A day on Enquiry Duty

A post for Library Day in the Life 7

As already mentioned in my earlier post Monday for a Commercial Librarian, I work as a Senior Information Officer at a commercial property firm in Bristol. Our small team (just me and the Information Centre Manager) provide an Information Service to around 1,500 employees.

My previous post explained a non-enquiry day. Whilst I don’t wish to bore you with a blow by blow account of every day I thought it would be useful to write about an enquiry day.

On an enquiry day I deal with any requests for information from within the firm. Generally the requests come by email, however some people prefer to call and occasionally people in the Bristol office will pop down to see us in person.

This what happened on Tuesday 26th July:

8.30 – in work already, although I don’t start until 9am. As nothing urgent had come in I took the opportunity to start writing my Library Day in the Life post for Monday.

9.00 – the following enquiries had now arrived in my inbox;

How much was paid for an industrial unit just outside of Cardiff?

They had already checked some of the specialist property databases we subscribe to with no luck. A quick land registry search provided the answer.

Please can I have a credit report for XYZ company?

Another quick enquiry using a paid for subscription service. The company report only had 2009 financial info on it so had a quick check of Companies House which told me 2010 accounts wouldn’t be available until the end of October.

A request for some articles from Property Week.

9.30 – we run a number of daily/weekly/monthly searches. 90% of today’s searches were press searches which we run through Factiva. It’s always good to get them done early as you never know what the day will bring and if you’ll run out of time to do them later.

10.45 – set up login details for a surveyor to Goad (a paid for retail mapping service).

10.50 – another land registry request. This time I was unable to get any electronic results from the Land Registry database so had to mark up a plan and submit it to the Land Registry, we’ll get the results in a couple of days.

10.55 – planning search using a subscription database.

11.05 – two more land registry searches. Until the recession hit in 2008 we had an Information Assistant who carried out these searches. They are searches surveyors could carry out for themselves with adequate training. This is something we’ll be looking at in the future.

11.25 – yesterday we received a request for information relating to airports. My colleague had already passed it on to one of our researches who she thought would have some relevant data. I called to check what they could provide and if there was anything we needed to do. It looks as if they had enough information to answer this query. Spoke to the surveyor to explain that the researcher would be in touch and asked him to get back to us if there were any gaps – we can check for market reports, run press searches etc.

11.45 – request for company financials. The surveyor knew the trading name, but didn't know what the company was registered as with Companies House. First I checked for a company website, there wasn’t one. A press search didn’t help either. Google bashing finally gave me an answer. I downloaded the latest accounts and checked that the information corresponded with what I knew about the company. It did, hoorah!

11.55 – another land registry search

12.05 – no more enquiries had come in so I took the opportunity to contact a colleague in procurement regarding paper based subscriptions. Whilst we manage subscriptions centrally, the company we have merged with use SWETS, with each department managing their own subscriptions. The librarian in me shouts noooo! Managing them centrally has allowed us to reduce duplication and cost and we have a complete record of what everyone subscribes to (invaluable for a tricky enquiry). However, in reality managing subscriptions involves a lot of paper pushing, chasing people and chasing payment. This isn’t a good use of my skills and in the future I will not have time to do this, so I need to let go.

12.45 – started looking into a request for the top 100 financial firms in the UK.

13.30 – downloaded a company credit report and dealt with one more land registry search.

14.00 – lunch.

15.00 – yet more company credit checks, land registry searches and another press search.

16.00 – no new enquiries, so start to do battle with my in-tray. Dealt with some subscription renewals, invoices and caught up on my reading; I scan through Property Week and Estates Gazette each week to try and keep up to date with what’s going on.

17.30 – time to go home. An unusually quiet day in terms of enquiries with nothing too complex. It’s rare to be able to catch up with other things whilst on enquiry duty, but makes a welcome change.

Thing 8: Google Calendar

Thing 8 of cpd23 introduced us to Google Calendar, a web-based calendar that allows you to share your diary with anyone who has access to the internet.

