The UCL Library Services Staff Summer School is a series of training and development sessions, events and online activities aimed at library staff from across UCL Library Services, to support them in answering enquiries and in providing support, training and advocacy to library users and stakeholders.

This year the entire programme will be delivered online throughout June and July, with a mixture of self-directed online learning and live sessions. Here is a taster of what’s on offer, with more sessions to be announced soon:

• Introduction to digital accessibility (Wednesday 9 June – Wednesday 21 July, self-directed online learning).
• Creating videos: an introduction (Thursday 10th June, 10.00-12.00)
• Blended learning by design (Monday 28th June, 10:00-11:00)
• LibAnswers and LibChat: Developing our online enquiry service (Tuesday 13 July, 11:00-12:00)
• eXperience eXchange and Feeback from FestivIL (Tuesday 20th July, 10:00-12:00)

Full details are available:

• UCL Library Services Staff Summer School Moodle Course. (If you do not already have access, please email libraryskills@ucl.ac.uk for an enrolment key).
• Make a booking and find full information for each session on our calendar.

Sessions are open to all UCL Library Services staff, with the permission of your line manager.

Angela Young, Head of Library Skills

As we have entered our new Appraisal Window, we would like to bring to your attention some changes for the upcoming cycle.

Appraisal form

During the current Covid-19 pandemic, colleagues in Library Services are asked to complete the abridged version of the UCL appraisal form.

The new format dispenses with Parts A-C in favour of a single document.

Appraisals and Covid-19

This has not been a ‘normal’ year. UCL’s position is that the appraisal write-up should include acknowledgement of any agreed adjustments to objectives, workload or working patterns, for individual members of staff. Where a barrier, such as the impact of COVID-19 or lockdown, may have impacted on an individual’s ability to meet agreed objectives from the previous year, it should not impact negatively on the individual in terms of demonstrating good performance over the past year. Nor should their revised working pattern/workload create a barrier to any learning and development opportunities which have been identified as part of the appraisal process.

See more information about holding appraisals this year.

How to manage the appraisal documentation

 

1. The Appraiser and Appraisee should keep a signed copy of the appraisal document, in a confidential file/location, until the subsequent appraisal, when the document should be disposed of confidentially. (If the appraisee leaves the organisation, the paperwork should be disposed of confidentially at that time.)
2. If revisions to the job description have been agreed during the appraisal process, please send an electronic copy to Library HR at lib-hrteam@ucl.ac.uk.

The LibNet appraisals page has been updated with information about the abridged appraisals process.

Developmental Conversations

The Developmental conversations approach allows for two-way conversation to take place which can enhance the appraisal experience through meaningful goal setting and personal development.

Further information on developmental conversations is available.

The recommended Developmental Conversations training module is available for staff to complete.

Appraisal Targets

In line with the Library Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action plan, all staff are required to have a target of engaging or undertaking at least one Equality, Diversity and Inclusion associated activity or event in the 2020/2021 academic session. For example contributing content to the Library Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) newsletter, engagement in wellbeing initiatives, attending a training session or team building exercises using the theme of EDI.

A discussion should take place regarding the Library Strategy and targets that link to the Strategic Key Performance Action objectives.

When developing the targets, consideration should also be given to the UCL Ways of Working and the indicators relating to the grade of the post that the employee holds.

4 dimensional (4D) goal setting:

UCL has introduced a goal setting framework based upon the following principles:

• Discover my potential – 1 goal required
• Deliver my role and alignment to UCL’s strategy – 3 goals required
• Defer/Discontinue activities that hinder me from achieving my role’s purpose and focus
• Demonstrate UCL’s way of working – 1 goal required

Further details about UCL’s 4 dimensional approach to goal setting are online.

Training

Please ensure you review training completed in the past year and that any mandatory refresher training is set as a training objective.

There are 9 core mandatory courses:

• Staff online diversity training
• Unconscious bias training 
• Change possible: Be part of a sustainable UCL
• Information Security
• UCL fire safety 
• UCL safety induction
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) training
• Freedom of information 
• Prevent duty training

GDPR refresher course completion required every two years.

Mandatory training for Managers

Managers should complete UCL recruitment essentials before participating upon recruitment panels.

UCL has a vast amount of training available for staff which can be found by visiting the Learning Academy.

