Author: Guest Contributor

Categories
University history

The Redevelopment of the Brynmor Jones Library

by Sharon Redgrave

When the library was built in 1959 and then extended in the late 1960’s, talk of mobile phones, computers, eBooks, the Internet, and such like would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction. But in 2012, the world was a very different place. This was the year of the London Olympics. We had our Apple iPhone 5 or Samsung S3 and our computers were running Windows 8. It became clear that the library needed to be brought up to date. The furniture was past its best. We had one printer on each floor and two on the ground floor. The printing came out automatically. At assessment time, there was a scrum of people at the printers trying to retrieve their work. There were very few electrical sockets in the library. Members of the shelving team were constantly faced with trailing wires at knee height all over the library floors as students plugged in their laptops. The floors in the tower block were crumbling with several potholes down some of the aisles.

Work began in the summer of 2012. We started by moving all the closed run journals from the basement and the floors into some unused buildings on the west campus. A removal firm was brought in, and a plan was put in place for everything to be packed up in classmark order. Items of the same classmark were picked from the basement, collected from the floors, and boxed up together and put into storage. Once the redevelopment was complete, it would then be a simple process of having the stock returned to the library and being able to put it straight back out on the shelves in classmark order. How wrong we were!

Conveyor belt moving all the closed run journals.

The closed run journals were moved to another building using a conveyor belt. This process was short lived once the Health and Safety team saw the conveyor belt balanced on pallets. In July 2012, work began on moving all the books from second floor east and re- shelving them on the seventh floor. Working in teams, trolley loads of books were shuttled from floor to floor

2nd floor East after all of the books were removed.

On 6th August 2012, back-office staff moved out of the library to temporary accommodation in Salmon Grove. The frontline customer service staff stayed behind to experience what it was like to work on a building site. The library remained open throughout this time. It was cold, it was dusty, and it was noisy. There wasn’t any heating in the building and due to several walls being missing, the temperature was often as low as 8 °C. Staff could often be seen sporting woolly hats when working at the reception desk. There was a large fan to disperse the copious amounts of dust in the air. Walls were knocked down around us, sometimes with concrete falling unexpectedly. Some new choice language was heard, which on occasion came over the tannoy or echoed round the silence of the Reading Room when the drilling stopped but the workmen carried on shouting.

Foundations being built in the Library
Exterior of the Library covered in scaffolding

The evacuation of the library became a matter of routine as the fire alarm went off on a near daily basis, often more than once a day. Pipes leaked all over the pamphlet stock that had been moved to what was thought a safe location. A hoist was attached to the outside of the building to allow the easy delivery of building materials. It also allowed the easy access of pigeons.

Hoist outside of the Library.
Digger inside of the Library.
First Floor light well covered over.
Old staircase in the Library.

All of this happened around our students continuing to use the library.
A decant area, often referred to as “the decadent area” by some of our students, was created on the ground floor for us to store books from the floors in the tower block.

Decant area of the Library.

In late August 2013, the books started to be moved to the newly created Reading Room.

The Reading Room under construction.
The finished Reading Room.

A few weeks later, the third and fourth floors reopened. Meanwhile, books from the second, fifth, sixth and seventh floors were moved to the decant area.


In December 2013, the new first and second floors of the east building were opened. By April 2014, all the floors in the tower block, except the first floor, had reopened. Finally in August of that year all the work had been completed. The library was officially opened on 15th September 2015 by the then poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Although it was not easy working in the library during this time, the camaraderie in our team is something I will always remember. I wish I had kept a daily diary of the events that took place along with daily photos. It would have been a good way to document all that happened. Finally, we have library that is fit for the 21st century. Our students can plug in their devices in numerous sockets in the building- even our furniture has plug sockets. We have super-fast Wi-Fi, printers throughout the building and more computers than ever before, laptops that can be loaned, a silent study area, group learning rooms with large computer screens, a postgraduate lounge, a Rare Books Room, a large cafe and an art gallery. It took a while to get there but it was worth the journey.

The Post Graduate Research Lounge.
A group learning room.
The Library Café.
The Library Art Gallery.
The exterior of the Library at night.