I'm sorry to say at the moment I really have no use for this. At work we use Outlook which enables me to share my diary with anyone in the firm. My social life is not complicated enough to warrant an online app (I prefer a dubious combination of a paper calendar and committing things to memory) and I'm not involved in any organisations or a member of a committee.

I can see that it could come in handy one day though, so will keep it in mind.

Thing 7: Networking in the Real World and Professional Organisations

Thing 7 of cpd23 asked us to consider our experiences with professional and informal organisations. Here goes...

CILIP

I've been a CILIP member for a fair few years now however it's no longer a conscious decision as my company pays for my membership. If they didn't I'm not so sure I'd still be a member. I'm aware that I've developed a rather negative attitude towards CILIP, feeling that they don't really cater for the commercial librarian. Working in a property firm, in Bristol, with only one other Librarian has made me feel isolated from the profession, which doesn't help.

I've never really engaged with CILIP, my local branch or any of the special interest groups so have no basis to complain and am really hoping over the coming months I will be proved wrong. I've just registered for Chartership, am looking to get involved with either the South West branch or the CLSIG special interest group (Commercial, Legal and Scientific Information Group) and am keeping an eye on upcoming training events. I'm sure it's just a case of you reap what you sow. With this in mind things can only get better.

 

LISNPN

The beauty of an informal organisation such as LISNPN is that you have no expectations of what it should offer. There are some great resources and members really do seem to shape the content of the website.

A Bristol meet up is planned for August which I'm really looking forward to. It will be good to meet some new people and hear about what's going on in different sectors. 

LIKE

LIKE stands for London Information and Knowledge Exchange and is a free to join organisation that I hadn't come across before. I know I'm not based in London, but many of the people who work in similar roles are, as well as my company's head office and research team.

It looks as if they've held some really interesting events in the past so will be keeping an eye on their website.

ASLIB

I'm sure I've come across the Association for Information Management before but had quite forgotten about it. Some of the upcoming training courses look really interesting and relevant to the work I do, so again I'll be keeping an eye on their website.

So why CILIP?

This exercise has made me wonder why I want to become involved with CILIP; after all there are some organisations out there that would probably suit me better. This is why:

• CILIP is my professional body
• They accredited the course I completed at university which allowed me to apply for my current job 
• I am interested in the profession as a whole and CILIP is good at providing broad coverage of what's going
• I've just started the Chartership process and frankly it just seems disloyal to go elsewhere

So I'll see where things go with CILIP, if things don't work out at least I know there are other opportunities.

Monday for a Commercial Librarian

A post for Library Day in the Life 7

I work as a Senior Information Officer at a commercial property firm in Bristol. Our small team (just me and the Information Centre Manager) provide an Information Service to around 1,500 employees - just call us Superwomen for what we can accomplish in a day!

We take it in turns to be on enquiry duty. Today was a non-enquiry day for me, a chance to catch up on all the other things I do. Here's what today looked like:

08.40 - logged on and checked emails.

09.00 - planning meeting with my manager. We've recently merged with another company which has doubled the number of employees in the UK to around 3,000. We've decided to make some of the things we do self-service, to free up time to enable us to deal with the increasing number of enquiries where are skills can be put to better use. At the moment we are still operating on two separate IT systems, however as different teams and offices merge we will undoubtedly get busier. Things need to change and fast.

09.30 - finished a couple of quick enquiries from Friday; a Land Registry search as well as finding some company information.

10.00 (ish) - downloaded documents for our Electronic Library. Reports are saved, catalogued and stored in a file structure that mirrors our in-house classification system. The latest report in a series is also uploaded onto the catalogue. There were lots of new titles today which needed to be catalogued from scratch.

14.30 - lunch. Sometime you just need to get out of the office for your sanity, today was one of those days.

15.30 - last bit of cataloguing for the day, hoorah!

