A day in the life of Becky Williams
07.30: Today is an office day. Like all NHS England staff I split my time between the office and working from home. My office is at Wellington Place in Leeds but as part of a national team (Knowledge and Library Services) my fellow team members are based across the country. We mainly stay in touch and work together through MS Teams and e-mail so it doesn’t make too much difference where I am working! However it is nice to come to Yorkshire’s unofficial capital and see the outside world.
The day got off to a slightly shaky and rushed start. My teenage children attend the school directly opposite the train station so I usually drop them off on office days. However shortly after we set off my daughter let out a screech of horror – she had left something behind…so back we went. When we set off again time was of the essence and everyone was flustered (mainly me to be fair). Still we made it – just. The teenagers slumped off to school and I got the train to Leeds.
08.45: I arrived at the office in Wellington Place, Leeds, following a quick detour to a coffee shop to grab a latte. The NHSE office is part of the Yorkshire Government Hub so we share the building with a large number of civil servants. Our desks are up on floor 6, so I took my laptop bag and latte up in the lift and over to my favourite desk – desk 17. Like a true creature of habit, I always try to book desk 17 and then mutter under my breath when I realise that someone else has been using it and I need to adjust MY chair and screens again! However, it is a nice building and we are lucky to have our office space here.
Like most days I start with good e-mailing session – catching up with anything that I haven’t yet replied to and taking any actions as needed. Of course, as well as e-mails, there is now MS Teams to attend to! There are always new notifications each morning to investigate. Each morning I also attend to any service desk tickets that have been assigned to me – if you ever log a RefWorks ticket it will most likely head my way!
After about an hour I had my first quick catch up of the day with Helene Gorring. Helene, Richard Bridgen and I keep in regular contact with each other as we do a similar role but focus on different areas of the country. It is great to bounce ideas around between us and we work well together even though we are geographically far apart.
10.30: I joined my first Teams meeting of the day – the mental health librarians network meeting. It was a really interesting and well attended meeting. There were lots of familiar faces from my days as a mental health librarian and it always so nice to see everyone. I gave an update on the changes to the National Core Content and the local procurement of PsycINFO. The group was very engaged so there was lots of good discussion and questions. The main speaker was Lynsey Hawker from the King’s Fund and I took some notes to feedback to the Resource Discovery team.
12.00: As soon as the mental health librarians network finished, I jumped onto the next call – our “LMS roundup.” We have this team meeting every couple of weeks to talk specifically about all things related to our regional library management systems. The main focus of the meeting was the new ILL module on Koha. Richard gave us a demonstration of the ILL module with the further developments that have been made following testing and feedback. We were very impressed and discussed training requirements when it is rolled out later in the year.
13.00: It was time to head outside briefly into the sunshine and grab a sandwich. Wellington Place is lovely when it is sunny – there are plenty of places to sit outside and get a breath of fresh air. Then, back to it! I needed to catch up with a few more messages and e-mails. I also needed to give a couple of library managers a quick call to discuss some resource related questions.
14.00: I joined an Open Fifth webinar/open discussion on tracking engagement with library software. The session focused on Koha and Aspen as products of Open Fifth. I learnt lots of new tips to feed back to the team and our regional LMS administrators.
15.00: It was time to have a catch-up with one of our suppliers. We meet regularly with all of our suppliers to ensure that everything is running smoothly and to consider forthcoming developments, usage statistics and marketing. We discussed the likely impact of AI summaries on usage and access to the best evidence – lots to think about! We also reviewed changes to the supplier website, which looks like a real improvement for NHS staff.
16.00: I finished the day with my regular 1-1 catch up with Lucy Reid – my boss! Lucy is based in London so we are geographically far apart! However that doesn’t matter – as always there was lots to talk about and I gave her an update on all things LMS related. We also talked about the Aspen pilot in YorCat and made plans for end-user evaluation.
17.00: Home time! It was time to do a final e-mail check, log-off, pack-up and head for my train home. It has been a good day but looking forward to getting home and having a good cup of Yorkshire Tea.
Becky Williams
Knowledge and Library Services Development Manager (Resource Discovery – North) NHS England
