I’m back from Berlin, where I spent Wednesday to Saturday first being introduced to the course, the lecturers, and my fellow students, and then being taught intensely. It was a good time and overall, a very good start to the course. There were, of course, the usual admin type things (some of which I felt could have well been done in advance), then there was socialising and going out for a meal with the lecturers. We pretty much took over the restaurant since there were about 70 of us!

We also had a tour of the new Jacob- und Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum (link goes to a flickr set of photos taken by one of my fellow students), the brand new university library of the Humboldt-Universität. Apparently, before this was built, they had no proper university library. There was the Staatsbibliothek, which was purely a “Magazinbibliothek” – a library with stacks but no social areas or reading rooms. Basically, you’d order your books in advance, go get them there, and then go find a place to work with them somewhere else. The university library collections were housed in the same building, but eventually they ran out of space and decided to separate the two and build a new library while they were at it. So now, the LIS institute is between two large and very important libraries, which I think is an extremely fitting position!

After all this fun part, there were two days of intense teaching and learning.

Friday teaching was alright because it started at nine. One thing I already like about the course is the atmosphere. In my previous course, I have experienced the relationship between students and lecturers/teachers as an often quite tense one, with teachers being so hopelessly overworked that there was simply no chance to build any sort of personal relationship with most of them. This course seems very different, largely because everyone in the room has already completed a first degree and most are working in the LIS field.

Saturday started at eight in the morning and was therefore more exhaustive than I would have thought, but it went ok and I got back to the airport in good time. The whole travelling part of all of it went quite smoothly there and back, and I’m grateful that my friend’s parents let me stay at their flat for the four days.

Now, I have a lot of reading and assignments to do – not all of it due next time, but enough to keep me busy for a little  while. I hope I can keep up my enthusiasm for the remainder of the course, but if this weekend is to be taken as any indicator for thigns to come, I’m not worried about that.

Twitter, as we all know, is the next big thing. Being a digital native, I embraced this new tool about a year ago, but I have to admit that I’m still learning. Because there has been a CILIP training seminar on how to use Twitter in libraries (Twitter users, search for #ciliptwitter to read some tweets from participants), I’ve spent a little time today investigating a few tools for “power tweeting”, as I like to call it – essentially, things that let you take Twitter beyond the level of IM replacement (or at least claim to do so). Even if I’m in no position to be tweeting on behalf of a library or a CILIP committee, I may be one day, so I’d like to be ahead of the game. Not to mention that I’m quite enthusiastic about Twitter in general.

First, I resurrected my Twitter client, TweetDeck. I’ve tried a good many Twitter clients, but this is the one I keep coming back to. Mind you, I am limited in my choices because I am a Mac user. The one feature that makes this one stand out for me is the ability to group people you are following. Very useful if you’re using one Twitter account to manage both professional/work-related and more private contacts. I personally believe that this is how it should be – I shouldn’t have to have multiple Twitter accounts, the Direct Message feature allows for enough privacy. But I find it nice to keep people organised. TweetDeck can also integrate Facebook and myspace (features I don’t use), you can follow and unfollow people from the client interface, and there’s a built-in search feature. It’s pretty powerful and I’m sure there are some features I have yet to discover!

Then, I briefly tested some tools. Some that I like:

Mr. Tweet. This looks through your list of followers and recommends people that they follow, retweet, or mention. The general idea id to find people in your extended network who you’re not yet following, but who could be of interest to you. You can also recommend people you follow so they become more visible to your extended network. That feature is the intelligent version of “followfriday” because you have to actually explain why you’re recommending someone instead of just randomly dropping names.

Friend or Follow. Who’s following you that you’re not following back and vice versa? Nice site for tracking down those annoying followbots as well as people who are following you that you’re not following back. I don’t know about you, but I tend to let follower requests build up over time, then forget all about it. And someone I used to follow merged two Twitter accounts so I was still following the wrong username.

Is Twitter down? If Twitter is playing up, just ask this site if it’s doing the same thing all over the shop, or if it’s just you. On a side note, if you’re not sure what time of the year it is, ask Is It Christmas?

