It has been a fortnight of revisions. I had a minor tweak to do to my book manuscript, but that was done pretty much in the twinkling of an eye. So far, so good. I zipped it all up in another zip-file, and off it went.
I’m also revising a paper that I’m giving to a professional organisation at the end of April. Most of it is fine, but I have an extra bit I need to add since I last gave the talk to a different group.
But then, yesterday I decided to do some revision to a lecture that I’m scheduled to give to our own students in a month’s time. I’ve given it annually for several years, and each time it gets a little brush-and-polish to reflect any additional thoughts I’ve had on the topic.
This time – and I don’t know why I thought of it – it underwent a slightly more detailed overhaul. Partly, this is because of the work done on my book since this time last year. In March last year, I was still completing the manuscript for the first draft. Now, it’s with the editors, so my thoughts have had time to settle. But actually, it’s quite interesting to stand back and look at this particular lecture, since it draws on my research over two decades, albeit in a pretty superficial way. (Well, how much can be said in an hour?!)
Writing Under Headings
As I read the lecture through for the umpteenth time today, I realised that there were bits of rearrangement to do. I remembered my PhD supervisor’s advice: write headings, then ensure you write to those headings. Today, I retrospectively added some headings and – miraculously – any passages that were slightly out of order pretty much jumped out and slapped me in the face. It definitely improves the clarity of one’s writing.
The controversies around Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s achievements are clearer with some of the life history pruned out, and her friend Professor Blackie is introduced in a more organised way.
Ironically, my listeners won’t even know what’s changed (and they won’t see those new headings!), but I’ll know it’s more polished, and that’s the main thing.
Seriously, why do we do year-end reviews? To show the world what we’re most proud of? Quite possibly. To convince ourselves – and the world – that really, we’ve been very busy and deserve a pat on the back? Perhaps so. I took to the internet to find out why businesses do reviews, and why a career-minded individual might do one of their own.
Consulting the Experts
Braze.com said that year-end reviews offer the chance to ‘create distinctive content’; to ‘build loyalty’ and to remind the world what your particular business does best. To that end, obviously you log milestones, achievements and events. You use multimedia formats, and draw upon customer data. This all makes sense, although I don’t know that I, as an individual, can do all these things. (No customers, for a start!)
I tried again, and found a Harvard Business Review posting about, ‘How to create your own “Year in Review“. There’s plenty of sound advice here, suggesting that I should pause and reflect upon successes and failures; lessons learned; proudest achievements; who has helped me most; how my strengths have helped me to succeed; and whether there’s anything I wish I’d done differently. This is much more introspective, and certainly valuable advice. Whether I’d want to blog about all these headings is a moot point, though.
For me, I have an extra conundrum. I shall be retiring from the Whittaker Library at the beginning of July. I hope to continue the research element of my work, though. So – in one sense I’m writing a career-end review, as far as librarianship is concerned, but it’s not a career-end review for me as a researcher.
The Harvard Business Review suggests using your diary to capture key events on which to reflect. I spent a few minutes doing just that, yesterday. Immediately, I realised that there’s one thing I’m proud of over everything else, and that is that although I spend 85% of my time as an academic librarian, my 15% as a postdoctoral researcher is actually highly productive.
What do I do best? I get things done.
‘She’s a Librarian’
I confess, I don’t like hearing this! It makes me feel as though my research activity is dismissed as dilettantism – that I don’t do badly, considering research isn’t my main role. On the other hand, a fly on the wall would point out that yes, I do spend the majority of my time as a librarian.
Jazz CDs – not a Highlight
So, what did my diary exercise reveal? I’ve catalogued a lot of jazz CDs. This causes me to feel quite a bit of resentment, because I know our readers don’t generally listen to CDs as a format, so all my efforts are to very little avail indeed. Maybe that’s one of the things that I wish I’d done differently. It’s not a high-priority task; however, I am conscious that I don’t want to leave the backlog to my successor. And that’s why I do this dreadfully tedious and repetitive activity!
Equality and Diversity: Stock Development
What I’m more proud of is my efforts to get more music by women and composers of colour, into the library, and most particularly, to ensure that our staff and students know just how much of it there now is in our stock. With a colleague from the academic staff, I’m concocting a plan to raise the profile of this material.
I also suggested maybe there might be a prize for diverse programming …
And I just heard – there is going to be such a prize – it really is happening. A red letter day!
