My trip to the DoH library

Before I attempt thing 3, I thought I’d use my new blog to tell you all about my trip to the Department of Health Library a few weeks ago.I definitely picked the right day to visit, as their Permanent Secretary officially opened their new Library (they had recently moved from a different part of the building). I was impressed with how positive their Perm Sec was about the library and how she emphasised the importance of a physical as well as electronic presence.

It was really interesting to chat to other subject librarians from the same sector – and to hear about their work and projects. At the moment, everyone is involved in bar-coding and boxing up all of the items in their archive, in preparation for it going in to deep storage somewhere in Lancashire. They’re also exploring the possibility of digitalising their circulars.

It was comforting to hear that they experience the same frustrations and challenges as us. They have been trying to get a library blog off the ground for the past 4 years, and they are also interested in improving information literacy within their organisation.

Ideas for improving our service

Not sure how easy they would be to implement, but here are some of the main tips I picked up

♦ Using electronic instead of paper copyright forms for ILLs

This is something the DoH already does, and seems to be working well.

♦ Changing from overdue to "nearly overdue" emails.

This seems to be going down well with their customers, as they feel like they are receiving a courtesy email, rather than a complaining one. A much friendlier approach!

♦ Develop a feedback email

They use a very simple email, with voting buttons and space for comments, so customers can easily provide feedback. They have found that the amount of feedback they receive has increased significantly as a result.

♦ Limit literature searches to 30 citations - Not sure how easy this would be for some of our vaguer requests!

♦ Current Awareness Services – They currently have lots of individual alerts set up for people, on very specific topics – although they still need to spend time filtering the information before it gets sent to their customers

Anyway, I’d be really interested to hear what you think…

So, all in all, a very productive, interesting visit - well worth the very long journey up to Leeds.

Thing 2...

So, finally, I am completing thing two, and exploring other people's blogs. I actually found this quite a daunting task, as I find the amount of blogs out there quite overwhelming - where to start?!

I initially explored the blogs of my colleagues who are also embarking on this CPD23 journey. It was very interesting to read their comments, and to see all of their different designs - they actually inspired me to jazz up my blog a bit.

I was also recomended the following blog (thanks Stephen!), which gives lots of very useful tips about using twitter. I particually like the step by step guide to tweeting - really useful for a novice like myself. I'm sure it will be really helpful when I get to thing 4.

http://pme200.blogspot.com/2011/11/language-of-twitter.html

My first blog!

I am a government librarian, working in Cardiff. I'd like to complete CPD23 as I'm keen to learn more about social networking - at the moment I feel like all these new technologies are passing me by!

I hope that eventually I'll be able use things like blogs to improve the way I share information with colleagues - I'm particularly interested in modernising the way I provide my current awareness services. From a personal point of view, I'm also looking forward to finding out all about twitter.

Feels a bit strange to be writing a blog, but hopefully I'll get used to it!