Last day at work for the year.

The rest of the University (and almost certainly TheOldPlace) are clearing out at lunchtime. Here the library has a directive from above to be open till 5pm. So open we are, and at work we'll be.

Still, I quite like this time of year when it is quiet and I could get on with things in preparation for the conference in January. And I did take the liberty of an excessively long lunch break.

Come 4.55 and even my boss is telling me to go home. Five minutes to pack up and log out. But I've barely even seen a student all day, never mind interacted with one, so it should have come as absolutely no surprise that as I'm switching off the light dead on 5 I get an enquiry.

And not a particularly quick one either as I get in the subtleties of database access from offcampus over Christmas. Still, I could answer the question and I suppose it did make it worth being there till then. It only remained to really have to run to catch the ferry I needed. I think I may have lost a glove in the process - we'll see, next year.

But this is me signing off for 2006 and back at the beginning of January.

Great party last night. Ok, so it didn't go on that long. Some teachers of my acquaintance who were also having their Christmas party last night (and who went on till well after midnight) ribbed me about librarians really knowing how to party when we were going to be thrown out at 8pm. But the team who must lock up couldn't be kept up too late!

The Head had arranged food (lots - and much better than the conference the day before) and kindly bought drinks himself. As we could get into the new extension the event was held in the new atrium. Strict instructions, naturally, not to spill anything on the new carpeting! The loans team took care of the music and my senior colleague who'd sorted the food and drink installed himself as barman behind the long and brandnew issue desk which became an impromtu bar.

Some of the chief builders attended too, the President and 'our' PVC made an appearance, and the odd family relation turned up as well. With a retirement to take care of as well the Head made a few remarks including news that the PVC had agreed to some monetary recompense for putting up with the delays [1] , and the building company were even kind enough to have a gift of a bottle of wine for every member of staff.

It was great to see the smiles on so many faces as we variously took ourselves around the floors, bridges, empty shelves, new offices, vast cupboards and the like with drinks in hand. And the smiles were before the gift announcements and much alcohol had been consumed so it was pretty clear that everyone was very pleased with how the place looked. Of course, it remains to be seen how it all works in practice. But it does look good.

And kind of makes me wish I'd started work at TheOldPlace just a little earlier and seen the same process. (I'd always been led to believe that I was well out of all the chaos that reigned as the building work then had been finished.)

And just before we left? Yes, someone managed to spill wine on the new carpet. Close to me - but nothing to do with me which was a relief! Never fear. My senior colleague announced that he was good at soaking up alcohol. And promptly did so doubly by finishing off his wine and getting down with paper towels to work on the floor and demonstrate that the new carpet was actually remarkably resilient to such abuse.

[1] Which of course immediately made me feel guilty because I've not strictly put up with all the hassle having only been here a dog watch. Ah well.

Great tour. Pretty detailed (lasted nearly three hours).

I now know more about what they do/have than I probably need to, but it's never going to bore a librarian (at least not me) being taken around a library. I even found my Dad listed in one of their naval collection volumes which was unexpected.

I'd suggested to the colleagues going on the tour with me that we did some 'creative swiping' - as learnt at the creativity course a month or so ago. This worked quite well and we spotted some things we could 'take away' and also saw things they might learn from us which encouraged us about our practice.

The only disappointment was that we didn't get to see 'behind-the-scenes' as it were and that I still didn't manage to see/meet my former colleague who works there (reportedly!). But I could leave her a Christmas card and we'll hopefully meet in the new year and maybe I can see the 'other' side of the library then. (Though to be honest the glimpses we had made me think it looked pretty cramped).

Today's the day we hear! They really are going to "hand over" the building.

Lots of work still to do and the proper new front entrance won't open till the new year, but it really is going to happen!

But first I've a visit with several others who've not been - including H - to the local Public Library. Not sure how long it will be, but we assume we'll be back before the after work party the Head is throwing.

All day at in internal conference on teaching and learning today. The theme of this year's event was 'assessment' so I nearly decided not to sign up several weeks back. I'm glad I did, however. Not only because I do have colleagues that are involved in assessment - so it may come my way yet, but because the were many ideas and papers that were of interest and inspiration in what I already do.