TweetStats. Moderately useful, this tracks the number of tweets you make over time and creates a graph based on that pattern. It’s only useful, however, if you compare your stats to other people’s to see how you’re doing. Preferably, compare with people that you follow and whose tweets/general style of using Twitter you like.

Twibes. I’m not sure how useful this one is. It’s basically another people finder, based on groups. I’ve joined the “librarians” twibe just in case. I think it might be a bit too vast and unspecific though. But we’ll see how it goes. And of course, I will now be linking to my Twitter account from this blog.

There are some nice blog posts on other Twitter tools and applications out there. I started my journey today from Smashing Magazine’s recommendations for 99 essential Twitter tools and apps. There are many lists like this out there, but I like this one because it has detailed descriptions and screenshots. I also like their tips on what to actually do with Twitter. I think we’re all still learning, to be honest, and I’m glad it’s finally getting a bit of support in the field of librarianship instead of being laughed off as “yet another Facebook”.

I have been appointed as a Library Assistant at my current place of work, following my traineeship, which has exteneded over 16 months as well. I consider myself very lucky to have this opportunity to continue working in a familiar environment while doing my Master’s qualification.

No doubt it will be an intense two years. I have booked my flights for my first residential weekend in Berlin. There are ten a year, which roughly evens out at one a month, and everything else is done over Moodle. Due to the postal strike and a delay with my fees payment, I have not received my Moodle login yet, so I’m sure there will be some things that I’ll need to catch up on already when I get registered.

In other news, I have joined the Cilip East of England Career Development Group Committee and am now working on an article for our next newsletter.  I hope I might get the chance to be involved in organising an event, although we’re a bit unfortunate as a CDG because there are no librarianship courses on offer in the area. Still, we could do something for all the Graduate Trainees out there…

Life has been busy, and I’ve been trying to sort out a lot of things – mainly, how and where I am going to do my MA in Librarianship, and how I’m going to fund it.

The long and short of it is: I will be doing a distance learning course via the Humboldt University of Berlin. Since I did not get an AHRC grant, full-time study was out of the question, and after a bit af deliberation, I finally settled on doing a degree with a German university because I do like the idea of being able to go “back home” after I qualify. I’ve noticed that the English seem to be less focused on specific formal qualifications and place slightly more emphasis on experience – meaning that, in England, you can theoretically make up for a missing or yet-to-be-attained qualification with relevant experience. They also seem to be more open to qualifications from foreign parts.

The Germans do not seem to look so kindly on this, and since they can be very funny when it comes to foreign qualifications, I chose to be on the safe side. My first residential period in Berlin is October 23-24, and I’m sure I shall report back on my studies once they really kick in – watch this space.

Apart from this, I have joined the CILIP East of England Career Development Group Committee (which meets tonight at Cambridge) and am still jobhunting. I hope something comes up soon.

I’ve been accepted into UCL’s Masters programme!

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I’ve been quite slow in applying for my Master’s degree, but one of the universities had an extremely early deadline. So, mid-January, I boarded a train out of Colchester North and, having arrived in London, wandered around Bloomsbury a bit.

The campus was alright – it’s in the heart of London, right opposite the British Museum, quite compact, yet with enough space and several cafés and relaxed areas and the like.

I even got to see the libraries – for me, that is a vital part of a university’s assets and a very important factor in my decision whether to go there or not.

I saw the main library and the science library, but I cannot say I was too impressed. The main library is in a beautiful building, and it is certainly a nice place to study, but I prefer to have my own laptop to do my studying, and there were no laptops to be seen anywhere – probably due to the lack of power sockets at the desks. The science library was a bit more welcoming in that respect. It has a postgraduate computer cluster, which was packed when I was there, and a “group study area” that I hope will see the addition of some furniture soon.

On the whole, I am in two minds, and will keep applying to other places as well. On a related note, I will most probably have to go for part-time study since I am not eligible for the full £ 10,000+ award from the AHRC, but only for one that covers my tuition fees. Maybe this will even mean going for distance learning.

Hey people! I know I haven’t updated in forever. What with one thing and another, I’ve been fairly busy. I’ve adopted a goal of one post per week – we shall see how this pans out.

