Getting to Know the Neighbours: Glasgow University Library

One of the great things about Glasgow is the wide choice of libraries to use.  Staff and students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland have their own Whittaker Library, of course, but sometimes it's good to know you can visit other libraries - public and academic - as well.
  There is a scheme called SCONUL Access which allows researchers and staff to borrow from other university libraries.  If you're an undergraduate or taking a taught Masters degree, you can still use the scheme to use other university libraries for reference, i.e. to consult books within the library but not borrow them.  And that applies to any UK university libraries, not just Glasgow ones, so you could get reading access to one near your family home during vacations, too.

Here's the good bit.  If you're an undergraduate going to another Scottish university of college library, your matriculation card should be enough to get you in without applying for a SCONUL Access card. 

If you're consulting books in a university or college library outside Scotland, or if you're a researcher wanting to borrow books, then you should apply for SCONUL Access online.  Your own Whittaker Library staff have to approve your application.  (Do make sure you haven't got heaps of overdue loans or fines.  We have to guarantee that you're a well-behaved library user!!)

Click here to read about SCONUL Access.  This is a brief excerpt from their website, describing the access agreement:-

"If you are:

• a member of staff (both academic and support staff) on an open or fixed term contract
• a postgraduate research student registered for a PhD, MPhil or similar qualification
• a part-time, distance learning and placement student
• or a full-time postgraduate

and your university or college is a member of the scheme, you may be able to borrow from other college or university libraries.
If you are

• a full-time undergraduate student

and your university or college is a member of the scheme, you may be able to use the resources of other college and university libraries for reference."

Glasgow University Library has a huge and very excellent collection, covering all subjects.  Here's their website:- http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/library/  You can follow them on Twitter @uofglibrary.

We'll introduce you to some other local libraries in future blogposts.   

We are the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, here to serve the information needs of our student and staff performing artists.  Follow us on Twitter @Whittakerlib.

Effective Use of Social Media

The recent IAML (UK and Ireland) Annual Study Weekend saw a new innovation - the "Quickfire" sessions.  Karen chaired a couple of sessions on effective social media use in music libraries, before she fled for the last Scotland-bound plane of the day.

It's fair to say Karen has embraced social media both on behalf of the Whittaker Library and in her own name, but she restricted her comments to library activities for these sessions.

BLOGGING

This Whittaker Live blog was established in 1999 – there have been changes over the years, most notably abandoning the attempt to find weblinks on weekly lecture topics.  Students can find that for themselves these days!  

Content is drawn from various sources:- stock acquisitions, forthcoming events, links to other relevant postings eg Bibliolore, and news about competitions and summer courses.  

·       It’s possible to schedule blogposts, but we don't generally do so.

TWEETING

Karen tweets as @WhittakerLib by day, and @Karenmca by night.  The @Whittakerlib account is the slightly younger of the two, started because there should be separation between library-related tweets and personal ones.  This is very important, because:-

• It also enables others to tweet.   
• It keeps tweets library-related.
• It enables the library to have its own persona.
• It means non-library related chat stays outside the workplace, and anything connected with Karen's research interests doesn't clutter up the library's message.
• Messages to the Library go to our generic email account, which anyone can access.     

When Karen is using Twitter in her own right, she “favourites” links or RTs them to @Whittakerlib, but she also makes heavy use of Diigo – social favouriting.  This means any interesting links that she finds in her spare time can be saved for use either on the blog or on Twitter next time she's in the library.

DIIGO

There’s a feed from Karen's own Diigo list through to the Whittakerlive blog, but the app enables her to mark as private anything that's not to be shared.  Diigo is excellent for accessing favourites from any device you’re using, and for storing content for future use.

Bufferapp 

This is a great way of scheduling tweets!

FACEBOOK

We don't use Facebook professionally; Karen has chosen to keep her account purely for a handful of family and close friends, and a select few others.  Separation of personal and private is very important indeed, to convey a professional impression.  Having said that, the library’s canvas Wheesht bags did have their own Facebook page ...!

Social media - for tips on types of tweets try @Buffer recommendations

Want to know how to get more traffic to your tweets?

How the Founder of Buffer Tweets: The System and 5 types of Tweets to Keep your Followers Engaged

In Praise of Great Teachers - Steinbeck

Tweeter R C de Winter reminds us of John Steinbeck's words about great teachers ...

"... a great teacher is a great artist ..."

Read the whole quotation here.   With thanks to @RCdeWinter!

How do you cite a Tweet?

There is a correct way, as The Modern Language Association explains.  (This newspaper article, by Alexis C. Madrigal for The Atlantic, was tweeted to Whittaker by research-support guru The Thesis Whisperer.)

