Equally I could have called this The Wasteland!
Suffice to say it's been an 'interesting' 2013 since my long-term employer unfortunately went under earlier this year.
Being in my previous place for 17 yrs I'd call changing jobs twice in six months since and all the job hunting a bit of an accomplishment. It's also been full-on so there's not really been time to do or think of much else though. So the blog has been hugely erratic this year.
So, yep, changed jobs yet again a couple of months ago, this time I've changed sector as well though.
Been deep in gen'ing up and getting used to it all since, thus I have realised that more than several weeks have passed and I really should up-date a few things!
So I'm not entirely sure what 'normal service' for this blog will become and what the impact will be on it of it all, but I daresay I'll gradually get back to it...
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
BIALL 2013 Invincible or just a flesh wound? The Holy Grail of Scots law
This was a presentation by
Professor Hector MacQueen of the Scottish Law Commission. Main gist below as
follows.
He started with a clip from Monty
Python and the Holy Grail showing the fate of the Black Knight against the King
of the Britons, limb after limb is lost but the Black Knight remains full of
fight sure he can win. Are they mere scratches or terminal condition?
Session looked at challenges for
the future of the Scottish legal system.
Scratches
Process of europeanisation (less
autonomy, loss of some individual character).
Human rights (has had large
impact on things like criminal procedure).
Social welfare / taxation /
public law (fairly recent types of law, what happens to them if there’s independence)
Commercial and consumer law
(area’s of law currently reserved to the UK).
So, some loss of autonomy
Flesh Wounds
Indifference of population at
large to lawyers and legal system.
Impatience (sometimes purely
Scottish points may be seen to be a drag factor).
Ignorance few people know about
Scots law.
Inaccessibility (people not sure
where to find it or what a contract subject to Scots law means).
Impotence (little clout to carry
things through or resources for).
Internationalism (fear of being
accused of parochialism).
There are issues in how to
reconcile internationalism and parochialism.
Other Flesh Wounds
Is our law in demand? (lots of
contracts in Scotland are made under English law).
Is our law in demand (who wants
Scots law?).
Choices of English law and
jurisdiction.
Are Scottish courts
proportionately under used? (research shows under used compared to English
courts by around 60%, some local Scots courts are being closed as part of
rationalisation).
The business difficulties of law
firms (big mergers, closures in dramatic circumstances, doing subsidiary work
for other jurisdictions, outsourcing).
Flesh Wounds
The effects on the laws
development “For a legal system to succeed it needs to develop a critical mass.
It needs to be sufficiently popular and important for lawyers and judges to study it. It needs to develop
case law to guide its interpretation and put flesh on the bare bones of text.”
Supreme Court - criticisms from the Scots judges in Supreme
Court on Scots legal system. Stress absence of case management and sending
appeals not appropriate for Supreme Court to consider, criticising how Court of
Session goes about giving its judgments.
Arguments for health…
Invincibility (1)
I’m still standing after all
these years (Scots law still going after a very long time).
Megrahi’s compassionate release
(power of Scots law, it can be independent).
The mixed legal system (a unique
tradition).
The re-in-STATE-d nation
(increased devolution at minimum seems certain for near future, should give
impetus to legal system, have to become more ambitious).
Invincibility (2)
Scots law has
Legislature
Courts
Associated institutions (e.g.
land registers)
Profession
Education
Lots Scots law subjects
So perhaps all in all, we should
consider it a draw for now
But what of the search for the Holy Grail?
The Holy Grail (should be able to
know what the law is).
Codification or at least reform
of law (need to develop law further, don’t have enough Scots caselaw, on many
questions there’s none or no depth of).
Reform of the courts to attract
and retain business, not drive it away, need to face outwards (do specialised
Tribunals stall the development of the law by making it hard to locate and
find?, if Sheriff Court becomes a general Court of First Instance for all
matters to a certain monetary limit what training issues does that lead to).
Knowledge of the economic,
political and social facts of our civilisation.
Ponder the common law of the
world, not just England (e.g. European jurisdictions, need for wide material
resources to support).