HEA Fellowship awards provide a great opportunity for anyone who wants to demonstrate their commitment to professionalism in supporting learning and teaching in higher education. The UCL Arena Open programme, which is free to UCL staff, provides a route to Higher Education Academy (HEA) / AdvanceHE fellowship and is open to all staff at UCL who teach or support students’ learning, regardless of role or job title, so it’s relevant to all sorts of roles within Library Services. In addition to gaining you post-nominals, the process of applying means you reflect on your teaching and learning support work and develop your skills, identify areas for your future development and enhance your support of students so contributing to the user experience.

UCL Arena are launching a brand new course that is being delivered online this summer, specifically to support Professional Services staff, including Library Services staff. This is a great opportunity for anyone thinking of applying for Associate Fellowship or Fellowship. Details of the course are below.

Contributed by Angela Young.

Professional Services Staff – Pathway to Arena Fellowships

Course description:

Professional Services (PS) Staff make an important contribution to UCL’s mission, by providing training and support for learning. This course is a development pathway for PS Staff, leading (ideally) to the submission of an application for fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

The course will enable you to think creatively about supporting teaching, learning, and assessment in your role. It will guide you in developing a fellowship application in a structured way over four synchronous, interactive sessions and through a variety of tasks. You will also have the opportunity to meet colleagues from different parts of UCL and to discuss how your experience maps to the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• identify ways in which your role and work experience supports high quality student learning and student outcomes
• reflect on your professional practice and consider the ways it impacts on the learning of others
• recognise the importance and value of your work and how it contributes to UCL’s operations and strategy
• understand what a good UCL Arena fellowship application looks like
• demonstrate how your experience and knowledge meet the relevant criteria of the UKPSF for the appropriate fellowship category

Dates/times of sessions:

• Session 1: Thursday, 9 July 2020 (14.00 – 15.30)
• Session 2: Tuesday, 21 July 2020 (14.00 – 15.30)
• Session 3: Thursday, 6 August 2020 (10.00 – 11.30)
• Session 4: Tuesday, 11 August 2020 (14.00 – 15.30) OR Wednesday, 16 September (11.00 – 12.30)

Who should apply:

This course is ideal for PS staff who have worked in higher education for at least two years and provide teaching and student support. It is most suitable for (but not restricted to) PS staff who work in programme/teaching administration, digital education, library services, teaching laboratories, and student wellbeing.

How to register:

Please complete this form by 5pm on Monday, 29 June, if you are interested in participating in this course:

We can only accept a maximum of 20 people for this course and will be confirming places on a “first come, first serve basis”. We will confirm your place on the course by 6 July 2020.

Please be aware that there will be a little bit of preparation to do before the first session and ‘homework’ to do between each session. We’ll be targeting Associate Fellow applications, but with scope for Fellow application development if participants have the appropriate experience.

The UCL Library Services Staff Summer School is a series of training and development sessions, events and online activities aimed at library staff from across UCL Library Services, to support them in answering enquiries and in providing support, training and advocacy to library users and stakeholders.

For the first time this year, the entire programme will be delivered online, with a mixture of self-paced online learning and real-time, ‘live’ sessions.

The programme this year has a variety of sessions, running throughout June and July:

Self-directed online training:

• Introduction to Open Science (1 June – 10 July, self-directed online training). An introduction to this key area of our library strategy. Each week a new real-world problem will be addressed.

Real-time, ‘live’ online training sessions:

• Accessible Word and PowerPoint templates training (2 June, 10.30-11.30): Learn how to use Library Services templates developed to help you meet new accessibility regulations.
• Health librarianship in a pandemic (10 June, 11.00-12.30): Discover what it’s like being a health librarian during the current COVID-19 crisis, with contributions from library staff at Public Health England and colleagues from our libraries which support NHS Trusts.
• Launch of the Systematic Reviews and Advanced Literature Searching Network (23 June, 11.00-12.00). Are you involved in any aspect of supporting systematic reviews or advanced database searching? Or would you like to develop your professional skills in this area? Join this session to help shape how we support each other.
• Social Media for Professional Development (29 June, 14.00-15.00). Find out more about social media tools and how they can be used for professional development.
• Liaison Librarians Panel Session (30 June, 10.00-11.30). Gain an insight into what it is like to be a liaison librarian.
• Live online training experience (7 July, 10.00-11.30): A chance for participants to take control and experience delivering live online training using Blackboard Collaborate.

Full details of the programme, including how to book, are available on the Library Services Summer School Moodle Course. If you do not already have access, please email libraryskills@ucl.ac.uk for an enrolment key. Sessions are open to all UCL Library Services staff, with the permission of your line manager.

