My induction program included meetings with two of the seven liaison officers - academics who've volunteered to be the link person with the library and filter such things as books orders and the like. But I thought I ought to meet the other five if possible. Friday last I emailed them all and have had three replies. Hence today and yesterday has seen meetings with four of them and another tomorrow.

An interesting variety of people. One from England, one from Uganda, one from France, one from Japan... It was hard not to warm to people who'd say "I'm passionate about books" or wished they'd got your job! Clearly this extra duty on top of their normal academic work wasn't quite the short straw I'd been led to believe it was.

They were all very welcoming and interested to hear about differences between here and TheOldPlace. I didn't quite dare point them to this blog but I could summarize briefly.

The most obvious difference was that I was talking to them. TheOldPlace didn't have such liaison and I was expected to do my best to get to know and make links with every academic in the subject areas I was responsible for. Where staff were reasonably library friendly, this worked well, but it was difficult to maintain a connection with everyone. This does seem a sensible solution.

Another thing we discussed was the much more 'hands on' approach of the academics in ordering (and weeding etc). They all seemed very amenable to discussion but I invariably got the distinct impression that there were things that they all might put their foot down about. One had a predilection for print books over anything electronic (even admitting to liking their smell) [1]. Another wasn't keen to see a huge, unwieldy, ringbound, looseleaf, 14 volume monstrosity that takes a fair bit of staff time to update disappearing. It costs nearly $800 and is also available free on the web. Continually up-to-date. Available from the desktop instead of coming to the library. (He feared the (government) website disappearing.) A third wasn't too enthusiastic about my observation that if there are space shortages, perhaps the printed abstracts and indexes might have had their day now that they are available electronically...

Hmmm, I might go off this whole 'hands on' faculty deal after all!




[1] which particularly amused me - though I didn't say so - as I've often drawn odd looks from those who've caught me sniffing particularly aromatic books. The ones that remind me of 3rd grade for some reason are particularly worth a smell!