This is (obviously) Day Two in this project – for Day One, and for the rest of the week (in case I don’t get around to posting them here), please check out my blog at http://butilikesayingshh.wordpress.com/, or follow me on Twitter @librarylandL.

So, just a brief post tonight as I’ve been out and I have work in the morning so I want to go to bed! This is day two of my blog for Hack Library School project for the week.

Today I had Uni all day, which started at 10am (thank goodness all of the 9am starts from last term are over!). I had an hour-long lecture for my Management module, which was about HR and the policies you need to think about, such as when employing people. A lot of it was common sense, but I certainly think it’s important to underline these things for when we become professionals. After that we had a half hour break which I spent in the common room with friends, and then a seminar for the same module from 11.30-1pm. In this we had a discussion about the use of volunteers and what you need to think about when considering using them – it was a really interesting discussion and made me consider issues that I hadn’t necessarily thought about before.

We then separated into our groups and started work on our third exercise. To give you some background, as a group we’ve created an imaginary library, which we have been given a budget for. In previous exercises we’ve outlined a mission statement and goals for the organisation, divided up the budget and staffed the library. Today we had to write a job description, person specification and create an advert for the job.

The most frustrating thing that I always find about this is that we don’t have enough time to do it, and working within a group obviously means that a lot of discussion happens – not ideal when you’re pressed for time! I generally find myself in the role of time management – i.e. I hurry everyone up so that we don’t waste time. We did quite well today and ended the session by dividing up the remaining work to do in our own time, with a deadline that we all have to meet. The group work is assessed so it’s important to make sure we’re all working at it.This kind of scenario is, I think, quite important for the course as I aim to be in management one day and it’s nice to consider these issues now, but I do find it a challenge working in such a big group.

After this was lunchtime. Usually I just spend this with my friends, but today I went to talk to one of my lecturers about my dissertation ideas first. One thing I really like about UCL is how approachable the staff are, and how helpful. After the discussion I feel a lot more certain about what I’m going to do for my dissertation now, which is a relief. I can start on my proposal this weekend now; something I’ve been putting off until now!

Then, after a hurried lunch (I bring in something from home and use the microwave in the common room) I went off to my optional module for this term. I’ve chosen to do Manuscript Studies, as it’s not something I have any experience in so I thought I would see what I think.

So far, I’m really enjoying it. A lot of it is based on palaeography, and is, I have to say, a barrage of information at times considering I have little prior knowledge of this. A visiting lecturer takes the class and it’s very old-school; no PowerPoint, but just the odd word or example on the board and lots of talking! Suffice to say that this week, as always, my brain felt like mush after it! Today we did about Gothic script. We always do some transcription as we have a test on this at the end of the term, and todays examples weren’t horrific so I don’t feel too freaked out about the test. My main quibble with the class is that we only get a 5 minute break in a 3 hour class, so I often find myself flagging towards the end. I’m glad I chose it though, as it’s allowed me to try something completely different.

After class I went for dinner and to the cinema with some friends from the course, and then headed home. And that’s day two in my life!

Anne Thoring (MA Publishing 2009-10) has published her dissertation research. ‘Corporate Tweeting: Analysing the use of Twitter as a marketing tool by UK trade publishers’ appears in the latest issue of the Springer journal Publishing Research Quarterly.

The research found that just 42% of the sample of publishers had a Twitter account. Medium sized and larger publishers were most likely to Tweet, with the medium sized companies most active. The average publishers Tweeted during the working week and posts were mainly normal Tweets and not retweets or replies.

The majority of Tweets were about competitions, games or votes, followed by information about books and then authors. Most content was exclusive to Twitter and did not appear in the News section of the publisher’s website or other social media. The majority of Tweets contained hyperlinks.

The article is available to read through the UCL library e-journal service

Tomorrow MA LIS student Sian Prosser is presenting a paper at the Early Book Society and York Manuscripts Conference Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350-1550. Sian’s paper is entitled ‘Used treasure: manuscript waste in the bindings of Ripon Cathedral Library, including a newly-discovered fragment of Brunetto Latini’s Livres dou tresor‘. She is continuing her research into the Ripon Cathedral binding fragments this summer for her Masters dissertation.

Image: from the Playing the Margins tumblog.

MA LIS student Jennifer Howard has had an article published in the latest issue of Catalogue & Index, the main practitioner journal for cataloguing in the UK:

Jennifer Howard. ‘Learning to catalogue in 2010-11’. Catalogue & Index 163: 10-11.

Given the topic, it may be of interest to students enrolling for this year’s MA LIS, alongside Genny Grim’s and Sarah Maule’s accounts in Catalogue & Index 162.

SLAIS alumnus Lorraine Mariner also has an article in the current issue:

Lorraine Mariner. ‘RDA and the small, specialist library’. Catalogue & Index 163: 12-13.

The current year’s issues of Catalogue & Index can be accessed online by members of Cilip’s Cataloguing and Indexing Group. (Previous years are open access). UCL subscribes to Catalogue & Index, and registered users can access issues from 1998 to date via the UCL ejournals service.

Image: Cataloguing and Indexing Group

Research students Alexandra Eveleigh and Claire Ross are speaking at the Fifth Bloomsbury Conference on e-Publishing and e-Publications at UCL this week.

Alexandra is speaking today in the session on the role of intermediaries’ role(s) in the research process, while tomorrow Claire will be presenting how Humanities scholars use social media.

Images: Alexandra: @ammeveleigh ; Claire: by Dr Melissa Terras for UCL Centre for Digital Humanities.

Research student Claire Ross has spent the last week at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria. As part of her Digital Fundamentals course, she has been digitizing images of title pages for us to use in teaching Historical Bibliography. You can read about the techniques she tried out – photography and flatbed scanning – on her blog, Digital Nerdosaurus.

Image: by Dr Melissa Terras for UCL Centre for Digital Humanities.

left to right:

Katharine Schopflin, Mei Yau Kan, Jennie-Claire Perry, Elly O’Brien

Each year the MA LIS programme organises a career day for students due to complete their studies. The morning session consists of formal presentations from Michael Martin (CILIP Qualifications) and one of the recruitment agencies. This year Nicola Franklin of Fabric Recruitment shared her experience and offered advice, which she has summarised on the Fabric blog.

In the afternoon we invite practitioners to talk about various aspects of working in the information sector. This year, Elly O’Brien (Bazian) talked about health libraries, Mei Yau Kan (ICAEW) about the commercial sector, Jenni-Claire Perry (University of the Arts) about academic libraries and cataloguing, and Katharine Schopflin (Houses of Parliament) about library management and working across different sectors. (more…)

Five students from the MA LIS programme are volunteering as interns at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. They are Inga Jones, Eunhae Jung, May Warren and Francine Wood.

Full details on the UCLDH blog.

This week’s Guardian Higher Education Network Panel included Claire Ross, a first year research student in the Centre for Digital Humanities. The issue discussed was how Higher Education uses the Internet. You can read about it on Claire’s blog, Digital Nerdosaurus.

Image: by Dr Melissa Terras for UCL Centre for Digital Humanities.

Current MA LIS student Amelia Grounds has accepted a part-time postision as a freelance preservation assistant at UCL Special Collections. She is working to pack and move the collections and is coordinating a team of volunteers also working towards this end.

* If you are a current or former UCL DIS student with news to share about a new professional appointment, please do get in touch.

Image: UCL Special Collections twitterfeed, where you can keep up to date not only with the upcoming move but with other announcements from the Special Collections team.