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To add my voice to the "universities haven't closed" discussion, library staff haven't just been on a 5 month holiday either. But what can librarians do without books? You may well ask. (1/n)
Well, last time was a rapid scramble to take advantage of all the free online access publishers granted us. This meant huge amounts of work for our eresources team, getting stuff into the catalogue, and for all of us trying to let our students & academics know about it. (2/n)
For me personally that meant attending and minuting a 2 hour meeting every two weeks that would normally be once a term, and managing a webpage to tell people about the free stuff. (3/n)
We had frantic students trying to finish dissertations when half their material was inaccessible. I did tutorials on referencing & literature searching via Teams. I converted a 2.5hour practical in-person class into an online one which meant making lots of extra resources (4/n)
I then recorded most of the content of the online class so it could be accessed be those who couldn't attend. I recorded more videos for new students introducing them to our services. (5/n)
I staff our Live Chat service. I staff our scanning triage service. I staff our printing/photocopying query service. I check in with, train, and manage a team of library assistants remotely. (6/n)
Every summer, the HUGE workload of reading lists looms large. This summer it is extra huge because we were always going to move to a new system. Academics needed more time to think about their readings because WHOLE NEW teaching setup, meaning I had less time than usual. (7/n)
I cannot express to you the amount of work that goes into reading lists in my library. Some of them are 700 items long. Every one needs adding to our online system, checking multiple times, working out if we need to buy things, linking to the VLE. (8/n)
Working out what to buy is a minefield. Will students be in Oxford to borrow things? Will the library be open enough to let them? Can we afford to buy ebooks of everything? Are they even available? What if it's on loan, will it ever come back? Each decision requires thought (9/n)
Now I am preparing my team for returning to the library in a cautious way. A whole new way of working. All training remotely. New systems for them, for me, for the students. And the threat of an Oxford lockdown looming large. (10/n)
Working from home means I never really switch off. I work a lot more hours than I'm paid to because my laptop is just there, with a reading list just waiting for me, all the time. I average 50 emails a day any day I take off which puts me off taking leave. (11/n)
So really, really, if you think librarians have had a summer holiday, think again. You have no idea how hard we've worked to support our institutions and our students. All that behind the scenes stuff that "just works"? That's us putting in the work. (12/n)
I thought I was done but sorry, MASSIVE SHOUT-OUT to all university administrators!! They have a very very similar story to mine. They are working SO HARD. (13/n)
They are the reason your students might turn up. They are the reason your Moodle/Canvas/whatever site exists. They timetable your sessions. Yes, we all mess up, the systems are clunky, the guidelines are complicated. But don't erase our hard work, please. (END)
