Exhausting postgraduate life

I knew that this MA in Librarianship was going to be extremely hard work when I started it, but only in that theoretical way you embrace at the outset of exciting times. When it comes down to it I can’t remember ever being so consistently exhausted at any other time in my life. What doesn’t help of course is all the travel from York to Sheffield; I’ve spoken to some of my fellow students who travel and we all agreed that it’s a killer. Some Monday mornings when I stand at the tram stop out the back of the railway station in Sheffield at 8.30am, having got up at 6am, I could just weep with tiredness. I don’t think I ever want to have to commute like this ever again.

Of course it’s not just physical tiredness, there’s the mental exhaustion too. I had completely forgotten that aspect of being a student that at any given time you could be working. Something you don’t have to contend with in the workaday world: once you’ve left the building you don’t carry on working. Certainly sometimes you mentally take home work with you and think about things, but not like this student way of living where you have to motivate yourself constantly. Displacement activities! Pffffft! The Web was in its crappy infancy when I did my undergraduate degree (1994-97) but I still found stuff to do rather than study – clean, organise, read, potter, faff etc. Now, I don’t even have to leave my seat to get distracted! Of course it doesn’t help that my dissertation is on Library2.0 so I can almost kid myself that I’m doing work when really I’m reading something of no earthly use. But it could come in handy, file away all that information somewhere as you never know – information hoarding!

This is something I used to refer to as “essay guilt”, when you’re not working but you feel you should be – which feeling is present whenever you aren’t working. Good job I’m not a Catholic, I’ve got the guilt thing already, don’t need any more on top.

Submitted some work yesterday, printed out some more to hand in next time I’m in Sheffield. About to get started on the next piece – but of course I’m blogging instead – aaaaaarrggh!

Dust jackets in the bin?

Why do hardback books still come with a dust jacket? Surely there’s no need. As I was reading my hardback “Naked Conversations” (a book on the benefits of blogging) on the train this morning, the dust jacket kept slipping around and irritating me so I removed it as I always do. Underneath, the book was beautifully printed on the cover with exactly the same artwork; so why the need for a dust jacket? That’s the viewpoint from a reader – they’re annoying, they don’t protect the book as they’re only on it when I’ve finished reading it, and how robust is a piece of paper compared to the book anyway?

Now from the librarian’s point of view – those things need processing, putting in plastic such as Adjustaroll, time-consuming and expensive, whether you do it yourself or your library supplier does it for you. That’s if you’re a public librarian. In academic libraries they often just bin them; nightmare for the shelver / browsing student – you end up with rows of dull-coloured books with the title rubbed off.

Why can’t everyone just print the book up with the cover art and dispense with the dust jacket entirely? Surely printing technology has made it that far, if some printers can do it then why not everybody?

I appreciate that in days of “yore” that just wasn’t possible but now? And book collectors can just cope with it, it’s the content of the book that’s important. Can’t be doing with “purists” like that: books are meant to be read, artwork admired, classic cars driven and trainsets to be ripped from the box and played with till they break.

Having said that, I wish hardbacks were bound properly instead of this proliferation of crappy perfect-bound hardbacks so that the spines don’t break when you press them open with your cross-legged knees whilst trying to eat and read in the sunshine. Enough ranting.

Naked Conversations is proving to be an interesting read and directly related to my dissertation. What particularly interests me is that this book is aimed squarely at the business world but there is much in there that is relevant and useful for the public library. I am moving towards the opinion that libraries need to look to the business world for strategies of survival and move past that to flourish. I’m not saying we need to make money or anything so crude, just that there are many tools and techniques already developed that we could adopt.    

Library 2.0 – powerful communications tool or fad?

Why are public libraries in USA more engaged with Web 2.0 applications than their UK counterparts?

I’m trying to work out if it is genuinely worthwhile getting involved in activities such as blogging if you are a public library. And are public library authorities developing web activity policies commensurate with the explosion of stuff online?

I’m working in my MA in Librarianship and the above is my dissertation topic; I’m more than just academically interested in it, I want to be able to justify my standpoint (that it is worthwhile engaging) when I get into my first professional role. From a user-centred design standpoint, there is no point developing blogs etc just because you think they are a good thing, you need to be able to discern a need or desire amongst your actual or potential users. I think I’m far too close to the issue to be able to judge, I’m a library geek, of course my local library’s website is in my del.icio.us bookmarks but I don’t think that’s necessarily “normal”!

So, I am seeking examples of UK public libraries with blogs specifically but any Web 2.0 activity is of interest and also the librarians that are responsible for their content because I want to gauge underlying attitudes that motivate you to blog, facebook etc.

I know that one of the big problems is that the library’s website sits underneath that of the local authority and that is usually somewhat clunky and generic, but how much of a problem is this? What other problems do keen bloggy librarians encount? Have they given it up as a bad job? What would happen to the blog if they moved to another job?

Would the average nethead bookmark their local library’s pages?