Year: 2019

Developing Resilience

On Monday 11th November, I attended the Organisational Development-organised course, Developing Resilience, here at City.  The aim of the day was to show us ways to develop our own resilience through looking at how stress is generated, and presenting a toolkit to help us deal with it. Resilience is all about the ability to bounce…Continue Reading Developing Resilience

Imperial College CSGUK Visit, 12th August 2019

Some time ago now (12th August), I visited Imperial College Library Services in South Kensington that was one of a series of Customer Service Group UK visit for Library and Information Assistants that took place over the summer. Going to South Kensington during the school holidays is never a good idea but after fighting through…Continue Reading Imperial College CSGUK Visit, 12th August 2019

Welcome to the Wellcome Collection

The Wellcome Collection and Library is based at 183 Euston Road and is free to visit.  It has permanent and temporary exhibitions  https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions  and specialises in the history of medicine. Sir Henry Wellcome was a pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector.  On his death in 1936, his will established a charity to advance medical and scientific…Continue Reading Welcome to the Wellcome Collection

LILAC conference – my top four sessions

As Hilary mentioned in her recent blog on LILAC, I also attended the conference in April, at the lovely campus of the University of Nottingham. It was the first conference I’ve attended that wasn’t law librarian-focused, and it was an opportunity for me to hear some interesting sessions and pick up some useful tips on…Continue Reading LILAC conference – my top four sessions

5 ideas for researcher support I picked up at LILAC

In April, Tom and I headed up to Nottingham for LILAC: The Information Literacy Conference. The venue for the conference was the University of Nottingham (see right for a photo of the Keighton Auditorium where the keynote speeches took place). One of the my main aims for the conference was to pick up ideas for…Continue Reading 5 ideas for researcher support I picked up at LILAC

Library Performance Measurement Conference

As the crow flies, it is about 180 miles from London to Aberystwyth.  As the combined railway services of Virgin Trains and Transport for Wales go, it’s a good deal longer than this – and takes the best part of 5 hours. So as a performance measure of this country’s railway service, this journey does…Continue Reading Library Performance Measurement Conference

Visit to the Francis Crick Institute

On the second hottest day on record I headed over to St Pancras to the Francis Crick Institute. Fortunately they had air conditioning! The Francis Crick Institute is a really interesting place. It is a pure research institution. It was launched in 2007 by Gordon Brown and founded by joining Cancer Research UK and the…Continue Reading Visit to the Francis Crick Institute

Storytelling masterclass

Once upon-a-time, in the bowels of College Building, our two adventurers, James and Rachel, set out to discover how the technique of story telling can be used to create great presentations. I signed up to this morning masterclass with the aim to make my presentations more engaging.  Whilst it was not run in the way…Continue Reading Storytelling masterclass

Work Shadowing: Library Systems Manager

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to shadow Lucy, our Library Systems Manager. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the technology our library service runs on, the job itself, and ask Lucy about her personal experiences in this role. Working with systems Lucy oversees the following systems and platforms that we…Continue Reading Work Shadowing: Library Systems Manager

Visit to the British Library Business and IP Centre

Recently, a group of library staff visited Business and IP Centre (BIPC) at the British Library. Seema Rampersand was our host for the two hour visit, and she gave an extremely informative talk on BIPC’s origins, and how it serves small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs. The BIPC reading room consists of two floors. The entrance…Continue Reading Visit to the British Library Business and IP Centre