The Library Marketing Toolkit, 6 months on

It's now around 6 months since I published my book, the Library Marketing Toolkit. This post is an update on how it's going, so if you're not interested in that, stop reading now! This post is reflective to the point of self-indulgence so feel free to skip it... Generally I've tried to keep the Toolkit blog and this blog very separate as I know some people subscribe to both, so I've not talked too much about the book on here  - I'm breaking that tradition as a bit of a one-off, half a year down the line from publication.

Back story

I wrote a book across 2011 which was published by Facet in August 2012 - it's all about marketing libraries and it has 27 case studies from libraries and librarians around the world. I found writing the book very tough - the writing itself was okay, but juggling it with having a baby at the same time was nightmarish! My wife and I knew it would be difficult, and took the decision that it would be worth it for the opportunities it would open up; thankfully that has proved to be the case... I'm doing a lot of freelance stuff which I probably wouldn't get the chance to do otherwise and I'm really enjoying it, and people are finding it useful.

Reception

The book has, Facet tell me, sold very well (as these things go - the actual number is still very small of course!). Amazon.co.uk charts change every day so it's impossible to keep track of when it's doing well (I don't want to be obsessively checking...) but on several occasions I've seen it at the top of the Library Management Charts, and taken a print-screen to celebrate!

I like the Amazon.com one better as you get a little '#1 best seller' thing on there...

People have been really nice about the book on Twitter, and I've favourited the tweets with the LibMarketing account to refer back to. Several people have said they've found it invaluable in their job or their studies, and I particularly like Dr Fidelius's comment that it was 'Far more readable than a book on marketing has any right to be'! It's so nice when people pick up on something you worked hard on. :)

Reviews

Reviews trickle out REALLY slowly. You build up to the huge push of submitting the final manuscript, and then with much relief you think 'I don't have to worry about this any more!'. But THEN you think, oh blimey, reviews - how well will I deal with someone absolutely savaging it..? And then no reviews appear! So it's a bit anti-climactic.

Facet warned me it took AGES for reviews to happen (people do have to read the thing from cover to cover after all, and then there's the publishing process if the review is in print) and that often a year was a typical waiting time, so I was sort of prepared for this. (Library Journal are yet to review it and I'm a columnist for them!) We had various pre-publication reviews from people who were sent advanced copies of the book:

• The Library Marketing Toolkit is packed full of useful, informative and above all practical information about the best ways of getting your message across, and it should be on the shelf of every librarian and information professional | Phil Bradley
• The Library Marketing Toolkit is brilliant and  a great addition to the library professional discourse | Andy Woodworth
• Ned Potter's book will help any library succeed in creating a community that is aware and engaged in its library. He has written an easy to follow tool kit targeted at the specific marketing needs of librarians that is sure to become a favourite resource for anyone involved in marketing a library. There are case studies from libraries around the world that will inspire you no matter whether your library is large or small. You'll love this book! | Nancy Dowd .

Since then I've found various other reviews from journals, book review blogs etc - all of which, thankfully, have been very positive!

• Potter's enthusiasm is infectious and he writes in a user friendly manner, not getting caught up in jargon. Concepts are explained concisely with a liberal dosing of analogies and case studies. The aim and scope of each chapter is laid out clearly from the outset and there is a useful synopsis of coverage in the introduction as well as a comprehensive index enabling readers to browse areas of interest.The Library Marketing Toolkit follows on from Facet publishing's New Professionals Toolkit published earlier this year and is certainly a useful addition to the Library office reference collection. It should prove beneficial to anyone involved in the marketing or promotion of library or information services. | CILIP Health Libraries Group Book Reviews
• So the questions for me on opening this book were “do we need another book on marketing libraries”, and “does this one offer anything different?”. And I am happy to say that this is not a traditional marketing text. It offers a contemporary perspective on what marketing means for libraries now ...my answers are “yes we do need another book on marketing libraries” and “yes it does offer something different”. This book showcases the best of contemporary marketing practices from libraries all over the world. The case studies with the author's illuminating focus on key points of learning are, for me, the added value which differentiates this book from other marketing books.| Library Management Journal
• That word—marketing—means so many different things to different people. In Ned Potter’s book The Library Marketing Toolkit, the complex process is divided up into distinct and manageable interdependent projects. I am certain I will be referring back to The Library Marketing Toolkit for years to come.|  Kendra Book Girl
• From social media to old fashioned methods, and how to build a good brand, this scholarly and comprehensive guide will prove invaluable to any librarian who seeks to get the word out. The Library Marketing Toolkit is enthusiastically recommended, not to be missed | Midwest Book Review .