Categories
Conferences Sharing practice

Academic Libraries North (ALN) Conference 2022

As online meeting becomes more commonplace than ever, the Academic Libraries North conference 2022 was no exception, and the organisers did an excellent job emulating the benefits of an in-person conference online.

Online Academic Libraries North Conference

This year’s spotlight was on inclusivity, particularly on the actions our institutions take to improve equality and diversity. The event was split over 2 half days, giving delegates plenty of time to digest the wide range of content and consider how these ideas could be more widely shared.

ALN hosted a series of talks, presentations, post-break-out session chats, networking opportunities, sponsor booths and competitions using the virtual event platform, Hubilo. Conference delegates were able to discuss ideas and speak with sponsors in between sessions. Aiding connections and interactivity allowed the conference to flourish and receive widespread positive feedback.

Academic libraries and trans allyship

One of the event keynotes, Kit Heyam, began the conference this year with a session on academic libraries & trans allyship. They explored what is meant by the terms sex and gender by breaking down key concepts and encouraging all attendees to think about whether their institutions go far enough to protect our students e.g. manually updating databases to reflect appropriate pronouns or treating protected characteristics on library record notes sensitively.

Kit also advised that we can all signpost individuals who may use problematic language in no bad faith to more information and to think about and reconsider this. It was fascinating to listen to a passionate and knowledgeable speaker explain that while misconceptions are natural, they can be addressed critically and kindly when there is a willingness to learn.

Community engagement, period dignity and being a diversity ally

The conference hosted several lightning talks, which made me wonder whether our offerings align with other academic libraries. Lancaster University Library presented a piece on community engagement. As well as organising clothes mending sessions, a library festival and collaborating with the Lancaster Black History Group, Lancaster has also launched a community library card for members of the public aged over 16 and with which they can borrow 6 books at a time.

Teesside University Library discussed their period dignity campaign driven by a particular desire in the northeast for access to period products. It was an eye-opening presentation which pointed out the loss of education and deterioration of general health as a result of period poverty.

I was pleased to see our very own Sarah Pymer discuss the Archives & Records Association Diversity and Inclusion Allies. The group aims to focus on equality, diversion and inclusion through working practice, professional training and driving standards. Some positive steps have already been taken here, specifically around balancing gender within the archiving profession.

The care that binds: of stories yet untold

The second day of the conference was opened by the Associate Director for Research at the University of Nottingham and keynote Josh Sendall. This presentation was an inspirational and optimistic outlook for the future of equality within academic libraries. The key messages here were around promoting intellectual freedom to access all information and how neutrality and social justice can work together to achieve true equality. Josh touched not only on the importance of diversifying library collections by including marginalized voices but also promoting and celebrating this and demonstrating professional pride in doing so.

Conference sponsors

It is certainly worth praising the sessions given by the gold sponsor of the conference Kortext and both silver sponsors, Anybook and Adam Matthew. While familiar with the work of these platforms, companies and publishers respectively, it was useful to gain a deeper insight into the fantastic work they do to assist our collections.

Kortext hosted a talk on building a case for free eBooks at the University of Derby with a key focus on accessibility tools offered such as note sharing, highlighting and open conversations. Anybook discussed their practices, including how they give a proportion of the money made from selling books to the libraries and allow the libraries autonomy on how this money is spent whether this is on the collection or donated to charitable organisations. Adam Matthew were keen to highlight their work with various libraries to make lots of exciting materials available. One notable example of this was the diaries of Anne Lister, whose life as a landowner and historical lesbian figure has been portrayed in the BBC series Gentleman Jack.

Book stacks in libraries

Stand-out moments from the conference for me were the short papers on decolonising the library collection from the University of Essex and recruiting diverse candidates into the library customer assistant roles at the University of Manchester.

Decolonising the Library Student Champion Project

At the University of Essex, the library recognised a lack of diversity in its collection and enlisted the help of students. A series of workshops were held to encourage free discussion, and a brilliant video was made by students to explain the importance of decolonisation and diversification and the impact on the student body. During Q&As, I asked whether there had been challenges encouraging academics to diversify their reading lists, and I was happy to learn that most had welcomed these changes with a full understanding of the significance of this work.