Angela Young, Head of Library Skills

Join our first ever online eXperience eXchange on Wednesday 20 May 2020, 10.00-11.30am.

eXperience eXchange – what happens?

Library staff come together to share ideas and good practice about library skills training and liaison activities through short presentations or other activities. For the first time this year the eXperience eXchange will be taking place completely online, with no limit to the number of library staff who may attend.

How will it work?

As usual we invite colleagues from across Library Services to give short presentations (5-7 mins) to exchange their experiences, ideas or feedback from events relating to library skills training and liaison activities. The event will be delivered using Blackboard Collaborate. If you have not presented using Blackboard Collaborate before, this is the perfect opportunity to try it out with peers as your friendly and supportive audience.

If you’d rather not present, you can attend as an attendee only.

Is there a theme?

This year we invite contributions relating to any aspect of library skills training and liaison activities, but we particularly welcome contributions relating to the online or remote delivery of these services. Ideas for presentations include:

• Something new you have tried to implement, or that you would like to try out in an online environment.
• A report back from a training event or conference you have attended.
• A review of an interesting article you have read.
• How you have been working to develop your own teaching or liaison skills.
• Using new technologies in training or liaison.

How do I join the event?

Full joining instructions will be provided. You will need:

• A computer / mobile device with Internet access and sound (speakers or headphones).
• If presenting you will also need a microphone (internal laptop / mobile device microphone or headset microphones are sufficient).

How do I sign up?

Simply complete the registration form and we will send you full joining instructions.

Bookings are now open for the 2019 UCL Library Services eXperience eXchange, which will be held on Monday 13th May 2019, 14.00-16.30 in the Library Teaching Room, Newsam Library, UCL Institute of Education. All UCL library staff  are invited to attend to share ideas and best practice about liaison and library skills teaching or training activities. See the previous blog post  for more information.

There are two types of booking available:

1. Contributor:  The event depends upon contributions so please consider making a 5-7 minute presentation or taking the PechaKucha challenge! A PechaKucha is a presentation made up of 20 slides which are shown for 20 seconds each. They are often used at conferences to keep presentations concise and fast paced, lasting exactly 6 minutes, 40 seconds. If you’ve never done one, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a go with an audience of friendly faces! Your presentation can cover anything to do with skills training or liaison activities, such as:
   • Something new you have tried to implement
   • A report back from a training event or conference you have attended
   • A review of an interesting article you have read
   • How you have been working to develop your own teaching or liaison skills
   • Using new technologies in training or liaison
2. Attendee only: If you’d rather not present you can book as an attendee only, but remember, the event depends on contributions so attendee-only places are limited! If you have some ideas which you’d like to share but prefer not to present, then you can contribute a poster, or email us a few sentences which can be added to the ideas pool, which we will put on display on the day.

How to make a booking:

Email Angela Young if you would like to come along, indicating the type of booking you would like to make. We look forward to seeing lots of you there.

Contributed by Angela Young

Last week I had an opportunity to attend the 2018 Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in Boston, Massachusetts. ASEEES is the leading international organization dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Eastern Europe in regional and global contexts.

It is one of the largest gathering of professionals (academics, librarians, publishers, etc.) working in the field of Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the world, so it was great opportunity to meet colleagues from a plethora of organisations, to exchange ideas, make new links, and discover new opportunities, and of course the right place to highlight our own work and achievements.

The convention lasted four days and was filled with panels and meetings. I was able to attend a number of panels, ranging from “Russian Imperial Cultural Heritage Abroad: 1917-1945”, chaired by Edward Kasinec from Columbia University, to “Copyright and Related Rights: A Look at the State of Play in Publishing, Music Licensing, and Broadcast Media” chaired by Janice T. Pilch, a library colleague from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. I found the panels, and especially the discussions that followed, to be very useful and informative. I also attended a UCL SSEES and UCL Press related event: round table “The Global Encyclopedia of Informality: Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity”, which was chaired by Elena Denisova-Schmidt from the University of St. Gallen and attended by Predrag Cveticanin from the University of Nis, as well as Eric D. Gordy, Michal Murawski and Alena Ledeneva, all from UCL SSEES.