Sunday, June 23, 2013
BIALL 2013 Developing Your Elevator Pitch
This session was led by Suzanne Wheatley from Sue Hill Recruitment, not many
notes as it was far more a highly interactive ‘do’ session rather than ‘talk
and listen’ one. It certainly got an awful lot of people talking away busily to
each other far beyond the confines of the exercises.
Getting Across Your Message
Suzanne demonstrated an elevator pitch by doing one on
Sue Hill Recruitment and all the services that they provide and the benefits
thereof.
She noted that elevators rarely break down and a
typical elevator ride gives around sixty seconds to make a good impression on
someone (depending on speed of elevator and how far going!).
An elevator pitch is a carefully controlled crafted
message that gets across the key points you want to make to that other person
in an informative and engaging way.
The session was about giving tools to construct and
deliver a good elevator pitch. It was not about a sales pitch or a hard sell,
but about striking curiousity to create a connection.
It should set out benefits, be short and succinct, get
attention. They are not just useful in a professional context. They are not
about cramming in as much as possible.
Often we meet someone we want to engage with in a
chance manner by accident. It’s important how hold and present yourself, to be
engaging, to appear conversational, and to believe what you’re saying.
People make judgments instantly so important to have
good posture, look positive and open, smile, shake hands.
Tools and Awareness
We then did various exercises about shaking hands with
strangers and making and maintaining eye contact with strangers and changing
the volume of conversations.
With hand shakes it was important to lean in, make eye
contact, mirror body language. But not look creepy!
With volume control it was about being aware of
context e.g. not loud private conversations in public places, or talking far
too fast to follow when excited, or reacting and mirroring the other person’s
tone and volume automatically without thought.
We then did a tongue twisters exercise getting words
out in right order and rhythm so they were clear.
Constructing a Clear and Persuasive Pitch
Words should be
concise and compelling. We were recommended playing about with the ElevatorPitch Builder of Harvard Business School.
Lots of advice on elevator pitches, important to take
the bits that work best for you.
5 steps to formulating an elevator pitch.
Need to know what you want to pitch and what you want
to achieve before you decide what to say.
Identify your goal
Explain what you do
Articulate your USP (unique selling point)
Engage person with a question
Exit
Need to be excited about what you’re talking about and
communicate the USP to get buy-in. Yes /
No questions are risky, open are better, must listen to the answer and pay
attention to it.
Can then try and build relationship outside the
confines of the lift and firm up the connection.
We all constructed and practiced elevator pitches on
each other for a while. End of session.
BIALL 2013 Flipping the Classroom: Revolutionising Legal Reseach Training at the University of Salford
This plenary session was by Nicola Sales. Main gist of
it below…
Reasons for Flipping
Training
A lot of the profession are not trained to teach, some
are. The Law School in her university is very new being opened in 2007. She
worked with the academic teaching team on another training model. There was
however 10 / 15% attendance from those being trained, training lecture style,
no knowledge
transfer obvious, they were passive, no enthusiasm in
those that did attend.
Common training experience, looking out to a lot of
blank faces. Hands on experience was
offered in addition above the lectures to those who attended. Again, this had
very low attendance and didn’t transfer knowledge.
The Flipping
The Classroom / Training Room model
This dates to the 1990s and is popular in America. The
trainer becomes ‘the guide on the side’ rather than directing and in charge at
the front start to end.
She then compared the traditional model to flipping
the classroom model.
Traditional Training is
Trainer led
Participants observe
Involves demonstrations
Follow guide instruction
Participants perform training activity
Feed back discussion
Flipped
training is where
Trainer provides content prior to participants
attending training
Training session as participant led
Problem based learning activities
Discussion
Participants receive support and guidance
Flipped steps
to learning
[This was shown as a progressive curve]
Engagement with knowledge – Remembers knowledge –
Applying theory – Creative research
Pros and Cons
of Flipping the Classroom Model
Hard to appeal to everyone with any training style
Needs to be used in the right place and the right
context
Plus Points
Individuals own and control their own learning
Can study in advance as much as need / feel necessary
Don’t get left behind in session
Manages expectations
Can leave training online after for students to catch
up on content if need be
More interaction
Peer to peer
Bad Points
Letting go of telling people how to do something is
hard
Temptation to put up too much content to study first
Need access to software and equipment
Takes time to create the information to be studied in
advance
Promoting the materials
Aclimatising to new way of doing training
Practical
Points to Consider for Any Training
Is it appropriate to flip?