Addressing barriers to inclusion in the recruitment process

Perhaps due to my own role as a customer experience team leader, I had a particular interest in how Manchester went about recruiting diverse candidates into their library customer service team. During a recruitment event, there was a big emphasis on encouraging those who lacked library experience but could offer other relevant skills to consider a customer service role. A video was shown at the event demonstrating what the day-to-day role looked like as well as a talk on demystifying the application process and an outline of the library 2030 vision. The University of Manchester Library saw an increase in disabled candidates, candidates under 20, candidates over 60 and LGBTQIA+ candidates.

Closing remarks

A wonderful panel discussion brought the conference to a close, and each participant was given the opportunity to share one thing we can all do to increase inclusivity. These included to keep talking about EDI, widening perspectives, sharing lived experiences, training to see through a diversity/anti-racist lens, being led by what others are going through and, of course, being kind.

Be kind in libraries

Many thanks for having me this year, Academic Libraries North. I have taken so much away from this conference and I am completely inspired to keep listening and to keep learning.

*Extra thank you to OCLC for donating the prize I won for my entry to the photo competition in which delegates were asked to submit a photo of where they were accessing the conference from. Small thanks also to my toddler, Frankie, whose cuddly Moomin toy, I believe, swung it for me.

A large wooden table with a laptop on it. There is a large vase of flowers to the right, and a Moomin soft toy sits beneath the vase.
The prize-winning photo

This post is authored by Ruby Hill, one of our University Library Customer Experience Team Leaders.

Categories
Interns Library insider

A Week at the Brynmor Jones Library

In July, the Brynmor Jones Library welcomed two work experience students from local schools. Sev and John both worked with staff for one week, and kindly agreed to tell us about their experiences.

Sev

My week at the Brynmor Jones Library started on Monday with a morning of induction and health and safety with Helen. During the week, I was shown a lot about how the library works.

I got a chance to work with the rare books collection in the Cube and created a display cabinet for the University Open Day. It was themed around tragedy and romance, with books including Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.

Sev’s ‘Tragedy and Romance’ rare book display

Between creating the display cabinet and researching the books used inside it, I got to work in Collections on the library database, and in the basement doing stocktaking. I was also in the Reading Room quite a lot doing available holds and KDL tagging.

Working with the rare books with Helen was my favourite part of the week!

John

This week at the University of Hull has been interesting and really enjoyable. When you mention a library, many people will have the image of a dull and boring place, but that’s not always the truth – some libraries go above and beyond to make it interesting and useful to all, and the Brynmor Jones Library is one of them.

I also started making a display case of some of the rare books, which I found really interesting. My theme being war, I picked out some of the most memorable and impactful books as a way to remember some of the wars that shaped our country.

John’s ‘Remembering War’ rare book display

The library staff were very nice and welcoming, and they kept me busy and engaged. It was fulfilling knowing that I was helping out.

This post is authored by Sev and John, two of our work experience students (July 2022).

Categories
General

Spotlight On: Decolonising & Diversifying Library Collections

Each month staff from the Spotlight Team at the Brynmor Jones Library create a Reading List and book display in the Reading Room based on a particular theme to create a ‘Spotlight On’ Collection. In June, we are highlighting work relating to Decolonising and Diversifying Collections, and sharing some book recommendations provided by students and staff.

Spotlight on Decolonising and Diversifying Collections

What is decolonisation and diversification?

Historically, academia has been dominated by white male voices. It is hard to believe that university study was once a male-only pursuit, with women very rarely admitted before the 19th century. Today, universities are incredibly diverse places with people from all walks of life and all over the world.

Yet this is not always reflected in library collections. The purpose of decolonising and diversifying libraries is to ensure that people who are marginalised by society’s perspectives – for example, by race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation and socioeconomic class – are better represented in universities and academia, by diversifying the books in library collections.

Diversification focuses on ensuring many voices and perspectives are heard. This means purchasing materials created by, and about, marginalised people.

Brynmor Jones Library

But decolonisation and diversification are not about the number of books by and about, for example, black and LGBTQ+ writers on the shelves. It is one thing to add books by marginalised authors to our collection – true decolonisation and diversification are about engaging with those voices while casting a critical view on the existing works of white, male writers who have dominated academia and publishing for so long. It is not about the erasure of those voices, but about challenging longstanding biases and widening our intellectual vision to include diverse perspectives and experiences.

