Library Inductions: Who, What, Where, When, How?

Do you know what an unconference is? Because I didn't until I went to LibCAMp, a Cambridge-based unconference on 21 July. So don't feel bad. (I still have to remind myself about the lower-case 'p'.)

I'm sure others will blog about the event, the various participant-led discussions, and of course there are always various Storify summaries to get a sense of the big picture. I specifically wanted to write my thoughts on the session I attended on library inductions, though, not because it was the most important talk of the day (the discussion led by two members of staff from the SPS library of what we as Cambridge Librarians can do to ensure services and resources are available to disabled students was - I hope - a major turning point on this important issue), but because inductions are part of what I do and for a couple years now I've been wondering how I can make them better. For this reason I thought it would be good to try to reflect and collect my thoughts on the session and maybe generate some ideas that would be doable.

Invaluable to get student engagement/co-operation with your inductions - how best to manage this? #camlibcamp

— Diana Sprints (@Selenographics) July 21, 2015

Library induction tours are the first chance we get to talk to students about the library. We generally do four tours in the first week of term that last half an hour each, and attendance is entirely optional. Usually we'll get one group of around 25-30 and the rest have around 3-8 students. I've been following the format I learned from longer-serving members of staff, whereby we show them around, show the catalogue, explain borrowing, fines, rules for use and so on. The obvious problems with this are a) it's not very engaging - we try to ask questions, tailor the tour a little bit to the subjects people are reading etc. but not very much - and b) the first week of term for first years is a time of information overload, so I'm not sure how much information is actually sinking in from those sessions. Furthermore, the uptake is not great so come Lent Term there are a lot of people who still don't really know some basic things about how to use the library.

The pitch for the LibCAMp session was to share ideas on how to make inductions more engaging, so I was very keen to attend and hear what people might suggest.

Deep in discussion about library inductions at #camlibcamp pic.twitter.com/TAupPoIwxn

— Claire Sewell (@ces43) July 21, 2015

Innovative forms of induction other libraries use include scavenger hunts, peer-led inductions, video/Vine inductions and hands-on sessions. Games were also mentioned as a possibility and in addition to SPRI's scavenger hunt, murder mystery style games were mentioned as something that other libraries around the world are doing. One of my favourite tips was to tell students that everything on the induction tour was something that a professor hadn't known, thus making it clear that it's normal not to have everything figured out and hopefully reducing the fear of asking "dumb" questions.

I was very pleased when the discussion moved toward User Experience (UX) and ongoing support. Many people agreed that inductions should not be thought of as a one-off session, but that we continue to communicate induction information through leaflets, signage, one-to-one troubleshooting sessions and so on.

Library inductions are not seen as most important to students. They shouldn't be one session, it's a continuing learning process #camlibcamp

— Rachel Claire Walker (@phys_librarian) July 21, 2015

In many ways the librarians present felt a tension between wanting the library to speak for itself - so that users could come in and accomplish their goals without ever needing intervention from library staff - and the desire to tell users what we think they should know. The problem is that we don't know what the gaps in knowledge are. Has everyone on the tour used a catalogue before? Have they already been told about search strategies? It's hard to know who will be bored by this basic information and who will be hearing it for the first time.

But the information overload of the first week – a factor over which we have very little control – may be a more critical factor in how students respond and how much they remember from the induction. That’s why it’s important to have induction information available at the point of need as well, or at least in a format that students can come back to when needed (like a postcard in their Freshers packs or a series of YouTube videos). The library should ideally be easy to navigate and the design should be unobtrusively helpful at the right points, meaning that inductions are not necessary in order to interpret the service.

I have been thinking about other kinds of induction that we might do and when we might do them. By the beginning of Lent Term, for instance, students will have gotten over the initial information overload and will have had personal experiences with library services. This seems like it would be a good opportunity to add some tips and tricks that will help students navigate the information landscape at Cambridge. I've been developing just such a course, adapted from Emma Coonan's "Here Be Dragons" presentation into a (hopefully) engaging look at "How to make the most of Cambridge Libraries". I would ask participants what barriers they've encountered using library services and tailor the session to address those issues, or if they don't highlight any issues then I can simply talk about tips and tricks to make better use of the library system at Cambridge. The problem with this approach is that one confusing, frustrating or otherwise negative experience in a library during Michaelmas Term may be enough to turn a library user into a non-user for the rest of their time at Cambridge.

