GLAM Blog Club – What I learned in 2016

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Like Sam, I’m a repeat #blogjune offender but rarely manage to get through the whole month of posting without #blogjunefail. Reading about #glamblogclub, I think this once a month thing might be more realistic.

So, what did I learn in 2016? Lots and lots. On a professional level there was a lot happening – much of which I’ve written about already over on the ILN blog, however the nuts and bolts of it is reproduced here:

I’ve had to learn to like special collections as I have the University Archives in my portfolio. My background has been in a large academic institution where the University Archives belonged to the records management office, not the library so my exposure to special collections has been limited. Fortunately, we do a lot of digitisation here at MPOW so I’m able to work with the team on a plan to unlock as much of our archival content as possible, making it more useful to a wider audience.

As part of this, I’ve re-discovered the digital humanities and really started to learn about and engage with the language and tools of this community.

I’ve learned how to write grant applications – since starting here I’ve successfully applied for a small grant to help with the preservation of one of our Archival items and I’ve been a partner with colleagues from Archives, Faculty and community groups on a (slightly larger) grant from the University to conduct a community engagement project with our digital archives images.

I’ve channeled every past colleague, team leader, manager and mentor I can think of to guide and shape processes and new ways of doing things for my team here.

I’ve developed skills in career coaching through engaging as a coach in our Internal Coaching Network program – this allows Library staff to talk through career and professional goal setting and action in a structured way outside of their traditional team member/supervisor relationship.

I’ve participated in multiple selection panels across all areas in the Library and really enjoyed the opportunity to help shape the staff capability for the library work of the future.

There’s also been countless opportunities for professional development, networking, stakeholder engagement and participation in policy writing, business case creation and strategic planning.

What do I want to learn in 2017? Well, I’ll need to get my project management skills up to date sharpish as I’m leading a cross-institutional project that will take much of the year and starts next week. Yikes. Also, more digital humanities – really, lots more.  I want to learn about APIs and how things like the @recipe_trove bot works and think about how those things could be applied to making our collections more accessible and usable.

And how to get some shade into my very, very exposed backyard. Quickly and cheaply.

Lots to be getting on with.