22 May, 2008

Everything New is Old Again


Well,
Dear Friends…
Here I sit at my new desk half way through my first week on the new job. And what have I learned, what do I think, should I cut and run… ?
Well, last things first, there shall be no cutting nor running. I know it is very early in the job, but I am very happy with the place. Have I mentioned which place? Should I try and keep quiet about where I am in case I want to say horrible things about people later? Probably no point as all you’d have to do is visit my facebook page to discover that I am working for Tabor Adelaide.
Tabor Adelaide? I hear many of you ask. Well, it is a small non-denominational Christian tertiary institute offering courses from VET level right up to Doctorates. It started life as a Pentecostal Bible College but somehow (I don’t know how yet) morphed so now, while it still offers theology it also does counseling, performing arts, teaching, nursing starts next year and I’m sure there is more I can’t remember yet.
But onto the library…
It is too small, but that is the cry of librarians everywhere. Luckily here the fact that the library needs bigger digs is an accepted fact and the Dean of the College mentioned some of his ideas to me on my first day. So it looks like that is a fight I don’t have to have. The staff are fantastic (although there are some casuals I am yet to meet). I am working for people with a real passion for the library and for the college as a whole.
So, what am I actually going to do then being as I obviously have it so good?
Well, there are lots of things I’ve been asking questions about. Finding out which odd things seem perfectly normal to longtime staff members and working out why we do things that way. Most of these revolve around the IT setup. Most of the systems in the library (and those is student services) don’t talk to each other, so there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of entering and re-entering the same information. Some of it we may just have to live with for now, but some of it I think I should be able to work out. So I am putting that high up on my list.

How can you help?
Well it’s kind of you to ask, do you know anyone who uses the e-library from Functional Solutions? Because before I start ringing them and complaining about what their system doesn’t do, I’d like to find out whether it is the system or whether it is the way we’re doing it.
All in all, your ADHD Librarian is a happy Library Manager.

2 comments:

Ross said...

Welcome to the Tabor family. Since January this year, I've become part of the Resource Centre (combined library and bookshop) team at Tabor Victoria. We don't have space constraints yet, but we're expanding all the time, and we plan to become one of the largest libraries of our kind in Victoria. Exciting times are ahead.

Karina said...

I was at Tabor last year, doing Yits. Going to the library to find books for my assignments was quite the task, of finding particular books amongst the thousands that there are. But yeah, I definitely found the space of the library very limiting!