Things went according to plan. I wrote more articles and papers, with a view to a book submission a bit further along the line. As you’ve read in earlier blogposts, I did eventually submit my thesis for publication with Ashgate. It included an extra chapter, written to embrace the research that I did subsequent to the PhD. As I write this, I have a rather wonderful document in front of me – my book. My copies have just arrived by post, in advance of their publication mid-March 2013. We’re having a launch in the Whittaker Library on 26th April, with talks from me and our Director of Academic Development, and music from some of our students and friends.

I’ve also given occasional lectures at two of our local universities, and talks to some local interest groups.

Best of all, I’m currently seconded for 40% of my time to be a postdoctoral research fellow on an AHRC-funded project involving the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Which you could say is the best of both worlds, as I still have the stability of the “day-job”, whilst having the opportunity to extend my research interests. It benefits other people, too, as a new professional has the opportunity to cover my librarianship role for those two days a week – and that effectively developes expertise for the next generation of subject librarians. (I’m not at the end of my career yet – as the main breadwinner, I have four hungry males to support – but I’m more than halfway through.)

Having worked full-time as a librarian for nearly three decades, it’s interesting to find myself job-sharing for the first time. It’s working well; we’re getting used to the leaving “handover notes” for each other, not to mention tasks left half-done for someone else to complete, queries partially answered, and the catching up that occupies those first hours back on the job again.

My research existence takes place outside the library – whether elsewhere in the Conservatoire building, or across at the University – and the first thing I learned on Day One was not to show my face in the Library on a research day! If you’re seen, you’re naturally enough assumed to be available. And cries of “while you’re here …”, just cause embarrassment all round. Best not to be there, until Wardrobe run me up a cloak of invisibility.

I wasn’t intending to open library-related emails on research days, and an out-of-office message alerts my unavailability, though I’ve realised it keeps things flowing more smoothly if I open anything that looks as though it can be answered quickly. After all, I can always forward it to my mini-me.

So – does having a PhD make a difference?

We had our first project team plenary meeting last week. I almost had to pinch myself! I might not have ascended to the dizzy heights of a promotion, but considering all that I’ve done post-doctorally, having a PhD has certainly made a difference.  I’ve even been asked to talk to postgraduates about career trajectories, and that’s something I never imagined myself doing!  But I’d have to qualify my response to the question.  Complacency gets you nowhere – it takes determination to capitalise on the potential benefits.  But if you can pick up the ball and run with it – that gives you the best chance of benefiting from your hard-earned qualification.

Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era

However, life goes on, so my music librarian self has continued to sort out reading lists for the new curriculum, catch up with cataloguing, and generally do all the stuff that music librarians do.   And blog for the departmental performing arts blog, Whittaker Live, naturally. (Do take a look, and tell me if you like it!)

In my spare time, I’ve recently written and submitted a completely fresh article about a Victorian song collection that I stumbled across a couple of months ago.  This one was published in Glasgow, and is the earliest I’ve encountered with sol-fa as well as conventional notation.  The editor was a music professor at what became the University of Strathclyde.

The other day, I got an earlier article returned to me.   Our team didn’t win.  (The paper was somewhat savaged, to be honest.)  That hurt, but hey, that’s life.  I took on board the bits of the criticism that made sense, and revised it again last night.  So far, so good.  But this morning,  I awoke with the realisation that I could not send it out into the world again until I’d done a bit more information-gathering.  No point in stating the equivalent of, “And I haven’t bothered to source those twelve books of correspondence.”  It’s okay to say, “I tried but was unable to”, but it’s just not good to do a literary shrug and fling one’s hands up in the air.  So I’ve taken steps.  Here’s hoping I manage to find what I’m looking for!

I’ve kept the most exciting news until last: I’m to be seconded as a part-time post-doc research assistant for an AHRC-funded project at the University of Glasgow!  I can hardly believe that I get to do research for two solid days a week for the next three years.  I mean, I didn’t even get to do that when I was doing my PhD, so this really does feel like a honour and a privilege.  We start later on, in the Autumn.  I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it again once it’s under way.

