Another irritating day when things pile up faster than you can deal with them (never mind the backlog).

Not helped by boss returning early from holiday and expecting the two jobs she wanted done on her return (next week) being done already. Still, one was done and I managed to put something together for the other. Only for her to admit that she wasn't very clear about what she wanted so it wasn't surprising if my answer wasn't exactly what she wanted!

Not helped by people being demanding about (say, journal withdrawals) and then not being around twice when you go to give them their answer! Or the course fees I've got permission for, got permission to spend money, got the invoice, passed it all onto the finance people and thought "ah! one job cleared" only for it to be returned because they can't now pay foreign currency until the end of July because of the "time of year".

Not helped by some beta testing we're supposed to be doing having their reps back today to ask how it's going when I specifically told them I was busy with conferences etc until next week and would get to that particular job *then*. Not now.

Aaaaaaargh.

There's a periodical open on my desk with an article I'm (trying) to read entitled "Something's got to give". It sure does. I just wish I knew what.

I'm going to take Monday off and am now thinking about taking Tuesday off as well just to bury my head in a deep dark hole. But of course, that will only mean more things pile up.

All done. Just escaped and returned 'my' giant poster on referencing to the right person. Conference went well. I think the panel session did too. I felt as though I was able to answer a couple of questions and was able to chip in on a few occasions too. Of course, whether I said anything of any value is a good question!

"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt". Wasn't that Mark Twain?

Getting apprehensive about my 'panel' at 2 - but it's time for lunch now....

Blogging today from an inhouse conference. All week the university is exploring learning and teaching and today is my Faculty's turn. Been interesting so far (including the keynote address showing us two very nice bits of technology in a Sony UX and a Samsung X1 I think it was). But I'm struggling to engage with the session I'm in now on f2f, blended and distance learning. Hence the blog posting. Still, I'm clearly not the only one as someone two rows in front is writing an email! (Nice thing about the technology faculty is that I don't feel too unusual sitting here with a laptop! There are half a dozen about with 50 or so attendees.)

Great start to the day as I set off an alarm in a building I'm not used to and from which I'm fetching a poster. I'm supposed to be taking the poster to the conference I'm attending but it was being used elsewhere yesterday.

No one to tell I'd set the alarm off so I had to march off with poster in hand. Did meet a security guard down the road who I guessed was 'responding' - so at least I could apologize and feel I'd done something about it.

Out in the shelves this morning getting my hands dirty (figuratively and literally) as I looked at old journals for weeding. The more I think about the the usage of (or not!), access to and longevity of interest in academic journals, the more I really think their days are numbered. Scholarly journal articles seem to me to be the one thing that can be served electronically much more easily. Access is easier, hopefully usage would improve, and although we've not really tested the limits of digital storage of archives, it seems it would be easier to keep things historically without such pressure on space (or tattiness!).

Still, it was fun whilst browsing to stumble across a glossy old inhouse newsletter from TheOldPlace's business school. Sidetracked for a few minutes into solving a mathematical brainteaser on one of the pages.

The final straw, though, for how I was feeling about the old journals though was when I turned round rather suddenly and really banged my elbow rather nastily on a bit of metal shelving. Still, hurts painfully several hours later.

One teaching hour today. Bit out of season but this was supposed to be for a group of students from the Middle East. However, it turned out that the attractions of a nearby shopping center proved too attractive and no one turned up. Ah! The glamour of the job.

The academic who’d arranged the session was very apologetic and although I offered to come back if she wanted to try again, they’re not in the country for long enough to find time in their timetable.

Still, that left me with 40 minutes till a meeting in the same building so it wasn’t worth hiking back to the library. Which is when the laptop came into its own as I found a café empty of students where I could sit and catch up.

Really nice to have a quieter day today diarywise and be able to catch up with piles of mail, email, other stuff (and didn't even get anywhere near the blogs I ought to/want to read).

Just one 'interruption'. A phone call somewhat out of the blue from a foreign friend I've not seen in several weeks suggesting lunch together. That was both a nice break and chance to catch up. Not to mention learn about some interesting cultural differences.

Phew! Finally done.

Day seems to have gone well for all the apprehension this morning. I could definitely have used a fraction more time to prepare myself, but in the end it seems to have gone down a treat.

