Holding, holding, 1, 2, 3...

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...

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).

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.

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.

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.

A quick survey of the current Scottish jobs market

 Last time I looked at how processes have changed in job applications since the 90s. What follows below is a quick run-down on the state of the job scene in Scotland for library and information jobs in the last few months.  It doesn’t remotely hold itself out to be based on anything other than subjective observation. No great particular order for what follows.

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)