Placement diary week 2

Another 2-day week on placement.

Monday

The plan for the day was to do more user experience (UX) interviews at the Conservatorium Library (the Con). However, the morning provided an

Sydney Conservatorium of Music 2019
A beautiful spot for a bit of work – “The Con” (c) 2019 Marika Simon

interesting insight on the unpredictability of the Learning Spaces coordinator role. A delivery of tables came for two library sites at 7:30 in the morning, with the email notifying the coordinator of the timing coming overnight. On arrival at 9 am, we went running around sorting out various issues and providing a liaison between the delivery worker, the staff at the various sites and the installer (who was meant to show up at 7:30 with the delivery, but did not arrive until around midday) to ensure that everything was in a reasonable space.

After a brief lunch break, we headed out to the Con and I scribed a couple of interviews led by my supervisor and then continued on my own until around 4:30. I tried to catch people either as they entered or were about to settle in to a study spot or to catch them when they were up and moving around. I attempted to get users from each of the study areas on the level we were targeting, hoping that I could also get a reasonable cross-section of student types. The plan is to start pulling out themes and creating an affinity diagram next Monday.

Friday

Today was a “find out more about the library in general” day. I got an intro to frontline services with one of the access services managers and access to the online training for the ALMA library management system (LMS). I also got a chance to shadow staff at the main information desk and in the returns room, along with a TAFE placement student. The final learning experience for the day was touring the non-traditional library spaces – where the collection is not books and traditional information material formats, but rather human resources, technological devices, and study space. Highlights from the various experiences follow:

Front Desk

  • Circulation services are automatically logged and tracked for statistics through the LMS
  • Interactions with users that did not go through the LMS were logged through a different statistics-gathering application
  • The majority of the interactions involved short-term borrowing and returning of technological assistance devices, such as:
    • laptop chargers
    • headphones
    • external DVD players

Returns Room

  • The return belt will not run if you stack more than one book at a time
  • There is an interesting and more complex Dewey system in use than we used ETL505
  • All staff have rostered times on front desk and return room/shelving duties

Non-traditional collections and sites

  • Interesting conversation about academic integrity – one of the Peer Learning Advisor services is an optional consultation with students who have had assignments flagged for potential plagiarism
  • Holds and Loans (HAL) vending machines – in Bosch – vending machines with popular textbooks providing two hour loan services round-the-clock
  • Library as a community service and community-creator serving all students and staff

 

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