Whittaker Library has a Twitter account @WhittakerLib

"The Whittaker Library has a Twitter account! Sharing news and views from the Library of the RoyalConservatoire of Scotland" (@WhittakerLib)

Scottish Society of Playwrights joins Twitter

Hello everyone. The Scottish Society of Playwrights is on Twitter now. Tell your friends. (This is @kieran_hurley, by the way).
— ScotSocPlaywrights (@ssp_playwrights) September 13, 2012

Ways to use Twitter for educational purposes

Worth a look - here.

Win an amazing day….and a lifetime of listening!

 http://theshowmustgo.com/2011/11/09/win-an-amazing-day-and-a-lifetime-of-listening/

"To celebrate the launch of The Show Must Go On, our friends at the Royal Opera House and EMI Classics have put their heads together to create a Show VIP Package Prize. The winner will receive two tickets to an end-of-year show at The Royal Opera House, a backstage VIP tour and ‘A Festival of Ballet’ collection of 50 CDs from EMI Classics, featuring music from Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.

The competition will take place on Twitter – you’ll find us @showgametweets. All we ask is that you send us your crazy tales of your show experiences. Whether it’s that time you had to deliver dentures to Someone Quite Famous’ dressing room during a work experience stint or the evening you watched Peter Pan fly into the audience and hover there while stage crew scrambled to keep the show on track- we want to hear them! The best #showtales will be collated and we’ll be very picky about our winner… the biggest challenge of all? Making us laugh with an anecdote of just 140 characters."

DISCLAIMER:- Whittaker is telling you about this out of the kindness of 'his' heart, but this is a competition run by the Royal Opera House and EMI Classics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Whittaker Library.

When to blog, when to tweet?

Blogs are more discursive, and give the chance to pull info together from different sources.  Like my WhittakerLive posting on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland namechange, or my separate pages on Minstrels and Metaphors.

Tweets are great for single, punchy comments or notifications, and messages to individuals or all followers. And that's why I both blog and tweet, but I have an RSS feed from Twitter to Blogspot, so you can catch up with me both ways!

By the way, you might be interested in Leonard Cassuto's blogpost about academic blogging, in the Guardian Professional's Higher Education Network (advice, insight, and best practice from the community). Does blogging help progress for an early career academic?  Read it here.

Why don't readers ask?!

In a fit of pure introspection, I tried to work out what my motivations were when I went to Waterstones and W H Smiths today. Obviously, I can’t tap into my subconscious, so the exercise was hardly scientific.


Amazon was promoting Grace Dent, How to leave Twitter. I wanted to see it before deciding whether to buy. I’d also come across Maureen Callahan's Poker Face: the Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, about Lady Gaga’s astounding success at self-promotion. Again, I wanted to assess how much of it actually was about self-promotion.  I started in Waterstones. But where would I find these titles?

• What did the Twitter book come under?  No catalogue, no classification to help me. A mass-appeal paperback on promotion (piles on tables, special displays)? Autobiographical? Humour? No sign of it. Did I ask for help? Not initially. Finally, I learned it wasn’t currently in stock. As for Lady Gaga - I found the music section, but that title wasn’t there. (Mind you, there was an interesting book about Beethoven - Harvey Sachs, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. I have an obsessive research interest in musical culture in the 1820’s…)

Given that I wanted to see the books, I gave up and went to Smiths, where I faced the same conundrum, although I asked sooner!

But why don’t we want to ask? Reticence? Pride? Reluctance to fall prey to a pushy salesperson?  Transfer all this to a library, though, and the parameters change.

• Catalogues available to the readers, for a start.
• A more detailed classification, too - at least in an academic library. I spotted the new Beethoven book on a promotional display at Waterstones, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have found it. On the other hand, books on the same narrow subject will be side by side on a college bookshelf.
• No financial risk - and if you don’t like the book, you just return it, read or unread. There’s a lot to be said for libraries!

So, that leaves us with my initial question: Why won’t we ask? Would you ask for help finding something in a bookshop? In a library?  If the librarians were more visible, would that change things at all? Should we be more proactive, or sit in our office like books on shelves, waiting to be consulted?


Which is one of the reasons why I blog.  Someone commented on Twitter the other day that libraries aren’t just books - they’re also people. Knowledgeable people, who not only know their subjects, but also know how to interrogate a catalogue!  (See 'Libraries are about People', by The Wikiman.)  But we need to reach out to our readers, who perhaps don't realise our "unique selling point".


So I’ll share something with you right now. I ordered the Twitter and Beethoven books on Amazon at home just now. I’ll let you know if they’re any good. Promise!