With a little help from my friends and more ... 15th Nov (pm)

The title of this post and our upcoming training day seems very apt, especially as I have had to call on my FIL committee friends to 'remind' me of the password to this site! But help they did and I was very grateful!! Some times we do need to ask for help at work - to bounce ideas off someone, discuss an idea or learn from colleagues. With this in mind, our November training event is looking at how effective collaboration and sharing information/knowledge can be ..... So shameless plug - "With a Little Help from My Friends - FIL@BL St Pancras" - BOOKING IS OPEN! The event is taking place at the British Library Document Supply Centre in St Pancras, London during the afternoon of Friday 15th November 2013. Places are limited to 40 delegates and are filling up fast, so book now to avoid disappointment! Price £30 members, £45 non members. Please register for a place at http://www.forumforinterlending.org.uk/filblst-pancras-friends-2 by the 8th November. We look forward to seeing you all there and if anyone has a bright idea to remember passwords please come and tell me ... :) Jennie (Marketing person @ FIL)

Document Delivery Review:

Work this week, has been about procedure manuals. It has been on my to-do-list all summer, but with one thing and another it's only now that I've gotten round to do it.
The procedures for Document Delivery have changed somewhat since our last review of them prior to going on maternity leave in June 2010! Things have changed, and quite significantly in some areas, so as its the start of a new academic year, time to dust down our procedures.

Myself and a colleague, were given time away from our normal work and we locked ourselves into a room with the said  manuals and ploughed on!
Once we got started, we made quick headway with the main procedure manual which solely focused on Inter Library Loans. Part of our work includes the CLA Scanning licence and these procedures have always been separate, on review we decided that as this falls under Document Delivery Service this was to now be included in the manual.
Over the last year, we have also been managing the TRILT Service and we felt this also needs to be included.

The manual will be the 'go to' place for all of our Document Delivery Services in the future.

FIL related news, the FIL @ BL St.Pancras programme is now available and bookings are open! The event is titled 'With a Little Help From My Friends' (at least there are no Cliff Richard references!) I've always been struck by how friendly ILL peeps are, and to build on these foundations we hope to continue in these footsteps.

Have you registered for our 'Members Only Area' yet? I implore you all to register for this added service, here you can discuss a variety off issues that affect interlending and document supply.

Marie
FIL Chair
Cardiff Metroplitan University

Photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cueva2008/2870517986/">CUEVA2008</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

New Faces for a new academic year

This is an exciting time at the Albert Sloman Library here at the University of Essex because September always sees the arrival of our new graduate trainees.

This year, as last year, we have four graduates coming to gain some experience of library work before embarking on a post-graduate programme of study. Each of our graduates spends three months in our Interlibrary loan department so that means we have to train some-one new about the delights of inter-lending every three months.

Whilst this can be quite a challenge, especially if there are any systems changes or product changes which coincides with the trainees, it also gives us time  to think about how we do things, and we can also get fresh ideas on maybe how to improve things.

What I find particularly rewarding is when I get requests for items from some of our previous trainees who have gone on to work in Interlibrary loan departments around the country. Seeing familiar names always sparks off conversations about good times.

This year our trainees are also going to see the opening of a new partnership project library brought about by Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, the University of Essex and South Essex College. Anyone who went to the FIL conference in Worcester will remember the Hive and I believe that this will be something similar. We are all excited to see what happens after it opens on 30^th September.

What a month of good things to look forward to :)

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/320182643/">Nrbelex</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a>