I'm sure a lot of you like myself and Hannah are right in the middle of the busiest time of the year...library inductions! I started at Guildford College as a library technician a year ago, I joined in an extremely busy time and spent my first few weeks trying to learn the ropes and watching my colleagues frantically carrying out inductions all day. Myself and James (another new starter) were so new to the LRC that it was agreed that we wouldn't do any inductions as we probably knew the same amount as the students we were inducting, therefore my other colleagues had to do even more inductions than usual.
However since I have now been here a year the time came to do my first induction. I was slightly nervous at first as I'm not very used to public speaking and have never really spoken in front of a group of people for longer than 5 minutes, let alone 25 rowdy 16 year old plumbers. Now that I have done quite a few I am finding myself less and less nervous and actually enjoying it (sometimes!!) As it is increasingly becoming an integral part of the librarian's role I wanted to experience the induction process and learn more about it.
The only difficulty I have experienced is the lack of interest of certain groups. It is great when you get a group of students that are really interested and ask lots of question, and who seem impressed by all the great services we can offer them. It is quite frustrating when a group of students simply look bored for the entire induction. Certain things can be done to try and interest them, like a great interactive quiz Hannah created and just by being friendly and chatting to them helps a lot. I have found it useful to gear each induction to the group you are getting e.g. higher level courses I would explain about our catalogue, e-resources etc. However we know that certain groups like the plumbers don't use the library very much, normally just to use the PCs. I have then been highlighting certain things that they might be interested in like our film and tv collection, suggesting things that might make them come into the LRC to borrow items.
I have enjoyed the induction experience and really feel like it has improved my confidence a great deal. It is also a great way to get to know students and show off all the great services we can offer them!!
Hannah has written a blog for COFHE LASEC about her experiences of induction this can be found at the following link, along with other people's experiences http://goo.gl/guB0B.
