Misconceptions

I really feel like we're getting to the home stretch now - two thirds done!

So, misconceptions. I think there are several massive misconceptions about libraries and library staff, so stop me if you've heard any of them:

1. Working in a library is all shushing and stamping
2. You work in a library? How wonderful, I'd love to read books all day!
3. The typical librarian (see also Fashion, which I'll be talking about on 25th) - female, spinster, wears cardigans, glasses and hair in a bun. Loves cats.

That's enough to be getting on with, I think! Right, let's tackle them one at a time...

Shushing and stamping

My four stamps!

Okay, I'll accept the stamping part - I got four of the dang things! But as everyone who's ever worked in a library knows, it's not the librarians who do the shushing - it's the readers ;) Seriously though, there's no space behind the scenes for me to do my work, so if I have to talk to people, on the phone or in person, I have to do it in the library. And in lots of libraries it's quite common to see areas for silent study, quiet study and group study nowadays. And have you been to the public library during Rhyme Time?!

Reading books

Last year I attempted a "19 for 19" - I would read 19 books, watch 19 films, play 19 gigs, cook 19 dishes/bake 19 cakes, finish 19 craft projects... I successfully completed 19 films, and that was it. I read 3 books last year. Three. And one of those I'd read before!

At work, I don't really read at all. I read to keep up with current trends and see what's happening in the library world (Twitter is very useful here), and then the bare minimum when cataloguing in order to classify something correctly. There are people who work in libraries and read all day. They're called researchers!

The Typical Librarian

Desk Set (1957) starring Katherine Hepburn as a librarian

Alright, there's a kernel of truth in this one, bound up in a lot of fiction, assumption and subversion. So yes, historically, being a librarian was a respectable job for a single woman. Because it's a service industry, it's female-dominated and poorly paid (female-dominated until you get to the higher echelons, anyway, grr...). The spinster thing - yes, if you were single, you had to work. Mind you, given what seems to me a high number of LGBTQ+ people in libraries around (I know probably 30-50 library workers in libraries in Cambridge, and maybe a third of them are LGBTQ+), I wonder whether librarianship is just diversity-friendly? Maybe of those spinsters, there were some who had no intention of finding a man to settle down with...

The cardigans - most of us would be overdressed in a suit, and cardigans don't mess with your hair when you put them on. The glasses, yes, that happens a lot, and frankly so do the cats - I'm seeing a lot of them now we're all working from home! So I guess this is not so much of a misconception after all. Which is interesting, because I see a lot of library staff getting huffy online complaining about how they don't fit this stereotype, when actually, a lot of us kinda do. What I think the problem is, largely, is that the stereotype is somehow a negative portrayal of a person. But why's that?

Checking in...and checking out again!

I'm checking iiiiin!

Time for an update, methinks. It's been a hectic two months back at my substantive post, with a few problems I've had to sort out with only a very tight deadline to do it in. Our serials aggregator declared itself bankrupt after we'd already prepaid, so there have been a lot of headaches caused by working out which periodicals we could spare for a year and which we couldn't, getting in touch with individual suppliers, and setting up new subscriptions while we dealt with the fallout, and taking the opportunity to sort out some periodicals which for one reason or another had fallen by the wayside. Then there was the cataloguing backlog which increased suddenly when we'd just received a huge delivery of books from a reactivated standing order along with all the other books we get in regularly. So that, combined with the usual reader enquiries, sorting out book orders for staff and the more routine tasks - like I said, a busy two months! Still to be accomplished are all the new things I wanted to set up following my return from secondment, like a library blog and an online graffiti wall, but as the museum website is undergoing a major overhaul, now was not going to be the best time to hassle our overworked IT staff! Still, I can keep plotting, maybe liaising with other Cambridge Museum libraries in the meantime about potential opportunities for collaboration and come back with fresh energy at a more convenient time.

Also currently taking a bit of a hit is my CPD. All the conferences are happening now, and I can't go to any of them! In particular I was most disappointed about missing the UX conference taking place in Cambridge over the last few days. UX and Ethnography in libraries is the hot new thing, and I was keen to learn more, but alas, I've had to make do with the twitter feed alone. Others I'm missing include both the UK and International music libraries conferences, so many workshops for art librarians, rare books, special collections, and the more generic library conferences like Lilac - most of these I can at least try next year, there's not much specifically drawing me to this particular year for a lot of them, but I do feel very aware that I'm looking at a year where I'm not taking on anything new or learning anything. To make up for this, I've accomplished two smaller things. The first is my first ever MOOC - Digging Deeper, which was a manuscripts and palaeography course run by Stanford with the UL, which is an amateur interest of mine. This was a brilliant course for my first MOOC, and I really enjoyed it; so much so I've immediately registered for the next one, which also covers music manuscripts (a slightly less amateurish interest of mine)! Once that's over, I'll no doubt be hitting up the Queen of the MOOCs (aka @ces43) for advice about other good courses to take!