My graduate traineeship includes visits to other libraries. The first of those was to Colchester Institute Library and took place in December. I did a short write-up with photos which also appeared in our internal newsletter. I’ve adapted it a bit for the net. Enjoy!

An aisle in Colchester Institute Library

Colchester Institute is doing some massive restructuring at the moment, with buildings being knocked down and others being built in their stead, so their library is operating out of a Portakabin near the back entrance at East Gate.
We were greeted warmly, but had to decline the offer of tea on account of being a bit late to start with and having a tight schedule. Considering they’re on a temporary site, the library is actually quite impressive. All books and DVDs live on the ground floor, while the first floor houses the computing facilities as well as a “listening room”. This facility is used primarily by music and performing arts students and is basically a room full of CDs, records and audio equipment to play them.

The library is also home to the TLC, the Technical Learning Centre, which lends equipment like digital cameras and video cameras, microphones, data projectors and even laptops to students and staff for projects and classes. We got to see some of the equipment in action as we did a quiz to start us off (and were given some shiny goodies to carry away when we got things right). The questions were displayed on an interactive whiteboard, which means you can get to the next screen just by touching it with a special pen – no need to fiddle around with a computer mouse, which appears to be handy for presentations and teaching. The librarians also have a tool which allows them to “spy” on what people are doing on the computers in the library – we found that intriguing, but also a bit scary.

Technical Learning Centre

On the whole, it was interesting to see how they handle their fairly diverse student population in terms of needs and library policies. One bit that I found particularly interesting was that you can get banned from using the college computer network if you hold books late repeatedly. Maybe this would be a good policy to implement in other places – my workplace did come to mind there.

The staff seemed quite keen on a return visit, which I hope will happen. And yes, of course I promise to blog it!

Computer suite downstairs

Computer suite upstairs

Since the graduate traineeship is intended to be preparation for a Master’s degree, this is the time of year where people start thinking about their applications and applying to various universities. My experience of this so far is that it is about five times harder to do this for an international applicant, as I am, than it is for a person who did their previous degree(s) in the UK.

At the moment, I am trying to piece together my application for UCL. Besides the completed application form, I need two references, one of which has to be academic. This meant I had to ask my German degree supervisor for one. I explicitly told him when I emailed him that I needed it in a signed and sealed envelope. He sent it to me – the envelope was sealed, but not signed, and some Deutsche Post or Royal Mail employee fragged the seal a bit. I am going to include it in the application and hope it will be okay. The writing on the front is, after all, in his handwriting, and there are about a dozen stamps from my home university on it.

Also, I need a transcript. German universities do not usually issue transcripts, so what I had to do was compile one out of all my records, then scan those records and send them plus the transcript to my home university, who then issued a transcript for me. UCL also request that translations are accompanied by a certified copy of the transcript in the native language. However, there is a sentence on my English one that it certifies that it says the same as my individual records, so I hope that it will suffice.

Furthermore, English is not my native language. I have lived and studied in an English-speaking country for seven months, I will have worked in one for fifteen months when I start my course, my teaching in germany was partially conducted in English, and my M. A. dissertation was written in English. I have as of yet no idea if that is sufficient, or if I will have to take an immensely expensive test to certify that my proficiency in English is sufficient for studying in England.

Once more, I am made very aware of cultural differences. English referees will be familiar with the procedure, especially if they are academics, whereas even a German university lecturer is at a loss to complete the requirements for an acceptable reference.

Another part of the English application process that is nonexistent in Germany is the personal statement – a piece of writing much like a covering letter for a job aplication, wherein the applicant explains what they will bring to the course, why they should be considered for a place, and what their particular interests are. Again – somebody who has studied in England will have done this at least once in their lives before their Masters application. I am lucky in that I had to write one for my application to the exchange programme with Ireland, so I have at least a vague idea what is expected.

Still, the bottom line is that applying for an MA takes a lot of energy in any case, and much more so from international applicants than natives. And I am an EU citizen, so I don’t even want to imagine what it entails for people from overseas.

My colleagues and I will be going to the Graduate Open Day in London on Monday!

And I’m planning the next event already – the Leadership talk, and an event in the East of England in November. The library is a bit mental these days, but hopefully, I will get around to writing some more at the weekend.