It's also got an average of 4.5 stars (out of 5...) on goodreads, and its only Amazon review so far is a 5 star one - yay!

No more books!

When I finished the Toolkit, I said 'never again'. The stress of writing a book in my own time, working full-time, and trying to be a proper Dad who didn't put work first, was just too much. And everyone - EVERYONE - told me, 'all authors say that but give it a while and you'll miss it, and you'll end up writing another one'.

Well, I can confirm I do NOT miss it! And I won't be writing another book - I did get asked to write one on Prezi, and I said no without hesitation. I'm delighted with all the stuff above, and maybe one day, if I'm working part time and the kids are at University or something, but for now: no more books.

:)

Work-life balance - it's a fluid concept

 

Recently I've read a good few posts about work / life balance. I also get asked about it sometimes.

This post has turned out quite long, so here's a one sentence version for those whose work / life balance doesn't give them enough time to read the whole thing... The balance changes over time, which is fine, and so is having bursts of intense work activity balanced out by longer periods of 'life', but you need to keep a hold of what you're doing this for and where it's taking you.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's what I think:

1) Whatever the balance is like now, it needs to be FOR something. If you feel that you're working too hard, it had better be because this is helping you achieve something - in other words, it has to be a means to an end not an end in itself. Personally I like to be either happy with the balance (with 'life' very much in the ascendancy) or comfortable in the knowledge that if the balance is wrong, it's getting me somewhere I specifically want to go, after which I can relax again.

2) Work / life balance isn't static over time. I wonder if people look at everyone else and just assume their balance is a permanent one? As in, person X is at SO many events, they must be 'always on', or person Y really seems to spend a lot of time with their family, how do they do it? But presumably we're just seeing a snapshot of a particular time. Good work / life balance is fluid.

In my view, it should be as in favour of 'work' as it will ever be, at the start of your career. The period on which an info pro is defined as a 'new professional' is often said to be the first 5 years, and that's a nice marker. You do a LOT of work in those five years, in order to expand your horizons, add to your CV, find out what you really like, and get noticed, get into the kind of job you want. Then after that, the balance can shift much more towards 'life' because you've put in the hard work to build some kind of platform, and then you're on the platform.

If you're a new professional reading this (see this, also; it might be useful) and you're thinking 'all the papers I'm writing and conferences I'm helping to organise, and presentations I'm giving - this isn't sustainable' then that's probably fine - it doesn't have to be sustainable. Just make sure at some point you do actually cut down or stop. Which leads me to...

3) Sometimes it's okay temporarily putting the balance out if it's going to be worth it in the long term. So sometimes, you can take on a really big project that you know will make things difficult, as long as you know when the end of the project is and that things will become a lot easier as a result. The key things here are taking things on which actually have an end! And not just chain-smoking right onto the next big thing when they do end. It's fine to stop. I know people (you know who you are!) who simply don't stop, even though they know they should... (This is, as you can imagine, a self-perpetuating cycle. Librarian Z takes on lots of things, so a: becomes expert in a lot of fields and b: gets a reputation as being helpful and receptive to being asked to do stuff, and so gets asked to do ever more stuff, etc etc, forever.)

4) Saying no is excellent. In my experience it feels good to say no when it's the right thing to do. Obviously it's better for the person asking if you can recommend someone alternative to do whatever it is instead. But the key thing is, once you've got yourself into a position where you're asked to do things, saying no doesn't mean you get asked any less in future. (Sometimes people feel like they ought to grab every opportunity, even not overly suitable ones, in case eschewing results in the opportunities drying up. But this isn't the case in most people's' experience.)

5) There are two types of balance - short-term and long-term. The day-to-day stuff is the detail level - doing that talk or not doing it, getting a sponsored place at that event which involves writing a report afterwards, or not. That can be managed, and can be fluid.

