First course committee of the academic year this afternoon. Fairly unthrilling as ever. But I had a good moment when they were discussing the new 'technical masters' course. I had my laptop out to save printing all the paperwork and did a quick google on the subject - so when they got bogged down over a particular bit and I'd happened to find a briefing paper I could supply a quick answer. Never quite sure at that point whether to own up to what I've done or sit there looking very intelligent and on the ball!

Of course, I let myself down a little later when just for five minutes I popped into Facebook to take a Scrabulous turn at just the moment the academic nearest me asked to check something on the intranet! Ah well.

Day working from home today.

Never sure this is going to be a good idea with all the distractions available and fears over the internet being slow or my PC not being able to cope, but in fact I got a lot done. The Head apparently isn't keen on such practice generally but my boss okayed it when I explained that what with the dentist first thing and an online course in Second Life for much of the afternoon, it would be a vastly more efficient way of spending my time.

As it turned out email was a bit slower than normal but not impossible so, and by sitting still for most of the time, I managed all but about 20 minutes of the online course. (PC did give up when we were all supposed to go off from the classroom on a treasure hunt briefly).

Shame I can't do it more often.

Late night tonight. I've probably mentioned it before but it's infrequent enough I'll mention it again. TheOldPlace had me doing fortnightly 'late nights' but they were only for two hours at a time. Here I do four hours from 5pm which does seem a long stretch. Even with a short break. But it occurred to me today that of course it would seem like that - it's actually half a day of sitting at one enquiry point.

Anyway, it still seems preferable to do that once a semester or so than two hours every fortnight.

Besides, I could take the morning off in lieu and upgrade a drum kit.

I think I've mentioned it before, but this morning my biggest dreadfear in this job came round again the committe that the faculty put together to keep an eye on library things.

First up my presentation rather fell apart as they'd asked so many questions earlier in the agenda that I'd pretty much covered everything I'd planned (with a really neat PowerPoint slide split into quarters and cleverly linking to web or file as necessary).

Next we got enormously bogged down in intricate details over budgets - which when things are going well I find difficult. Now one department had a particulary gripe about apportionment and just wouldn't let it go - even after the fourth lap.

Unfortunately the chairman possibly didn't keep as tight a rein on things as he might. On the upside, he did an excellent job of defending the library and bearing the brunt of the unhappiness. So things could have been worse.

But three hours later I emerged utterly wrung out and with a to do list longer than my arm. If only there were time!

Maybe I'm more sensitive as answering enquiries is a good chunk of my job.

But this just doesn't seem right. Last week I had cause to email a company about a product I want to spend quite a large sum of money on. Fairly straightforward question. I finally had a response that appeared to come from a human being rather than being machine generated, but it was clear that at no point had my actual question been engaged with. It was though someone was half listening and decided to answer something they knew about rather than something they didn't.

Then today I finally had a reply from the university photographer. Actually, not the photographer himself whom I've emailed twice now, but his diary keeper. All I need to know is can I use the photographs he's already taken and I have on a CD to accompany an article in a professional magazine. So I was more than a bit irked when the answer told me all about how to book him for photographic projects.

Am I writing in Mongolian? Is my email going via AltaVista's great fun BableFish?

I was tempted both times to fire off rather sarcastic email replies, but I refrained. What if, just suppose, the answers I'm giving students are just like that? I "hear" what they say and go into my stock routines?

Not strictly work related but I fitted it into lunch break. Blood donation. Not done it for a while for various medical reasons so I had to go through quite a 'first' time rigmarole, but if they want my tired stuff they're welcome to it. Besides, if it gives me an official excuse to have a Cherry Coke, it can't be all bad.
Didn't realize that only 5% of people bother. Get out there and give!

At very short notice (but thanks for the tip-off) and just when I was considering going home after a busy day with few breaks, I heard about a discussion on Information Literacy in SecondLife. Following up on a conference that had taken place over in Germany.

Thought I'd drop in and was glad I did as I picked up a variety of things that I want some time now to go off an explore.

What was most surreal about this session though was not the usual weirdness of SL that you slowly get used to. Not sitting around in 'comfy' chairs, in my tails (with top hat in hand) with a couple of people I knew from Real Life, one I'd heard present in Real Life, another who I only knew from the course on Tuesday and other complete strangers. Not the way we all very carefully sat in the chairs in just the same way as we would have done in real life (at the ends of sofas), filling the space 'evenly' rather than sitting next to each other, etc. Nope, none of that.

It was the number of colleagues who dropped in to see what was going on - word seemed to spread that I was in SecondLife. I think I had six people 'lurking' over my shoulder - though not all at the same time. Some of them were interested in the content, some of them were interested in seeing 'work' in SL in action, some of them were just curious about me at 'work' in SL. And a couple just wanted to dare me to strip naked for some reason. (What is with that?)

