Eight Weeks to Associateship - Week 3

Week 3: Thinking about management and planning

The focus for this week is part B, where you get to describe your "management and planning responsibilities". This may feel easier for some of you than others! However, it's not a requirement for you to have been in a traditional 'management' role (and as the application form says "Some of the categories below may not be applicable…"), but you may have to think a little more laterally about the kinds of things you have managed.

Let's look through each area. Most of us can pick out one or two areas immediately where we've had experience. Grab your notes, and start jotting things down. For example:
· Staff management: If you managed staff, what was your role, how many people were in the team, were they were permanent or contract, full or part-time, professional, semi- or non-professional roles? What were your responsibilities? Were there performance reviews, salary reviews or even (gulp), disciplinary responsibilities? Were there some things you achieved or supported your staff through, of which you are especially proud of? Perhaps a change management process or a difficult time financially for the organisation?
· Financial management: Have you looked after a budget or had responsibility for the money? Perhaps you managed the binding budget, ensured you kept inside the budget for shelvers or collections, or presented a budget for a project or your department.
· Resource management: This could cover aspects such as managing the upkeep of the collection, maintaining a particular subject or reference collection (physical or virtual), or perhaps the upkeep on the library system or website.
· Implementing and managing appropriate and/or innovative library and information services: Have you started up a new service? It might be an onsite or virtual service that's offered through the website. How about library blogs to keep people up-to-date (internally or externally)?
· Initiating or contributing to projects or changes/improvements in existing services: Are there key areas that you've streamlined? Maybe you've made something faster, more efficient, less prone to mistakes or more cost effective. How about changes in the way the library is organised, or what different roles do?
· Marketing services: What have you done in the way of promotions? Do you send out newsletters to target groups, run the library's Library Week programme, or designed posters to target a particular service? Perhaps you've written up promotions for the local newspaper or library website?
· Evaluating and implementing appropriate technologies: Have you had something automated, changed library systems, or made live reference services available online to customers? How about an online reference tracking system, or making the catalogue mobile-friendly?
· Planning your own work and that of others, setting priorities and aligning with organisational goals and objectives: If you've managed people, how did you set their priorities, and make sure that they're consistent with the goals of the organisation? Do they know what the organisational goals are? How do you prioritise your own work, and how does it contribute to organisational objectives? How do you go about long- and short-term planning for yourself or your team?

There is a lot to think about in this week's task. If you're having some trouble, try taking out the work 'management' and replace it with 'supervision' or think about what you 'look after' in your role. Sometimes we don't think of what we do as being 'management' in the technical sense.

Also consider what you've done outside of work - have you been a treasurer for a SIG? Run a professional committee? Helped to run a weekend school? These activities all contribute to your professional development and your 'management and planning' experience.

Good luck, and talk to you next week!

Eight Weeks to Associateship - Week 2

Week 2: Starting on the detail

This week we're focussing on Part A, which talks about your "Practical knowledge and skills in providing library/information services". As we work through these areas, the idea is to make lots of notes as they come to mind. These notes will form the basis of your application, which we'll start to write up formally in a couple of weeks.

So, here's what they'd like to know about:

(a):
(i) Competence and achievement in some particular aspect(s) of library and information services
(such as circulation services, book selection, collection development, cataloguing, reference and
information services, response to community/user needs, specific services, e.g. Bi/multicultural,
young persons, outreach, special needs, archives, records management, research, user surveys,
etc.).
(ii) A well–demonstrated understanding of the information needs of clients, and the delivery of
services to meet those needs.

Let's start with part i. Sometimes, when you're so close to what you do everyday, it's hard to recognise it as a 'competence', so take out all those job descriptions that you collected last week and give them a read through. What kind of jobs has your library career been characterised by? Are there one or two areas that you'd consider a speciality, or has it been a more of a mixed bag? What did you enjoy doing the most, and where did you feel the greatest sense of achievement? You can pick a few areas if you think you have strengths in several places.

Once you've got your list of competences, for each one, ask yourself
· What were my greatest achievements in that area? It could be a new system of training you devised, a way of making your workflow more efficient, a particular promotion that got lots of good feedback from clients or staff or finding a specialised need and filling it. Take out your performance reviews, and see what you've achieved over the years.
· What other activities have I done in support of this area? Have you done a course or attended training, read specialist magazines, presented at conference, received an award (internal or external) served on a related SIG or working group?
· How do I know that I'm good at this? Perhaps you're the go-to person in your area, you've trained others, or provided support or advice to other libraries. Take out your performance reviews again, and look at your managers comments. How did they say you did the job?