Highlights:
comment after the first session (the one with the computing academic who didn't want to practice our double act for fear we'd forget what we'd planned to say) that it was well rehearsed!

demonstrating Second Life and ending up doing the salsa with said academic who logged in via a laptop

using my laptop to take notes in a feedback session that I saved to the shared drive over the network such that the file could then be opened up from the front and shown the the room rather than squinting at scribbled flipcharts

The lowlight was probably the half hour session pointing out some of the 'dark side' of the web and in particular web 2.0. Crime and abuse and ethical issues... Good to be reminded of it, but the two presenters weren't pulling punches and we really did hear about some of the worst examples of what's been happening in the courts and the press.

Thanks are due to a former colleague though, who dutifully turned up as promised in Second Life while we were 'live' in front of 40 people and provided some in world interaction that people found really helpful as an example of what goes on. Thanks S.

I'm utterly drained now. But brother has persuaded me to go to a debate on nuclear energy this evening, so no rest for the wicked.

The trouble with the training session and all the other things filling my diary and interruptions filling the time in between is that I'm now quite stressed and quite out of time in preparing for tomorrow. Given that I'm supposed to be doing the main introductory session to Web 2.0 along with a computing academic, another session on Second Life, and another session (four times over) on blogging, I really should have spent a bit more time preparing.

I think I'm getting to where I need to be. Maybe a bit of time tonight (laptop will be a help there) and there is an hour maybe in the morning if I'm quick. But I must run now...

Excellent three hour tutorial this morning on PowerPoint. But this one going beyond the ordinary bullet points and tedious teaching to looking at some of the pedagogy behind how it's used. How it can be used (if necessary) in much more useful ways and how to achieve that technically towards the end.

The presenter was the guy that preceded the session I had to do at the end of the mini-teaching induction I had when I first arrived here. So I knew it would be good. He's entertaining, great on the pedagogy, skilled in the technical aspects. Well worth spending the time on.

Great visit from former colleagues.

TheOldPlace sent 5 folk down today. 10 more on an identical trip in July. I'd been a bit apprehensive of it beforehand not knowing quite what they wanted and thinking maybe it was a long way to come just for a tour of the library.

We started with coffee and the Head gave a talk introducing the extension - plans, architect's competition, building, opening and use.
We had a fairly extensive tour for an hour or so including 'behind the scenes'.
Then a look round some of the web resources.
Lunch in the nice cafe opposite.
Then back to the train station via most of the rest of the campus.

Seemed to go very well and I was suprised by how energised I was by seeing former colleagues. I hope it was useful/fun/interesting for them too.

ebooks this afternoon.

We're beta testing for a new player. And of course it's a different model to all the others.

Some allow students to 'borrow' an ebook and no one else can read it for those 24 hours.
Some allow only reading online.
This one does have mechanisms for downloading an ebook (which selfdestructs after a set time) but *every* time a student looks at it 'credits' are used up. Once the limit for the book is used up the library gets the option to buy it again (or buy multiple copies in the first place).

But you can tell it's still a technology that's not matured yet when everyone does something slightly differently. And it's still debateable how many people want to read a book on the screens we have now. Even with the new laptop I'm hardly lapping them up all of a sudden. Still prefer my Palm for comfort of reading and instant 'on' if not size of screen!

In what's turning out to be quite a week for Second Life, I went to a workshop on the subject this morning. I'd missed one such workshop whilst on leave and they'd had so many subscribe that they'd decided to rerun it.

We were in a room with a partition and an exam had been scheduled for the other side of the partition, so after realizing we couldn't actually talk, there was a short hiatus while we were removed to a nearby research office with enough computers for everyone to login.

For some reason I was unable to login as myself even though it had been working back in the office, but one of the workshop leaders, KV (another computing academic), logged in as himself and kindly allowed me to move his avatar around. [1]

I happened to be sitting next to a rather nice voiced lady with some geology background and it turned out her interest in Second Life was wanting to build a store to sell music. She had a gorgeous avatar [2] and when people commented on this (which amused me as I was desperately refraining from doing any such thing), it turned out that she'd paid for her shimmering hair, graceful movements and other enhancements. I discovered why when later in the day I looked at the URL she'd given me to check out her music. She obviously does want to make an impression as in real life she sings - semi professionally I think and with some talent. I thought her voice sounded good. She's toured a number of countries and supported Midge Ure a number of times and Marillion. I've heard of these people!

But there were two strange moments as the group of us wandered around under the advice and direction of the workshop leaders who probably felt as though they were herding cats. Firstly, we happened to stumble across a former work colleague, S, whose avatar I knew. Even in the much reduced universe of Second Life this seemed unlikely. But it was curious - my neighbour, the singer, had brought her to our attention because she was amused by the guy that was chatting to her being puzzled at meeting so many people that liked books. I mean we were outside a library. Meanwhile, S guessed immediately who I meant when I introduced myself as not my avatar but "it's me", but seemed to find it a bit odd that I should be channelling another person's body. I guess it was.