Creating the Spotlight Collection

The Spotlight Team put a lot of work into discovering and promoting diverse library resources. Researching and creating the collections often reminds us just how extensive our resources are. We are always excited to discover hidden gems, but it can be difficult deciding which resources to include in a Spotlight collection. With this theme, we felt it was important to seek input from our academic and student community to ensure our list, while only a snapshot of the immense resources available, included the voices of those we seek to represent.

We initially contacted Dr Nicholas Evans of the Wilberforce Institute (WISE), who showed great enthusiasm and put us in touch with historian Channon Oyeniran and two WISE PhD students with interests in decolonisation, Jen Nghishitende and Fred Bricknell. We also received some excellent recommendations from Dr Catherine Baker, senior lecturer in 20th Century History.

Book recommendations

The book cover for Decolonizing Colonial Heritage

Dr Nicholas Evans’ top recommendation for the collection was Decolonizing Colonial Heritage: New Agendas, Actors and Practices in and beyond Europe (2022).

“Decolonizing Colonial Heritage is a fantastic series of essays that deploys a truly global approach to studying the legacy of European colonisation in multiple societies. Such comparative analysis highlights the need look beyond national frameworks when discussing the legacy of imperialism. I especially loved the essay on Cape Town a port city influenced by Portuguese, Dutch and British imperialism.”

Dr Nicholas Evans

Channon Oyeniran, historian, educator and author, is a former MA student of the Wilberforce Institute. Now based in Canada where she is Vice President of the Ontario Black History Society, Channon recommended How to Be an Antiracist (2019) by Ibram X. Kendi. She talked to us about why decolonising collections in libraries is important.

“Libraries are the gatekeepers of knowledge and should therefore have an abundance of knowledge in different subject areas by different people who have different experiences and who come from all walks of life. It is important for people to go into a library and feel represented, see themselves in the books that are on the shelves and learn about diverse subjects.”

Channon Oyeniran

Jen Nghishitende, a current PhD student at WISE, enthusiastically recommended Dr Roselyne Masamha’s thesis titled The education experiences of Zimbabwean nurses recruited to undertake pre-registration nurse education in the UK. Dr Roselyn Masamha is a University of Hull lecturer in learning disabilities nursing whose research interests include experiences of disadvantaged groups, inclusive education and decolonisation. Jen praised Dr Masamha’s thesis for offering “a new perspective on shaping knowledge production, challenging the ‘traditional’ way of knowing in academia by producing academic work that accentuates the voices of her co-producers while embedding herself in the research by occupying the dual role of researcher and participant.”

Book cover for The Brutish Museum

Fred Bricknell, also a PhD student at the Wilberforce Institute, has previously developed reading lists for the History module Global Britain. His recommendations were The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (2020) by Dan Hicks and Museums and Atlantic Slavery (2021) by Ana Lucia Araujo. Fred described The Brutish Museums as “the one book anybody seeking to understand calls for cultural restitution in modern Britain must read”. Talking about Museums and Atlantic Slavery, Fred told us the book “explores how the histories foregrounded in our national museums often omit uncomfortable truths” while emphasizing that “the fact they are uncomfortable does not make them any less true”.

Book cover for EmpireLand

Dr Catherine Baker took time out of her very busy assessment period to suggest three resources. On Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain (2021) by Sathnam Sanghera, Catherine said, “struggles over historical memory and national identity in former Yugoslavia are among my main research interests – this book offers food for thought about those same questions in the country where I live and work”.

Book cover for The Trans-gender Issue: An argument for justice

Also recommended by Catherine is a new addition to the Library: The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice (2021) by Shon Faye. Catherine described The Transgender Issue as “an accessible and empathetic account which connects up the inequalities facing trans people today into an explanation of what makes transphobia so systemic, and integrates them through focusing on the context of ‘justice’.”

