Troughing in the library

Yet another library user troughing over the shared computers today – when I asked them to stop, you’d have thought I’d asked them to eat their children! “Where am I supposed to eat then?” was the truculent response. Er, in the canteen or the coffee room, like a normal person?

Honestly, at what point did it become so acceptable to sit and constantly stuff your face in a library, for heaven’s sake? When I was a student we weren’t even allowed WATER! Now they seem to regard the place as their own personal picnic area. Though it wasn’t that so much that was aggravating as the argumentative attitude. Echo boomers, you have to love them!

I actually wouldn’t care, but research shows that shared keyboards are around four times as filthy as toilet seats (and that’s not even in a hospital environment like ours….) I also wouldn’t care if it was easy to get replacements, but in our environment you have to beg for everything you get. And when I pointed this out, mentioned the name of our canteen, and asked if she’d had an induction she looked completely blank – leading me to wonder – are you REALLY a member of staff?! Or did your friends just let you in?

She claimed she worked with us but was studying biology at a local university, where they were allowed to sit and eat and drink in the library (intriguing that her story changed around 3 times in the course of our conversation. I wasn’t aware that particular university offered the course part-time) – in which case, she might want to go and watch the film Contagion, since it’s evidently got more science in it about how bacteria spread than whatever she claims to be studying!

Everything you always wanted to know about job rejections but were scared to ask…

I’ve been looking to move job for a little while now. Lovely as my time in the south west has been, I’d got it into my head it might be nice to move a little nearer my family “up north”. (Not too near, you understand!!). Now, previously, whenever I’ve wanted to get a new job, I’ve normally started looking, applied, and around 6 months later, been invited to at least some interviews.

Usually, on average, I’ve been offered 1 interview in 3 applications, and 1 job every 3 interviews. But this time round, the rules appear to have changed.

I am, evidently, no longer an attractive proposition. I’m not even getting interviews any more, especially not in the north. I’ve even been unsuccessful at getting jobs in the Middle East – which hardly used to be inundated with applicants. (Mind you, I’m over a certain age and not married or widowed with children, so that probably does mean it’s probably just as well I didn’t get those jobs, on reflection….) But the unsuccessful job applications for vacancies in the north perplex me. I can only presume that everyone north of Watford Gap must be incredibly talented these days and have every possible skill an employer could want, with no need for training or nurturing!

I always ask for feedback when I’m rejected and sometimes the organisation is kind enough to give it. More often, of course, they just ignore me and hope I’ll go away (yes, Manchester, I’m looking at you. Through the drizzle, mist and gunfire… and before anyone complains, I worked in the city for almost 6 months back in 1999. It’s the only place I’ve ever worked where grown men walk about with full size umbrellas, and I was never able to work out if it was to protect them from the rain or act as a weapon. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where I saw someone get their teeth knocked out on a pavement for no apparent reason. At least in the north-east you normally have to look at someone a bit askance for that kind of thing to happen).

So this morning I asked for feedback on my latest rejection. The very friendly and cheerful HR person on the end of the phone told me that my application had “insufficiently evidenced” criteria 5 and 8. Which turned out to be “service delivery” and “understanding of equality and diversity”.

On the service delivery front – okay, I can accept that there were probably other candidates with more experience, which is what they should have said. I must confess, though, I find it a bit amusing that despite having managed 3 successful small services, often with hardly any resources and, at best, indifference from management and “support” staff, this obviously doesn’t count towards “service delivery”.

But the other rejection criterion? I’ve had rejections from job applications over the years, obviously, but this is the first time that I haven’t, apparently, included enough evidence of my understanding of the importance of equality and diversity.

I grew up in the North East in a fairly multi-cultural environment, for the 1970s. At primary school my best friend was from Pakistan. I spent 2 years in Japan, in an ethnic minority of 5 in my town. I have friends from lots of different backgrounds and even (whisper it) several who didn’t grow up in the UK. I currently work in the NHS, a byword for equality and diversity. I worked in the MoD for 4 years, with people from all backgrounds. The MoD even included a few wealthy Caucasian male heterosexual Southerners, who are practically extinct if you believe the media… I’ve worked alongside squaddies and army officers. In my current job, many of our users have dyslexia. Many have English as their second or third language (and usually speak it better than many natives…) Some users have hearing or other disabilities.  I’ve had three sets of formal E&D training over the years. What more could I have put in to prove that I understand equality and diversity, for heaven’s sake?!

