A life in letters: Work - 'Talisman'

(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.