Thirdly, Catherine highlighted LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe as “a thought-provoking collection that illustrates the complex ways that LGBTQ+ activism in former Yugoslavia relates to cities, nations, governments, and the idea of ‘Europe’ itself, by a team of authors with deep ties to LGBTQ+ scholarship and activism in the post-Yugoslav space”.

The spotlight bookshelves in the reading room showing our Spotlight on Decolonising and diversifying the collection
The Spotlight display in the Reading Room

These are just a few of the resources included in the Spotlight Collection, and all are available via the Library or Open Access. The full collection can be found in the Reading Room in the Showcase Corner.

How can I get involved?

You can find out more about the Library’s work on decolonising and diversifying the collections on the Library website.

We are keen to receive recommendations from students and staff for these collections. If you are a current student, you can do this by completing a Suggest a Purchase form and ticking the checkbox for diversifying and decolonising the Library.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter so you don’t miss our Spotlight On: Decolonising and Diversifying Collections posts throughout the month of June.

Special thanks to Jen Nghishitende, Channon Oyeniran, and Fred Bricknell, and to Dr Catherine Baker and Dr Nicholas Evans of the wonderful History@Hull department.

Read more about decolonisation in our Twitter thread, Maggie is our Collection Development Manager responsible for Library and Archive collections at the University of Hull. Sarah is one of the University Archivists at the Hull History Centre, and also an @RL_UK Professional Practice Fellow 2022.

Categories
Academic literacies Skills Team

Strategies to make your revision successful

Revising your work and the information you’re studying is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure a high-level understanding of those subjects and high-quality work. Students in every subject area can benefit from a well-thought-out revision plan. Today we’ll discuss some of the different revision methods you can use, and how you can use feedback and revising drafts to your benefit. 

Study methods for revision

John Weightman & Codey McShane  

There are a wide range of possible techniques that may be useful to you when revising. The most important thing is to find what works for you. Everyone uses a combination of different learning styles throughout their academic study, and these will be unique to that student. That said, here are some example techniques that may be useful to you.

Leitner Flash Cards

The Leitner system is a revision technique using flashcards. The idea is to create your flashcards for the subject you are revising for and sort the individual flashcards into groups depending on how well you know the knowledge on the card. You then pull a flashcard from the group you remember the least from and attempt to recall the knowledge on its back. If you succeed, you can send it one box further along the line. If you fail, you send the flashcard back to the first group.

Index Cards, Cards, Paper

Groups of flashcards you know quite well should be revised less frequently than those you are having trouble with. This way, you’re focusing on the gaps in your knowledge, while still refreshing yourself on what you already know every so often.  

Mind Mapping 

Mind mapping is a technique that allows you to visually organize information in a diagram. Start with a word in the centre of a blank page (or use a tool online) and around this write your major ideas and keywords and connect them to the central concept. Then branch out into sub-branches from your major ideas with other related ideas that support your major points. You could also consider using different colours for each branch and draw pictures if it helps. The structure of a mind map is related to the way our brains store and retrieve information. Therefore, using this method can improve your reading comprehension and enable you to see the big picture by communicating the relationships between concepts and ideas. 

Mindmap - Free image on Pixabay

Colour Coding 

Writing in colour is a dynamic way to organize the information you’re learning. It also helps you review and prioritize the important ideas. A recent study found that colour can improve your memory performance. The study also found that warm colours (red and yellow) “can create a learning environment that is positive and motivating that can help learners” It also reported that warmer colours “increase attention and elicit excitement and information.” 

Consider these tips: 

  • Write down key points in red. 
  • Highlight important information in yellow. 
  • Organize topics by colour. 
  • Don’t just colour everything because then nothing will stand out
Learn Sharpie Markers GIF by Sharpie - Find & Share on GIPHY

The Pomodoro Technique 

The Pomodoro Technique was originally created by Francesco Cirillo in 1999. This method has been widely used by thousands of students for over 20 years. The method is based on studying in timed intervals. Cirillo actually named it after the timer he used which was shaped like a tomato (Pomodoro in Italian). Cirillo found that breaking large tasks up into smaller manageable timed units is the most effective way to study. 