So that’s it.  My book went to the Post Office, and its feet barely touched the ground before it was whisked away to the sorting office.  To anyone who has already published a book, my apologies, but you’ll probably agree that sending off one’s first book is quite exciting!

Although I’m far from unpublished, I’ve never published a book before.   I took a couple of days off the nine-to-five in order to get everything printed and saved to USB etc, etc.  I’m speaking at a conference tomorrow, but at least I can look forward to a couple of days’ rest and relaxation after that.

Now people are asking me, “What next?”  But it takes about 11 months from submission to publication, I’m told, so there could well be more to do to it yet.  And getting it indexed, of course.

Meanwhile, a colleague has lodged an application for research funding, so that’s something else which might occupy me in due course.  And wearing my “nine-to-five” librarianly hat, there’s plenty to be getting on with in any case.

If I haven’t posted here much of late, it’s because my spare time has been spent working on my book manuscript, and at the same time writing a short series of lectures, a book review and a couple of conference papers.  (Like buses, nothing comes along for ages and then suddenly the opportunities come in a flurry.)

I did an evening talk to a local association a week past Monday; and this weekend I’m off to the IAML(UK & Irl) Annual Study Weekend in Cardiff – with a new paper to deliver.  My research was on historic Scottish song collecting, but last year I gave a paper in Dublin embracing Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, too.  So it follows that in Cardiff I need to talk about Welsh bards.  (Strange to say, I now know a huge amount more about them than I ever did while I was doing my PhD!)  Still, it’s all grist to the mill – it expands my repertoire of things I feel able to speak on, and everything goes on the CV.

Looking ahead at my diary, I see I need to write another lecture next week, and the following week the final lecture, besides revising a paper for a local conference.

May is looking strangely empty.  I wonder what will turn up to occupy my evenings and weekends?!

Being a librarian rather than a lecturer, I don’t have lecture plans and essay marking to do, so I suppose I have a slight time advantage during termtime – though lecturers have MUCH more time in vacations!  (Even if they’re still “working” while the students are away, they don’t have the week-in, week-out 9-5 routine that we library folk “enjoy”…)

Back to the book, though.  I had a bit of reading I wanted to do in relation to a conference paper I’ve committed to, so it was New Year’s Day before I sat down and wrote a schedule for work on the book.  So far, so good – I shall have finished Chapter 3 by the weekend, and that means I’m right up to date.  Thereafter I’ve allowed a month for chapter 4 and the new chapter 5.  (It’s a book-based-on-a-thesis, but chapter 5 is new, and that means chapter 4 will undergo a tiny, modest bit of pruning in order to avoid duplication.)

A bigger question is the question of images.  I knew I’d have to pay for them myself.  Until today, I had no idea just how much I might have to pay.  Owch.  I see I shall have to factor in time not just for SOURCING and OBTAINING them, but also for finding the cheapest way of getting digital images.

I’ve written papers and articles before.  (And reviews, and short stories, and even a magazine serial.)  But 2012 is the year when I get to grips with obtaining images and their appropriate rights.  All I can say is, watch this space!

Oh, and a belated Happy New Year to you while I’m at it!  Here’s a Hogmanay posting I wrote for The Thesis Whisperer.

And I only had the pleasure of changing library leaflets – that was a marathon enough.  (Change the name, change the hyperlinks, ensure the formatting is consistent and fits the A5 leaflet size, convert to a pdf, remove the old and upload the new to the VLE.  For each of a dozen or so leaflets.  Did you detect the silent scream?)