Flipping would achieve what?
How encourage? Embed in module
Actual
Academic Experience Using Method
70% of attendees had done the pre-reading before
attending sessions
Very minimal materials for actual sessions – 4 ppt
slides and worksheets
Didn’t repeat the pre-reading content for those who
hadn’t done it
91% attendance
Good feedback and academic outcomes
Students enjoyed
Gave an identity hook for the sessions
Short, compact, straight to point
Issues to
Think About
Where to host pre-reading materials – private YouTube
channel, VLE?
Learning modules – releasing material on a time
release basis before it’s needed
Decide how much content to give – she gave about 40
mins worth, but will pare it down for next time using the feedback to decide
what’s most important
If content already exists which can be freely used
then use it, don’t reinvent for sake of it
Consider formats and mix e.g. voiceover over
Powerpoint slides, Prezi etc
Lots of free software that might suffice or priced
options e.g. Jing, Cantasia
Took 3 months to put together the new module approach
working part-time
Top 10 Tips
Short video pre-reading content should only last 3 / 4
mins each
Repurpose content that already exists
Use free software
Natural voice will come through after while
Focus learning content
Time release learning
Resist repetition
Remember to use more than videos
Create relevant tasks
Be flexible
BIALL 2013 The Story of Open Access at a Leading UK Law School and The Open Access Fringe Meeting
This session was by Tony Simmonds
of the University of Nottingham.
Main gist of it below with
apologies for anything I’ve misunderstood as this is not my core field so
wanted to find out more about it.
Nottingham Context
He discussed the general research
agenda at his university and JISC funded work on OA (Open Access). Session as
the story of his sustained campaign of advocacy for OA in his institution.
While not leading the field, they were certainly now in a better position than
formerly.
Nottingham has a medium sized law
school with 40 academic staff, many of whom have full Professor status. There
are challenges around interaction of free availability of research and traditional
routes for the output of academic scholarship.
Differing approaches to OA.
Basically two routes get
discussed. Green route, academics put content in repository for their discipline
or for their institution, free at point of use, may be an embargo period
depending on discipline. Gold path or
route, payment is made to publisher when publishing in their journal etc to
also make it also freely discoverable and available at publication point for OA
purposes (though there may be time embargos on imposed by specific publishers).
OA Movement Momentum
OA movement gathering momentum
since the 1990s.
Growing questions and pressure
relating to there was no free public access to publicly funded research outputs
and that the outputs should be available as free access rather than behind
commercial publisher paywalls. Also argument that making research more
accessible an incentive to research and industrial development to strengthen economy.
OA at Nottingham, Background
Nottingham Uni had had a pre-print
repository since 2005 (pre-refereed pre-publication versions), and a department
for APCs (Article Processing Charges) since 2006. An APC is the upfront pre-publication
fee paid to publisher to make an article free at the point of access when it is
being published commercially. There had been a mandate to the university
academics since 2009 that they should make available their work OA.
Recent Momentum for OA
In June 2012 the
Government-instructed Finch Report (under aegis of Dame Janet Finch) was
published. This endorsed OA and it endorsed the APC (gold route) model.
Publishers generally liked this as it would open up a new income stream in APC
fees for them. However APC fees are not cheap, can be £1,500 / £2,000 per
article.
RCUK (Research Councils UK)
published its own policy in July 2012 (now as subsequently amended several times since)
which got criticised and was controversial.
OA and responses to is basically a moving picture, it changes all the
time. RCUK good place to look for literature on though.
RCUK Position
RCUK favoured gold over green.
Block grants to some universities to fund APC costs. Funding will continue and
grow. Supposed to put in place an equitable spread across disciplines. However legal academics haven’t been
applying. A certain type of Creative Commons - Attribution CC-BY licence should
be used. Publishers and academics a bit jittery about this particular licence
and what it allows in terms of remixing content. Anyone in recent RCUK funding
must acknowledge and make available their research through the gold route
immediately or green route later. Should give statements on how to request
underlying data.
Barriers to Open Access
Academic indifference – lots to
do, just another thing.