  1. Decide what you want to study and for how long. Then break your work into Pomodoro’s. 
  1. Set a timer for 25 minutes and start studying. (There are many pomodoro apps available or you can follow along with someone’s study session on YouTube). 
  1. Minimize distractions during each interval. If a thought pops into your head write it down.  
  1. After 25 minutes take a short break. Have a tea or a coffee, go for a walk, call your friend, or just relax. 
  1. Then just repeat and after 4 Pomodoro’s take a longer break for 20-30 minutes. 

The Feynman Technique 

This technique is one that I find quite useful. It doesn’t require any extra resources, as all you need to do is take a concept you’re revising and pretend to teach it to someone else – specifically, a child. As you take a particular subject and pretend to explain it to a child, look for the gaps in your own understanding. Explaining a particular concept to someone else out loud can be an excellent way to realize exactly what it is you don’t understand fully yet. 

After refreshing yourself on the knowledge you didn’t fully understand, there is a final step. Simplify your explanation. Using analogies is a suggested way to do this, as analogies are easy to recall and explain, and require you to omit any specialized jargon.  

This also prevents you from merely committing facts to memory. If you’re able to take a concept, reduce it to its simplest form, and then explain it in a different way, you’re more likely to understand the concept. 

The Preview, Questions, Read, Recite, Review method 

This method (also called PQ3R) is potentially a more natural way of understanding academic textbooks. It encourages asking questions to facilitate your learning, as well as understanding the context surrounding the facts you’ll be learning. Following the PQ3R method in order should help you have a streamlined study method that will work every time. 

Preview: Before you dive into any source material, it’s important to understand what it is you’re about to read. With a chapter in a textbook, this means reading the chapter title, introduction, subheadings, the first sentences of each paragraph, and finally, the chapter summary. 

Questions: During the Preview step, you should take note of any questions that are raised by the initial text you are reading. This will help you to become active in your study, and you should keep these questions in mind during the next step, Read. 

Read: That’s right, it’s reading time. Read the chapter now, paying attention to any text that is specifically emphasized by highlighting or bold text. Look at all the graphs and illustrations, including their captions, and reread anything that you didn’t quite get the first time. 

Recite: If there are any questions that come at the end of this chapter, now is the time to complete them, as well as your own questions that you recorded during the preview step. 

Review: A couple of days after finishing the previous steps, you can perform the Review step. Attempt to summarize the chapter. See if you can answer the questions that you created and those in the text easily, having already done so before. How confident are you that you could explain the content in this chapter to another student? 

Revising your revision techniques 

Joanna Rawnsley

You may not think honing your skills and looking back on your techniques is revision, but when you do this, you are actually revising your techniques which results in them developing.  

Before starting an assessment, going back to basics will help familiarise yourself with how its structured and how to get the best possible grades. For example, if you’ve been asked to write an essay, revising essay structures and academic writing will make for a better outcome. For more guidance on essay writing, we have a whole guide on it: Essay Writing Skills Guide. 

If you’re a creative, honing your craft is a key part of your course – writing, drawing, any kind of creative skill needs to be continuously used to help it develop. Have you ever not drawn for a period and when you get back into it, you seem to not be able to draw anymore? You obviously haven’t lost your capabilities; you just haven’t been exercising your drawing muscles. Once you start drawing again, you’ll find your techniques starting to develop once again.  

This isn’t only for creatives though. If you’ve been using a computer software, you need to keep up to date with it to build your knowledge on how to use it. The same goes for health practitioners, who must always have more training when new medical practices are found.  

As a writer, I continuously revise narrative structures, planning techniques, and poetic form. I write whenever I get the chance to develop my writing, but I also read craft books and fiction/poetry in the genre and form I am writing in. This helps me familiarise myself with the genre and its narrative structure, but also any devices other authors use that may make my writing stronger.  

Therefore, revising techniques and honing your skills is important when it comes to the revision process. 

For more information and guidance on revision, processes check out our Skills Guide. 

Categories
General

Procrastination & Time Management

Learning how to manage your time effectively is crucial to any student’s time at university, but also something you will need to take into any job/career. We, interns, are no different, the techniques we learnt as students to help us tackle procrastination have helped us manage our time whilst in our current roles. Here are some tips from each of us to help you with your studies (and avoid procrastination along the way!).