Part ii is about looking at the needs of your clients, and how you deliver a service that fills those needs.
Firstly, think about your clients. These might be your colleagues, your customers, the public, and other libraries. What are their top priorities when they come to the library, or ask you to provide a particular service? Are they looking for speed, efficiency, customer care…? How do you contribute to those needs?

Ask yourself:
· How do I know what my clients want? This might be informal feedback, formal requests, or surveys.
· What areas of my role impact on the stakeholders I serve? Is it speed, efficiency, good knowledge of the library or resources, or doing my role in a thorough way?
· Have I been able to improve on these areas?
· What feedback have I received? Have I had comment on the service, internally or externally? How about positive feedback from a manager or customer? You might be able to see a tangible change, such as increased visitors, or more users of a particular service, or something less tangible, such as a decline in complaints, a better working environment or quicker turnaround time. Or perhaps you know what you're doing works because of your repeat customers!

Hold on to these notes! Again, you might like to keep them close by in case you think of additional ideas during the week. Until next week, happy associating!

Eight Weeks to Associateship - Week 1

Welcome to the "Eight weeks to Associateship" series.

2010 is a great year to apply for an associateship. It's the 100th anniversary of LIANZA, and what better way to celebrate than by recognising your achievements and seeing how far you've come?

The aim of this series is to break the process of applying for an associateship up into easy chunks, a little bit each week. You may also want to find yourself a buddy or mentor (maybe your manager, another applicant, or a person who has their associateship already). It's always good to have someone to bounce ideas off.

Week 1: Gathering yourself

There are three tasks to do this week:

1. Read through the associateship documentation


2. Start assembling your evidence


3. Decide on your referees

Step 1: Read the documentation
The application process is well documented on the LIANZA website. Have a good read of the definition and requirements to make sure you fulfil the criteria, as well as reading the Information and Application form to see what kind of information you need to supply (you may want to read this one twice!) Also take a look at the Guidelines for Referees - this should help you choose who you'd like as your referees.

Step 2: Assemble your evidence
Evidence here is not just the 'publications' that you might include with your application, but also the documents that will jog your memory as you write everything up. That could include your CV (new and old), job descriptions, performance reviews, certificates or notes from training courses, as well as documents that you've written in the course of your job. During the week, keep a notebook next to your desk and jot down any other 'evidence' that comes to mind, for example committees you've been on, awards from inside or outside your institution, achievements you've been particularly proud of, and so on.

3. Choose your referees
The associate application requires reports from three referees. Think about who might be suitable as you're reading the Guidelines for Referees, and choose these early on. You may want to approach them first to explain the process and see if they are willing. The referees reports have a later deadline than the associateship application, but do make sure that you give them plenty of time to write up the report.

While the first week requires a bit of hunting around for documents and brainstorming, next week we'll get into the nitty gritty of addressing the Application Form - one step at a time!

LIANZA Welly Christmas do - Flying Burrito Bro's!

Hey hey!

Just reminding you all that we'll be having din dins and drinks at Flying Burrito Brother's on the corner of Cuba and Vivian Street in Wellington City. Now if you're a bonifide LIANZA member living in the Wellington region, you would've received a personal invite from the committee chair, Paddy Plunket.

If you haven't, not to worry, just let Laurinda know if you'd like to attend and then we can just hang out at Flying Burrito Bro's on Tuesday the 8th of December 7pm onwards.

SLIS happen to be having a do on the same night at The Library, so maybe we can even do an all nighter?!?

Hope to see you there :-)

ma te wa,
Hana

Rowena Cullen: "Why IT matters: Your health and the public health" (10 November)

For those people who were unable to attend her inaugural lecture last month, RowenaCullen, Professor of Information Management at Victoria University, has agreed to reprise her talk a second time LIANZA members and others from the Library and Information Managment profession.

In her talk, Professor Cullen will explore some of the successful uses of health information technology (IT), and possible reasons for the apparent failure of health IT projects. In the 21st century sophisticated technology is routinely used for medical diagnosis, to record and share patient information, and to make unprecedented amounts of medical and consumer health information available through the internet. However, this investment often fails to significantly improve health care.

Rowena will be speaking on Tuesday 10 November at the Old Government Buildings Lecture Theatre 1, from 12-1pm. This lecture is open to anyone. Please feel free to bring your lunch!