16.00 - started work on FAQ's and training manual for one of the things we will be making self-service. The principle behind the service is simple enough; you work out what documents you need, then order them, however the idiosyncrasies of the system are making it very difficult to come up with a clear set of instructions. You try explaining that when the system says something is coming by post, it doesn't always mean by post - this is what I'm up against. I've already compiled a list of top users, who will be my guinea pigs. Good luck to them! Of course, I don’t really mean that, being a librarian I'll be there to provide on-going training and backup for the more complex enquiries, but they will have to get used to doing things for themselves.

17.30 - responded to a couple of emails before heading home.

So that's my Monday. Non-enquiry days for me vary greatly and I could have easily spent most of the day dealing with subscriptions, developing our new library catalogue or maintaining our intranet pages, but I'll leave that excitement for another day.

Thing 6: Connecting the Disconnected Librarian (Online Networks)

As I'm just getting to grips with blogging and Twitter I'm keen not to overdo it this week with Thing 6 of cpd23 which is about social networking sites. Whilst having a presence on more sites promises to up your profile and help you become better connected, I believe it's more beneficial to concentrate on a couple of sites that you maintain, rather than crop up on several sites with out-of-date information, old postings etc.

Here are my thoughts on the some on the sites that were suggested we look at:

LISNPN

I come across the LIS New Professionals website several months ago, however never ended up registering. Having just signed up and found some example Chartership portfolios and a mention of a Bristol LISNPN meet up this is definitely a site I'll be revisiting - thank you cpd23!

CILIP Communities

Again this is something I've browsed in the past; however I've only found things of passing interest. I've just taken a quick look and whilst there aren't that many recent posts there is some interesting advice and information. It's worth keeping an eye on, but I won't be checking in regularly.

Facebook

I set up an account several years ago and whilst my friends were prodding each other I never really bought in. Back then I was really only using it for socialising and whilst I'm sure it could help with professional networking, logging back in today has not made me want to rekindle my Facebook affair.

My initial dislike of Twitter was its immediacy, however I've grown rather fond of it and enjoy taking a peak at what's going on right now. I also like that you can connect with anyone. In comparison Facebook seems clunky and a bit cliquey. Coupled with it's dubious privacy policy, I think I'll give it a miss.

LinkedIn

If there's one thing surveyors are good at it's networking, therefore I've come across LinkedIn in my professional capacity several times. I tried to set up an account some time ago, but back then you needed to add a photo before you could complete your registration - being in work this wasn't possible and I never ended up registering.

I've just registered, added some basic info to my profile and joined a couple of groups. Some of the discussions I've stumbled across seem interesting and relevant; however I'm not really sure where to go with it from here. I guess I'll have to play with it more and see where it leads.

The Connected Librarian?

No, and I'm a long way off, but I do feel more in the loop and have a better understanding of how online networking sites can help. LISNPN will definitely become part of my information diet, I need to spend more time getting to know LinkedIn and will continue to check in on the CILIP Communities pages every now and again, however will be giving Facebook a miss. I need to throw more time at Twitter and am still not commenting on other people's blogs at much as I'd like, both of which I think are just as important, if not more in building an online network.

PS. I can see that people from far and wide are viewing my blog. Hello there! Feel free to say hi, it would be really nice to know who you are.

Thing 5: Reflective Practice

Thing 5 of cpd23 was all about reflective practice. Having just started the Chartership process, which amongst other things requires you to demonstrate an ability to reflect on personal performance, I really need reflective practice to become my new best friend.

Reflective practice is all about evaluating experiences, learning from them and applying what you've learnt. I'd like to think I do this in my everyday work, however without putting pen to paper, I can't be sure, especially when it comes to personal/professional development rather than work projects. Sure I evaluate, but I don't always get around to putting my thoughts into practice.

So, now is the time to formalise the approach I take. The Plan-Do-Review model is the one I'm most familiar with, however as I need to record my thoughts the approach I'll take will be more along these lines of:

• Recall/describe what happened

• Evaluate - what I learnt, what went well, what didn't go so well, what could be done better in the future etc.