But then there's the long-term which is basically your job, which is a little harder to be in control of after a certain point. Some types of job really DEMAND an enormous amount of work hours. This post from the always honest and readable Jenica Rogers literally made me not want to be successful. So you have to think about where you're going, about what all your hard work is ultimately for.

I used to do a LOT more stuff in my own time (see 1, 2 and 3 above) because it would help me get a job where the same stuff was relevant to my work, so I wouldn't have to do it in my own time anymore. I'd use annual leave to speak at a conference. I wouldn't do that now - I did it then because it was a short-term thing and it was worth it.

The job it all resulted in is not the kind of job where you have to work 50 hour weeks, and nor would I want one of those (even for twice the salary). Also, I have to work where I live, because my work / life balance approach is that you live where you want to and then find work there - as opposed to going where the work is. So if someone says 'I'll give you £150k a year to do your ideal job in London' I say no without hesitation. That's the long-term balance.

6) You don't have to the best that you can be. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it to anyone who'll listen. If being 80% (or whatever) of who you could be makes you HAPPY,  that's what you should be aiming for. Society is blindly accepting of the notion that doing one's best is the be all and end all, but it's only worth it if that'll make you happy!

7) Focus on things you're naturally good at so you can make more progress in a shorter time. You can make more time for life if the work comes easy to you, so as much as it's nourishing to challenge yourself, don't take that idea so far that you always have to work doubly hard on everything because everything you take on is out of your comfort zone.

***

Everyone is different, but the above is what works for me. I'm really happy with the balance I have, I'd recommend it - but to people who are a bit like me, not to everyone... A lot of people have a lot more drive than I do, and this approach probably wouldn't suit them and their own quest for happiness and contentment.

When I wrote the book, the balance was wrong. I was working on weekends, I had a young child, and it felt awful. I felt like I'd done the wrong thing. In fact, I probably HAD done the wrong thing - I certainly wouldn't recommend it. (Again, that's just me - Beth did much the same thing at much the same time and coped a lot better than I did.) But I can't regret it now because we got through it and I am where I want to be, doing freelance work for the BL among others, as well as the job I love. I do freelance training about areas I already know about and have a natural affinity for, so I don't have to spend much of my free time preparing them. I obey number 7, above - if someone came to me and said 'could you run a workshop  for us, on managing change' I'd say no, call Lisa Jeskins. It would take me too long to put together the materials to keep my work / life balance as I'd want it be (but Lisa's done such a course before, and in any case is a full-time trainer). I obey number 4 too - of all the interesting offers I had in 2012 to do stuff at conferences, I didn't do 13 of them, even though I really wanted to. People often say 'it's the things you don't do that you regret' and I understand that, but actually I don't regret saying no to anything, even if, at the time, it was really hard to do.

I am a very reflective person; I spend lots of time analysing stuff, processing stuff. So I am very aware of what works for me and what doesn't, which is how I've arrived at the above, which is basically a description of my life as much as it is advice to anyone else. I think the key thing is to do your own analysis of where you are, what you're doing, and where you're going, as objectively as possible, without reference to your peers or accepted norms. It's easy to be influenced by what librarian X is doing, or to feel we 'should' be more like Y. But actually that's not relevant, it's all about you and only you.

What is going to make you happy?

P.S [added the next day]: I meant to say, all the extra stuff we take on should be so fun it doesn't feel like work anyway. (This partly why it's easy to get overwhelmed by it and out of balance, because it's enjoyable.) If you're taking things on which feel like work, or things which were previously fun start to feel like work, that's a sign that it's time to cut down - either getting rid of some long-standing responsibilities, or saying 'no' for a long period of time, or both.

The message is (and this post is aimed primarily at information professionals - this may not be true in other industries, I don't know) - there should be enough relevant and interesting opportunities out there for you never to have to feel like all this stuff is a drag. Seek out the good stuff. :)

Would you recommend librarianship? The results!

So, would you? Most people have an automatic response to this question - many people will say 'yes' straightaway because they love librarianship and know it is largely misunderstood, while others will say 'no' straightaway because they've had a rough time of it.

