Took this on the way to vote..Tony Abbot/Kevin Rudd?...dont remember who I voted though!

Graduate Trainee

Reflection on Graduate Trainee experiences

It had been an amazing experience working as a Graduate trainee at Charles Darwin University Casuarina Campus Library. I started the traineeship from 20^th of March 2013 with Research Services. This area focusses on a particular group of audience- CDU Staff, Menzies school of health staff, RIEL, CDU Post Graduates, Masters by Research, PhD Students, etc. I had opportunities to attend workshops on Finding Theses, Setting up Alerts in databases like web of science, science direct, scopus, and EndNote X6. I also worked on My Research website and learned to use Contribute - a web editing software. With the help of my mentors I learned to create libguides- Theses Libguide and Reference libuguide. I attended several one on one consultation on researching via Summon, Databases, Google scholar, etc. I also attended a presentation on theses proposal by a researcher. Research services are a central point for all the researchers and they are guided on every step of their candidacy during their research life cycle. I also attended a workshop on social media tools for researchers and have been using some of the tools like twitter, drop box, prezi, slide share, etc for professional purpose. It was an interesting experience as I had not had much exposure to advance level of research skills.

I moved on with Liaison Librarians’ team next. I learnt to create lesson plans, deliver researching classes for VET, TEP, Undergraduate and Master’s Group of students. I liked delivering and having a two way conversation with students. I thoroughly enjoyed the different sessions we had with different groups and the approach. I also learnt how to record instructional videos using Camtasia, Prop profs for creating quiz, collaborate for online classes, etc. I also worked on reviewing Reference Collection, stock take, recommendation for current collection. Familiarizing these tools as well as learning to work with a team who is ready to share, care, respect and collaborate made my journey further smooth.

I continued later with Library Resource services and received training on cataloguing-editing MARC fields- and processing resources. I also learnt how to process Inter Library Loans and Document Delivery via RELAIS. I have received training on Acquisitions module in Symphony and learnt how to order books via CDU Bookshop, James Bennet and GOBI and assign cost/price/budget against individual schools. Furthermore, I also worked on a spreadsheet for renewing serials and run report on usage of 7 day loanable magazines and also learnt how to activate eBooks on Serials Solutions. The different functionalities of Library Management System include running reports of items with various statuses. I used the web reporter function to run reports of all the items that have ‘discard’ and discard ‘weeding’.

Currently, I am working with Library support team. I am trying to understand the background function of Library Management System.

Thus, It is a great opportunity having to work in all the different areas of the library and understanding their functionalities. In addition working with most of the staff members and learning from them is a very significant phase. Each area’s function is interconnected and is related to each other. I have thoroughly enjoyed this and

Top End ALIA Symposium

8^th ALIA Top End Symposium Design Discover Diversify held at CDU in October 2013

In this biennial conference librarians came along and shared their stories. It was a wonderful experience having to listen to the stories of librarians working in different libraries. They shared their experiences working in remote communities and engaging parents and communities with technology. A young librarian shared her story about starting an informal book club where student came along without their parents and gradually involved themselves reading and showing interest in the activities librarian organized for them. Parents joined along and also their reading levels were surprisingly improved which was reported by their school teachers. It serves as a community hub and helps formal and informal opportunities to engage the local community and reflect local identity. It is a point of access for information about the community.

Libraries and librarians have a significant role to play in order to disseminate knowledge to the society. Is library located within four walls? Opportunities and challenges of eBooks in public libraries by Sharon Harvey were presented by Sharon Harvey-Manager Brisbane city council. People still want to read books. However, Brisbane city council libraries research survey reveals 50% books could go online by 2020.

Thus, attending ALIA Symposiums helped me explore new ideas, enriched creativity, augmented new perspectives and develop networking with professional members from different parts of the nation.

Friday 14th

Oh Dear it's been a long time I have had any contact with you. I had a few different things to tell you. On Wednesday I learnt how to check Gobi Alert and order via Gobi Platform. We ordered lots of monographs for Research area.I am just thinking if we could publicize this new books  so that they get used..what are the different methods?..display on the new book shelves, update them on My Research web, send emails about the new arrivals?
I also observed another one on one consultation . It is amazing to see how diverse the research queries are and yet there are solutions when we use a thoughtful research techniques. We could break the question into keywords, try different synonyms, word combinatios, etc.
Got to know about Baldrige survey , NIST - National Institute of Standards & Technology
I have also completed checking My Research page and waiting to update the broken links. It took more than a day to fix my log in as we could not continue in Contribute-web editing software.
I am also trying to play around recording using Camtasia and audio file.

