News and comment on the world of librarianship.
From the questionable design choice to include an author’s presumed gender in their global library name authority record to the gendered nature of names in general, society seems to have made some questionable design choices in how we choose to label people that have far-reaching consequences.
Until today, I had blithely assumed that diversity awareness training was an unquestionably good thing that could not possibly ever go wrong.
Then I read a seminal article from way back in 2015 and everything suddenly seemed a lot less certain.
Before the internet, before computers, before typewriters and the skill of typing was commonplace, there were handwritten catalogue cards. What few people realise is that librarians developed a distinctive handwriting style specifically to make these cards easily readable and therefore functional. Enter the ultra-clear written script of ‘Library hand’.
You don’t organise online live Twitter discussions almost every month for ten years without learning something about how to run a small group of volunteers effectively. Since practical know-how and experience are hard-won and often harder still to come by, …
Lessons learned: reflections on 10 years of community building Read more »
Now be honest, not all library subject pages have undergone enough work to warrant an academic journal article on how they were made to be as useful and functional as they now are, but ours have. If you have been …
The University of Portsmouth Library is now contributing to the Jisc Library Hub Discover (not to be confused with the Library’s Discovery Service, which is available through our website and finds information across many of our printed and electronic resources). …
The University Library joins Jisc Library Hub Discover Read more »
We are delighted to present a guest blog from our most recent work experience student to the University Library, Tara Bell. Here’s how she found Library life, in her own words. During the summer, I planned a week of work …
This week, we are pleased to present something a little different – a post offered to us by David Mizne from the award winning 15Five blog on methods for working continually towards continuous performance management… continuously. I’m pretty sure there …
Moving towards continuous performance management Read more »
Part of the duty of a librarian is to reflect critically on what we do in education and as an information society as a whole and question whether everything we do is still fit for purpose, and suggest what new …
I wish I could think of a witty punchline, but I can’t so I’m going to share some highlights of the ARCLIB, Architecture Librarians Conference which I attended, recently, at De Montfort University in Leicester. The conference began with an …