Workload
Academic freedom (not liking
being told what to do and how)
Quality control (e.g. worried
about different versions of work including out-dated ones)
Defend publishing status quo (worked
till now so why complicate it)
Copyright
SHERPA
SHERPA is based at Nottingham Uni
and facilitates scholarly communication and has a lot of OA tools and
materials. These include RoMEO (Publisher's
copyright & archiving policies which allows search by title and publisher
and collates information re OA
approaches) and JULIET (Research funders archiving mandates and
guidelines)
The Nottingham Repository
In 2012 the total number of items
that had been deposited by the 40 law school academics was 8, all written by
the same person.
Important to move on to improve
that.
What are Lawyers Like?
Conservative (small ‘c’)
Successful
Many are not technologically
savvy (though some are)
Respect rules
Rights focused, believe in
academic freedom
Low levels of applications for research
funding
Care about book chapters
Busy, busy, busy
People don’t necessarily like
being told how and where to publish, OA is disruptive to old model where
everyone knew the key places in their field to publish and did so accordingly.
Details matter, things like lack of pagination become important if want others
to be able to accurately cite and refer to work. Fears of APCs being rationed
or influencing choices on publication routes. However likely to become
necessary to gain research funding from most major funders by time of next REF
2020 exercise. Book chapters are not
covered by Romeo and lots of publishers don’t stipulate their OA position
regarding.
Nottingham Milestones (1)
Speaking at School meeting, Jan
2012. Appealed to philanthropy (didn’t work) and talked about Finch report in
advance.
Joining a reformed Research
Committee, March 2012. Talked about concerns and discussed implications for
REF.
Pilot of green OA, March – April 2012. Did a review against RoMEO, uncovered lots of
challenges.
Academic Staff Seminar, May
2012. Lots of staff attended.
Nottingham Milestones (2)
Finch Report published Summer
2012.
Extra hours agreed for Legal
Researcher, Sept. 2012. Based within library, funded by law school to help with
their research, identified which publications could be used
Consent from Sweet & Maxwell, Sept. 2012 (for Nottingham Uni
authors only).
Academy of Social Sciences
Conference, Nov . 12. Fairly negative
discussion, lots of objections, didn’t like the CC-BY licence use. Concerns had
been imposed, could lead to misappropriation of rights, threat to learned
societies.
Nottingham – End of 2012
77 items in law school repository
between 12 academics representing a third of the School. Others hadn’t gotten
around to or there’d been problems / issues that meant couldn’t use content of.
Nottingham Milestones (3)
List of journals in law with gold
APC route, Jan 2013.
First application from academic
to Publications Fund re APC March 2013.
HEFCE Consultation March 2013 re
OA in REF 2020 context on requirement of eligibility that research outputs are
born OA. That would change the game
entirely.
REF Environment Statement May
2013.
How To Get Buy-In (1)
Be aware academics are still
often not aware of OA
Keep up with developments and
push out new news on OA (likes of Peter Suber open access book on Open Access and his blog, LSE Impact Blog, Guardian blog, HEFCE, RCUK
Get on the Research Committee
Press the right buttons – REF 2020
(Research Excellence Framework 2020 research assessment policy).
Talk about impact
Comparison use of own
institutional repositories (May 2012)
LSE – 2,115
UCL – 2,170
Oxford – 68
Nottingham – 8
How to get Buy-In (2)
Get academics to advocate for
you, much more effective to own peers
Provide administrative support
Be proactive with publishers, use
RoMEO and help up-date
Reassure over copyright –paginate
post-prints (post refereed pre-publication status)
Monitor gold OA opportunities
across thediscipline
Don’t give up
Questions / discussion
There was discussion of flipping
funding steams and the pressures on Finch and amount of lobbying – hence gold
route chosen? Discussion of universities
having to pay twice – the subscription costs for libraries to journals plus OA
fees separately. How discoverable are OA material? A little linking to from
commercial databases, but not much as yet. No formal relationship between OA
and indexing / web browsing tools. What way the major funders and HEFCE come
down re REF 2020 will have a major impact – stick model more effective than
carrot? What happens with ‘born OA’ material, how is that dealt with? Green OA
with embargo period likely. Need to think a lot more about individual data
management practices underlying research also in terms of being able to find,
record and make available data accurately.
