Library fitness

A short while ago, some of my colleagues heard about a ‘pedometer challenge’ that was being run in another department in the University. They thought it might be a good idea to get involved and try to encourage people to move away from their desks at breaks/lunchtimes. A small group of interested people signed up to take part and I have to say the results have been quite interesting.

I was pretty confident that I ran about a lot during the day – my office is at the other side of the floor from the rest of the staff and I feel that I am constantly going back and forth between the two areas. 10000 steps per day? I’m sure I do that, no problem. Er, no, as it turns out, how far you think you walk in a day and how many steps you actually take is quite different! I started off with one of those cheap pedometers, but I was sure it wasn’t very accurate (and I kept accidentally resetting it by leaning against my desk) so armed with my Nectar points, off I went to Argos where I bought myself a Fitbit wristband. I have never become so addicted to something in my life! It keeps a very accurate record of your movements during the day and when synced with the app, you can see how many steps you have taken on a graph at 15 minute intervals. It has shamed me into moving away from my desk as much as possible! Previously, I would send various items to the printer then pick them up all at once the next time I was at the MFD. Not now. I will go and pick up my prints every time I send them!  Arrive at work early? I’ve started running up the stairs from level 2 to level 12 (so far I can get to level 9 before having to walk the rest but that’s better than when I started!). Nice weather at lunchtime? 40 minute power walk round the park! Even then, I’m not hitting 10000 steps per day but I’m getting close!  Once or twice a week we’ll try to get a group of 4 or 5 people together to go out for a lunchtime walk but I actually find I quite like walking on my own. The worst thing was seeing my results for a Saturday – clearly I sit around most of the day watching tv or knitting! I have now shamed myself into walking round the village where I live on a Saturday afternoon (I do however feel that I should borrow a dog from one of my neighbours as dog-walkers look at me as if I’m mad out walking without an obvious reason!).  One of my colleagues mentioned that in the US, mall-walking is a big thing where people just power walk round shopping malls. She wondered if we could do that in the library on days when the weather is bad – wouldn’t that be a sight to behold!

So, if you see me at the FIL conference walking around talking to people and you think I’m actively socialising you’ll know I’m secretly just trying to increase my step count for the day! 

Joanne

To Blog or not To Blog?

Apologies for 'altering' two famous quotes but they have been, in the end my only inspiration for this blog!

I've sat with blank page in front of me for most of the week trying to decide what on earth I could blog about that would be of interest to the ILL community. 

The answer - nothing!

I thought about telling you what we do here in Hertfordshire on a daily basis - but probably because it's our daily work, I can't think how to make it exciting.

I thought about some of the unusual successes we've had tracking down books - but when one has writers block, nothing seems to come to mind.

I thought about plugging the FIL Conference - but then we have blogged that recently.

I thought about plugging the other FIL benefits, the website, the members area, the facebook page, the journal, the twitter account, the FIL@BL and FIL@BLDSC days - but then - oh hang on, I've just plugged them!

So, ultimately this blog is about blogging. What is blogging and why do it?  Is it just vanity writing, a way of advertising yourself and what you do? Or is it a good way of getting a message across to people?

Getting your message across is very likely true for a number of people but that also depends on you having a good following of people reading your blog, otherwise it is just you writing for yourself, isn't it?

Reading other blogs over the years, I think a large number are just vanity ramblings for people who want an audience and want every body else to know who they are and what they are up to. That is something that this blog certainly isn't - I hope, or is it and that's why we don't have a huge following or lots of FIL members coming forward to blog for us.

So if you have something ILL you wish to share with us all or maybe if you just want to get yourself out there for the world to read, blog for us. Please don't just leave it to the committee, I for one am rapidly running out of ideas! 

So blog over with, rambling finished - I'll now disappear into the 'real world' and probably think of a fascinating subject to blog - but I can always come back and blog another time.

Thanks for reading and if you think you can do better (but lets face it - anybody can do better than this blog), get in touch and blog for us.

Tracey
FIL Vice Chair & Marketing Officer
Hertfordshire Libraries

ps Don't forget you can still book your place at the Conference!  (well I had to get a plug in there somewhere)

Budding Bloggers?

Call for Budding Bloggers

Is there a budding writer, poet, blogger out there?

Today I fear I’m undone

For blogging ideas will not come

My brains I have wracked

But content I’ve lacked

No piece to present for the Forum

‘We could do with your help here at FIL

If you have a spare hour to kill

Put your pen and your mind

To a blog, we could find

that your content might just fit the bill!’

The committee for the Forum for Interlending take it in turns each week to compose a short piece for the FIL Blog. It is not always easy to think of something ILL related which is informative, interesting, funny or sometimes just downright weird to share with our fellow ILLers.  Every library is different and every ILL department has its own unique way of doing what is essentially the same job as another ILL department, so it is always great to hear from others about what they do and how they do it.

 With this in mind I am asking if there are others out there with a story, or a question or just a little insight into their daily lives that they would like to share with the rest of the ILL community by composing a guest blog that we can feature in the coming weeks and months.

As well as the FIL blog we are always happy to receive longer articles for the FIL Journal too!

Limericks courtesy of myself and a colleague (thank you Lucy).

Sandra DeRoy
Chair of FIL

 

 photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/107963674@N07/17117862267">Forget-me-nots. Pittsburgh, PA.</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">(license)</a>

Could we be more flexible friends?

Our ILL team can’t be alone in finding it really frustrating when we have a customer who desperately needs to see a book, journal supplement or DVD for their research and we trace a holding library and the response comes back that it’s not for loan. On a number of occasions the library may also be the only UK location so we can understand why they would be reluctant to part with it but are we sometimes too cautious?  