For me, a particularly proud moment was being invited to attend a Masters student’s final recital in June, at which one of these new pieces was played. It was a piece requested by a member of staff – I don’t think it was me that actually stumbled across it – but I certainly sourced it, catalogued and listed it. Whilst I’m heartily sick of cataloguing, I do take pleasure in stock development, and in ensuring there are ample means of discovering the music once we have it.
In September, I was gratified that one of our performance departments reached out to me to request more materials by under-represented composers – a sign that the message is getting through, and that staff appreciate that the library really is trying to help.
Since October, I’ve also been broadening the stock of music inspired by climate change and ecology, including songbooks for school-children, since we have a number of music education students. That pleases me, too.
What else? Dealing with donations to the library, some eagerly received and others needing sifting through. Weeding stock to ensure there’s room for new material, and ensuring that tatty material is removed or replaced depending on how much it’s likely to be used.
User Education
Some things are cyclical – most particularly providing initial library introductions, and later talking to different year-groups about good library research practice. In June, I gave a talk about bibliography to the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, which attracted far more of an audience than I’d ever dreamt of!
Queries, and Research-Related Activity
I’ve also dealt with queries – such as one from a Polish librarian, or another from an elderly enquirer wanting to trace music remembered from childhood. And I talked about my research activities at a library training session, even though I was rather afraid of wasting colleagues’ time going on about something that might not feel very relevant. (This autumn, I also obtained and catalogued – in detail – a book of Scottish songs that I have written a book chapter about. It would be dreadful, wouldn’t it?, if someone read the chapter but couldn’t find the song-book in the library!)
Professional Activity
Professionally, I managed the comms for the IAML Congress in Cambridge this summer (with a little bit of help from mascots Cam, Bridge and Don and a couple of fellow IAML (UK & Ireland) librarians, and I think it went quite well. The stats for the blog and Twitter (“X”) rose gratifyingly during this period. I went to a couple of days in Cambridge, but I didn’t speak this time.
IAML Congress mascot Don
A Researcher with Determination
Early on in 2023, I was gratified to receive an LIHG (Library and Information History Group) Bursary to attend a conference at the University of Stirling between 17-19 April, which was about Reading and Book Circulation 1650-1850. This was to be the first of two major successes this year, for I was also elected the inaugural Ketelbey Fellow in the Institute of Scottish Historical Research at the University of St Andrews. I’ve written extensively about this experience in other blog-posts, so I won’t duplicate it here. However, I can’t resist reminding myself of highlights!
Researching key documents in Martyrs’ Kirk Reading Room
Attending both fortnightly research lectures, and ISHR pub lunches on alternating weeks
Many enjoyable hours concentrating on my book revisions – with a view of the sea!
Twilight from my window, St Katharine’s Lodge, St Andrews
We’re not going on a (sniff!) Summer Holiday …
Being a researcher for 15% of the time is not easy – there simply isn’t the time to do all I want to do. Far from ‘dabbling’ in research, I take this side of my work very seriously indeed. I might have been a librarian most of the time, but I have devoted far more than the designated 10.5 hours a week to my research activity! I took annual leave in the summer to get my book draft completed, and took more annual leave to enable me to spend two, rather than 1.5 days researching in St Andrews. I’m doing it again next week; the book revisions must be completed and submitted very soon, and if the only way I can do it is by taking holiday, then that is what I must do.
In January, I wrote an article for the Glasgow Society of Organists, about a Paisley woman organist and accompanist whom I’d discovered during research over Christmas 2022. Even though it wasn’t for a scholarly journal, it was research done to my usual standard, and I’ve drawn upon that research in one of the chapters in my forthcoming monograph.
I’ve peer-reviewed an article, a book manuscript and a grant application. Considering all that I’ve had on my plate this year, I’m quite proud that I did manage to do these things. I don’t attend reading groups, and I’m not always able to attend research-related events that fall in ‘library time’ – I don’t want to give the impression I’m skiving off library work! But I do want to feel part of the research community, and that was precisely what was so magical about my Fellowship in St Andrews. For those two days a week, I was a researcher, pure and simple.
Roll on 2024! What am I going to do differently?
I’m looking forward to the summer. I feel I’ve been a librarian long enough. I’ll miss doing the user education, and rising to the challenges posed by unexpected or unusual queries. I shan’t be sorry to quit cataloguing, particularly jazz CDs!
