Not a lot happening today but preparing for a presentation on blog readers on Wednesday. Which means, amongst other things, I've got lost in YouTube and in particular this which was a delight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_WXP7lUWM

Here's a computer department delight for you:

a week or so ago I was trying to get another problem resolved by a very friendly/helpful IT guy who was impressed by the error code I was getting that he'd never come aross before. Anyway, as he had to pass the problem on to someone else, I thought I'd mention that I'd filled the 600meg I was given on a network drive and could use more space if that was allowed. No problem, came the reply, have 4 gig.

So you can imagine my spluttering today when we were told that we had to tidy up the space that 55 odd people (definitely odd!) use as the shared library drive for files we all access. We must tidy up because there was no way we could have more room. Guess how much space we take up on the drive? 1.6 gig.

Am I going round in circles, stepping back five years, reinventing the wheel, or just making the best use of my experience? I'm not entirely sure but I'm definitely getting the feeling that I've been here before. Deja vu writ large.

There was a meeting this morning of a group looking at publicity. I had thought that I'd been sucked into the vortex of participating but somehow I managed to escape. I was never a part of plugging the library at TheOldPlace and I'm not entirely sure my skills lie in marketing - for all that I'll dress up as a pirate if required, so it's probably a lucky escape. But I think they were all fired up by a wanna be comic librarian who visited over the summer. [1]

Following the meeting I get a phone call telling me that after the disappointing response to offering the tours of the new extension (not unpredictable), they've decided that maybe they do want a virtual tour and an mp3 tour. For those who don't know, these were two projects I undertook at TheOldPlace and rather enjoyed doing.[2] Enquiring early on in my time here about why such things didn't exist, I was told they didn't really want to go down this route and there were those who hadn't particularly like the approach I'd taken in my previous job (they'd looked).

So now they've (I appreciate the 'theys' in this description may not be the same people) changed their minds. And guess who's being volunteered to do both jobs?!

Well, I did warn them it's not going to look very different from what I did before in terms of style - obviously the content will be different. I don't have a vast amount of technical ability or design skills. But apparently that's fine.

So that's my summer taken care of.

Perhaps I could them an alternative library while I'm at it.

[1] See entry for October 5th
http://doosouth.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html

[2] Great to actually finish something for once and be able to point to a single complete project and be able to say "I did that".

Two and half hours of EndNote this afternoon. It was actually a training session run by a colleague for any academics or researchers (or students even) who wanted to get to grips with the software (used for creating bibliographies [1]). But the back row of the room was taken up with several of the library staff also getting to grips with it so we can pass on the knowledge to those who ask.

I wasn't too sure about attending as I'm fairly familiar with the software, but I did learn new things, learned a little - as ever - about presentational style, and besides, I could be a real student and keep up with email during the parts where I was a bit ahead. (e.g. we had a sheet of 11 references we could use to practice creating entries; I came in for no end of mockery when the trainer asked as we "sorted alphabetically" how many entries people had typed in. Three or four was as much as anyone had managed except for one sad person who'd finished the sheet.)

Judging by the speed of the first five minutes I had thought we were going to be in for a long afternoon and could see why Q had bought an apple in with him. But time flew by (must have been the emails!). The one dilemma of the afternoon being on whether to correct my senior colleague on a subtle but crucial point that would save users a lot of work. Fortunately I've just about been here long enough to dare to speak up and have him accept it graciously.

[1] Oh, it's an exciting life we librarians lead!

Great talk at lunchtime today (after the excellent cosmologist a month back) from an academic who went dogsledding in the arctic. Great photos, great story and a great theme (team management techniques she developed from her team of four dogs).

Of course, it can only leave you feeling disastisfied about:
a) your own presentational skills
b) your photographic skills
c) your vacation plans which don't involve anything more exciting than a train journey.

Day off tomorrow, though, so something to look forward to...

Visit from a database salesman today. Actually a rep from one which we already subscribe to just checking up on us. Took him about 10 minutes and then he clicked that he'd met me at TheOldPlace. I had to be impressed that he managed to make the connection with no help from myself. Still, I guess being good peoplewise like that is what they're paid for.

I'm never quite sure what to make of such meetings but this one was particularly useful to our surprise (I met him along with our technical services guru who sorts the budgets etc). As we reviewed what we take, bells began to ring in the guru's head as he realized we had separate electronic subscriptions to some of the documents that were included in this large technical database. As time went on we uncovered several places where there were duplications. It soon began to add up. Maybe $3000 worth or more. So definitely worth the time spent.