It’s not always practical for economical or geographical reasons for the requester to travel to see the item. Refusal is always polite and there is usually a good reason for not supplying that we can pass on but a little flexibility can make a huge difference to the person who needs it. We’ve certainly had situations where all UK holding libraries decline to lend an item and we’ve subsequently obtained it from a library in the USA or Australia! Not only do we have a very satisfied customer but it also results in great feedback for the service we all want to promote.

If we are asked for an item we don’t normally lend we’ll weigh up the risks and impact on our own users and if at all possible we’ll bend the rules. It may be something from our DVD collection that would not be available for ILL but if it’s not been issued for a long time then why not make an exception, or it could be a journal supplement from years ago that we have to blow the dust off when we check the shelf. Don’t get me wrong as we often do have to decline but if at all possible we will send such items but stipulate that they are for ‘library use only’ and issue for a short time to minimise any impact for us.

One recent request which wasn’t straightforward but it did result in success  for one of our academic staff was a loan from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library in Beverly Hills. Not quite the Oscar but nearly!  Now that would be my dream job to work in their library…

Interlend 2015: Programme published!

Well, Spring has sprung, and with it our plans for Interlend 2015!

I’m very pleased to be able to tell you all that the eagerly-awaited programme for Manchester has now been published!  Apologies for not getting it out sooner, but we had a few ‘late entries’ after the deadline for the call to speakers.  Usually, they wouldn’t be considered after the deadline, but Committee felt that they were interesting, and covered topics you’d want to hear about, so we made exceptions this time around.

We are especially delighted to have two very interesting and well known speakers as keynotes.    Ned Potter will address the conference on Day 1, talking about useful social media in libraries.  Then, on Day 2, Mike McGrath gives us the benefit of his considerable experience as he discusses just where interlending is at the moment. I won’t list all the other contributors – check out the website for details- but we are covering some very topical issues, including PDA, Open Access, copyright and we've also included a number of practitioner-based sessions. I hope you’ll agree that we have produced a packed programme covering a wide-range of topics.

There really should be ‘something for everyone’ in the interlending community, and the venue is  conveniently located for even day delegates from around the country.  So do take a look at the programme, and consider booking a place.  But don’t hesitate too long; bookings are being made fast!

Details of the programme can be found on the FIL website:

http://www.forumforinterlending.org.uk/

I look forward to seeing you all in Manchester!

ILL under Fire

Just a quick blog late on a Friday. Having worked in ILL for about fifteen years nows I thought I had seen everything when it came to working under unusual circumstance, but just before Easter I had another first. 

On the Wednesday before Easter there was an underground fire in Holborn Central London (Just google Holborn fire for some pretty dramatic pictures).  The library I work in was very close to the fire so it made for an interesting day.  The fire began at about 12.30 but there was not an evacuation of surrounding buildings until mid -afternoon.  Luckily nobody was hurt and damage to any buildings in the area was minimal.  As there were building works going on outside the office I had not noticed the smoke in the air.  Once the power was switched off for safety I had to stop working, but I hope you'll agree that it was quite impressive that all the ILLs waiting to be processed were done before the building was evacuated.   Luckily the post had been delivered quite early so I had time to get this done before a late lunch break.   As the library was due to close that evening anyway my Easter holiday started a bit early.  I had a very smoky journey once I got outside.  Thank goodness for the British Library as I popped in for a much needed cuppa on the way home.

So apologies to anyone who has received their loans back late and slightly smoky! 

Have a great weekend and here's hoping for a smoke free rest of the year.

Karen

 

Musings from Edinburgh University Library

Beautiful weather here this week – definitely not weather to be stuck inside.  What has been happening here?

Edinburgh will be going live with Alma on 29^th June, and I’m sure many of you will appreciate the major operations involved in configuring everything for migration from Voyager.  Similarly “Subject matter experts” or SMEs can routinely be seen sitting under headphones watching or listening to online training videos which are hopefully relevant to their own functional area.  Our email boxes are bombarded with Alma-related messages;  we’ve been to meetings, seminars, more meetings and “Learning to train” training courses, and each now have to give a short presentation on a functional area of Alma or Primo.

All this is highly organised and will put the library in good stead for the launch.  However, for ILL staff it’s rather a surreal experience, because in the short term at least, we won’t be directly using Alma for Interlibrary Loans; instead we plan to continue with ILLiad until we find a way of integrating the 2 systems.

I’m still doing all the training on general aspects of Alma, but I almost feel as if I’m looking at all the mad activity through a blurred lens, not quite sure where we fit in.

As far as ILL is concerned, it’s pretty well business as usual – a fairly humdrum existence at the moment, were it not for some crazy requests

Miracle workers?

Case 1

Day 1:  Student submits request for microfilms from an art library in the USA

Day 6:  (Note the day!)  Student phones up informing us that he had contacted said art library who had informed him that they normally process items in 7 days……

Question from student:  “Why have my microfilms not arrived yet?”       

 

Case 2

Day 1 - 11.15 am:  Request submitted by student for an article.

Day 1 – 11.18 am:  Student phones in, wondering why he hasn’t heard anything about his request……

We do like to think we’re quite efficient, but……….

 

Lost item returned to the nest

This week a book was returned to us by a US library.  It had been handed into them by some random person.  We checked our catalogue to discover that it had been recorded as missing in our catalogue in 2001, having been issued to one of our non-American students and apparently never returned.  If only books could talk – where has it journeyed meantime??

 

OK, I can’t put off that training video any longer….   Have a good weekend everyone when it comes.