I don’t actually have any ‘retirement’ plans as such. Apart from having more time to spend on my role as Honorary Librarian of the Friends of Wighton in Dundee. Whilst I live on the other side of Scotland, at least I shall have more opportunities to leap on a bus or train to get to Dundee Central Library to look after the repertoire that I love.
Little old lady? Not me!
Not Entirely Retiring!
I don’t feel remotely like a little old lady! I hope I’ll continue as a postdoctoral researcher in my present institution, but I’m also keeping my eyes open for any other part-time opportunities that I could pursue alongside that. ’Actively looking’, is the phrase, I think.
With a colleague in another institution, we’re cautiously planning a new research idea. And I also have strands of research that I commenced for my book, but hope to pursue in greater depth once this book is safely further along the publication process. Watch this space.
I never really understood Flow State Theory, beyond knowing that it has something to do with being deeply immersed in what you’re doing, and achieving your best work as a result. (People will have written theses and books about it, but I’m afraid that’s the extent of my understanding of it.) It certainly means having a calm and single-minded focus, in an environment without distractions. Concentration was easy in St Andrews, which is why the Fellowship was such a delight.
Anyway, there I sat at home in my alcove yesterday afternoon, working away at my book revisions and getting on just fine – in the flow, you could say – when Someone sat down beside me and started watching this:-
My state of flow screeched to a halt. Static. To say I felt traumatised and misunderstood is hardly an overstatement. ’Surely you’re not so easily distracted?!’, scoffed the perpetrator. But when you’re trying to weave in links between chapters, and to strengthen a historical thread, you do need all your wits about you, and all your concentration on the task in hand.
I regret to say that, with all the other festive domesticity needing attention, I think my state of flow had diverted itself elsewhere. I wonder if I’ll find it again this side of Christmas?
Because I am retiring from the Library next summer, this is the last Christmas I’ll be working full-time in the run-up to the Christmas holiday. And I have a book deadline. It’s self-inflicted – I was asked when I thought I could get the revisions done by. And I said …
The start of January.
Am I insane? December has always been the busiest month for us. Our Christmas is low-key, but we’re also church organists, and that brings its own challenges. I’ve had the Ketelbey Fellowship in St Andrews as well. The experience was fabulous, but I covered approximately 2700 miles in Scotland in 3 months, which all takes time.
There was only one solution: I tried to ignore Christmas for as long as I could. Did it wait for me? No. ‘You knew it was coming’, said the critic at my shoulder. ‘You should have been more organised.’ (Don’t get me started! Why should WOMEN be more organised? Particularly those who are working *and* keeping everything in the home afloat!) I bought the Christmas pudding and the Paxo stuffing ages ago, anyway!
My Christmas circular was written at the weekend, and most of my Christmas cards were sent. I ordered some presents online, and told myself there was plenty of time.
Mishaps come in Threes
Don’t you just love it when you try so hard to get everything right, and then a different thing goes wrong? I recorded my new carol for the two instrumentalists who had kindly agreed to play with me and the choir … and crashed my Finale software creating cornet parts in Bb. (It wasn’t the cornets’ fault that I accidentally left a file open when experience should have reminded me to close it properly – but it took a five hour system-restore to get the audio back …)
I’ve been taking odd bits of annual leave to get writing done (an alternative definition of ‘working at home’), which meant I could justify doing a supermarket shopping order at 9 am yesterday. I felt guilty, even though it was my time, because I knew I should be writing… and yes, I was too late to book a delivery slot. I have to go and collect it tomorrow evening. But the veg box came by van. It was on the doorstep early this morning, neatly draped in plastic to protect it from the rain. Phew!
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are the biggest chapters, and as I revised, I found myself adding in stuff that I’d discovered during the Fellowship. Chapter 4, which I most enjoyed (and was pleased with – always fatal) led me a merry dance. I splurged on more old teaching materials on eBay. The critic at my shoulder balefully watched small jiffy bags periodically being delivered. Only yesterday, I received a very expensive scan of a delightful new find. (Thankfully, it wasn’t in yet another jiffy bag.) Anyway, it resulted in a new paragraph. Just one, but it was worth it!
I revised Chapter 5 yesterday. Chapter 6 was just about done today – little has had to be done. It’s just a question of weaving in loose ends …
Second Mishap
But we had a service at church tonight, accompanied by Govan Salvation Army Band. It was time for something else to go wrong. This time, in my anxiety not to be late, I misread the clock and inadvertently fed the family an hour early. I’ll never live it down! However, I did get there in plenty of time, and all went well. My carol (about the women who must have been present at the Nativity) met with almost universal approval – well, from the people who were kind enough to comment, at any rate!