A photograph of alarm clocks. Procrastination can make time disappear!
Image from pixabay: Alarm clocks

Beating procrastination the old fashioned way

By Joanna Rawnsley

I’m old fashioned because I keep everything in a paper diary, if I keep things on my phone, I end up looking at them more often which leads to me procrastinating. When doing my work, I always put my phone out of my line of sight: out of sight, out of mind. Back when I was doing my assignments, I’d even turn it off, or onto “do not disturb” and put it in a drawer. That way I wouldn’t be distracted by notifications, and I’d be solely focused on the task at hand.

Speaking of tasks, every morning before I start work, I write a daily to-do list for that day. As I go about my day, I tick off any tasks I’ve completed, you don’t realise how satisfying it is to tick off tasks until you do it. I also write down any deadlines in my diary when I get them, so I always know when things need to be in. I do, however, use my phone for reminders. Having an “annoying” alarm going off helps remind me of meetings and deadlines, this way I’m less likely to forget things and I always have a calendar handy.

via GIPHY

Another way to help with procrastination is taking short breaks between classes, studying and work, especially if you’re working at a screen. Now bear with me, I’m serious about this! It’s good to take a break every hour or so to give your eyes a rest and stretch your legs. According to the Well-being Thesis taking “micro-breaks” throughout your workday will not only improve productivity but will also help with stress and your overall well-being. Getting a drink and/or talking to a peer for a few minutes helps you relax and then when you go back to your work, you will be more focused and more efficient. This also helps prevent you from burning out at the end of each day. I for one have been known to turn my laptop off and spend my evenings scrolling through social media and watching TV due to feeling lethargic after work. So, take breaks when you can and stay hydrated!

Now I’m going to go get a drink and take a micro-break of my own.

Time management in the workplace

By David Moore

Throughout this Internship, I have had to schedule my time between different people and their required designs. How I started this, is a week at a time and planned the following week ahead of time for example on one occasion I had to finish editing videos and complete Halloween designs in the same week. I was stressed at first but planning and preparation and doing the video first left me enough time to complete two designs a day so I could finish the work by Friday. What stopped me from getting distracted was I tried to mix my design work, so I was not doing the same work repeatedly. So, one day I would do videos on After Effects and on another day, I would create my own images on Photoshop and create slides and descriptions of work ideas for new images on PowerPoint or I would separate hours of the day to do a mixture of them all.

This is my first work experience and I have found the time management quite challenging as I am not a morning person as it took some time to get used to the hours but once I got into a routine, I have enjoyed my experience. It is important to me to keep a routine, so I do not lose track of where I am.

via GIPHY

Avoiding procrastination with the right mindset

By Codey McShane

For me, the most important aspect of managing procrastination and my time for study was getting into the correct mindset. While I was at university, I found it easy to beat myself up for procrastinating, which would only make me want to study less. When thinking about doing my work evoked feelings of guilt or made me feel under intense pressure, it became way harder to get anything done at all. For me, what helped was accepting and forgiving myself for procrastinating – there was no point dwelling on what I’d already done, and all I could change was what I was going to do. I didn’t pretend that it hadn’t happened, but I recognized that I could still turn things around and give myself a fresh start.

via GIPHY

It was incredibly freeing to be able to let go of these feelings of anxiety and realize that so long as I began working now, whatever I produced would be the best work I could’ve done starting from my fresh start. Of course, this isn’t a method that will work for everyone – there is no magical cure-all for feelings of anxiety or stress that may prevent you from being able to work. The answer may be different for you (e.g., therapy, medication, journaling, exercise, dieting, mindfulness/meditation). But if you can get yourself into the right frame of mind in whatever way works for you, I found it way easier to apply some simple methods to mitigate my procrastination.

Here are some tips that worked for me:

  • Structure your time.
     The simple act of creating a daily schedule for when I would study helped a lot. Having a planned-out routine for when I would study and when I could relax made it a lot easier to power through it.
  • Find your incentive to work.
     Once I planned out exactly what and when I was going to be studying, I got a big sense of satisfaction by being able to cross that task off my list when I had finished doing it. Figure out what motivates you and use that to your advantage.
  • Starting is the hardest part.
    Once I was studying, I tended to not get distracted. But getting there in the first place sometimes felt impossible. Studying when you don’t want to requires discipline; I had to do the work even though I didn’t want to. It helped me to think things like “Just do this first task, and then you can stop if you need to.” Once I’d completed that first task I was past those initial feelings and could then continue with my schedule.

