full pass to Umbrella, CILIP's biennial conference which takes place in July this year. We're working with CILIP on this competition so thank you very much to CEO Annie Mauger for agreeing to be part of this - the prize is worth up to £500 (based on what the pass would cost to buy; it'd be slightly cheaper if you are a CILIP member already) and includes refreshments, social activities and the Gala Dinner. Attendance at such a conference is usually out of the reach of New Professionals due to the cost, so we're really hoping the competition sparks loads of interest and is entered by people who would love to attend but couldn't normally. Not only that but there is a second prize of attendance at the New Professionals Conference this year! This has kindly been donated by the Career Development Group. Full details of this year's NPC are still to be decided, but it'll take place in June, somewhere other than London. You can read about last year's conference here to get an idea of what it's all about.

We'd really encourage as many people as possible to enter, whether it will be your first attempts at library advocacy, or if you're a veteran. You can read the full Terms and Conditions on LISNPN. (And thank you muchly to the LISNPN admin team for spending ages with me working those out!)

Apart from the great prize, and it being another step forward for the network, there's another reason I'm thrilled about this. Every single entry should benefit the library community, whether it wins or not. Many competition entries are inward-facing rather than out-ward facing - an essay about why you want to win, only ever seen by the judges, for example. That's fine, but this is different. Because every single entry to this competition will be a little piece of library advocacy, a small effort to raise awareness about the profession and the industry. The beauty of a competition format like this is that one prize inspires multiple efforts - to actually commission 10 or 20 or 50 people to create advocacy would cost a fortune, whereas here we only 'pay out' once, or rather twice as we have a second prize. So lots of innovation is (hopefully) catalysed. When this happened in the air-travel industry, with the Orteig prize in 1927, it moved things on by years in a single leap! Not saying that will happen here, but I'm still excited at the prospects of what we can do.

You can read more about the Orteig Prize and how we can use the method to advance the library profession, in the unofficial part 2 of this blog post, here. It's a really interesting story!

- thewikiman