What I'm interested in is, would you ACTUALLY recommend it to someone, who might then act on your recommendation? I was asked about entering the profession in an email recently, and my reply sounded, I realised as I re-read it, quite negative. That's because I think you have a responsibility when someone wants your advice to actually think about what you're saying! And there's a lot to be said for not-entering librarianship (by the end of the decade who knows how many worthwhile jobs there will actually be, for example) just as there is a lot to be said for entering it (it's ace). I sometimes worry that we're so busy promoting our value and the value of the profession, that we blindly tell everyone to become librarians even though they might not thank us later if they become one.

So I asked Twitter, a brief and unscientific 24hr poll. 133 responses. It started off more or less equal, with recommending just about edging ahead of not doing so - when I tweeted something to this effect, the vast majority of the subsequent votes were in favour of recommending it. So I don't know if that's because people who hadn't previously voted felt moved to 'defend' the profession, or just a coincidence.

So of the 133 respondents, 72% would recommend this profession of ours.

Here's the split by country. This started off VERY interesting because the US had 100% of voting no, but then every single other vote from that country was yes so it ended up being a landslide in favour of recommendation... Ireland, from this miniscule sample-size, doesn't look much fun.

So would you recommend librarianship to a friend? I'd like to hear what you think in a comment.

Some reasons I can think of why I wouldn't recommend it:

• you can't avoid starting at the bottom (can't do the MA until you've had a year of experience, can't get a higher graded job without the MA);
• some career paths hit the buffers very early on unless the right person happens to retire / move etc;
• the long-term future of the profession is far from certain;
• constantly fighting peoples' misconceptions of what we do and how valuable it is (I think the need to do this may fade over time because I'm far less fussed about it than I used to be);
• there are far more capable librarians than there are decent posts;
• the money isn't amazing for the first few years (I know it's very cool to not care about money but when you're having to buy new shoes for your toddler every 3 months, you do);
• you have to fork out a fortune to do the MA but, if you think about it, the difference between librarians with the Masters and those without it is very rarely the Masters. It's a qualification that is both essential and of questionable value. .

Some reasons why I would recommend it (heavily academic-librarianship bias here):

• it's fantastically engaging;
• the community (if you chose to be part of it) is kind, fun, and unremittingly helpful and happy to share information and advice;
• you get to work in a role that helps people, which is genuinely fulfilling even for a partial-cynic like me;
• unless you're unlucky you won't be expected to work longer than the hours of your contract (so many non-librarians I know work all the hours God sends, and are incredibly jealous of the flexitime scheme I'm on);
• libraries are supportive employers, generally;
• you get to investigate, write about and train people on stuff you're interested in anyway, in my case;
•  you can do academicy stuff like presenting at conferences and writing papers, without having to actually BE an academic;
• once you get up the ladder a bit you get a lot of freedom and your time is self-directed as well as self-managed;
• the people you work with are NICE. .

For me, my day to day environment is the most important thing. I'd rather live in a smaller house in a nicer area than a grand house further away from town. I'd rather work in a nice room with nice people who will understand if I need to go home and pick up my daughter from nursery, than have a high status job with a company car a career trajectory ending in a six-figure salary. My job is challenging but fun, it suits ME better than any profession I could imagine.

But everyone is different, and I'm already entrenched in this profession, whilst at the same time developing the skills to keep working if this profession ceases to exist - that's a very different situation from advising someone to just now start applying for entry-level library posts with a view to doing their Masters in October 2014 and maybe, just maybe, getting a job they really want in 2017ish.

Where do you stand on this? What would you add?

New Professionals! Get hold of a Library organisational chart and start plotting your path...

 

I believe that as a new professional in the information industry, you're better off with a plan of where you want to be, and specifically HOW you want to get there. Some people (who I respect very much)  have advocated a 'relax and see what happens' approach, pointing out the need to be able to try new things you'd never have thought of, and be taken off in new directions. I agree with this, but I still think this:

The profession is SO competitive now, if you can come up with a plan of how you'll move through it then it's worth doing so, even in the knowledge that it's perfectly okay not to stick to it if something interesting comes up.