For this reason I think it’s still important to have the initial contact of the induction tour and for students to have a positive impression of the library at this stage. I want to tell them: If you take only one thing away from the induction tour, I hope it’s that we’re here to help you do the best you can. We can then try to make the library experience easier through good design, through helpful staff and through ongoing training opportunities that emphasise what the library can do for users, "induction" will be an ongoing process of mutual development.

So I'm looking at a three-facet approach to inductions: the tour (Fresher's week), ongoing information/library literacy training and good design of library services and informational material. But how to make that initial tour inviting and engaging? Part of it is just being a friendly face, but I must admit I'm really tempted by the idea of a game or other hands on activity. But because we never know how many will be in a tour, I think it's likely we'd have to have people sign up if we tried to "gameify" the induction tours. It's something I'll definitely have to think about. At the end of the day, though, if students leave the induction tour feeling like the library staff are on their side and that it's not a scary place I will consider it a job well done.

What creative ideas have you heard for library inductions? Do you think they're useful or do you think the design of the library should tell users everything they need to know?

Work/Life Balance

By woodleywonderworks on Flickr

As far as first world, middle class problems go, few are as prevalent and perennial as the problem of balancing one's career with the rest of one's life. The thing is, dividing the problem into two parts - work, and then everything else outside of work - is a tremendous oversimplification. I don't know anyone's life who can be divided so cleanly. Even if you take kids out of the equation (which I have), you still have friends and family, fitness, mental/physical health, cooking, keeping your home and garden under control and maybe even altering it in fairly major ways, hobbies you love, classes you take, travel, decompression time by yourself... the list could go on and on.

Work is not so easily segregated into a single category either when you add to the day-to-day activities things like committees, special projects, long-term goals, professional development, relationships and networking etc. There are certainly times when I feel incredibly motivated to join everything, participate in everything, take on everything, and there are others when I am perfectly content to not have any challenges greater than a trolley of books to be labeled and a stack of archives to reshelve. So how does one cultivate all these disparate facets without burning out?

I used to think that achieving work/life balance involved stumbling upon the magic ratio where one's time was divided up into all the various hobbies, interests, social engagements and professional development activities and that was it. Once you'd settled on The Timetable you were good to go and the reason I hadn't achieved a balance yet was because I needed how to figure out how to divide all the hours of the day. But life doesn't work like that. Plans fall through or crop up unexpectedly, and, more importantly, I don't work like that. I used to think that balance was something I would have to impose upon myself because I'm the sort of person who dives passionately into one thing to the exclusion of others for a while, only to reemerge with a new passion a few weeks or months later.

The revelation for me has been accepting that balance is not a fixed ratio but a point that is constantly shifting beneath me in response to external circumstances and where my own energy and passion is guiding me. 

Balance means keeping some things ticking over with minimal effort/energy expended while I pursue my latest passion, but also recognising that whatever it is, no matter how passionate I am about it at the moment, it isn't the be-all-and-end-all thing I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life to. It's taken me over 30 years to recognise that pattern and understand how to make it work in my favour rather than feeling like it's a fatal flaw that will stop me from ever achieving balance.

Lately I've been working on riding the ebbs and flows of energy and making them work for me. Here's a brief run-down of the different facets that make up work/life balance for me and how I'm learning to maintain them without letting them take over:

Making - Although I'm not very artistically talented in any specific way, creative expression has always been very important to me, whether it's writing, photography, drawing, crafting, dancing, singing or curating (this includes things like putting together Pinterest boards and Spotify playlists). Sometimes I have absolute bucket-loads of creative energy and all I want to do is make stuff. This makes me seek out creative projects at work and/or at home. It's worth knowing that I can happily ride the wave of this creative energy for a while and accomplish a lot in a short space of time but that it will burn out pretty quickly, so I should be careful that I don't start so many things that I can't finish any of them before I dry up. Luckily, this sort of mood comes along pretty regularly so I can pick things up again at a later date when my creative energy is bubbling over again.

