I sent off my unit D answers, submission, whatever you want to call it, on Saturday morning. Having spent the weekend before working on it, I realised I needed a lot more time and so took the week off work. Yet again I found myself second guessing myself all over the place. I have no idea whether the decisions I made were right. One of the frustrations is when you are marked down, or criticised for something when you have actively decided to change something from what evidently was a perfectly reasonable approach.
At work, we did some training in subject indexing (not the back-of-book type) for our panel of freelance abstractors. Initially, we tried to do it via post – in the same way we send them a batch of books to abstract – we sent them instructions, guidelines etc, and then waited for them to be sent back. It didn’t work. What we found was that if someone misunderstood the instructions, or just got something wrong – they would get it wrong for the whole batch of books – for there was no way for us to give them feedback until after they’d done the whole lot. This made a whole lot more work for us, and potentially would have made learning our house style / procedures (which are fairly light-touch) a really slow process. So we instead ran some face-to-face workshops, which allowed people to ask questions, discuss our requirements, learn as they went along. And that proved much more successful. The work they returned following the sessions was perfectly acceptable.
If you start doing the Society of Indexers training course these days, there are some online tutorials which are a compulsory part of the course. However, I started it five years ago, when this was not the case. So the tutorials were optional. After failing Unit D the last time, the feedback suggested I might benefit from one, so I coughed up the money and did one. I won’t say it was totally satisfactory – there is no pass or fail really, and no detailed personal feedback on what you have done. But there is discussion – and that was very useful. The tutor did say something which was entirely the opposite of something I had been told in feedback to a test, which was confusing. But it was a beneficial process on the whole. So I wish I had done more. I didn’t because I just didn’t have the expendable income at the time to do something which I didn’t have to do. The whole training process is expensive. That’s not to say I am not prepared to invest in my training, in my professional future. Just that realistically you also have to pay the rent, and bills, and so I’ve put off investing in some things until absolutely necessary.
Having a new PC this time round helped. I could download the demo version of Sky indexing software. My printer works. Last time, I had to print at work – which meant that I couldn’t do last minute checks as easily. This time I was working until midnight on the Friday night so I could do last checks on Saturday morning and still send off in time. So I wish I’d had a better PC from the start. (When I started the course I was still with my ex – who had a decent computer. After the split I had a knackered laptop and latterly a netbook) I wish I’d done more tutorials. I wish I had been able to focus on the training more during the middle few years. But homelife and work didn’t allow.
So here I am. I think I’ve learned the ropes. I need practice, yes, and I have no doubt I will improve with experience. It’s quite exiting really.
Just have to wait and see if I pass, or if I have to “go my own way” as it were. I hope not. I would like to be more involved. Being based in Sheffield makes it feel more accessible than say, CILIP. The Y&H group meets regularly, and I’ve been wanting to go along. I used to go to the Y&H branch of CILIP – and it was just a committee meeting. Interesting as far as it goes, but not very useful, or effective for building relationships or connections.
I won’t be surprised if I fail though. I don’t think I will have made as many stupid mistakes as I did last time (coming really from not giving myself enough time to check and double check at the last moment), but there are elements I wasn’t confident about.
You have to avoid long strings of locators. Usually by distributing the references through subheadings. But the topics didn’t subdivide naturally – so I ended up using what felt to me like artificial combinations. But ones which would be potentially useful to the user I think. Still – I was uncertain. And I would have preferred to go back and check them more.
Anyway. It’s done now. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort on it. I hope it hasn’t been for nothing.