And a Third
Finally, home again, can I catch a break? Well, no. I missed some items off the Sainsbury’s order. I’m twirling like a top …
The bus got delayed in traffic today. (Significantly so. My journey was 4.75 hours from door to door!) This did reduce the time I had for book revisions, but I still managed a productive afternoon. I’ve revised the Introduction and created a Preface.
I had already done more work on my literature review, so I worked through the reviewer’s suggestions until I was pretty sure I’d addressed them all. I start with their suggestions and my responses. Once dealt with, each point is ticked off, and digitally ‘crossed out.’
So far, so good. Just a small matter of giving all the chapters the same treatment. I’ll get there eventually.
And because a mild, damp morning turned into a mild, dry afternoon, I even managed a walk by the sea. What could be nicer? (I didn’t quite get onto the sand, but next time, if I’m in trainers! …. )
Late lunchtime in St AndrewsUpstairs & downstairs flats with outside stairs
I’m currently reading a new book in the Routledge Insider Guides to Success in Academia series:
Be Visible or Vanish: Engage, Influence and Ensure your Research has Impact (Routledge, 2023)
The authors are Inger Mewburn and Simon Clews; since I’ve followed Inger’s work for a number of years, I knew it would be good, and I got it for RCS Library recently.
It’s an approachable guide, and the kind of book you can tuck into a bag or pocket to read at free moments during the day. This morning as I drank my pre-work latte, I was reading the chapter on making academic small-talk, and being ready with an answer to the inevitable question:-
So, what is your research about?
(A reasonable question in any situation!)
It particularly resonated for me this morning, because I take up my honorary Ketelbey Fellowship at St Andrews tomorrow. Not only that, but a family member had been asking me the same question last night! What are you studying there? Why there? How are you going to benefit from the experience? It wasn’t intended as preparation for the sort of questions I should be anticipating, but I nonetheless took it as a prompt to think carefully about how I shall be introducing myself when I meet new colleagues!
I’ve also heard this described as an ‘elevator pitch’ – though in my case, I would need the elevator to travel more than one floor! As I’ve said before, the title of my recently-submitted book doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. However, it outlines what my research has been about in recent years so I have to be able to trot it out.
A social history (yes, that describes it well)
of amateur music-making (make no mistake, that’s what we’re talking about – it’s not generally about serious, cutting-edge classical music)
and Scottish national identity (this is such a big deal, that it’s inextricably interwoven throughout the whole book)
[And then there’s the subtitle!] : Scotland’s printed music, 1880-1951 (I’ve been looking at the output of Scottish publishers during this era, which proved much more interesting than even I had ever imagined. When I got to 1951, I got to fever-pitch excitement. You’ll have to wait for the book to find out why!)
But, back to the questions of last night. I’ll be revising the book when it returns from the reviewer(s). I’ll also be investigating a particular aspect of my research that still merits even deeper investigation. I’ll be exploring a bigger, richer library collection than I usually have access to, and I look forward to engaging with a lot of different research scholars, hopefully gaining fresh ideas and maybe ideas for new directions or collaborations.
Most of all, I’ll be settling into my academic role – yes, I know, I’m a seconded researcher back in my home institution, but it’s new for me to be a Fellow for a few months – and I’ll be thinking about my future ‘second career’ as a researcher once I retire from music librarianship next summer.
People, people! My completed book draft is now exactly TWO WORDS under the word limit. Eureka! And I’ve written my abstracts for each chapter. I still have a couple of things I want to check, and some other admin-type stuff – and we can’t go out to celebrate today. Anyway, that’s more appropriate when the manuscript gets sent off.
Nonetheless, we’ll celebrate modestly, with a McDonald’s Happy Meal …
Allow me to introduce an expressionless bear! Generally, I consider his expression to be concerned and reassuring, but today he seems to display no expression whatsoever. Which is appropriate for a blog post about unneccessary expressions.
I would like to have begun with an earnest introduction, explaining that this is part of a series of blog posts intended to help newcomers to scholarly writing. Indeed, I do wish to help you, and I’d love to write that series, but at the moment, my focus is on my book deadline in six days’ time. So, this posting is just a collection of thoughts arising from my second edit of the book draft! It might still be helpful – I do hope so.