So how do you go about this? Well first of all you need to know where you'd actually like to end up. (And by 'end up' I don't necessarily mean the job you'll retire in - just the one you're aiming for in the medium term.) There are various ways of getting a feel for this:

• Talk to people in those roles (seriously do this - it's MUCH more effective than anything else I can think of. If you'd like to chat about what being a Subject Librarian involves and the skills it requires I'm very happy to do so)
• Try and get some work-shadowing in those roles, or an actual job in a more junior version of the same role
• Read about how people got where they are today via the many excellent stories on the Library Routes Project
• Keyword search the Library Day in the Life wiki for the kind of job titles you're interested in, and see how people in these roles actually spend their days
• (I'm probably missing something useful so please leave a comment with more suggestions if you have them...) .

Once you've formulated an idea as to where you want to get to (and keep in mind this may evolve or change completely as you go along, which is fine), you can start to plan how to get there. Relating to this there are two important things which I've mentioned on here before, and in talks to New Professionals.

Firstly don't think of Librarianship as having a career-ladder, think of it is as having a career-climbing wall. Ladders go straight up and have evenly spaced rungs; climbing walls require a certain amount of traversing or diagonal movement, and a certain amount of inching forward followed by ambitions stretches, to get to the top of them. The example I always give is if you want to be a Customer Services manager for your library - the natural place to start is in Customer Services itself as a lending assistant (or whatever - the terminology is interchangable here but hopefully you know what I mean) but there's often a 3 pay-grade gap between asssistant and manager, with no obvious jobs in between. It's very, very rare for anyone to jump three grades in one go - so you need to go diagonally upwards so you're high enough up the grade structure to get a high-graded role, whilst trying to retain the relevant experience necessary to become the Customer Services manager. This improvisation and flexibility is not very ladder-like, and much more akin to a climbing wall.

The second thing I always advocate is to find the job you really want (Head of Special Collections, Subject Librarian, Children's Librarian, Law Librarian or whatever) and when you see it advertised at the kind of place you want to work, download the job spec and save it in a folder even when you have absolutely zero chance of being able to apply any time soon. Look at the person specification and make sure you shape your professional experiences to hit every single one of the essential and desirable skills over the coming years (either through jobs or involvement with professional bodies or writing papers or giving presentations or all four of these) so that you're in a position to nail the application in the future. Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity as they say - every time a great job comes up, you have a chance to try and manipulate your future luck in your favour...

 The Organisational Chart

So to the point of this post, the Organisatinal Chart (known also as Organisational Structure, Staffing Framework and, apparently, an 'organogram'). The Organisational Chart shows how the hierachy of any given organisation works - who is at the head, who is responsible to and for whom, how the teams fit together, and who manages what. It's quite hard to get hold of ones for organisations you don't work for, so I'd recommend finding your own library's (it's probably in the intranet somewhere...) and saving a copy into the same folder as your ideal job spec. Obviously libraries in different sectors have very different charts, so if you're aiming to work in the academic sector then a public sector chart may not be of much use to you.

I can't find a single Creative Commons example online (for obvious reasons) so here's a link to a publicly available chart for a big library. Obviously the point of this chart is to detail the positions and how it all fits together, but for the excited new professional it's a chart to literally plan an upwards trajectory with a highlighter pen (if you print it out - I wouldn't recommend using one on your monitor). Ask yourself, which of the higher jobs than mine can I get next? Does it lead to the job I really want (or the job before the job I really want)? Could I stand doing X for a year if it helped me get to Y the year after, or am I better off doing Z for two years and getting more relevant experience outside of the workplace at the same time?

I think it's particularly important to look at where the tree structure stops or hits a dead-end. Look at the role you're in now - is the only position directly above that your boss? Is your boss likely to leave any time soon? If not, you need to make proper plans for progression or you'll be doing the same thing you're doing now in 5 years time. Is there a path which opens up lots of possibilities for you, as opposed to the 'dead-mans shoes' syndrome of waiting for one or two people to retire or leave? Is the division you're in one with many holds on the climbing wall or just one or two (both of which someone else already has a firm grip on)?

I'm not advocating naked ambition - ambition for ambition's sake is something I'm not a fan of at all. But you DO want to be fulfilled, and ultimately you will want to earn a decent wage rather than get stuck on an okay one forever. If your current path hits the buffers in one job's time, think about the fact that you're going to be in this for 20, 30, 40 years so even if it's worthy and fulfilling now, it may not be stimulating when you're still doing it in 2020. Because as much as the rhetoric around library jobs is often about how 'none of us are in this for the money' and 'I just want a job I'm happy doing' the fact is there are lot of frustrated librarians who have just got mired in a certain part of their library and can't see an obvious path forward. So I really think it's worth being aware of what the future possibilites are, so you can start planning how you'll meet the challenges and achieve whatever it is that will make you happy.

