(Click here to see details of my previous job as Education Services Librarian.)
Things were changing at the Library Support Unit (LSU - as Central
Services Unit had been renamed when local government was restructured in 1996
and the Highland Regional Council became The Highland Council.) Mike O’Brien
took early retirement, and the senior manager who temporarily ran the Service
after his departure expressed the view that I had done what I had come to do as
Education Services Librarian, and that consequently, I should be ‘reined in.’
My own line manager Peter Reynolds was supportive of me and my role, but though
I could have taken it as a compliment, in fact I found it distressing to be
told that my work was done when from my point of view much remained to be
achieved.
What in fact happened was that the whole Library Service was
re-structured. The new Highland Council was committed to moving decision-making
within the Highlands as close to the people as possible, and in keeping with
this strategy, Area Libraries Officer posts were created for each of the eight
Areas within the Council’s boundaries As there were no additional resources to
fund these new positions, the subject librarian’s posts, including mine – were
abolished, and the post holders were encouraged to apply for the newly-created
jobs, and for some posts at LSU including that of Senior Librarian – System
Support.
My senior colleague Christopher Phillips, who also worked at LSU had been implementing from 1995 onwards a new computer-based library
management system, called Talis, the product of a Birmingham-based co-operative
which in time would handle all aspects of our library business. By the spring
of 1998 Talis was live at a small number of libraries. It sat on a unix server
located in a cupboard at LSU, and communicated with libraries across a network
managed by the Council’s IT team.
Knowing that I had some technical experience in working with PCs,
Christopher had begun to introduce me to some Talis-related systems work,
despatching me to a course in Birmingham where before having any unix knowledge
to speak of, I learned how to run SQL queries on the database and began to
ascend a seriously steep learning curve. It was the first of several excursions
to Birmingham over the next few years – my favourite mode of transport involved
catching the Caledonian Sleeper from Inverness to London Euston, and then
transferring to a Birmingham train, and doing the opposite on my return. I
rather loved the security of stepping off a platform in the heart of London
into a space which, twelve hours later would roll into the familiarity of
Inverness Railway Station. I found the motion of the train calming, and somehow
I loved hearing the railwaymen working sometime in the middle of the night to
separate the train into the various parts going to different Scottish destinations.
The staff at the Birmingham Talis office were friendly, but I always felt a
little insecure there.
My trips to Birmingham took place because the time of the
reorganisation, Christopher was promoted to the post of Libraries and
Information Services Co-ordinator, leaving the new Systems Support post vacant.
It was by no means certain that I would be appointed to this vacancy, and as I
was very keen to remain based in the Inverness area, I also applied for the
Inverness and Ross and Cromarty Area Librarians posts, and for another new
post, that of Senior Librarian – Information Services. I was interviewed for
all four posts. The morning of the Area Librarian interviews, on my walk from
the bus stop to the Library Support Unit I took a detour past the front door of
Inverness Library, with its imposing colonnade. By this time tomorrow, I
thought, I might be in charge there, in a room with my name on it. Although the
interviews were in the morning they kept us waiting until late in the afternoon
before letting us know who had been successful. My wife Lorna was working that
afternoon, so I had to collect our young daughters and take them down to the
office were I sat them on a story mat in a corner beside my desk and gave them
books to read while I waited. Of course my colleagues who were appointed to the
Area Library Officer posts had far more experience in management than I had at
that point, but having invested in the hope of success, I felt the sense of
rejection keenly. However, a few days later the suspense was over, and I knew
I’d be remaining in Inverness as the Systems Support librarian, and so I
became, as I called myself, ‘Talisman.’
In the years following my appointment in 1998, the post and its duties continued
to evolve. At the start, my role encompassed managing the servers based at the
Library Support Unit, supporting the five libraries which had by that point
been connected to Talis and arranging for the roll-out of computers to the
other libraries and school libraries with Fujitsu, who had taken responsibility
for managing the Highland Council’s network. The Talis product had to be
maintained and upgraded when new releases of the software became available, and
in addition new ancillary products, such as the offline version designed for
use on mobile libraries, and the on-line public access catalogue, ever-evolving
to take advantage of internet developments had to be tested installed, launched
and managed.
I was particularly involved in the development of the Mobile library
product: I liaised directly with the developer, and undertook prolonged testing
as we identified and ironed out bugs in the system of which there were many due
to the complexity of getting an offline database to integrate with the live
database when there are so many variables involved.
I have never reached the summit of that learning curve which I began to
traverse at that SQL course in Birmingham. Not just my technical skills, but my interpersonal skills have developed as
I came to lead a four-strong team managing various aspects of IT within the
library service, including a meticulous statistician who produces reports on
our performance with an attention to detail sometimes so single-minded and
focussed that I had to gently remind him that the work we’re doing matters more
than the statistics rather than the other way round, and a perceptive senior
library assistant who worries away at the detail and draws our attention to
realities we may have overlooked in dreaming expansive dreams. I found the job
extremely satisfying. And when the
colleague who had set up the network of public access computers in HLH
libraries left in a restructuring, his post sadly deleted, I took over
responsibility for these computers.
Whereas not all of my library colleagues acknowledged the significance
of my previous education role, all of them recognised that the Talis Team’s
role was central to their work, and that recognition, together with the
satisfaction of being able to help individual colleagues resolve the problems
they encounter built a strong sense that what we were doing was worthwhile.
I appreciated having my own area of expertise of which I had a better
knowledge than most other people in the Library Service. I don’t mean that I
cultivated a sense of mystique and mystery, refusing to share my knowledge and
insights with others, simply that it contributed immeasurably to my feelings of
self-worth to have a level of understanding which others can’t be expected to have
time to gain personally, and to apply that understanding to resolve problems
and further develop the service.
