Promotions

I mentioned yesterday that I have newly been given responsibility for promotions within the Library. It's delightfully complex. You may wish to skip this post.

Previously all the subject librarians have had 'watching briefs' for small areas to keep an eye on developments / needs / university provision etc to make sure the Library wasn't missing anything in how we could contribute. Thus, one colleague kept an eye on disability needs, one looked after our collaborative partners (libraries at other colleges where we run courses), and I kept an eye on work placement students.

Except that the latter didn't need much looking after. After all, they're by definition not here for the year of their placement. I made contact with the various placement offices around the university, subscribed to mailing lists or virtual learning environments they used, and liaised with them where necessary but it amounted to barely a few hours a year.

In the staff restructure we've been going through, each of the subject librarians has been given a 'portfolio' to manage. One manages all the enquiry desks and provision around the library, another manages the collection, and the growing disability needs are managed by a third. Six of us; six new duties that we're supposed to 'strategically manage' while another part of the restructuring has given us various levels of help.

We each have an assistant (one level below us) who spends much of the week on the enquiry desk but can devote a fair bit of time to implementing our strategy. Let's call him A. We then have a lower level assistant (2 or 3 steps down, depending how you count) who is supposed to do much of the legwork (on top of enquiry work and other duties). Let's call her B. (In fact the enquiry team has three of these people they have so much to deal with).

Then a new feature is some time from what are fast becoming called our 20%ers. Staff from the issue desk who are given to us for a day a week (20% of their time) to help out wherever necessary. This gives them some variety in an otherwise tedious job and us some help with low level jobs we need doing. We used to have to beg for this sort of help from a manager who was reluctant to let go because her team is often needy and short staffed, but now it's formal and a lot easier in some respects. I get 2.5 of these - on a Wednesday I get a whole person "C", Friday I get two part timers making a whole day "D" and "E", and Thursday afternoon I get one part timer for the half a day "F".

I've never had so many folk to manage.

Theoretically.

The snag is that B hasn't yet joined us from her old role - as I said the restructuring is still trickling down. In any case, she wants to go and work in a job in cataloging that's just become available. C, who was an invaluable help (clued up, quick off the mark and the only we have who can do a couple of vital jobs) has just been promoted and gone to help the Enquiry team as a level B type person. And A - who to be fair has been a kind of lieutenant where you couldn't wish for better in terms of seeing eye to eye with me and getting on with things - is about to retire.

So I now have a fair bit more work to do - although in theory it's only supposed to be strategic - and some really great help, but not all that's required. Or been promised.

And this on top of still not having my formal assistant (who I shared with the science librarian) back from the sideways moves she was being made to fill in for way back at the beginning of the restructuring over two years ago. Sigh.

On the upside, whether by chance or design, the 20%ers I was given have been marvellous. They all have an eye for design for posters and so forth, a clue about how to engage with students in eye-catching, interesting ways, and as I said, one is very into the Web 2 stuff we need to deal with. So that's been great. Well, not quite all. The half day person, "F", is not quite so pro-active and design minded. Very capable at being set a task with explicit instructions and working through it, but I do have to think harder about what jobs will be possible to pass on and how to encourage more ability with thinking in pictures! But it's good management experience.