It was well put together and the keynote speakers were both excellent. The only real complaint was that with seven strands to choose from you felt as if you were missing a huge amount. Although all the papers were published in a volume we could carry around with us, it was hard to digest that much very quickly. On the other hand, there were three awards for 'best paper' that were kept a secret till the end of the day and I found I'd managed to pick two of them to attend. The overall winner was one I quite agreed was excellent - it's presentation had been great too. One of the others I had to admit had worthy content but had been presented very dully.

Actually, I say I spent the day there but having started at 8 it went on till a little after 2 when it broke for lunch. And that was it! Lunch was nothing to write home about but by the time that was over at a little after 3, it was clear that colleagues (and my boss) weren't returning to work. It had been a pretty intense day so I decided not to show them up and headed home as well. Nice to do that in the daylight.

On the whole though, the day had been very similar to such events at TheOldPlace and perhaps next time, when the theme isn't assessment I'll feel braver about looking at the possibility of presenting something. In fact, H and our boss had done something on e-literacy but very few had turned up. We decided that it was more to do with the fact that they'd been allotted a double session (which meant, presumably, people felt they'd be missing two other possible papers) rather than reluctance to attend anything libraryish. In fact, they'd not mentioned the 'l' word!

But good for H being brave enough to contribute so early on!

Meanwhile, I've fallen into a discussion (via email) with the Head of Library over the possibility of a creative room/space/zone or some such. This was suggested by a former colleague and does sound a good idea. (see www.uea.ac.uk/lhi for an example)

Much to my suprise the Head isn't opposed to the idea and seems to at least be giving some thought to it and how it might work. After all, we have various new group study areas and such like, one of which could conceivably be set aside for such a project.

I'm not holding my breath, but it will be interesting to see what will happen.

Growing sense of anticipation today as the extension nears completion.

Which is ironic because the activity that is making it feel as though 'things are happening' is actually the removal of all the furniture (desks/chairs) from the old part of the library. Money has been put aside to replace everything so that it matches throughout, I understand.

If there's money over then staff desks will get replaced (and it looks like that will happen). But not those that are fixed. Such as mine!

Bullying, harassment and intimidation today.

No, not a chance to indulge it but another management briefing on dealing with it. Bit of a downer in some ways as certain attendees could cite a fair few examples of it going on in the uni. But at a rough guess it's no worse than anywhere else and I suppose I should be grateful that I've encountered so little in my last couple of jobs. ('course there was the incident in the job prior to those two where I worked and lived on the premises, but I really don't want to talk about being sent to bed with no supper when in my mid-twenties!).

Workshop this morning on a new electronic voting system that one of the centers in the uni (the one with the strange hospital dummies and operating theater and the like) has just bought into. This one allows up to 110 students at a time to participate and unlike the one at the day-long staff conference I attended a few weeks back, is portable. Which means you could book it and take it to whatever class you were teaching in. Certainly beats my colored card into a cocked hat.

This was a top end system (the top end system?) and could do all sorts of clever things such as not only voting on ABCD answers and the like, but also could cope with text message responses so you could, for example, have students suggesting search terms for databases (bit more useful perhaps than the example we had of what was our favorite tv program). Or you could tell them that if they wanted feedback on all their responses, they could text their email address. All the answers were stored in a database that you could review later, but of course were also displayed - if you wanted - on the screen in natty bar/pie charts or whatever. Or even combining two questions to produce X-Y scatter plots.

I'm really really going to have to develop some uses for this! (And I wasn't the only one, two other library colleagues were there getting equally inspired). It certainly seems like an interesting way of engaging the students and getting some instant feedback without necessarily putting them on the spot. If they liked the cards, I can see them loving this - 'specially if it's well designed round the teaching rather than just done for the sake of it.