I'm not sure I want to ask how long that overlap's been going on. (All my fears about the difficulty of managing electronic resources were raised.) But it was hugely encouraging to see the usage stats for the database. (Bizarrely we have no access to these and can only get them by asking the rep for them). However, even he was impressed with the use we make which is on a level with the larger commercial companies that use the service.

Makes a change from worrying about whether the huge cost of some "vital" databases can be justified when the students (and academics) seem to make so little use of them. They don't want indexing databases pointing to things that may be in the library or might take three days to get via inter-library loan; they want full-text and they want it now.

OK, the meeting went about as badly as I might have expected. Hence no post yesterday... by the time I escaped I just wanted to crawl into a dark hole.

I guess it wasn't that bad. They liked the content. But they've been burned by what they described as "landscape formatted tables" before with careers where something that was offered as a framework eventually became something that had to be checked off for every student and become assessed and generally caused a lot of problems. Still does apparently.

So they were very keen on the library turning it into a suite of web pages (haven't I been here before somewhere?!) with a list of 'how to' do things rather than learning outcomes.

Still, I've reported back to my boss and that's 'over' with for the moment. On to other things....

I have no idea why I'm so nervous/neurotic/worried/not quite sleepless about tomorrow's commitee meeting. I think it's because I have to present something about information literacy.

I can't work out if my concerns are because I'm presenting something my boss has handed me (which is hard to get inspired by), because I find the whole committee a bit intimidating, or just because it's all new and I've not settled into that particular aspect of faculty liaison yet.

Displacement jobs are so in demand at the moment that I'm actually wading through a publisher's catalog looking for computing books to buy (which is fairly tedious when the book stock is new to you, you have to fill in antiquated cards by hand (rather than electronically), and you can't adequately do statistical checks on items - but that's what assistants are for!).

I'm sure it will be fine tomorrow, but I look forward to the later afternoon when it's done!

Sloped off early on Friday to get up to TheOldPlace for YALD (Yet another leaving do). I still can't get over how long it takes to travel between the two universities. Still, it was good to meet up with (some) former colleagues once more and share a bite to eat and tales of what everyone is up to now. But did someone in Personnel pull a plug out or something?

On a completely opposite note, office colleague here celebrates 25 years in the job today. We bought some flowers, chocolates and balloons which seemed to go down (and up) well. But 25 years? never mind that she could pass for 35 much less her actual 45, I think I'd go mad if I was still here (or anywhere) in 24.5 years time.

Talking about enforcing civility ( http://ml107.blogspot.com/2007/04/enforcing-civility.html ) as a blog or two I read earlier today were, we were revisiting the proposed new library code of conduct this morning. At least I was revisiting it having sat through some of the discussion last week. This was a chance for the remainder of the library staff to air an opinion. And at least this time I caught the Head's briefing at the beginning which was interesting. [1]

This was a smaller gathering (maybe half the size of the first) and somewhat less, urh, heated and free ranging. Still, there were a couple of "old timers" there to oppose any move towards allowing food/drink/phones even in limited areas. One of their comments accused the library of once again trying to make a name for itself by being an "early adopter". I had to supress a smile as I thought about how slow this place can be in that regard - certainly in comparison to TheOldPlace.

Anyway, it would appear that we're moving towards quite a major liberalization of the rules regarding behavior and I can only wish as ever that students didn't need any "enforcing civility", but no doubt given an inch some will take a mile and the majority will end up 'putting up with it'.

Aaargh!

(Which reminds me of this: http://osteele.com/words/aargh which I also came across this morning).


[1] I was particularly intrigued by a graph that showed borrowing per full time equivalent student for the last 27 years - almost rock steady at 40,000 a year or so - and the number of library visits per full time equivalent student (sinking like a stone from about 1987 onwards from 120,000 to 80,000 or less). Given the rise in student numbers over that time it presumably shows the change in the style of university based courses (more vocational?) and/or that fewer people are taking out more books. The decline seems a bit early to be charting electronic resources.

I'm sure I've done something today. Just not sure what it was.

Spent some time answering a query forwarded to me by a colleague who's just returned from a week or more off. Evidently a bit snowed under and also dealing with students at the door, she asked me to deal with it. It was, after all, one of 'my' students. Snag was the query he had was really her subject area, but I did the best I could and after a fair bit of time sent what I thought wasn't a bad set of possibilities for the student to explore.

Only to hear in the afternoon that her assistant had dealt with the enquiry in her absence last week. Great.

I suppose it's one way of learning to use the business databases.

