Despite this being the fifth in the series, today is the first Library day in the life I’ve blogged. I have no idea why I haven’t done it before.
I’m a Transformation Officer, working for the library service of a biggish metropolitan borough in the north-west of England. Unlike most public library services in the UK, I don’t work for a local authority: I work for a charitable trust, established in 2003 to provide leisure and cultural services on behalf of the council.
Today I was on the trust’s induction course, learning about all of the many and varied things we do collectively.
The day started with an icebreaker: human bingo. The idea, for the uninitiated, is that you have a bingo card with statements like “can speak another language” and “owns an animal” and you then have to talk to your cohort to find people who have done these things. One of them was “has tweeted today” and I was the only person with a Twitter account. Given the amount of discussion this generated over the course of the day, I ‘m sure some of my co-workers will be Twitter-stalking me this evening…
Most members of the executive management team made appearances to talk about their areas of responsibility (starting with the Chief Executive, who is both excellent and a former librarian. The first time I met him, he singled me out as someone he didn’t know and introduced himself. That costs nothing, and it’s a classy move for a senior manager. I like the guy.) and going through everything the trust does. You can take a look at the website (link above) if you’re keen, but we do grounds maintenance, sport, libraries, heritage, arts, music festivals, and a host of other stuff.
We seem to have a few of these things where staff from different working areas are brought together. I think it’s really important to understand the context we work in, so meeting and chatting with other delegates was useful. I got to do my usual bit of library evangelism, which I always enjoy.
So this was an atypical day for me: very little library stuff, but lots of thinking about where the library fits in with the myriad other stuff my employer does. Sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed, and I feel that I got a lot out of the induction course. I have a better understanding of what goes on, I met some good people, and I got to chat to some of them about libraries.
Could you talk about what it means to be at “Transformation Officer” it sounds like an interesting job. Or is that why you have Optimus in your blog title?