I have also found that my mind responds well to the cerebral, analytical
approach which working with software calls for. While neither in personal nor
working life am I the kind of person who is driven to explore and implement new
technology simply because it exists – I have neither the curiosity nor the
energy for this – when software can solve a problem, or make it easier for us
to accomplish a piece of work, then I will doggedly work at it, pestering the
Help Desk until we get it operational.
My approach to IT professionals is to stress that I am a librarian, not
an engineer, asking them to bear with me while I express in simple terms what I
don’t understand, and then reply to me at an appropriately simple level.
In earlier jobs I complained of a lack of support and training. But
whether because the corporate ethos in local government had changed over the
years or because The Highland Council had come to place a particular emphasis
on staff development I was reasonably well-supported in my Systems Support
role. I was always given access to the training, both technical and managerial,
which I required to do my work. I particularly appreciated the PDP (personal
development plan) process, when you get to sit down with your boss and discuss
in an honest and realistic way how you are progressing. I think for the very
first time I had a settled sense of being a valued professional.
I remained involved to some extend in other aspects of library work
besides the purely IT systems related. I attended regular meetings of the
Libraries Network Team, the group of senior staff who make decisions about the
management and direction of the Service. While these meetings were over-long
and their agendas often too complex, I did feel a sense of privilege in being
able to sit round this table and participate in the discussion, and I recognise
with some astonishment that I actually had some wisdom to contribute. But I had
a growing recognition that my passion was for IT, and while I admired my
colleagues’ intense commitment to making a difference to peoples’ lives through
library-based activities, I did not fully share it.
When Christopher was promoted to an HQ-based post, the Library and
Information Services Co-ordinator post became vacant, and I applied for it,
though with some misgivings, for I my heart was telling me that the job wasn’t
really ‘me’. It involved management
responsibility for all aspects of the library service, and at that point I
wasn’t quite sure I had the confidence to cope with that. But in addition, it
seemed to me that the post clearly called for a person of vision – someone who
could see the future and call it into being, while I was aware of operating
best as a loyal lieutenant embracing an existing vision, and helping to realise
it by planning, focus on the detail, and dogged persistence when things went
wrong.
However, the vacant post paid more than I was currently earning, and so
in the interests of supporting my family as well as possible I decided to
apply. I worked extremely hard writing my presentation and researching in
preparation for the interview, which took place first thing in the morning. It
went well: the panel seemed impressed with what I said, and I was reasonably
confident of being appointed. All afternoon I worked away resolutely at my desk
awaiting the phone call from Christopher, and as the hours passed without
hearing from him, first the suspicion and then the certainty grew that I had
been unsuccessful. Eventually, Christopher rang and told me that another
colleague, Joyce Watson had been appointed to the post. Of course I was deeply disappointed, but I
quickly came to appreciate at first hand not just Joyce’s abilities and vision,
but also the contribution I could make to help translate vision into reality.
In fact I had a taste of Joyce’s job when, while she was out of the
office on a prolonged period of sick leave, I
‘acted up’ for a number of months. The experience made me question how
well I could have coped as post-holder in the long term. There are always days
when I struggle with my emotions and don’t feel particularly resilient, when I
find it hard to think clearly and engage in robust discussion. On days like
that, my Systems Co-ordinator post allowed me to find therapy in the routine,
and I wonder whether a job which routinely presented a higher level of
inter-personal challenge would, ultimately, have worn me down. But on the other
hand, I would never, as a young librarian, have imagined I would have the
confidence, resilience and strength to do the job which I now not only do well,
but relish. It seems to me that my developing confidence over the years has
been a slow, evolving miracle, and on my clearer-seeing days I recognise that
in this I have been blessed by God.
Increasingly convinced that IT was where I belonged, I applied early in
2010 for a post with The Highland Council’s ICT team as Information and
Security Officer. Again, I did extensive reading and preparation for the
interview, and probably entertained the interview panel, but I was not
unsuccessful – in retrospect I recognise that I did not have the necessary
breadth of experience.
In 2010-11 I found myself in a few situations which called for skills
beyond my competence level. I found myself giving a presentation in London on a
complicated international library cataloguing project attended by cataloguing
experts. I gave a colourful and interesting presentation, which was
appreciated, but I was conscious only of how uninformed I was compared with the
other speakers and delegates. In an
attempt to encourage people in the community to make full use of hand-held
devices, and to exploit the range of library services available on line, we set
up a couple of ‘Digital Days’ projects, encouraging people to come to the
library for guidance in using smartphones and tablets. For the first of these,
we signed up an expert to work with us for the duration of the project, but
even working with him I felt inadequate to fully tackle the range of issues
people presented with at the library.
But I enjoyed these years working as ‘Talisman’ at the Library Support
Unit. As I matured and grew as a person,
so I was able to build close relationships and friendships with colleagues,
which I much appreciated. In time Talis became Alto (but I remained ‘Talisman’!)
, a much more visually-pleasing product though demanding on bandwidth. Over the
years the old co-operative became Talis Information Limited, which in turn sold
the library management system to Capita. Even though initially the staff
remained the same, something was lost with the move from partnership and
co-operating to a commercial relationship where the bottom line features too
prominently in decision-making.
Again, times were changing. There were further restructures, and in 2011
The Highland Council set up an arms-length organisation, High Life Highland to
deliver a range of services including Libraries, Museums and Archives, Youth
Development, Adult Education and Leisure. Alan Hoseason was appointed High Life
Highland’s ICT manager, and in January 2013 my post was moved from Library
Service to the ICT Team. After twenty years at the Library Support Unit, I had
a new boss and a new base.