A nice quiet day allowed the catch up on blogs and (most) email etc that's arrived over Easter.

Although the 'nice, quiet day' was rudely interrupted by a lunchtime I wouldn't recommend. I'd (foolishly?) volunteered to help out on the general enquiry desk where they deal with inter-library loans and off-campus database access particularly. Phone call after phone call and f2f enquiry after f2f enquiry led me to the realization that I know nothing and can help no one. Actually, that's not quite true. I did manage to track down a stapler for one student. Not that I was supposed to - but it was so nice to actually provide what was requested for a change.

Worse than that, the lady I was covering was delayed half an hour and then just as she did return I got involved in a 40 minute phone call that was involved complex (after seeming to start out just the opposite).

Memo to self: remember not to volunteer!

Back to work after a week's vacation is never much fun (although I wasn't quite as overwhelmed by email etc as I'd feared I might be).

But the day cheered up when the boss came by with a box and said "don't say I never give you anything". I opened it up to find a laptop bag! Yes, they've finally arrived. (Though I did fear for a moment that maybe the bag had come but the laptop itself would be a few more days/weeks with whatever IS was doing to it). But by then the boss was back with two more boxes. Laptop and docking station.

A Dell Latitude D420 for anyone who cares. Very dinky. (I'd specifically not asked for the larger one that was on offer, as I have vague intentions of carrying this every day to use at home as well. And maybe commuting.)

Upsides
- Very easily logged onto our network and I was printing one of my documents that wasn't even on the laptop.
- An SD card reader in the side which I'd not dared to hope for.
- Trackpad and one of those little rubber things in the keyboard that I've never really tried before but wondered how they'd be.

Downsides
- The DVD rewriter is a separate unit (price I pay for lightweight and small, I guess) which means extra thing to manage and a bit more capable. (However, I have a plan: with several of us having been given identical machines, I'll bet there'll be someone who doesn't make much use of either their docking port or the DVD rewriter, so I might ship mine home for use there and 'borrow' someone elses when necessary here. Cunning, eh?!)
- Next to the PC you realize how large the flat screens we have on the desk are!

Quiet day with few students and a diary free day - managed to catch up on some reading. Stuff on student-centred learning, "For Earth's Sake! Just what are we teaching" by Andresen (bit dense really - the article I mean!), the fascinating _The Perfect Thing_ by Steven Levy about why the iPod has been successful, and finished Chown's _The Never Ending Days of Being Dead_ which I'm not entirely sure I'm any the wiser for having waded through.

Have a great Easter. I'm back next week.

It appears that Blogger has fixed the date/time stamping problem. I emailed them on Monday and have had no reply but the thing's fixed which is the main thing. So those who were sensing the imminent demise of DueSouth in any angst of the last entry or two can stop worrying - you're stuck with me for a bit yet!

I might even get round to fixing the dates on the posts when it all went wrong. But not today.

Nothing changes.

Now the new library extension is beginning to settle down, the time has come to take the long awaited decisions on how it's working with regard to noise and environment and culture and so on.

Today saw the first of two chances for library staff to discuss what we felt about food, talking, phones and so on. And as ever there was the usual range of opinion from "ban the lot" to "we've got to change with the times". And, as ever, it was all pretty heartfelt.

Normally, I get really involved in the debate (for good or bad!) and find it hard to step back. (Just ask former colleagues). But as a prior appointment (with an enthusiastic sales rep) meant I turned up ten minutes late, I actually managed to sit back and observe the discussion for a change which was interesting. I guess being new it enabled me to compress quite a lot of learning about how people react and express themselves into a short space of time.

Nothing's decided yet - next week the remainder of the library staff get a chance to do the same and I might go to compare sessions (as I missed the briefing bit at the beginning) - but I suspect the 'zoning' word won't be far from the final plan.

Whether a compromise, "middle of the road" solution like that (the Head's words) satisfies either of the far ends of the range of opinion remains to be seen.

Perhaps that is the solution: a library in the middle of the road...

First day in my diary for a dozen weeks in which I've not had an appointment.

Well, strictly I did, a chaplain invited me for lunch but it turns out that whatever he said he only meant a drink. Bit odd, but not to worry - I ate enough at the weekend welcoming home parents from six months abroad.

News from TheOldPlace includes yet another former colleague moving on. (This is becoming regular enough to need a new acronym YAFCMO.) This time she's not leaving the university but it must still be a blow for the team and the law librarian. I'm going to start feeling guilty soon.

Hungry and guilty. Not good.