The second strange moment was when the singer suggested we visited the Star Trek Museum of Culture (the workshop leader whose body I was temporarily inhabiting rudely suggested that that was a contradiction in terms!). Once there I immediately spotted an oddly shaped portal that must have been the gateway on the edge forever. And I realized how sad I was when I walked across what initially looked like a rocky outcrop and long before I got to the other side and turned round to look at the sign, knew that it must be a Horta!

However, the odd moment was when we went to look at the holodeck and set it to be the bridge of the Enterprise. So I'm now sitting in a room full of real people as we explore a virtual world within a virtual world. I was beginning to lose the plot as regards what was real and what wasn't! [3]

A torrential rain storm (in Real Life) motivated many of us to stay exploring for longer than planned, but eventually - and with some regret actually - it was time to rejoin the real world.



[1] I'm not sure he didn't regret this at the end when the room fell into a discussion about gender and how whether you choose to be a male or female affects the reception you get from other people in SL. KV suggested I try this so I changed his avatar gender to female and then, attempting to make 'him' look more womanly, only succeeded in making him look pregnant. He said he'd keep the look for a bit and see what difference it made.

[2] I realize these are pixilated computer creations that may or may not bear any relation to their Real Life owner and that don't (for me at least) look that attractive in a real sense. However, it's the representation of beauty that I mean. And clearly the money she'd spent on appearance, skin and movements did indeed set her apart from your typical avatar that's straight out of the box as it were.

[3] Took me right back to the days of IPLmoo (a moo in the Internet Public Library) back in the 90s. All text based. But even then I remember being engaged by the whole design of the thing, and sitting one day at a (real life) enquiry desk with a colleague and showing him what I was doing as I sat in a (virtual) audiovisual suite with another IPLmooer chatting over a "video" we were "watching" of a meeting that had gone in IPLmoo the week before. Keeping track of the levels of chat going on there was really interesting.

Meeting today with person (this time from the library) with whom I'm doing another presentation on this CPD next week. At least here the goal seems a bit clearer which helps and I think I know what we're both doing. She's the SecondLife guru of the library (actually owns land) and is most impressed that I'm being expected to explore it as part of work.

But next Thursday we're talking about blogging and forums. She's doing the latter as she actually runs a couple, I'm back on blogs (which I feel like I covered for library staff at a Wednesday morning traning session a few weeks back), but this time more hands on and get people writing or reading blogs.

Meeting with one of the computing academics, RFE, this afternoon. She's been a great help getting me going with Second Life but the point of today's get together was to discuss/plan the half session we're jointly leading next week that opens a Continuing Professional Development day for all the library staff. Subject: web 2.0

I don't know whether it's feeling a bit too new to be doing anything of the sort, or whether it's trying to do it in tandem with someone I'm not very familiar with, or whether our working styles are just completely at odds - possibly it's all three - but I felt we achieved very little in the two hours which left me feeling even more nervous and stressed about next week. Oh dear.

Last week it was new laptops, this week it's the also long promised new chairs. A change from the red/purple things that were fairly worn, these are 'charcoal', new and much more adjustable (height/tilt/backrake). Some come with arms and an inflatable lumber support. I've opted for the latter as I discovered with some delight that the support seemed to help the lower back pain I've been experiencing since an RTA in January. I was a little dubious that one with arms would fit under my desk when I'm not around (there's not a lot of space in this office), but it turns out that they can be lowered quite easily and the chair fit's nicely so my colleagues can move (if not actually swing a cat).

Ah! Such is the exciting life of the library world.

Visit this morning to a nearby college.

Very jealous. Their library is naturally much smaller, but they've put into place some marvellous software which is what we'd gone to see demonstrated. It's used in computer suites for teaching and enables you to fix all the computers on the room on what the teacher/trainer's doing. Of course you could somewhat negatively say that it would stop students surfing the web or reading email instead of concentrating on the matter in hand, or more positively view it as helping students to focus on the teaching point before then allowing them to have their hands on time.

In addition the teaching machine could view any individual student machine to help with problems (or, presumably, to spot 'abuse') and it was even possible to block particular web sites and/or send a text message to the relevant screen saying to desist.

We're considering introducing some such software here as some of my colleagues doing training sessions have felt that it would be more than helpful in keeping attention focussed where it's supposed to be.