By, job hunting must be tough up north right now, all the candidates must be deities in human form – maybe I’ll just stick with the south and be grateful I have a job at all, even if it is in the utterly insane NHS. Who knows what lies ahead for us – I’m hoping it’s more involvement with helping patients find information, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m always a bit suspicious of job advertisements where an interview date is listed – in my experience that’s normally shorthand for “we know who we’re going to appoint, actually, but HR are making us jump through hoops. So please don’t bother applying, as we won’t interview you and you’ll just be wasting your time. And if we do interview you, it’ll be perfectly obvious you’ve just been invited to make up the numbers and keep HR off our back, as the internal or known candidate will be very apparent”. Cynical but realistic, that’s me…

My only consolation is that it’s not just me who’s having this experience. I know of very talented much younger librarians/information professionals who are finding it impossible to get interviewed, even for jobs that they could do standing on their head with one arm tied behind their back.

Part of the reason is obviously to do with cutbacks and the general economic situation. Part of it may well be connected to the fact that there are at least some information professionals who turned 60 in the last couple of years and who would have normally taken retirement at 60. Now that the compulsory retirement age has been abolished, at least some  are choosing to stay in post, often for just 1 or 2 days a week rather than the previous 5. Nobody is being employed to work the other 3 or 4 days a week. You can hardly blame the 60-somethings for staying in post, given the financial situation since 2007 and the lifestyles we’ve all got used to over the last 15-20 years.  And you can hardly blame employers for being pleased about saving on their wage bill. But, combined with the upsurge in new technology, it does mean that there simply aren’t the numbers of job vacancies that there might once have been. Of course what we do will evolve, just as it always has. But it’s likely there will be fewer and fewer of us as the years go on, and attrition rates in younger professionals are likely to increase, especially for those who don’t work in academic or larger library/information services.  Well, it’s one way to kill a profession…!

So I’m going to stop depressing myself and give job hunting a miss for a while and concentrate on the other parts of my life.  Namely, writing, my complementary therapies, and, for want of a better way to describe it, the “grounded” aspect of being a grounded librarian.  Which involves stone circles, Shamanic drumming, Arthurian legends.  And stuff.  This is the West Country, after all. (I could have put “stoned librarian” but that really would give the wrong impression!)

It doesn’t mean that I don’t like being a librarian – I especially like being a health/medical librarian. Our professional users, in general, are educated, charming, unfailingly polite, and nice to be around – and some of our students on placement are learning to be that way. We have no agenda. We are one of the neutral spaces of the hospital – like the chapel and the canteen. And even in a small way, we contribute towards patient welfare – when a doctor says “This article will help us cure someone”, that’s a real reward. Working with some of the public and university librarians in the region on a recent project has also been brilliant, and hopefully sowed the seeds for further work to benefit patients/members of the public and their information needs. Books on Prescription, anyone? Or how about a nice mood-boosting book?

But the recent spate of rejections does mean that being a librarian is no longer the centre of my life.  Rather than being a career, it’s now highly likely that it will simply fade into just being a job. Oh, I’ll still be interested in CPD, and writing, and the odd bit of research I can squeeze in. But it’ll just be one theme in the musical score, and no longer the main one.

Head of Collections, Isle of Bute Vacancy

Oh, if only I had a degree in Art History or Museum Interpretation! This fabulous-sounding job, in the most gorgeous of locations, is currently being advertised….

http://www.mountstuart.com/More/Job_Opportunities/

Well, that’s now 2 full-time permanent posts that have been advertised within the space of a week – which is considerably better than it has been recently.

Library Manager vacancy at Derby Foundation Trust

After months and months and months of nothing but part-time, fixed-term, temporary vacancies (not that I’m looking obsessively or anything), a full-time permanent post was advertised for a Library & Knowledge Services Manager in Derby today. (Yes, that’s a librarian.)

This is a larger library, by NHS standards, with 13 staff, yet I can’t find out much about this library though, beyond the fact it’s big and shiny and new, in an equally shiny new hospital.

Still, whatever the mystery, on the plus side, houses are relatively cheap in Derby. Three bedroom homes with huge gardens and small drives are the price of a studio flat in Somerset or Devon. And there are actually buses, real live buses, that go between the hospitals – now there’s a thought. Working, frequent public transport! Just a shame it’s so far from the sea…!

Dovecot Towers

I currently live in what is, apparently, a “luxury” block of flats on the seafront in a small seaside town in Somerset. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? But every week, if not every day, something happens in this ghastly stalag that makes me wonder, What The….? This morning it sounds like my upstairs neighbours (I privately call them the Thumpitties) are humping filing cabinets about.