The BIALL Open Access Fringe
Short note on this.
Basically this was an add-on
informal discussion session over lunchtime put together by Pete Smith for those interested in Open Access and Free
Law that was not part of the scheduled conference programme but considered
various themes also explored in formal conference.
A lot of the discussion was about
what different institutions were doing about OA and how it was catered for in
their institutions and the extent to which national collaboration could prove
useful and save people re-inventing the wheel. So, discussion about whether BIALL
could co-ordinate a Directory of Open Access journals and legal publishers OA
policies and what other bodies may wish to be involved and how co-ordinate
that. Looks like BIALL will take
forward.
Questions about whether there
would be any overt quality control in such a publication in terms of whether
journals are considered reputable. General agreement no one peer review
standard and thorny territory to impose subjective judgments.
Discussion of where institutional
repositories sit within academic institutions and whether and to what extent
library was involved with. Few libraries seem to have management of the
function, but various are involved (e.g. managing APC money), and all encourage.
Lots of universities appointing cross-institution OA Managers.
Few have policies on how APC
money distributed, tends to be first come first served. Could create problems
with the duty to use APC money equitably across disciplines. May have to change
current approaches if more demand and depending how the funding for it goes.
Discussion of whether the LIS
profession in its own research output has opted into OA and supported. Various
journals have OA routes, but problem for learned societies and professional
bodies with journals where income stream is an issue to afford gold OA route or
to give ‘free’ their output without membership or subscription.
Discussion of whether gold is
sustainable in terms of institutions paying twice to make OA gold route and to
subscribe to the journals.
Discussion of whether authors
choose to publish and why now and how this could be affected by OA depending on
publishers fees and models. Is there a perception that OA journals aren’t as
good or authoritative or are not long-term sustainable to access compared to commercially
published and price competitors?
Lot of the focus is on articles
in journals, but real problem with book chapters, conference proceedings,
dissertations too – that shouldn’t be lost with all concentration on journals.
Also general discussion of free
law sites and tools and extent to which supported and used. General agreement
are used and useful and worth supporting and promoting in terms of breadth and
coverage offered which may be unavailable from commercial datasets or not
subscribed to.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
BIALL 2013 Doing more with less – Tips on being more effective
The below being my potted notes from the Susie Kay session at BIALL2013 Conference…
Will gradually put all my notes up from the various sessions I attended. Susie was going at a fair pace so this is the general gist, it’s not everything.
Susie noted people commonly have more demands to fulfil using less resources so the session was about strategies for dealing with that.
What are we short of?
People tend to say they’re short of e.g. time, staff, space, money. Therefore finding ‘extra’ working days would help. Session intended to suggest ways people could reclaim 10 / 15 mins daily making up to several days ‘extra’ time over the year.
Fundamental Questions
We need to ask ourselves
What is our job role meant to do?
How much of what we do is peripheral to the core of that?
The Moscow Rules
Think about the Moscow Rules, which break things down into
Must do
Should do
Could do
There are key activities that are necessary to achieve any task including planning and prioritising.
As Others See Us
Think about your own workplace –
What is their view of you / your team?
How much impact do they think you have?
Whose Goals Are Important?
Important to distinguish between being prepared and being swamped by others.
If you allow yourself to get swamped by others you lose ability to complete your own goals. Fail to complete your own goals and you lose your reputation for being able to get things done.
Important we recognise the value we add in terms of confidence, reputation management, earning respect and demanding respect.
We are there to help others, but we are also professionals in our own right and not at the beck and call of everyone else.
Important to safeguard reputation because it is built up over a long timeperiod.
Professionalism
Relationship with Time
Time is finite – we all have 24 hours, 60 minutes per hour. In that time we need to eat, sleep, do family, do social activities. A fraction of it only is available for work, thus work hours need to be carefully constructed for maximum effect. We cannot manage time, but we can utilise time more effectively.
Procrastination and Distractions
Two major problems are procrastinaton and distraction.
These can be reduced and eliminated.
The tendency to procrastinate is caused by various issues – feeling of overload, in ability to decide what to do next out of the pile, unable to find time to complete a task, start bits of tasks but never complete any.
