Day in the life of....a college librarian/Assistant Director

Hello there,

Well I thought I would set the ball rolling as the chair of the group. As a College Librarian and Assistant Director of Library and Learning Centres (Kent), I have a number of hats to juggle, which can be challenging....I am based in Canterbury and live in Maidstone, so I have a 40 minute journey to work, passing by lots of rolling hills and lots and lots of sheep - this usually makes for a relaxing start to the day, as long as I haven't been behind a tractor for the last 20 miles! I used to work in London for the University of the Arts, but the long commute was very draining and left very little time for unwinding from a busy day. At Canterbury, I share an allotment with work colleague, which breaks up my working day and means that I can focus on something else apart from work (note to all: work/life balance is very important!). Well on to my day - as I was out of the office yesterday, the first thing I do is check my email - gosh what a lot of emails I have! A good proportion of these are spam, so just leaves me with a few that should be able to deal with quite quickly. All done and dusted by 11am. Email Arlis administrator to let her know that I cannot attend Arlis Council meeting on Wednesday - just too busy....Get phone call from librarian at Maidstone to ask when the graduate trainee posts are starting - I ring up HR and they give me a start date. He also talks about the Herbert Read Exhibition which we are curating for January 2010. We have each been given an area of Herbert's life to research, which is proving great fun. We have a meeting scheduled with the Galleries Manager next week, so need to get the information together - all this stuff is being housed in a blog at the moment, which we will make live fairly soon. I then start thinking about preparing for the Graduate Diploma in Architecture inductions we have on Thursday - I don't liaise with many courses now that I am Assistant Director, but I like to keep my hand in. Spend the rest of the morning peparing the session outline for this....hoping to pop to the allotment at lunchtime. Write a "things to do" list before I set out. This includes writing up a report on a one day workshop I attended at De Montford University called "Open House for Learning Developers" (I am really interested in how librarians can better promote their role in information literacy and in particular, how this can be linked to employability), booking in Personal Development Reviews with all my staff and writing an induction programme for our new Graduate Trainee starting on the 17th September......... I also need to prepare for a presentation I am doing for the Higher Education Academy called "Mapping the Territory" which looks at the link between information skills and emp0loyability. (Note to all: Read Tara Brabazon's "University of Google")

Some key dates for your diary if you are a graduate trainee or wanting to get into art library work

CPD Workshops

Applying to study library and information studies, 29 October 2008 - if you want to find out how to make a good application to library school, this one day workshop is a must - please click here: http://www.cpd25.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=143&extmode=view&extid=306

An introduction to art and design reference sources, 10 November 2008 - this is an ARLIS one day workshop which takes place at the National Art Library - hear experiences of enquiry work in the art and design sector and do some practical enquiries yourself

Taking the Plunge, 7 March 2009 - ARLIS one day workshop. Opportunity to listen to experiences and ask questions of art librarians in museums, academic libraries, public libraries and private collections.

See Arlis website for more details of forthcoming visits and workshops. www.arlis.org.uk