Oddly enough I realized I was becoming quite protective of "my" avatar and given that I knew (to one degree or another) some of the people there didn't really want to act in any of the a- or anti-social ways that were being suggested.

I know there are 'griefers' in SL (people who just deliberately cause trouble) - but clearly not in the libraryland ghettos of the virtual world!

To a lunchtime session on 'motivating students'. Bit heavy on the research and light on 'solutions'. Indeed, by the time we'd been encouraged to spend fifteen minutes sharing our own experience I think we were all ready to shoot ourselves.

But I came away with a couple of ideas:
chocolate apparently is a good motivator (despite what the head of library said earlier in the week about trying to wean subject librarians from the idea that food and drink solve most problems)
the electronic voting systems (again!) came warmly recommended
extra-curricular stuff for those who are more motivated - hmmm, not sure that will work in the Library, but it's a thought
Good to hear it wasn't just the library that turns students off though. All the academics there could tale horror stories.

Was supposed to be teaching at 1 but that's been postponed a week so fortunately I'd made of a note of something I was interested in but had figured I couldn't get to - a lecture on the 'dynamics of spin'. So I pitched up at that instead and was glad I could as it was rather fascinating. A mathematician who had a gift for communicating (and some great toys!).

The head of the math department was there so he took the opportunity of telling me about a talk he was giving to prospective students in the afternoon on the beauty of fractals. As it happened my diary was free... my mind curious... Also very interesting (plus a brown paper bag lunch to go with it!).

Back in my Second Life course today (yes, I actually managed to do my homework!) it wasn't quite such a great session, but I continue to enjoy both the content and the meta-learning (about how it all works and how people use the space and relate to each other). I feel very smart in my top hat and tails.

First meeting of a 'documents group' today to look how we use a shared drive. We make much more use of such a thing than we did at TheOldPlace but that can raise issues about how and who organizes the thing.

The biggest obstacle is that our IT folk give us just 2 gig to use. I'm allowed 4 gig in my personal space so it seems rather ridiculous we have to spend so much time talking about. What does a 1 terabyte or 500 gig hard drive cost these days? We've asked for more and been turned down - apparently we might fill it up.

One project I've been on this week is to see what blogs I can collect up from around the university which are written by university staff. Found a few and the idea is that we gather them together on a page headed by the two 'library' blogs we do.

One academic came over to show me the half dozen he has and also showed me some nifty software which I'm going to have to investigate further called 'Star Tree'. Looked fun - more later.

Oh, and apparently the new Chancellor came for a visit today. But she wasn't brought anywhere near the likes of me!

Another of our Wednesday morning training sessions this morning. Only they've moved to Thursday due to staffing issues.

Today on YouTube. And great to see not only a junior member of the loans team doing the presentation (and doing it very well), but the Head of library in attendance and learning new things.

That's one thing I do like about here over TheOldPlace, not so much the equality that exists in that way which probably isn't so different, but the visibility of senior staff.

Supposed to be helping out in a cafe style drop in centre today for a couple of hours but had so many students (and others) dropping in at the office that I never got over there.

University of Illinois virtual librarianship course starts again today. This time the 'intermediate' level. Knowing I hadn't been into Second Life for a bit meant I started early to download the software (as ever), get it installed, make sure I could login in etc. Then I met a former colleague who took me on a shopping expedition - so I'm now the proud possessor of a top hat and tuxedo which I think makes for elegant outdoor class attendance! (The bunny pyjamas and big fluffy slippers were fun but possibly too much of a statement.)

Unfortuanately, with that and some other movement around the place I found my motion sickness was back (perhaps exacerbated by tiredness) but fortunately the class was pretty static so I could sit still, and try and keep up with three or four conversations at the back of the class. (Two former colleagues were chatting and two class members I didn't know from real life).

My resolution for this time round though is to make more time to use and interact with the associated virtual learning environment. Assuming I can login which was part of the problem last time.

From a low start to the day to a flat end to the day via an unexpected high at lunchtime - I'm beginning to feel like a drug user - it is at least good to see a week in my diary that doesn't look quite as manic as the last few. Unfortunately evenings are still looking a bit dense. But the latter's not helped by the book group which was postponed from last week because so many had not yet finished the book. I don't know, I make the effort...

Seemed to spend a fair bit of this morning's senior team meeting hearing about TheOldPlace. They're putting out a tender for a new library management system, or the head had been to visit, or was it really so difficult to put floor locations into the library catalogue here? (Apparently so, on the last one).

Still, at last the 'other blog' is going to be allowed to go ahead with a revised strapline. No calls for it to be abandoned. phew.