Dumpling in a Hanky

Well, THAT was a busy year! And it's not going to get any quieter this year either.... So, why was it so hard? Well, last year involved these things in the library: Implementing a brand new Library Management System Getting the core library materials (textbooks and looseleafs) recatalogued (1,200+ items by the end of the year) on the new LMS Reclassifying all library materials to a new in-house classification system Setting up the subscription records for hundreds of journals and looseleafs Relocating all stock to match the new classification system, over a three floor library Driven to the Borders and back three times, to pack and relocate 40 sacks of books and law reports Setting up and stocking a new room with library materials Coping with recruiting and training three different assistants in six months* Spending a month running the library on my own Me having two different managers Managing a mid-year wholesale move of the library from the oversight of one depart...

Phew, it's been a long time between blog posts here, huh? Mainly, this has been because I've been super busy at work, between settling in to my role, and working hard with our intake of summer students. Settling in, and having people get to know me (made much easier now by the fact that the Information Services team and our Library have been located on one of the main office floors since mid April, so we're far more visible to staff) means that the fee earners have become more comfortable with asking me for research help, and passing research tasks to me to deal with, so my day-to-day workload has been picking up. Plus I've been checking over and altering the training materials I inherited from my predecessor...and testing them out on the Summer Law School students! The Summer Law School at my current workplace is partially similar to the one which was run by my old employer, but it's also substantially more involved. Unlike the previous 2-sets-of-students, 4-we...

I had a few minutes of fun today checking my reading speed on this site . Probably a not very accurate test, but it does check your understanding of the text you've just read, by questioning you on aspects of it at the end of your reading time. I got 100% accuracy each time I tried it, and a very fast reading speed each time. I wanted to average out my speed, but there were only 3 sample texts, and repeating them wouldn't be very accurate, so I had to settle for the average of the 3 texts: 754 words per minute.That seems to put me above "college professors", and below "high-scoring college students" (ok - that seems slightly back-to-front, but hey-ho!) on their scale.  Now, although I'm actually generally a very fast reader anyway, I think that years of doing legal research has actually trained me to be a more accurate skim reader. I may not necessarily understand the details of what I get asked to research (I'm not a lawyer, so the esoteric point...

Recently, I was regaling my partner with exciting tales of what thrilling things I'd got up to at work that day, while he listened with eager attention. Well, actually, what he was doing was trying to go to sleep, and I was babbling at him about research problems, but... I was explaining that I was frustrated that I was busy when a research enquiry that had come in, and that when I actually got a chance to do it, I found the answer within a few minutes. "I could have had that result back to the enquirer in minutes, rather than hours, and looked really efficient, since it was so straightforward to find." I was pouting. "Yes, but your enquirer has no idea of the level of skill it took you to find that answer. They asked you because they didn't know how to find it, and you are the expert. Just because you could find it easily doesn't mean it would be as easy for anyone else. And answering too quickly could make it appear that it was an simpler task than it w...

So, it seems we're all finding it difficult to concentrate on reading large amounts of text , and getting more easily distracted from.... oh, shiny thing ! Ahem...yes, so...I suppose the techniques frowned upon by the Oxford History professor in the article may well be naughty to use when trying to study and analyse literature....but in legal research, they're a godsend! Databases may well throw up hundreds or thousands of hits when you search for a specific term. Once you've narrowed it down a bit more, you're still left with dozens of articles and cases to wade through. And nobody's ever claimed that legal language was snappy, or easy to skim. The ability to go into these items and search for a specific word is great: by being able to find words instantly, and get some understanding of their use in the case or article through looking at the context, discarding irrelevant items is a much faster process. I'm not a lawyer: I don't necessarily always understan...

Information Overlord kindly pointed me towards Wests reply to the staggeringly badly thought out "Librarian name" marketing email. Wisely, they've put their hands up and confessed to being *rses, and apologised. A good response, but why did a massive (I believe, I'm not overinformed on the US legal information suppliers marekt) company whose focus is on supplying information to legal and information professionals, ever think that it would be ok to insult the best informed sector of their users? And who authorised that email going out? Did they look at it and go "Yup, that's just the tone we want to set!" Apparently, it "won't happen again". I'm just surprised that it happened at all.

Well, West (the American parent of our UK Westlaw) seem just about ready to start giving classes in "simultaneously patronising and insulting some of your core users". Sarah Glassmeyer posted this screenshot to Twitpic of a West email to its users. Shall I explain why I find this to be hugely insulting? Well.... do West understand who the biggest users / on site trainers / troubleshooters / BUYERS of its products are? Have they ever actually met a librarian, or do they still think all librarians wear half-moon glasses / twinsets / pearls / sensible shoes / their hair in buns? I suppose we should be grateful they didn't throw in a clipart library matron, or something about keeping te noise down too. And do they really think it's a good idea to imply that knowing a colleagues name in another department, who's there to do expert research work to save that fee earner valuable time, is beneath the dignity of a fee earner? Sigh. *Written by the librarian who has sho...

Sarah Hammond, an MA student, is researching the world of UK library blogging, and is trying to compile a comprehensive list of UK public library blogs. She's going to post the results on Delicious, with the username Public_biblioglogosphere , and has kindly agreed to allow me to add the results of her work into the overall UK library bloggers wiki. She's also doing her dissertation on the UK biblioblogosphere, and has set up a survey for UK public librarians to fill in here , if they're feeling  nice. It should only take 10 minutes, and will give you an inner glow of happiness for being so lovely :D

Tara Brabazon's hitting the headlines again, with an interview in The Guardian. She thinks that librarians will like her take on things, as we all want more books, and must feel as she does, that using Google, Wikipedia, and even blogs is 'bad' research. Well, I disagree. I like using Google - it gives me a good starting point. Wikipedia quickly gives me information on topics that I don't know about. Blogs give a personal view of issues, and often uncover a bias or truth not widely publicised. Yes, books are wonderful, but to get to the information in them, I need physical access to them...which isn't always possible. Online tools allow me to start my research from resources I can access, then if needed, I can move on to physical resources. I can't easily tell if a book even discusses a certain topic without having it and its index in my hand, but I can do a keyword search on a pdf, or webpage, and rapidly check its usefulness. I'm also a big enough girl t...