Spreading the word



Glazed tile image from Ishtar Gate of Babylon, Museum of the Ancient Orient, Istanbul.
Copyright Emma Woods 2011.

I am writing this post at work. However, I'm not in the library, I'm in the Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) school office. Last month, my colleague and I started visiting the school office for two hours every Thursday afternoon. We do an hour each, talking to academics, answering their queries and updating them with relevant library news. The school office is the perfect place for this to take place as it's where the hot drinks machine is, so as academics come in to get their coffee in between lectures we can take the opportunity to start a dialogue. This week it's very quiet due to UCU industrial action, which is why I'm writing this post instead.

Even though it's still early days, I feel our regular presence here has already increased interest in the library. I'm hoping that this will continue and will strengthen our relationship with the department, leading to more requests for information skills sessions and better promotion of library resources to students. Some computing reading lists are alarmingly short and this means students don't see the need to come into the library or use the online resources until very late on in their studies. I hope to start encouraging academic staff to explore what we have of relevance to their modules and to update and extend their recommended reading.

I'll write another post in a few months to further reflect on how our visiting librarian scheme is going. In the meantime, I'd be very interested to hear from other librarians engaged in similar activities. Please comment below.