The open day went well. I had a nice little afternoon trip over to Manchester and left feeling more positive about the course. Sheffield is still my first choice but I will probably apply to MMU as well because of the convenience of its location. It’s a short train journey away and the course did sound interesting. The course has an in depth focus on information and technology. The core module titles are; Research and Practice, Management and Information Professionals, Search and Retrieval, Information Futures and Dissertation. The optional modules are; Digital Rights, E-learning and the Organisation, Literature and it’s Readers and Information and Knowledge Management. There are not many options available in terms of module choices. They do offer some decent funding. There are 16 bursaries for the faculty up for grabs offering 50% of tuition fees and there is also the Jean Rich Studentship which is the award of 6000 Canadian dollars. There are no exams but this doesn’t really matter to me as I don’t mind sitting exams. I will make a more comprehensive comparison once I’ve been to the open day at Sheffield in a few weeks.
Monthly Archives: February 2015
11/02/15
I have had some really good experiences over the past few weeks which I unfortunately haven’t had the time to blog about. So this blog post will probably just be another list compromising of all the great things I get to do at work on a daily basis.
This is a point that I have probably made already and will probably keep on making (I hope I keep making it anyway), I really enjoy this job and I enjoy coming into work. Not everybody is lucky enough to feel that way and I definitely didn’t feel that way in my last job. This was nothing to do with the company as they were great, just the repetitiveness of the work really did get to me. I will admit, I don’t particularly enjoy getting up the morning, but once I get over the initial shock of the alarm, I am happy to get up and tootle on into work because I do love my job. I think this is the charm of a GT position as my role is so varied and interesting and everyone wants a piece of me… Sorry, I had to say it. I am in high demand and it is great as everybody’s roles vary greatly and I get to help out and experience a little slice of many different jobs. I still feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity of working within the library here at Bradford because I get learn something new from fantastic librarians every day. I will stop being super gushy now.
I think I have finally got to grips with my calendar (I can keep on telling myself this)… I still get really panicky and scared when I get a clash but I needn’t worry as people generally don’t mind as long as I am not double booking myself left, right and centre. Look how busy it is, it’s great. I would be lost without it.
I am currently not savvy enough to figure out how to install the plugins to connect WordPress with Padlet so a picture will have to do. This is the padlet I made during a teaching session I was helping with yesterday. It was for foundation engineering students who were all lovely and mostly very engaged with what we were doing. Kirsty did a fantastic lecture on the library resources they should be using and she did a demo on how to access them. She had them ‘saying what they saw’ in order to get them to familiarise themselves with individual databases and libraries and gave prizes to whoever could guess the answer first. I have been helping out a lot with teaching sessions over the past few weeks and it has been great. I’ve entered the sessions terrified feeling like I am going to be of little help to anyone but I’ve left the sessions feeling a lot more confident about the knowledge I have. I know more that I think and even if I don’t know the answer I can sit down with the person and we can figure it out together (or I can ask the experts). It is so strange being summoned by a hand in the air and a ‘Miss’. I don’t think I will ever get used to that.
The engineering students have been set a project where they must find 3 different sources and investigate the implications of spark ignition engines and present their findings. I am really excited as I will hopefully be going along with Kirsty to watch them present. It was a good session and it really highlights how important Kirsty’s job is because one student did not know the different between a newspaper article and a journal. When I was a student I felt that the lecturers did not have the time to teach us how to use the library and how to find information and the teaching sessions I am sitting in on prove that people really do need the support.
I have also been helping out with Anne’s teaching sessions and Donna’s Health Studies sessions where she has been giving inductions on the library services. I missed the start of the academic year therefore I missed the library inductions so her sessions are very helpful to me. Donna is fantastic at giving a clear demonstration on what is on offer and how to access it and I can learn a lot from her. I feel I am getting better with the databases in that area as I have been helping people to search for information and getting some decent enough results. I still have a lot of learning to do though and I can only do that through practising.
I am off to Manchester today to have a nosy at what their Library and Information Management MA course has to offer. MMU will be a back up option for me as I am hoping to attend the University of Sheffield. I am in the midst of applying at the moment and I will be attending their open day in a few weeks. Sheffield are actually having a full open/ taster day for the course, whereas MMU are hosting a postgraduate fair with course stands and a 30 minute talk on the course. So this in itself says a lot about the course to me. I will check it out today and report back.
Amy
Books, Sweat & Tears 