Finally I participated in the roundtable panel: “Leveraging E-resources to Foster Access for Libraries”. The panel was chaired by Angela Cannon from the Library of Congress and my roundtable partners were: Liladhar R. Pendse from the University of California, Berkeley, Zina Somova from East View Information Services and Gudrun Wirtz from the Bavarian State Library. Among other issues we discussed how scholars researching Eastern Europe are using new publishing technologies and initiatives to disseminate their output and to reach new audiences. I used this opportunity to highlight research output related to Slavonic and East European studies/themes that can be accessed via UCL Press or UCL Discovery. Finally, at the ASEEES Committee on Libraries and Information Resource Membership Meeting, I provided a summary report on behalf of the Council for Slavonic and East European Library and Information Services (COSEELIS) of which UCL SSEES Library is a part.

I also had an opportunity to visit the Widener Library, an important part of the Harvard College Libraries that is also home to Harvard’s Slavonic collections, where I met library colleagues working in the Slavonic section of the Widener Library.

The convention provided me with the opportunity to discuss some potential projects with colleagues. The project met with interest and offers of support from colleagues from Harvard Library, the Hoover Institute, the New York Public Library and the Bavarian State Library.

All in all I found my participation at the convention as very helpful and informative. Both the knowledge and professional contacts gained during the conference will be very useful in my work and future projects.

 

Many congratulations to the winners of the 30 Day Get Searching Challenge virtual trophy. This year’s challenge has 8 winners: Katie Abranson, Sandra Bamborough, Sandra Blaj, Heather Chesters, Katarina Homolova, Chris Li-In-On, Alicia Lucas Garcia and Sui Jing Ly. All winners managed to complete the challenge by undertaking 30 days of online activities within a six week period, which ended at midnight on Sunday 22nd July 2018.

The challenge is an online course for UCL Library Services colleagues, which took place over six weeks this summer. Participants could choose to follow one of two pathways:

• Pathway A: to learn about or refresh skills in searching library resources
• Pathway B: to explore and learn about different ways to present and deliver online library skills material

Gold, silver and bronze virtual badges were awarded for completing 25, 20 and 15 days respectively. Congratulations to the following colleagues who achieved badges:

• Gold: Kate Brunskill, George Finnigan, Gillian Mackenzie, Yuriko Nakano, Robert Seymour, Danny Williams
• Silver: Sharon A James, Rachel Perrins, Nadia Van Der Westhuizen

Well done to everyone else who attempted the challenge.

Now the challenge is over, it remains available on the UCL Library Services Staff Summer School Moodle course as a training resource for any member of library staff to access and has now been opened up so you no longer need to complete one ‘day’ before moving on to the next, but can dip in wherever interests you. If you have difficulties accessing the course or have any questions please contact library.skills@ucl.ac.uk.

2018 sees the launch of the UCL Library Services Staff Summer School, which replaces the Biomedical and Health Information Summer School. The Summer School is a series of training and development sessions, events and online activities aimed at library staff from across UCL Library Services, to support their ability to answer enquiries and to provide support, training and advocacy to library users and stakeholders.

The programme this year has a wide variety of sessions, pitched at a range of levels, running throughout June and July:

• 30 day ‘get searching’ challenge (11 June – 20 July): An online only challenge, with a choice of pathways to get you to improve your searching skills or understand what works in online library skills training.
• A selection of sessions from Special Collections (5 June all day and 19 June 10.00-11.30): Get to see some of our treasures and learn about the work of the Special Collections team
• Information literacy frameworks (6 June 11.00-13.00): Learn about IL frameworks and help frame how they can help inform library skills training and support at UCL
• How open notebooks can support open research (21 June 14.00-16.00): An exploration into open approaches to scholarship.
• The Audience Engagement Factor: Introduction to making online videos for library inductions and outreach (26 June 10.00-11.30): A practical session focussing on the creation of online videos using Powtoon
• Bibliometrics at UCL (3 July 15.00-16.00): An exploration into library support for bibliometrics.
• Building an Outreach Project (12 July 10.00-11.30): Learn about what is involved in delivering outreach projects for Library Services.
• Evaluating information: From fake news to academic works (16 Jluy 14.30-16.00): Learn why and how to evaluate information.

Full details of the programme are available on the Library Services Moodle Course. If you do not already have access, please email library.skills@ucl.ac.uk for an enrolment key. Sessions are open to all UCL Library Services staff, with the permission of your line manager.

Please email library.skills@ucl.ac.uk to book a place or for further information. Please include your name, site/team, telephone number, email address, and the session(s) you wish to attend.

Angela Young, Head of Library Skills