• Outcome - explain what actions I took as a result of my reflection

Elaine Andrew's post, detailing a reflective writing course she attended made me realise how important the last part of the process is, after all, this is the bit that shows you are developing and learning from your experiences. One of the other tips she shares, which I think is really useful, is to reflect quickly to capture your gut reaction.

Elaine points out that the only way to fail at reflective practice is to do nothing. So, all I need to do now is reflect and take action. Why does that sound so simple?!

Thing 4: To Tweet and Feed

The aim of Thing 4 of cpd23 was to introduce us to some tools that would help us keep up-to-date with things going on in the library and information world. Here's my thoughts on Twitter and RSS feeds.

Twitter

Until now I've shied away from Twitter. To be honest I just really didn't get it. In the past I only ever seemed to stumble across fragmented conversations and stuff of little interest or relevance. To say I've had a Twitter epiphany this week wouldn't overstate the case.


thewikiman's post "3 essential things to do as soon as you join Twitter" could have come a few days earlier and offered some sound advice; put in a picture, proper engaging bio and write a couple of tweets. When I set up my account my only aim was to try and get my head around how Twitter works, however now realise I was doing myself no favours not doing these things before following people. 

So, default egg replaced with mug shot and a blurb in place all I had to do was tweet. Sounds so simple, but I really struggled to get my first tweet out there. Searching for #cpd23 lead me to a fab list of people on Twitter who are following the cpd23 programme and I've since replied to a few of their tweets.

I'm only following a few people at the moment, however from what I've seen so far I'm impressed. Yes there's still a lot of stuff that's not of interest, but there's also lots of links to articles, blog posts and events and some enlightening conversations. As I follow more people I must remember Woodsiegirl's advice that you do not need to read every tweet that pops up in your stream, instead treat Twitter as what it is; a conversation to dip into as and when you can.

Now the negatives. Building an online presence from scratch is time consuming and I'm definitely learning that you only get out what you put in. I know I can't conjure up an online network overnight, but I’m struggling to find the time to get the most out of blogging and tweeting. I know what I need to do; tweet, respond and comment, however just finding the people I want to interact with, having the confidence to put myself out there (without feeling like a stalker) and finding something relevant and interesting to say is proving a problem. I'm still unsure of what I have to offer?


RSS Feeds

I'd already set up a few feeds using my Blogger account and so far so good, although I find it easier to view posts in Google Reader.

Working in a commercial environment I run regular press searches and often find when I'm reading the Sunday papers I can't help but read the headline, some of the lead paragraph and skim the rest of the article if it's interesting. Whilst frustrating when reading for pleasure, this habit really helps when it comes to keeping on top of my reading list. I'm happy to skim through, see if anything takes my fancy, ignore the posts that don't and mark the really interesting ones to come back to later.

I'm starting to sound on top of things, but I'm not. Seeing what others are posting all in one place is great, but I need to make time to interact with people and their blogs, otherwise I will remain forever disconnected.

Pushnote

Pushnote was the final thing on the to do list this week, however proved to be a step too far. I'm mentioning it here just to remind me to take a look later.

Posing a Risk to the Reputation of Your Company

A recent Information World Review article reported on a Protiviti study which looked at workplace policies in relation to social networking sites. The study concluded that companies need clear polices to help protect them from the reputational damage that employees can cause through the use of social networking sites. In light of thing 3 of CPD23, “consider your personal brand,” this article made me think.

Whilst I think it’s a no-brainer that negative comments about your employer will do you no favours in the long term, many people don’t seem to think this way or maybe just don’t understand the consequences of their online posts. Sadly this has resulted in many organisations blocking access to social networking sites. The survey thankfully recognises that not allowing access is not sustainable, after all, people can blog, tweet and comment from the comfort of their own homes.