It is, in my view, much better to be happy than successful. Being the 'best you can be' is only worth it if it makes you happy - I see a lot of people putting pressure on themselves, hitting great heights, but not being overly content. But forward planning never hurts, so even if you're not aiming for Head Librarian (I know I'm not - I'm going to completely ignore all my own advice and stagnate in my current job forever, although I did a lot of the above into practice to get to this position that I actually like in the first place) then knowing what you ARE aiming for will help you stay fulfilled.

If you're interested, there's a whole page of essential advice for new professionals elsewhere on this website, put together from the quotes of loads of librarians who have been there and done that...

Good luck!

- thewikiman

Rebooting infolit, the BATTLE DECKS way

This is quite a long post because I'm very excited about all this... Here's the super-short version: I decided to completely redesign my academic skills teaching. It went really well. Feedback was great. The students took part in Battledecks competitions, which was awesome. I learned certain things along the way. I think there's room for rethinking our approach to infolit.

Background

I do quite a lot of external talks and workshops, and much to my relief the feedback is generally better than I could hope for. What's more, I really enjoy them. I also do a fair amount of academic skills teaching as part of my job, and the feedback is just okay. And I don't particularly enjoy it a lot of the time - I enjoy the interaction with students, but I can't get worked up about the sessions, they feel a bit dull for all concerned.

Last academic year was my first as an Academic Liaison Librarian, and although I'd done information literacy sessions before I wasn't sufficiently confident to do more than take my predecessors' induction teaching materials, and try and make them my own. This time around though, I wanted to see if it was possible to do something different. I basically wanted to approach this presentation like I would an external one, and see if the students could get more out of it.

The biggest problem I have with teaching academic skills to undergrads is that the subject matter is boring. It really is dull. And a lot of it probably not that useful either; maybe to one or two students, but not most of them. I wrote a whole book without once using advanced search techniques for example (some would say it shows :) ) so why would a 1st year realistically want to know about them? For infolit teaching my process used to go like this: look at all the stuff I have to tell them about the library, and then work through it as unboringly as possible. For external workshops my process goes like this: think what is most useful and interesting to the audience, then try and present it in an engaging way so it stays with them.

These are definitely distinct approaches. Thinking about what is most useful to the audience may well involve not actually talking about 'library' stuff nearly as much. But if the students get more out of it, is that really a problem?

The plan

• Tell them about all sorts of things - some of them directly Library related, and some of them more generally information related
• Brand it like I would an external presentation - so rather than 'Library session' or whatever, I titled it '6 really useful things to make your academic life easier' (classic marketing tactics - sell the benefits of the session not the features, and stick a number on the front so it feels focussed)
• I created the slides like I would for an external presentation - ie I tried quite hard to make it nice, and didn't use any kind of template
• No workbook - instructions on the slides, and embed the slides where they can find them later for all the links etc
• Introduce Battledecks to end the session. Battledecks is something that happens in US Library conferences, where participants battle against each other, presenting on slides they've never seen before, which move on automatically after a certain amount of time (usually 15 or 20 seconds per slide). I've also seen it done here as part of Betta Kultcha sessions. Earlier in the year I tried it with some slightly drunk librarians at an SLA event as a way of summarising the session - what better way to reinforce the key points then to get someone else to do it? Better than me droning on about the same stuff all over again. Plus it's always quite hilarious, seeing people improvise over slides which are often just tenuous visual metaphors for the subject matter...
• (In this instance, our local cinema City Screen had given us some free student memberships to use as prizes in the Battledecks. I'm now thinking about local business I could contact about providing prizes for my other departments in the future. I offered each winner 4 student memberships - worth £100 in total, it has free tickets, money off at the bar etc - so they could give some to their friends. Having a desirable prize definitely helped ensure we had volunteers! We used an applauseometer to decide the winners in the session, and the last thing I wanted was for anyone to feel bad having been brave enough to volunteer so I declared each session a draw and gave both participants the full first prize...) .

