ARLG 2019 Lightening talk burchell shared roles a way to work smarter in a time of change d3.05
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ARLG 2019 Lightening talk burchell shared roles a way to work smarter in a time of change d3.05
- 1. Shared Roles: a way to work smarter in a time of change Katherine Burchell Samuel Roberts School of Arts & Humanities, University of Cambridge
- 2. Our shared roles: what do they involve? 3 FACULTY LIBRARIES WIDE VARIETY OF TASKS A FLEXIBLE STYLE OF WORKING
- 3. Wider benefits of cross-library experience • Collaboration across library spaces to improve the services they offer. • Projects undertaken benefit each library and have been shared. • A more holistic library service
- 4. Key challenges • Adapting to one new place can be hard, but three is even harder! • Requires a flexible and dynamic approach to work. • Managing time and tasks can be challenging due to limited hours in each library. • Difficult to gain in-depth knowledge of the collections across the three libraries.
- 5. Key Positives Wide variety of library experience Sharing knowledge across multiple libraries Greater understanding of student experience
- 6. Reflections • Gaining three lots of library experience in one unique and interesting shared role. • Improving collaboration and finding smarter solutions. • Learning to learn from other libraries - adapt their great ideas to fit your own unique service
Editor's Notes
- - Focus on the roles from our perspective - Expand more on what it is like to work across three libraries, rewarding but challenging? - learning to adapt to a new style of work Our shared roles involve working across three faculty libraries in the school of arts and humanities of the University of Cambridge. Our week is divided up so that, between us, we roughly spend an equal amount of time in each library. This does mean that we work in a minimum of two libraries each day. Despite the large number of libraries centred very close together in Cambridge, our cross-library posts are fairly uncommon. There are understandable reasons for this. Creating a shared post needs both the coincidence of multiple libraries having synchronised staff vacancies and the collaboration between such libraries to make the roles feasible. In a moment Katherine will explain how our shared roles are helping the libraries we work in to collaborate more closely, but before she does I thought I would offer a little more insight into our experience of these cross-library posts. Initially, the idea of working in three libraries was a formidable prospect. Simultaneously Learning how three services operate is difficult enough - add in the fact that the same processes and procedures had minor differences in each library - and remembering what to do where was suddenly a real challenge. However, overcoming this hurdle presented the opportunity to gain three times as much experience through a naturally wide variety of tasks and projects. Myself and Katherine both agree that the challenge of having to adapt to three different library services has benefitted us tremendously, not just through the wide variety of library experience, but by compelling us to develop a flexible style of working.
- - Focus on the shared roles from the perspective of the libraries/school of arts and humanities - Multiple projects undertaken across the libraries, and knowledge is disseminated amongst the three faculty libraries. UX projects, our own easter projects (organising dissertation folders and creating postcards) - since conciously or subconcioulsy we approach tasks and problems with the expereince of other SAH libraries meaning our solutions often fit into a bigger picture. Whenever possible, we are able to draw on the experience all three libraries have given us.
- - Adapting to our new roles was initially hard, learning to work across three similar, but equally different libraries, was an adjustment for us both. - Being flexible as often cover is needed at other libraries during busier times / when staff are on leave. - Managing time is challenging due to limited hours, having to break down tasks in to manageable chunks to do in the shorter time that is had at some libraries. Being flexible and adaptable to the changing nature of tasks that may need to be undertaken in each library - It is difficult to gain subject specific knowledge from working in three libraries, however, we're able to bring other knowledge from the other libraries that will be helpful to the students and staff a-like.
- The key to the success of the shared roles has been the ability to assimilate and apply the experience of working in three libraries to tasks and projects presented in the academic year. An important lesson can be taken from this: whenever faced with a challenge, or a difficulty that requires a solution, it is highly likely that another library will have passed the same, if not a very similar hurdle. Although it may not be possible to draw upon the experience of operating in a shared role, greater collaboration through a more interconnected library network can produce equally effective results. By learning to learn from each other, we can find and adapt smart solutions to shared problems while maintaining a unique library service.