Since the 1st of June I am taking on a new challenge as acting Collection Manager for the TU Delft Library. This seems like the perfect time to start blogging and an introduction may be in order.
My name is Louise Otting, I started at the TU Delft Library in September 2019 as a Host in Open Spaces. This wonderful team showed me all the ins and outs of an academic library, since my experience so far had been in public libraries. You could find me at the desk answering questions or in the back office thinking about how to improve our services and make them more visible.
Start at the TU Delft
As a Host I got to interact with many colleagues and students, at least until the Corona Virus made me work from home. I took that as an opportunity to work on different projects involving process improvements and process visualizations. I also joined a very cool ongoing project that has the work-title ‘Society Library’ and aims to bring some very exciting things to the main hall of the library. It is a framework for programming, activities, services and a lot of cooperation with our students and student organizations within the main hall.
I was part of the first Z&BRA pilot that my library colleague, Will Roestenburg, set up. Through Z&BRA I got to work with other colleagues in the university like Roeland Loggen, who brought me in touch with the Process Stewards Network (PSN). There I learned about the internal trainer, Dirk de Jong, who provides Lean training for TU Delft Employees. I decided to get my Lean Green Belt and can heartily recommend joining one of his upcoming training sessions and/or the PSN if you’re interested in finding opportunities and viewpoints to improve your services and processes.
Acting Collection Manager
I first heard of the vacancy for acting collection manager, while presenting a plan to the MT to strengthen our connection with the faculties and try to work together on issues like the physical collection. Some of those ideas are now going to be incorporated in a much broader plan that also includes the digital collections and the publications of the TU Delft. I’ll post more about those topics on this blog. If you’re interested, I also recommend this blog: Digital Services Programme.
A lot of our efforts and services in regards to the collection remains invisible. In a way it is a compliment that things run so smoothly they are not noticed, but it can become a problem if people don’t realize that they are using a service the Library offers. It will be a nice challenge to make ourselves more visible and make our services even smarter and faster at the same time.
I very much enjoy connecting people, analyzing how we work together and finding new ways to add value to our services and make things easier. I hope to gain a better insight in how we can support our teachers, students and staff. Needless to say, I am very happy to have this opportunity to grow. I look forward to getting to know more colleagues from the different departments and faculties.
About this blog
In this blog, I want to keep everyone informed about events concerning collection and publication at the TU Delft Library. I also provide background information on improvements we devise and decisions we make.
If you have ideas, feedback or other comments I’d very much like to hear them. You can leave a comment or e-mail me directly.