I'm somewhat in two minds. If the students are disengaged enough to want to be reading their email or websurfing, how much is that down to our teaching? And even if our teaching is scintillating, shouldn't the students be able to decide what they want to do? (It's their money!)

But a couple of things about it did appeal: it can be quite hard to see web pages projected at the front when you're sitting at the back, and although we're also considering repeater screens to ameliorate this, it would be great to be able to see clearly because the presenter's screen was on your own monitor.

The other thought I had was that it would be possible to show the rest of the class if a student had a particularly good example of something or a good answer or some such. With their permission of course. Or, indeed, to respond to a query by letting them work through their particular question with everyone else watching if that was useful.

It remains to be seen whether we'll spend the money... but the visit was well worth making if only for the cakes they provided!

Reading this:
http://www.slowleadership.org/2007/06/making-it-past-law-of-small-numbers.html

I was reminded of the Library surveys we used to do at TheOldPlace each month. Informal polls that would pop up after X number of hits on the catalogue. We kept them short to encourage people to fill them in, and then changed them every month. Each year we started over with the questions (for the most part) so that we had some consistency over time.

Sometimes largish numbers of people would fill them in. But sometimes not very many bothered. Certainly not a statistically valid sample. But we'd still spend hours (or maybe it just felt like hours) discussing the results, agonizing over whether we should do x, y or z in response and sometimes even get hung up on just one 'comment' that had been made. (We never did take up the request made one time for "more naked librarians" - though I was curious about the 'more'.)

Gee, I'm glad I'm not responsible for reporting on those surveys any more.

Definite sense of history passing today.

First up was one of our regular Wednesday morning training sessions. But this one was run by a couple of the loans team who were doing an unexpurgated version of the history of the Library. The one they'd produced for the opening of the new extension had had to be glossy and they wanted an outlet for all the fun/interesting/controversial stuff they'd found. And apparently we wanted that too as we turned up in huge numbers (perhaps it was the cookies on offer). Highlight was a video produced a few years ago in the style of an 80s tv treasure hunt game show where a pert, attractive presenter raced into and around the library in an effort to find what she needed. Only the video didn't work on the PC so as I'd happened to bring my laptop, I was able to save the day by running it from that.

Then I spent half an hour joining in with the last bit of a three day job to clear all the science and technology abstracts out. Given we're a bit tight for space on this floor and with summer moves meaning things arriving from the closure of the last remaining 'branch', this is an obvious way of gaining space. In fact, ever since I've arrived I've been saying they're not long for this world as far I'm concerned. TheOldPlace got rid of printed abstracts a long time back. Certainly no one is using the ones here. I'm sure some of the dust dates back 40 years. I wouldn't be surprised to hear we were the last HE place to get rid of them. But as we filled a third huge skip (three times the size of normal ones), it was hard to think it wasn't a waste of... well, something. Just think of the binding costs if nothing else. This is one part of librarianship that I have no problems with going electronic! Much more usable, useful, sensible to access these vast abstract volumes virtually. Death to the abstract, long live the abstract!

Finally, our systems librarian had a little presentation as it was his last day. 'course the usually reliable catalog will probably fall over tomorrow. (He's not been replaced yet - that kind of thing doesn't seem to change from one job to another.) Fifteen years in post, less than five minutes to say adios. C'est la vie.

Supposed to be seeing a group of students from the Middle East today - but apparently the attractions of a nearby shopping centre outweighed the prospect of finding out how to access our library resources from half way round the world. Ah! Such glamor in the job.

Visit from a former colleague today. Law librarians getting together - always a bit scary! Apparently this is a yearly thing which makes me wondering if oughtn't be getting together with my opposite number/replacement a bit more often.

After a tour of the place, I joined them for coffee and it was great to swap notes and catch up on what was going on at TheOldPlace. It sounds as if they're managing with all the departures and a lack of a boss. Though it doesn't sound ideal.

What was oddest though was the kind of blur effect of sitting with the two people that have filled my mental space of 'law librarian' for the last however long. Evidently my mapping of TheOldPlace to the new has been too accurate. It's not like the two individuals in question are easily confusable.

Our break quickly became 'the rest of the afternoon' - but that seemed fine as a 'not too often' mix of CPD (comparing notes) and networking (the social bits!).

[This post went missing - Blogger obviously playing silly wotsits - but thanks to the faithful reader who not only saw it, but saw the problem and kindly emailed the post back to me so I could repost it.]



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 an extra thing to manage and a bit more cable.
(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! (Or is it just that my eyes are getting old?)