Multitasking is a fallacy. It is neither possible nor a good idea. When multitasking people don’t achieve anything very well as they tend to lose concentration.
How to avoid this?
Having a today’s priorities list, eating the frog first (the nasty task) so that everything else is easy in comparison, eating the elephant one slice at a time, the desire to get to the end, the desire to feel satisfied.
Our inboxes are the delivery system for other peoples priorities. Show your inbox who is the boss. Check it at your convenience. Empty it every day. Create folders to store information that needs kept, other wise either do or delete. Do the worst things in it.
Space and Contingency
People forget to plan and priotise in the rush to just do.
Important to put contingency into the diary, free space, and not shift it. That way if you really do need it for something it’s there.
If people lack capacity then their overall lists lengthen and delivery weakens and they get reputation for being unreliable.
Default mechanism of people is to say yes. Important to practice saying no as well. Push back when it’s someone else’s problem.
Organisation Preferences
Different people have different ways of working. Some create lists, others are post-it addicts. These things can become mere decoration if they’re not used to base actions from.
Helps a lot of people to use mind mapping when figuring out commitments. Lots of advice on and examples on internet. Can be hand drawn or using software, no right or wrong way to go about, helps add value.
Mindfulness
People allow themselves to become distracted, always thinking about what’s ‘next’. Important to know difference between being mind full and mindful.
Mindfulness is becoming still, creating focus to aid better concentration, stopping the noise in our heads.
Important to ditch the clutter to get more organised. Don’t just put things down, put them away in their correct place so they’re easy to find next time.
Finding the good and Recognising Bad Signs
No job is all stress, so figure out what triggers your stress reactions, see the patterns and develop strategies to offset.
Important to look after yourself because no one else does it. Build in breaks, lunch, quiet time, understand your own body patterns and map how you work to it.
If things get overwhelming then stand still, let the feeling subside around you or try donothingfor2minutes. Important to hit the pause button on the day if you need it, relax, then get on again.
At end of the week
Create a done list.
Don’t worry about what wasn’t done.
Reward yourself.
Important not to feel alone, mentoring and peer support both beneficial.
Most people need to work for a living, but work can also be wonderful.
Monday, May 13, 2013
A Picture Post - Carnegie Reading Time Of Year
It seems to me I'm writing lots of very long text-laden blog posts at the moment (mini-series on issues relating to job hunting).
So I want to break it up a bit inbetween these with some short and lighter things that are more image-focused.
Carnegie seems a good place to start...
Carnegie Time Of Year
Every year recently (I think this is my 4th year, could be wrong) I've been taking part in a CILIP Carnegie Medal Shadowing Reading Group. Which I usually schedule in fairly rigorously to ensure I'll make it through the shortlist and do everything for in time.
To Carnegie Or Not To Carnegie
This year I'm in transit. I wasn't initially sure I had the time or the will to do Carnegie this year in result. But I decided to give it a go, because I knew I enjoyed it and found it worthwhile.
Organisation? You laugh - what's that again?
I'm way off my usual organised schedule approach this year. Nevertheless I've made my way through 6 of the 8 on the shortlist.
The End In Sight
Winner is announced 19th June so I think I'll comfortably make it after all (yay!).
The books illustrated on this post are the six I've read so far.
Overall
Is it worth it? Yes, it is. I'll probably do a general post on the whole thing once I've finished, but I certainly think it's the best overall shortlist I've read so far.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
A quick survey of the current Scottish jobs market
Are There Jobs Going In Scotland?
Yes, there are. A fair amount in fact. I was in fact pleasantly surprised at the amount going and the frequency with which new ones were advertised. Obvious caveat on this is that what I don’t know is what the proportions are between jobs advertised and sheer numbers of folk seeking and applying for them. So all I can really say is that there recently have been a range of jobs to apply for out there at least.
What’s the sectoral coverage?
There’s a big variety, again, a really surprising amount of variety in some ways. So a quick basic run-down would include various school library / resource centre posts, lots of university academic library posts (especially in Edinburgh), lots of public library posts (though tending to be paraprofessional level or entry level professional, and often very limited fixed hours or ‘casual’ contracts), some health jobs, some commercial company ones (tend to be Aberdeen), some charity jobs, the odd National Library of Scotland one, rare legal information ones.