In the second week of my intensive book revision fortnight, I’m on the warpath for unneccessary expressions. I still needed to lose a few words in order to meet the deadline of 75,000 words, so I’ve been compiling a glossary of terms best either avoided or used sparingly!
‘Always with an eye for an opportunity’. Cancel that cliche!
‘At this time‘. If you’ve already defined the time-frame, there’s no need to over-egg the pudding!
‘Essentially‘. No, that word has to go. The genre either was, or wasn’t a hybrid form. No ‘essentially’ about it. Same applies to ‘Evidently’.
‘In actual fact’. Basically, if it’s a fact, it’s a fact, and doesn’t need to be labelled as one. (If it’s a surprising or unexpected fact, fair enough.)
And here I am, overdoing ‘Indeed‘ again, too. I can’t have seven ‘indeeds’ in one chapter!
‘Interestingly,’ …? Obviously it’s interesting or it shouldn’t be there. Another word down!
‘… is on record as havingperformed’. ‘Performed’ would do!
‘It is clear that‘. This is just padding, the same as ‘evidently‘. A quick way to lose four words (or one!).
‘More significantly in the present context‘ – oh, this is a good one! Six unneccessary words. Just say what you’re going to say.
‘Repertoire‘. Use judiciously. ‘Song and dance repertoire’ can often be encapsulated in ‘Song and dance’!
‘… seems to‘. Stop prevaricating! Does it or doesn’t it? Keep this expression for when you’re really not sure.
‘Specifically‘ is often a redundant word (said she, just deleting another one).
‘… was groundbreaking in being one of the first‘. Okay, she was one of the first. ‘Groundbreaking’ can be taken as read. Three more words gone.
‘… would also have been‘. Or, more concisely, ‘was’!
Acceptable Informality? Or Not …
I had a feeling that I shouldn’t really be writing that something was ‘in your face’; nor that we ‘should call out’ something that is now politically incorrect or considered offensive. So, I’m afraid I asked Chat GPT what it thought!
I consider myself enlightened now. ‘In your face’ is apparently unacceptably informal in scholarly writing, so I won’t use it.
However, I can call out whatever I like, with impunity. There you go, then!
I’ve done the first edit of the book. Cutting roughly 11% off each chapter was a good start, but each chapter gets a bibliography, and I couldn’t know how many words that would add. I do now!
Each chapter has to lose 2.5% more words. Say, between 8-10 words a page. It doesn’t sound so bad that way, and it does make me a bit more ruthless about anything extra that doesn’t carry the thread forward.
I still want to get this done by the end of the month if humanly possible. And I do have a short list of little points I need to check, so I need to find time to sort those out too.
But whilst I count down to completion at the end of July, I’m also counting down to the beginning of next July when I stop being a librarian and can hopefully just concentrate on research. (49 weeks to go. No time to stitch an imaginative weekly square this week, just a plain one.)
But I have the Ketelbey Fellowship in St Andrew’s to look forward to this autumn first!
There’s an introduction, eight chapters and a conclusion. (Chapter 7 is more of an interlude than a proper chapter, so maybe I could call it seven and a half chapters …. ) Anyway, I’ve taken two weeks’ annual leave to revise and prune this book draft, and after four days and evenings hard at it, I can now say I’ve only got three (two and a half) chapters and the conclusion left to deal with.
It seems punishing, but the idea is that I’ll spot inconsistencies if I’ve dealt with it all in a condensed space of time, so that earlier sections are still fresh in my mind as I come to the later chapters. This has proven to be the case, so far. Did they move to London in the late 1920s or the late 1930s? Ah, yes, THERE they are! Sorted.
All the while, snip, snipping and re-wording to get the word-count down by 11% across the board.
I had a tiny panic when I couldn’t actually find Chapter 5 this morning. For ten seconds I thought, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be there’, followed by fifteen seconds of, ‘Oh dear, it’s not in either folder where it ought to be’. Five seconds of ,’OH, SH**!!’, and then there it was. I’d renamed it at some point, but not in the Book Schedule document that’s meant to keep me on track. Phew!
I finally ground to a halt at 9.30 this evening. Chapter 5 is neatly tied up, and filed in two places on the cloud. I’m just feeling a bit frayed around the edges …
But just think how great tomorrow’s going to be! I wrote Chapters 6, 8 and the Conclusion so recently that they should be reasonably fresh in my mind. I just might get Chapter 6 and tiny Chapter 7 revised tomorrow – wouldn’t that be good?
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 