That was what I had to do.  What I also decided to do was to blog the 30 days’ events around Scotland that marked this epoch-making change in our identity.  The performers are doing the touring; I’m just following their Tweets and uploading pictures onto WhittakerLive, our performing arts blog.  That’s because I feel we should somehow “archive” a record of the month for posterity.  You want to take a look?  Visit http://whittakerlive.blogspot.com!  We’re only halfway through the month, but it’s looking quite good, though I say it myself.  Sadly (yes, I use the term advisedly), I can’t help myself checking Twitter even when I’m NOT working, to see if there are any more nice images to upload! 

What else does a librarian do in September?  Well, there are the reading lists (three stars to academic colleagues who give me the lists before term starts).  And checking to see if any exist as e-books.  It must be easier in bigger institutions and for subjects like law and the sciences.  Publishers of music textbooks don’t do large print-runs and seldom seem to see the value of marketing an e-book as well.  But maybe things are just changing slowly.

And then there’s my research existence.  I’ve been polishing up the first draft of a conference paper that’s going to be published in Fontes, and now I need to start a book review.  Right now, in fact …

For example, this summer I spoke at the IAML Music Libraries’ international conference in Dublin.  My subject was ‘Minstrels and Metaphors’.  This is a fascinating subject which has preoccupied me for a good few months since graduating with my PhD.  (It was in Music, though you could be forgiven for thinking it was in literature or cultural history).

There were interesting challenges, though. 

To start with, my research had been into Scottish late 18^th and 19^th century song collectors, but I was speaking in Ireland.  Easy; I simply had to extend my scope to make it Celtic, as opposed to just Scottish.   Enter Thomas Moore, the United Irishmen, and a touch of Welsh bardic nostalgia. 

And secondly, how was I going to make musicology, literature and cultural history relevant to music librarians, not all of whom had studied music history to degree level?  I got round that by emphasising the significance of the song collections I was talking about, and the importance of preserving them in our music libraries.

All went well.  I discovered some fascinating material on Irish contemporary collections while I was preparing my paper, and I now have my own personal mission to see what Irish collections are available in Glasgow academic special collections!

But then …!  Last week I was invited to speak at next year’s national IAML (UK and Ireland) study weekend.  It’s in Cardiff.  Now, I’ve looked at a couple of Welsh collections in connection with this year’s Celtic paper for the Dublin conference.  I’m not sure I want to typecast myself as “the librarian who talks about 19^th century Celtic song collections”.  It’s enthralling (to me), but a bit limiting.  So, what to do?

My vague plan is to indulge in a bit of crowd-sourcing.  If I can set up a wiki for people in other countries to share their own national ‘minstrels and metaphors’ findings, I will then have a much wider scope to talk about – and, even better, I can talk about crowd-sourcing and an international research project, as well as 19^th century Celtic song collections.

Anyone feel like telling me about French collections (with music, not words-only publications) during the French Revolution?  I’ll post a link as soon as I’ve set up my wiki!

So this week, your music information specialist found it necessary to post links about the Edinburgh Festivals, Glasgow’s Piping Live (and the launch of the Piping Centre’s ‘Noting the Tradition’ project, which I attended), and various research-support projects that I’ve come across.  Like #phdchat, on Twitter.  There’s also a #phdchat wiki on pbworks, and now there’s a blogspot blog, too.  I feel a bit like an octopus, reaching out to grab all these interesting ideas to pass on, in the hope they’ll appeal to our staff and student readers.

This is all well and good, but eventually I reach the stage where I feel I’m constantly connected.  It’s all useful stuff, but the more I draw into my web, the more I feel I’m only engaging with things at the most surface level.  At this point, I need to turn the computer and mobile phone off before I go bonkers!  Mind you, http://WhittakerLive.blogspot.com is looking good these days, and I like to think interest in it is increasing.  I’m also getting to “know” quite a few people with similar professional interests to my own.