And it’s a Saturday. Yes, I can go out, and am going out in a minute – but I pay through the nose for this place, far more than I would pay on a mortgage. Yet here I am caught in Catch 22 – I can easily afford to pay a mortgage, in terms of the monthly amounts, but I can’t scrape together the mortgage because I’m too busy subsidising my landlord and paying to live in a flat that’s unbearable half the time. And sadly, my “Bank of Mum of Dad” are not in a position to help and never have been.

Thank God, during the week I’m one of those lucky enough to still have a job, so I don’t have to sit and listen to their thumping, but at weekends, all I can hear is thumping. Don’t ever live in one of these ghastly dovecots unless you absolutely have to – Rentergirl is absolutely right, they’re some of the most miserable dwellings in the UK.

Why is everyone apparently so surprised…

…that politicians lie to get into power? Question Time is always amusing, but some of the panelists are particularly entertaining this evening.

Of course politicians lie; of course they change their policies after they’re in power. That’s the way the game is played. If they were honest, they wouldn’t be in politics. They’d be out teaching children, farming fields, or healing the sick.

Sometimes it’s as if all of recorded history didn’t actually happen, and certainly nothing appears to have been learned from it.  As it is, this government looks as if it’s going to go down in history as the one that managed to simulataneously destroy the education and health systems, and make libraries even more of an endangered species than they already were. They should all be forced to read The Quiet Earth and learn certain sections off by heart.

The book is one of those classic post-apocalyptic books where the human race is almost wiped out by a mysterious plague. Only a very small number of people are immune; eventually, the main character meets a female survivor, they have a family, but only one of the children sees the value of the knowledge in books. He dies young, and with each successive generation, more knowledge is lost…

Bath Spa: thermal underground springs and all that

After 2 weeks of glorious freedom, communing with stones, dolphins and Iron Age reconstructed villages in lovely, remote, rural Pembrokeshire and generally chilling out in Somerset, it’s back to work day tomorrow – though in the current climate, I suppose I should be glad I have a job to go back to at all. After 7 or 8 years of relative plenty, there’s barely anything to apply for now unless I want maternity cover, fixed term vacancies, or fancy living in London. (No thank you. I can get all the over-priced food, accommodation and transport I need in the south west of England, thank you, and at least my skin isn’t greasy with black grime at the end of the day.)

So, as a last “touristy” activity before it’s back to the computer shaped grindstone, I thought I’d visit the Thermal Spa in Bath.

The publicity shows a lovely, peaceful, aquamarine expanse of tranquil water with just a couple of people bobbing about. The reality is somewhat different.

The place can’t seem to make its mind up whether it’s a public swimming baths or a spa. The Minerva pool definitely smelled and felt like a public swimming pool. I’m still not convinced I haven’t caught something nasty from all the stagnant water.  (One of the unexpected side effects of working in a hospital, even on the admin side – I’m now quite paranoid about bugs lurking round EVERY corner!)

The scented steam rooms were quite nice but the shower in the middle was a bit erratic; the restaurant was okay, but again, quite pricy, which is saying something in Bath, where outlets regularly charge prices verging on those in London. I’d also definitely say, don’t expect fast or courteous service, especially in the restaurant, and particularly if you’re on your own. I was very glad I wasn’t expected to tip, since the staff definitely wouldn’t have deserved it.

The rooftop pool was a nice idea, but crowded, and unfortunately the day I visited it was too chilly to lie out on the loungers on the sun terrace. The spa treatments are at least 30% more than you’d pay if you just went to a normal beauty therapy place,  and the beauty therapy place would definitely be more relaxing and less crowded. Hire of towels, robes and slippers is very costly, the changing rooms are unisex, the lockers have an interesting key system and there aren’t enough of them, and the shower facilities are, well, basic. The signing also leaves a lot to be desired. It was an interesting experience but not one I’d care to repeat.

The Grounded Librarian

After 8 years in the West Country, the grounded librarian decided she wanted to go and live somewhere even less rational. She’d applied, with little success, for several jobs in the north of England in an attempt to be nearer her family, and had decided it might be fun and interesting to apply for jobs in the academic sector. Which is how she ended up in Northern Ireland.

The years she spent in the mid 1990s in Japan are coming in extremely useful in this new environment, particularly the concepts of tatamae and honne.

She never would have believed she could be so homesick for a region she hadn’t grown up in (the West Country).