Moving - It's taken me a very long time to realise that I derive a huge amount of energy and happiness from being fit and active. As the sort of kid who loathed P.E. and organised sports, it was surprising to get to university and realise that I LOVE working out, I LOVE a physical challenge and I LOVE having a lot of movement in my life. I can turn sloth-like very easily, however, so to keep balance it's important for me to have physical activity be part of a routine. Roller Derby was great for this because even if I didn't feel like going to practice I would still go because it was an obligation. Then I'd invariably have a good time and feel better for it. Without the structure of Roller Derby, I kind of lost motivation for about 6 months, but I now have a personal trainer and I'm getting back into a regular schedule of exercise and feeling a lot better for it. It's good to know how important that discipline and routine of exercise is to my overall well-being so now I will try to keep that in mind as something that should be a part of my life at all times.

Learning - This includes reading, practicing something new, problem-solving, doing something unexpected, basically just introducing something novel into my life. Like "making", this is something that I can do at work by attending classes, developing my skills or just trying to do something in a different way. Sometimes I have a lot of energy to do this, while other times I really don't feel like I can take any more on because I'm getting overwhelmed and can't focus on anything. Once again it's about using the energy while I have it but not taking on too much because I know it won't last indefinitely.

Friends/Family - This one doesn't need too much explanation. If I don't have time to see friends and family, I start to feel super guilty and overwhelmed. Everyone needs time for relationships outside of work and this tends to need to be the most flexible aspect because it depends on when other people are available or need you to be in their lives. In my mind time with friends and family is never time wasted. It's the priority, even if it's not a constant.

For me the most difficult part of trying to strike a balance is accepting that I will not always have the same level of energy for particular activities - that it's a moving, shifting quantity and that my balancing point will differ from week to week or even moment to moment. When I have a lot of energy for a particular activity I find it very difficult to accept that it will change. At the time it feels like I can take on anything and everything and I have almost unlimited enthusiasm for a particular thing. Often it feels like a "Eureka" moment and it seems like I've finally discovered my calling in life as I practically fall in love with whatever the latest thing is. But this has happened so often in my life that I know now to be prepared for the bubble to burst, for reality to set in, and for my enthusiasm to wane as quickly as it arrived. It's not that I have no interest in it anymore, but I just have less energy and passion for it. I've never stopped being interested in astronomy, for example, but I stopped wanting to be an astronaut when I was about 15.

I don't think these things have been a waste of time simply because I didn't go on to "do" anything with them. It's nice to be able to contribute to conversations about astronomy, say, or at least know enough to ask questions of people who know it better than I do. Same with music, history, art and any of the other things I've been passionate about in my life. It's the newness, the learning, the dwelling in beginner's mind that makes it worthwhile. If I'm shaking myself out of routine and getting excited about stuff, it doesn't matter what that stuff is or whether I "do" something with it. At least I've kept things fresh and exciting. Maybe I'll never be a master of any one trade, but at least I'll have had an interesting life and taken advantage of my natural magpie-like tendencies to find my own individual work/life balance.

While you're pursuing your passions it's important to learn how to budget your finite mental energy by making as many other things automatic as possible. That keeps all the facets of your life ticking over at a base rate so that you're not abandoning your friends to do your hobbies, for example, or letting your physical exercise collapse completely when you're diving into a big project at work. The video below is a really good explanation of this idea. I highly recommend it!

So that's what I'm working on at the moment. I can feel myself shifting out of a very work-focused period into a time when I have a lot of physical energy, so I might need to consolidate my projects at work, maybe delegate a few things to my co-workers to keep the momentum going and use this opportunity to reflect on what I've done in the last month or so and what I can do better next time the career energy ramps up again. It might seem a little chaotic from the outside but I'm learning that this really works for me, so I guess I'll run with it!