I say thankfully, but until I started the cpd23 programme I didn’t understand just how important social networking sites are for professional development. I wanted to create a blog to help with the reflective practice element of Chartership, but didn’t realise how important online interaction is and really missed the point of Twitter. I now have a better idea of how sites such as Twitter can help with networking, keeping up to date with news, events and trends and sharing and challenging your ideas. All of this in theory should help my development and ultimately benefit the company I work for.

I get that this is a complicated area, that different people use social networking in different ways and setting policies that impact upon personal comments is extremely difficult and contentious, however hope that companies do indeed think about their access policies, rather than just blocking sites.

In the future I hope companies will not only see the commercial benefit of using social networking sites (marketing, sharing information and managing their online presence), but will also recognise that such sites can provide their employees with an effective means of continuing professional development. Although, with 5% of the survey respondents admitting that they use social networking sites several times an hour, it may be a hard sell.

Thing 3: Brand Disconnected Librarian

Thing 3 of cpd23 asked us to consider our personal brand. Initially the word brand makes me think of product names and packaging, which has led me to tinker with the look of my blog a little. As well as a few cosmetic changes I've also decided to add my name to my blog. Whilst I wasn't sure about this at first I now can see the importance in terms of networking, especially when the online and real world collide. I also think a photo is a good idea, but that’s a job for another day.

I too can see the benefits of a clear visual brand and having a single identity across different online platforms. I'm just starting out and would like people to recognise me and find me as I make more of a contribution. The visual bit has proved much easier; I've set up a new Twitter account and have kept with the blue theme and birds which I hope is easy on the eye. Let me know what you think? The single identity has not been so easy. DisconnectedLibrarian is too long to be used as a Twitter name, and try as I might it doesn't abbreviate well. This made me think should I keep the Disconnected Librarian name at all? After all it does have a negative connotation which isn't great when creating a brand. After much debate, it's been decided Disconnected Librarian is here to stay. Whilst it can be construed in a negative way, this blog is about my development, I've recognised that I'm not really involved with the profession and I'm trying to something about it. Disconnected is also the title of a Rancid song which always makes me smile because of the fab voice of the bassist Matt Freeman, I digress. So my Twitter name is still a little undecided but looks as if it will be Dis_Librarian, not catchy but am struggling to think of anything better. My name, although quite unusual has already been taken. Suggestions please!

More importantly though as The Practical Librarian notes, your brand is really your online reputation. As a newbie to all this and because I really have kept my head below the parapet I really do not have an online presence, good or bad. Whilst I never thought of this as a problem cpd23 has made me realise that my absence is conspicuous and would do me no favours if I were job hunting (luckily no need at the moment, but you never know when your circumstances are gonna change). On the plus side though I can start a fresh and have every opportunity to make sure my online presence accurately reflects me. Thankfully my name is unusual and a Google search really only comes up with a defence attorney in the US, no mistakes can be made there. Disconnected Librarian also gets no solid hits at the moment; hopefully this will change over the coming months.

What my online reputation will say about me is yet to be decided, however I hope it will eventually show that I'm a balanced individual (mostly), who is proud to be a Librarian. I hope to be able to share the occasional good idea too.

In terms of the personal/professional divide, I'm happy to let people know a little about me. I don't think it’s a bad thing to show some individuality (as long as you remember anyone could be reading your posts/tweets/comments) and I hope this will help with networking. At the moment however I'm planning to keep my personal/professional stuff separate, partly because I can't imagine people wanting to read about my other interests alongside my library stuff.

Finally it's worth mentioning Andromeda Yelton's article for the ALA Personal Branding for New Librarians, which really made me think. It considers your personal brand as a way of finding the people who you want to know and work with and cultivating conversations, building your community. I couldn't agree more. After all you can't have a reputation if no-one knows you exist. It's all well and good having a clear visual brand and identity and making sure you are portrayed in an accurate and positive way online but it's the getting out there, commenting on others blogs, tweeting etc. that builds your network and ultimately your reputation. It’s has to be a two way thing. So from now on a comment a day. You could be hearing from me soon...