Cutting distractions to avoid procrastination

By John Weightman

Procrastination was a problem for me when I first started out as a student so much so that I would sometimes have YouTube clips playing in the background while I was supposed to be concentrating on work. However, I soon realized I couldn’t keep doing this as even though I would get the work done it would take much longer and lead to stress as deadlines loomed. As has already been mentioned one way to solve this was to turn off my phone or other distractions. But sometimes we find it difficult so what I would occasionally do is listen to relaxing sounds or music nothing loud or distracting. It was just something that helped me concentrate though now more frequently I also go along with the method of just turning off my phone.

A photograph of a mobile phone sitting on top of a book. This kind of set up leads to procrastination! Put the phone away and out of sight.
Image from Pixabay

Another good way to avoid procrastination is to think about the different places you have been when studying where were you the most focused? Where were you most distracted? Is there anything you can do to make studying enjoyable?

So, in my case, the music made it more enjoyable for me and I also found that working in a different environment to the one where I spent my free time was beneficial. For example, as a student, I found I did more work in the library than I did in my room as there were just more distractions but at the library, the people around me were working which motivated me to work. I carried this on after I was a student too as when I’m working now, I have a separate room where I can do work and it doesn’t have things like a PlayStation.

It is important to remember though that what works for one person might not necessarily work for you.  For example, studying with friends may limit your productivity. But for others, studying in groups can help to increase motivation and avoid procrastination.

Managing time

So, if we have got our procrastination under control how would I manage the time I have to work. Breaks as we have covered are important, I would often do something fun which for me is playing the guitar. I would say right I am going to write for maybe an hour then I’ll play the guitar for 20 minutes and let my mind concentrate on something else. Alternatively, you could try something like exercise which you may not believe but actually works in the same way sleep does. It can focus your state of mind, helping you to clear your head and boost your brainpower in between study sessions. If you don’t exercise much maybe aim for a 10-minute run/workout here and there, steadily increasing the amount you do as you go on.

via GIPHY

Finally, as a history student planning and research was also very important for me. If I managed my time well it would allow me to process new information and plan how I was going to use it which can help you to avoid having to re-read and repeat any research. One way of effectively planning before researching is to make a list of everything you want to find out so that you can make notes below each subheading as you go. Rather than writing out information just anywhere, if it is stored in the correct place on paper, it will then go to the correct place in my mind.

Categories
Library services

Launch of the Family Room in the Brynmor Jones Library

Katie Austin

The photograph shows the Library's new Family Room. The room has a desk and computer for work, while the floor has lots of child-friendly resources. There are decorations on the wall and a mat on the floor to make the space more welcoming for our little visitors.

As an inclusive and welcoming campus, we are delighted here at the Hull University Library to launch a study room for students with children. A third of our student population are mature learners, many of whom are also managing family life as well as academic studies.

The large group learning room on the ground floor has been converted into a child-friendly room which can be booked out for students needing to access the library facilities whilst also juggling childcare.

So if you have a deadline looming during school holidays, need to drop in to print something out or simply prefer studying in our wonderful library building, please know that your children are very welcome to join you.

The ground floor is pushchair friendly and we also have a baby change and nappy disposal bin located within the café toilets.

Brynmor Jones Library Family Room

If you need books collecting from the library floors, you can use the Library Live Chat to make a request during staffed hours. A member of staff will gladly bring these over to you.

The Family Room aims to take away any added pressures students with children may face while completing their academic studies on campus. Feedback from previous students with children has been overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to welcoming our first bookings throughout October.

Ali Craig

As always, please direct any comments or suggestions to the Library Feedback page.

I would like to acknowledge the excellent work of Katie Austin, our Equality Diversity and Inclusivity Coordinator who has meticulously planned for this launch. It’s been a long time in the making.

Ali Craig
Operations Director & Head of Customer Experience