Cast your minds back to the heady days of August. Do you remember the endless sun, the heatwave that lasted for months? No, me either. Never mind, because you DO, surely, remember our fabulous August Event, the Courses, Conferences and Experiences Sharing Session? No? Well, here’s a reminder then:
We kicked off with Verena Price, SEMS and SOI librarian, presenting her experience of having been to a number of User Groups for various bits of software we use, including Talis Aspire, IEEE Xplore and Edina Digimap. They were a great way to learn more about the software, network (with tea and LOTS of cake) with colleagues using the same stuff as you, and see how the tools are used at other universities in a way that you wouldn’t normally be able to.
Mandy Cumbridge, our former School of Arts Librarian, told us about her experiences at the 2013 ARLIS Conference in Bristol, which sounded like a great opportunity to learn more about work going on in libraries concerned with Visual Arts, Architecture and Design. She also took the opportunity to photograph a number of artistically-decorated Gromits which were scattered around Bristol at the time!
Paul Banks, Head of Law Library Services, went slightly further afield when he attended the American Association of Law Librarians’ Annual Meeting and Conference in Seattle. He also managed to fit in a few trips round new iconic library buildings – he’s put beautiful images of the Seattle Public Library and the Gallagher Law Library here on Haiku Deck.
Laura Radford, our Digital Repository Administrator, journeyed with yours truly, Antonella Yarnold and Mandy Cumbridge up to LILAC 2013 in “sunny” Manchester, and reported back on her experiences of this busy and interesting event for librarians who teach Information Literacy skills. We also had evening events in two fabulous 19th century surroundings – the glorious John Rylands Library and a monastery-turned-event space now called, um, The Monastery.
Then, Kat Williams, one of our 2012-13 Graduate Trainees, shared her experiences of her year with us and told us about her plans for the future – she’s gone on to read for her MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL so we can’t have been all that bad!
After Kat, Neil Stewart, Digital Repository Manager, shared with us his thoughts on two projects he’s been deeply involved with, implementing our new research discovery tool Summon, branded as CityLibrarySearch, and City Research Online, the institutional repository that he manages. He gave us an overview of the current state of the open access area and of libraries’ work on Research Data Management.
Samantha Halford*, Subject Librarian (Cass UGs), then gave an overview of 2013’s Business Librarians Conference, which she attended with (then) new member of staff Suzanne Griffiths, Eresources Manager (Cass). We had a great time at this really interesting event, learning about our fellow business librarians’ techniques and research as well as meeting vendors and each other. I even gave a 10-minute Member Presentation at the end, showing off our Library Loves… More Books! project on behalf of my colleagues.
Derek Mackenzie, Head of Customer Services, then finished the afternoon off with a discussion of a recent even he’d been to in York, on Performance Management in Libraries, which he’s kindly posted about on this blog before. The conference presentations and other information can be found online here, too.
We had a great afternoon sharing our experiences and are looking forwards to hearing from you all at the next one!
*Um, me again. It’s really strange typing about yourself in the third person.