There’s been an utterly astounding level of some very subject specialist jobs though (e.g. two art librarians in Edinburgh), Media Librarian… Trying to think of what I haven’t seen at all... Further education / college jobs actually. I’m assuming that’s to some extent at least down to the major changes going through that sector just now with an awful lot of big mergers allied to the (now traditional just about everywhere) lack of cash.
What’s the geographical coverage?
Again, it’s really quite broad and better than I expected. Though the extent is better than the depth really. Overall there’s a lot more jobs in Edinburgh and Aberdeen than anywhere else that I’ve seen, and everywhere else is patchy or slim. In the last week or so for example islands and coastal locations have been very popular with lots of public library assistant jobs in the Highlands.
Geography is an interesting one jobs-wise. The basic rule on it goes it’s not the distance it’s the accessibility that matters. It’s the logistics of could you actually get there for the start time and get home again after the end time, how long does all that take, how much of your own time and expense are you prepared to spend on it, what proportion of salary would it actually cost to do it. Is there public transport that is feasible? If you drive then is there parking there and how long would it take in rush hour? So it’s not the distance, it’s the logistics.
What level of jobs / hours / salaries are going?
Public library tends to be mostly library assistants, mostly part-time. Though there are some more entry level professional librarian roles and library assistant roles that are full-time. The charity jobs are often fixed-term and may be ‘x’ number of days a week rather than full-time and have tended to be professional level. Health, again, has been mostly fixed-term and some part-time hours. The academic library jobs tend to be full-time open professional level contracts. The school librarian / LRC Manager ones are often term-time only and may involve more than one school (depends on the local authority policy on and how they’re organised or if it’s a private school). Other sectors, bit of a mix between full-time open contracts and fixed term appointments.
More library assistant roles in public sector, more professional level posts in academic, and there’s been a fair amount of senior roles in academic sector compared to any other sector too. Schools and health bit of a mixture of professional and paraprofessional roles going. Salaries, as you would expect, kind of depends what level of role in what sector and how many hours. So some very basic salaries to some high ones for Scotland and everything inbetween.
Career Prospects
I was reading one particular Job Description the other week and came to the wonderful line near the end of ‘Career prospects – none’. Most Job Descriptions are not as blatant as this (quite possibly a good thing!). But it did get me thinking about a few things.
I tend to take the view that in the last five years or so most places have been restructured and felt the impacts of straightened financial circumstances. It’s not news to anyone that times are difficult. I would suspect what this means in terms of individuals is that a lot of people’s c.v.’s will no longer go in straight linear upward trajectory and / or expected ways, but might well take more diversions, cul-de-sacs, and changes of direction than would otherwise be expected to be the case.
I don’t see anything wrong in any of that. I’d call it being pragmatic and realistic. I think folk have to be fairly flexible and adaptable and it’s good to decide what you are willing to compromise on and what you aren’t early on. But I do suspect it’s easier to sell the wish for a change of direction currently than it might have been several years ago.
Changing Sectors
Obviously it still needs backed up with reasonable prospect that you can also fulfil it mind, which is the less easy part! Changing sectors has been one of those eternally debated issues within the profession. I don’t think the answer on it has changed any. It’s possible to do it, but it isn’t easy to do it, and you have to be able to demonstrate why you should be employed to do it, what experience you have that is relevant and what else you can bring to it someone else could not, or someone else with more closely aligned experience will get it.
But I don’t think there’s enough jobs going that just waiting for one very specific dream job to come along is hugely realistic. It never was in Scotland. If you can wait year upon year for it then all well and good, if not, well, maybe look a bit wider, see what else is interesting and do’able and make of it what you can.
Conclusion
There are jobs going, and in a variety of sectors at a variety of levels. But there’s not huge amounts doing any one particular thing or in any one place mostly. So all in all be prepared to be flexible and diversify and think through what is essential and what can be compromised is probably good advice.
Next time, I shall muse on the content of Job Descriptions and Person Specifications and the common elements. This appears to be becoming a mini-series (yikes!!!) (grins)
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