The stroke of luck

I was only planning to do this with the Department of Film, Theatre and Television because I was banking on there being enough performers in each class for there to be Battledecks volunteers. TFTV are a fantastic department and very supportive of what I try and do with them, and the head of department Andrew Higson has been extremely helpful in trying to further embed info lit. This year I did my usual 15 minutes as part of the general induction talk, to tell them about the Library and the services we offer (using the interactive map prezi with lots of our new videos embedded in it) and got the actual PC lab session moved back to Week 4, when the students aren't drowning in new information, and have been set assignments so realise they'll actually have use for the Library.

The stroke of luck came when Andrew invited me to do another 15 minutes in one of his lectures, the day before my PC lab sessions. It meant I could get all the not-overly-exciting-but-absolutely-neccessary stuff about finding resources off reading lists out the way then, and focus on more non-library stuff the next day.

The session

The session (the same thing repeated three times to get all the first years in) went really well - it felt quite good at the time but the feedback suggested it was very good. Here's the slides I used (which, incidentally just got featured on the Slideshare homepage - spreading the word for infolit!):

6 really useful things to make your academic life easier from Ned Potter

Battledecks was AWESOME! What I really like about it, just like at the SLA event, was that although it was hilarious and there were times when the presenter literally had no idea what the slide meant (until a member of the audience shouted out 'Duck Duck Go!' or whatever...), it was actually a really, really good summary of the session. It showed they'd really listened, they picked up on the key points and they fed them back to their peers. So much more effective than me summarising. And because it's the last thing we did and by far the best part of the session, it meant everyone left feeling happy (and gave good feedback!).

The feedback

The best part of this was the feedback. I compared it to an equivalent set of sessions from the previous year and in terms of rating it from 1 (outstanding) to 5 (terrible - there were no  4s and 5s  in either year hence they don't appear below) there was a huge improvement:

This was great (not Judge Business School great but better than I am used to!) but I know from filling in those sorts of forms myself how easy it is to just tick numbers, so I was more interested in the comments.

Some of them referred to how the session had cleared up specific problems they'd been having, which was great. One referred to the 'excellent academic insight'. One person said 'I used to hate PowerPoint; you made me love it' (!), lots said it was either great or perfect, and one person ticked the box to say there was 'too much' covered in the session but then left comments in capitals that said 'BEST PRESENTATIONS EVER! PERFECT. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING'... There were lots of smiley faces, a few nice comments about me, and a third of them took the time to answer the 'what could be improved about the session?' question to specifically say that it couldn't be better (one person wrote: Not physically possible!). It was overwhelmingly better than my (distinctly underwhelming) feedback last year.

What was also interesting was that in answer to a question about what they found most useful, by far the majority replied that the stuff on SubjectGuides and JSTOR etc was the most useful (and none of them picked it as the least useful) - so smuggling in the Library stuff amid some more glamorous stuff elsewhere obviously didn't diminish its impact, in fact I'd argue it probably increased it.

Conclusions and changes

As you can tell I'm really chuffed about this. I enjoyed the fact that the students actually got more out of the session. I enjoyed the chance to talk about what I was interested in. I enjoyed actually applying the stuff I do / learn externally to my day-job (something my previous employer when unable to imagine was possible, but my current employer are very supportive of). And just as an aside, a colleague of mine tried this whole idea with Archaeology students and they really liked it too - proving that you don't need a great prize and a room full of budding actors to get battle decks volunteers...

When I do it again I'll be making some changes based on the feedback - in fact the slidedeck above is the 2nd version with some of this already taken into account. Someone suggested more funny clues for the battle-decks (hence Jay-Z is in there, rather than the JSTOR logo as used to be the case...) and someone else said they'd like to have seen some kind of information finding competition earlier in the session. I'd love to make it more interactive prior to the big battle decks finish, certainly. (The most common suggestion for improving the session was 'free chocolate', by the way...) I still don't think I'm very good at getting the balance right between talk, discussion and hands-on exercises so I'd like to improve how that works generally.  But basically, it was fun! I'd genuinely recommend Battle decks to anyone - feel free to steal my slides if you'd like a starting point...

If you have suggestions on how to make sessions like these more interactive, or you've revamped your own infolit and the students have responded well, let me know in a comment!

- thewikiman