At the end of my week off, I find I’ve got quite a bit of domesticity done, burned a few calories at the leisure centre, not to mention writing a conference report and turning a presentation into a journal article.  Result!  If I could just find the strength of mind to keep away from the internet for the weekend, I’d probably feel more rested when I get back to the office.  Being a workaholic isn’t always a good thing …

As a career choice, music librarianship has many good points.  But sometimes, as in any job, there are mundane days or even weeks.

After a fortnight’s annual leave and then the two conferences (musicology and music librarianship), I was prepared for the bulging inbox.  Mind you, the physical intray wasn’t so bad – it didn’t necessitate an early coffee break, anyway!

But the donations had been proliferating behind my back.  Now, I’m not ungrateful – far from it – but once they’ve arrived in my office (which I share with several people), they have to be sorted through and places found for them.  At least these days we can download many of the catalogue records from a shared database.  In the case of this particular donation from a publisher – only half of them were on the database.  Guess which ones haven’t yet been catalogued? 

Because there was another task screaming for my attention: rebranding.  The rebranding of our institution means that all my beautifully authored library guides need rebranding, too.

We now have an official font, and all the spacing  changed when I revised into the latest version of Word.  Oh, joy!

Writing a conference report for the trust which sponsored my bursary, was a pleasure by comparison.  As was the editing of some seminar notes into a newsletter article, and the updating of WhittakerLive, the performing arts blog which I author on behalf of the Library.

In between all of which, I was carefully saving useful weblinks to Diigo for possible future use either on WhittakerLive, or in information literacy and other library training.  Did you know you can post a weblink via Diigo directly onto your blog?  I now have a feed from Diigo to Delicious (which goes to Whittaker live); another from Bibliophile (RILM’s blog) to Whittaker live, and I’m using Diigo and Evernote synchronously on my android and two PCs.  Being a music librarian doesn’t mean you have to be a techie-geek, but it helps.  Want to follow me on Twitter?  I’m karenmca.  Stands to reason, really!

I was determined to provide audio clips for my Minstrels and Metaphors paper at IAML 2011 in Dublin this week.  I engaged a thoroughly modern minstrel (one of our students). We rehearsed, and I booked the studio.  Unfortunately, even modern minstrels have human frailties, and mine lost her voice 36 hours before the recording session.

I texted back what any self-respecting professional would say: “Don’t worry about it – I’ll sort something out.”

And I did – I sang to my own accompaniment. Problem solved.  Apart, that is, from the fact that I’m not a trained singer.  I don’t like the sound of my own voice, so I disliked the majority of my tracks.

However, I discovered an out-of-print CD with a couple of the Thomas Moore songs, and Hyperion helpfully provided me with an authorised copy, within just 24 hours.  So there I was, all dressed up and ready to go.  Two recordings of my piano-playing (perfectly acceptable); one of my self-accompanied singing (tolerable); one of my tracks strategically dropped;  and two very nice Hyperion ones.

Off I flew to Belfast, chaired a session, proceeded south to Dublin, and dived into the second conference.  Twenty minutes before the appointed hour, I presented myself at the podium of an absolutely huge auditorium (400-seater lecture theatres are larger than I’m used to!), and handed over the discs.

The machine swallowed the first one, refused to recognise it, play it or eject it.  (Did a higher power cause this to happen to spare my blushes?)  The moral, of course, is to save the track to a memory stick and embed it in the PowerPoint.  I could have kicked myself.  The disc was finally ejected and handed back to me after a further two presentations.

I suppose there are some things that you just learn the hard way!  It was fortunate, to say the least, that another speaker had coincidentally played one of the Irish songs that I would have finished up with, so the audience had already heard what Moore’s songs sound like.   At any event, I will know better another time.  You can never be too well-prepared.

The positive side was that I had more time for the presentation, which went like a dream and was favourably received. Thank heavens for that! 

(I’m preparing the paper to submit to the Editor of Fontes, but in the meantime, readers might like to visit my web-page on Minstrels and Metaphors - it’s a page I added to our performing arts blog, WhittakerLive.)