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• Resources manager: Jenny

Resources manager: Jenny

This Case Study belongs to Public librarian.

Jenny graduated with a degree in English language and literature. Following her degree, she took a post as an information trainee in a solicitors for a year before taking a Postgraduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies. Jenny chose a career as a librarian as she had enjoyed working in information management during a gap-year, had an interest in books and hoped that she could use her English degree knowledge.

On graduating, Jenny decided to work in the public library sector:

‘As a first qualified post, public libraries offered opportunities for gaining experience in a wide range of skills and it involved working with people. I felt that I would be helping to provide a worthwhile and valued service to the public and the job was in the right geographical area.’ Her first professional post was as an information librarian with her current local authority. This post involved reference/enquiry work, user awareness training and display work.

In 1997, Jenny took a newly created post within the authority as resources management librarian which included, ‘piloting/developing the use of online stock selection tools and procedures; coordinating and implementing a stock weeding and maintenance programme for twelve libraries; managing two staff; getting involved in reader development work.’

In 1998 through re-structuring, Jenny become the area resources manager:

‘Working as part of a county team I selected adult non-fiction and junior fiction stock for all 52 county libraries; introduced the online selection tools to colleagues, managed the stock maintenance work of nine area team librarians and remained involved in reader development work.’

Her current job as resources manager was also brought about by internal restructuring. It involves bookstock selection and maintenance; budget monitoring; advising staff on stock issues; contributing to the development of online stock selection products; planning library stock layouts for library refurbishments; line managing five staff and training staff across the county at all levels.

Jenny feels that her Postgraduate Diploma provided her with a lot of useful skills which were important especially in getting her first professional posts. Now, although a professional qualification is still an essential requirement for her job, she feels that experience is more important. Jenny has the following tips for getting on as a public librarian:

‘Be prepared to get your hands dirty – literally! Never be afraid to ask for help or advice from more experienced colleagues; be reasonably physically fit; be prepared to do the work your staff do; learn to delegate.’

A significant change to Jenny’s work has been the use of ICT especially in the area of stock selection;

‘The traditional job involved the selector handling physical copies of books in approval collections, already published, to decide what to buy. Now in some types of stock, complex order specifications, drawn up by librarians, are automatically run by the library stock suppliers against pre-publication book information, to create orders for items to be in stock almost on the day of publication. This significantly improves the service to the public as well as enabling libraries to ‘compete’ with bookshops. But the librarian now fulfils more of a monitoring role, rather than deciding on actual titles to be purchased.’

Jenny enjoys the feeling that she is contributing to someone’s educational progress or enjoyment of leisure time through ordering and maintaining stock. She enjoys working as a team especially when there is a visible result, such as a new or re-organised library. She likes being exposed to a wide range of books and technology. The opportunity to travel to different libraries and apply the principles of librarianship in big town libraries and tiny suburban ones is another positive aspect. Jenny hopes to be able to progress without moving away from the practical hands-on work.

There are less favourable parts of the job:

‘Due to understaffing, I always feel under pressure with far too much work to do and never have enough time to properly review progress, plan new approaches or implement service developments fully. Local government bureaucracy means that things can take a long time to happen or we are bound by county council procedures which limit our responsiveness to the users. External influences from central government and other policy funding bodies, such as cuts to funding and the need to reach targets are also frustrating as we have no control over them. It is also frustrating when the library computer system is out of action; we are so IT dependent that few tasks can be done without using a computer at some point!’

Case Study sourced by Sarah Herring of University of Bristol, 08 November 2007.