Our team's Christmas meal today at lunchtime. A dozen or so of us marched off to a local hostelry for a feast and a half. Fairly rolled back to work. Of particular note was the presence of my predecessor. I'd only heard of him by rumor before, but it appears he does exist. Enjoying retirement, roaming the city and its markets on a bike, popping up for events like lunch. Felt about as odd as encountering a new member of the team at TheOldPlace last Thursday. Fractures in the fabric of things that don't feel quite 'right'. But I can't put my finger on quite what it is.

Quiet day at work which gave me a chance to catch up on blogs and other things that aren't vital day-to-day but I'd like to keep up with. Where's that training on 'information overload' gone?

Three days off this week (plus the creativity on Monday) so just Friday to catch up with emails and everything else piling up just as rapidly as it ever did.

On one day off I went up to TheOldPlace and enjoyed eating out with former colleagues. (Hi there, if you're reading!). Also managed to catch the day they turned the Christmas lights on - I must have heard there'd be wine and mince pies. And took my formal leave of the VC (who happens to be stepping down next summer) so I could wish him well as well. Turns out our friendly PVC - ultimately responsible for libraryish matters and very positive about work that S and I did on our alternative library - is being promoted to VC. So I was glad I bumped into him and could say congratulations. I couldn't resist the opportunity to point out that a lot of my staff 'development' and helpful relationships came directly out of the annual staff conference that no longer runs. Whether that will prod any movement on having them return will remain to be seen.

Good chance to do some Christmas shopping as well. Though in an effort not to carry too much around I left a couple of items to buy later on Amazon - only to find that they don't seem to be available there much to my surprise. Should have picked them up while I saw them. One thing I did pick up was a book on excellence in drumming which I couldn't resist. Read it in two days flat as well it was so good.

What was bizarre was that this afternoon we had a demo of a database full of videos made specially for students of business, law, engineering, archictecture and so on. Some of them covered so-called 'soft skills' like leadership or time management etc. One of them caught my eye: 'Drumming our way to excellence!' What an odd piece of consilience. Anyway, we're having a trial so I can watch the video in a week or two.

More creativity this morning.

This time an internal course on managing creativity and change.

I'm glad I hadn't been put off attending by the course I attended a few weeks back. This was very different.

I guess I'd been expecting more tips and techniques, but it was somewhat more management focussed. And I enjoyed that as it meant new things to learn and apply.

Prior to the day itself we'd had some prep work to do in the shape of Belbin's Team Role Analysis. We received the results of this amongst other things and then went through them with everyone in the room standing along the scale of our various strengths (or not). This was then applied to the creative process so we could see how we (or other team members) might best contribute.

I learned a lot about myself in the process. I came out very strongly as a 'plant' which may explain the meeting last Friday where a problem had been raised and I'd contributed quite a few 'thoughts' before feeling maybe I was overstepping the mark and shutting up. My two "least preferred roles" were as a 'coordinator' and as an 'implementer'. (Apparently the last have "practical common sense and a good deal of self-control and discipline" which is probably why I scored so low on that scale!)

But what was particularly interesting was that two colleagues were also present. H on the first of such days for her, and SE her office colleague. So with all three of us in the same team at the same level, I was intrigued by how we might compare. Perhaps somewhat worryingly they were both at the other end of the room when we lined up on the plant scale - especially as SE came out as an 'implementer' which was described as "intolerant of plants"!

But on a brighter note the three of us were absolutely identical on the 'team workers' scale and all three of us as high as anyone else in the room.

Fascinating.

6 hats was in the folder we were given, but we never talked about that.

The afternoon was spent doing some 'stakeholder analysis' and planning stakeholder commitment out of that. This was new to me and an interesting process that I only didn't really enjoy because I ended up in a group looking at age discrimination which got bogged down in some minutae of the law.

'Review' meeting with the Head this morning. Don't recall these (except when had formal appraisals that were never quite yearly) from 'TheOldPlace' but perhaps it's only a feature of being new here. It was apparently just to check everything was ok and as it was soon degenerated into side-tracks of very specific issues I would never have planned on raising.

Still, it seemed to fit a pattern of induction and training and general 'welcomeness' that leaves me feeling a warm, fuzzy glow of something. Not entirely sure what, but the experience was certainly positive.