Libraries and cake work together so well...

The other small thing proved not so small, really, which is why it's taken me so long to actually get round to writing about it, and that's CaKE 2. Cambridge Knowledge Exchange is the brainchild of two super librarians in Cambridge. Lots of conferences get attended by many of the librarians throughout the university, and there are even more librarians who don't get to go but who'd love to hear about them, so we get together (over cake, naturally) and the attendees share their impressions of the conferences they've attended, and any useful advice or information they've acquired.The first one of these was great because it introduced me to a few conferences and groups I'd not heard of before, but which sounded worth pursuing, while this time around, I think I'd heard of most of them, but had wanted to attend a few, so was really pleased that they were being reported on. This is basically going to be my CPD for this year, as I said, so it was definitely worth attending just for that. I made copious notes, so I think CaKE deserves its own separate post. I should have time now, seeing as I'm on leave for the next few months, leaving the library in capable hands! So hopefully it won't be much longer before my next post...

TFI Friday

So it's been a busy old time here in the reference library. We've been closed to the public now for 5 weeks (one to go!) due to building works elsewhere, resulting in the relocation of three other departments (that's right, three!) into our hallowed reading room.

The library looks remarkably like this

Not only that, but as I mentioned previously, we said goodbye to a number of colleagues, two of which were library staff. Given that we were effectively a full-time staff of three...yeah, I've taken over a few extra responsibilities! But now we're looking at the future, and hopefully soon we'll have a temp coming to ease the pressure, so that's good news. Though I'll still have to train them, and supervise them, and they won't be working Mondays at all...

Then we've had a colossal book move, swapping a room of oversized books, dealers' catalogues and art books with some of the archives. Hundreds...maybe even thousands of books being moved in two weeks...ouch. And much as I love not having had to move the books myself, this does mean I wasn't able to stop the movers when they reshelved the oversized books not by classmark, but by size. So now nothing's in order and I have no idea where anything is!

Added to that we've got the usual start-of-term chaos happening out in the real world university - I shall be giving tours to the History of Art postgrads soon. I've also been asked to run tours for the Cambridge Library Group, so I'm ankle-deep in email conversations with the other two libraries here to try and co-ordinate that (but that won't be until April, so I have a little time yet!).

The students I'll be showing around the library are ever so slightly older than these

I am luxuriating in the freedom to make decisions - I'm looking at ways to publicise the library and tie it closer to the general museum experience. So the idea is a person comes in, checks out the exhibition that they came to see. They might take in a couple of other galleries, eat at the café, make purchases from the shop...somewhere in there I think I can insert "visit library to look at further material on the exhibition, or just have a browse of the fantastic resources the library has on various forms of art". Or maybe just "visit library to sit down and allow feet to recover from all that ambling and read the Times Literary Supplement". I'm not fussy.

And finally...
My course is ever-progressing (at snail's pace). I've read 26 articles and learnt Set Theory for my latest assignment - and I'm hoping that that will be sufficient! I want to get it all done in order to go back to Aberystwyth in April, which means basically having completed everything by January. A month for each assignment should be possible, I think. Particularly given I've done so much reading for the next two already. Once I've completed Information Organisation and Retrieval, it's only Collections Management and Research in the Profession to do to be allowed to go back. It would be nice to have done Music Librarianship and one other before then, but we'll see. I'm hoping to have an idea about my dissertation by then too. I'd love to do something to do with music, but I'm pretty stumped for ideas beyond that thought.

And just a last cartoon which seemed pretty relevant to an art library but that I couldn't fit in with the rest of my verbal splurgings.

Happy Friday!

Business Hours Are Over, Baby

It's party-time. We're saying goodbye to a few colleagues, so here is the festive table before it got summarily destroyed by rampaging employees.

The un-fail-cake is hiding at the back, with Good Luck! written on it in my best icing handwriting (which, for the record, is so much harder than normal handwriting as a leftie, because you're not allowed to smear icing writing). The Christmas decorations are simply because we wished to decorate, and they were the only decorations to hand.

The plan is Easter eggs and plastic daffodils for this year's Christmas party.