It is Wednesday again

The libguide we had created has been sent for feedback. I attended a  long library budget as well as Acquisition meetings this morning. I am going to practice Endnote as it is important to put in practice what I had learnt  at the3 hrs workshop last week.

Learnt answering some online referencing queries. Also did some stats for the workshops held this year. Spending some time practicing Endnote X5..

Need to pactise now

I am full on with the 3 hrs Endnote workshop today. I need to practice now. I find Endnote so cool as it saves lot of time and the stress associated at the end of your research of not having to remember where you had sourced your reference material. What a perfect information management system. I also find the feature of linking intext citation so cool..

hi again

It is already Thursday and here I am. I am really enjoying the traineeship as I am learning new things everyday. Yesterday I spent some time in the morning trying to understand how to develop a lesson plan for today's Navitas class-International students doing a few weeks of comprehensive English course to get into the main stream. The lesson plan was about referencing using CDU Harvard and APA style guides. I had to keep in mind the clientele type while planning. It was important for me to note down every detail of information and how am I going to explain about:  referencing-intext & reference list, plagiarism, journals,database, eresources, websites, etc.

In the afternoon I spent some time with Jayshree working on theses libguide and tyding up the information. It was a bit tedious to fix the font and margins in the libguide software. I had to rearrange the resources-books & ebooks on order latest on top. It took ages for me to figure out before noticing the "reorder books" tab!..sometimes information is right under your nose and you dont see it!

Today I spent two  and half hours in the training room with Navitas group training how to reference. It was a very interactive class. They were very keen to learn and responded very well. Michelle started the delivery giving a detail and interesting information about referencing followed by activity . They were given books with different information : edited books, more than one authors, etc, and use two referencing styles. Later, I continued with journals asking few questions about what journals are, showing the hard copy, etc and Bernadatte helped me . I felt very comfortable in delivering and answering ...I am very keen  to continue in future..feeling more confident at the same time realizing that there is a lot to learn!

Later in the afternoon spent sometime collating resources and handouts for tomorrow's EndNote workshop! And most interesting part was a friends who is a masters by coursework pops into my office asking for help finding theses. how cool is that? as I had already attended a few workshops on finding thesis ..this was the real time to practice what I had learnt so far..I helped her confidently and also directed her to the online links and wokshops that are there for students through research page. As she was a friend so I could ask her if it was helpful and she was positive!

Soon we'll be heading towards Wharf Illido?? for Sally's farwell dinner!

It is Friday already!

I had a very good day today ! I started with a practice on the lesson I am going to deliver in the afternoon trying to build up more confidence. And I attended a class run by Michelle Turner for TEP 026. It was a refresher to me as I was going to deliver one in the afternoon. I find Michelle's flow so fantastic and at the same time very lively delivery with few wit & humour that adds spice to the group.
I really rushed home for lunch as I wanted to be ahead on time to set up for the class and surprisingly I was 20 mins early. So I relaxed a bit and went to the training room to set up the white board for the class. The group did not look familiar and were new to the topic which was a big relief for me! As I find it hard to balance in a class where  my clients are disinterested. So I started with a brief intro on their research topic. Michelle had introduced me to the group and their lecturer. The start was good I guess but in between I struggled to word how to explain what "journal articles"..what a tragedy!..but Michelle was there to rescue me everytime I was caught up..which was so comforting and reassuring that I had a strong back up if at all I miss or misdirect !

the hour went very fast!

Later I attended one on one consultation with Jayshree with a researcher/lecturer from Menzies school of health. She looked very stressed and sounded panicky as she said she is expected to complete her research at the end of next month and she wanted help to research quick. After we heard from her about her research topic , she was shown how to search in google scholar, and ebscohost database, summon, informit for Australian content and a brief intro  how to export and manage info in Endnote. Also I learnt(hope so) what gray literature meant!

At the end of this consultation she looked better and more relaxed and was grateful for the information. She was aslo offered more help if needed when she had time as she was in a rush!

Overall I feel the support library renders to these variety of clients is worth mentioning as the degree of satisfaction can be visible on the clients' face. As we all know people can search google and googling is so popular but the quality of resources retrieved from google is questionable. And the trainings library offers to discover & manage those resourcesis so good!