Last day at work till the New Year today.

Needless to say, not a lot happening workwise (except the meeting earlier). Emailing a friend Christmas greetings, taking a lunchbreak to swap gifts with another friend, going skating in Second Life with former colleagues, joining in with the game of Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit the loans team had set up (in which knowing the books better than the films was a disadvantage) and staying till 5pm to show solidarity with those who weren't allowed to leave until then.

Meeting this morning to discuss how the Library should arrange our shared space on the university drives. Files we all access or teams need to work on together or archives of documents - the usual kind of thing.

Just for once I was the only person who'd responded to an email asking for comments on the matter so it was nice to feel I'd done my 'homework'.

Today the Library invited all the liaison officers we have in each department for an update on what we're doing, what we're providing, how to access it and so on. We ran a speed dating sort of thing where each of us did a 5 minute slot on a topic (I had ebooks) and the visitors moved round at the sound of a Tardis (I think it was) arriving. Went very well. The only disappointment being the low turn out. A dozen or so was less than a third of those who might have come (2 of my 6 came), but those who did attend seemed to enjoy and find it useful. The mince pies no doubt helped.

Invited to a 'focus group' this morning with a handful of other library staff to talk about the university's communications. I think the lady from corporate communications was a little taken aback by our enthusiasm for things like the printed newsletter that's produced and which we all admitted to reading. Evidently she hasn't had that response elsewhere. Being 'taken aback' moved to outright astonishment when someone mentioned we archived the things and would like both print and electronic copies. Well we are librarians...

The talk went went well. Some 30 turned up which surprised us. We just about had enough laptops and books to allow our 'activity' to work. (And I was relieved we'd put it in when one of the previous speakers who'd done an excellent session on engaging students through games decided to come to our session.) The discussion on whether we should be doing fun things like Facebook or blogs or SecondLife went well although I don't think any conclusions were reached. It was interesting to note that most of those attending (generally but not exclusively, academics) weren't even as far along in their thinking as the library evidently is.

The whole day was really excellent - from the brilliance of one keynote talk given by one of our own academics to the awesomeness of another given by the father of a well-known alternative (at one time)comedian/writer/playwright/generalfarty. It will be interesting to see if we're invited to turn our presentation into a paper.

Little bit apprehensive about tomorrow. It's the university teaching and learning 'bash' for all academics and I've somehow got involved in a 45 minute slot on making the library 'fun'. (And whether we should be.)

No idea how many will turn up. Could be 2, could be 20. There's five other options for people to choose to be elsewhere but the Head was very kind today to suggest that the other choices sounded very dull. (I didn't like to point out that possibly non-library stuff would think ours sounded dull!)

We've got a quiz for people to try (internet vs print resources), we've got discussion segments, and we've got me doing small bits on Facebook, blogging and Second Life. Let's hope the internet's playing ball...

Day off tomorrow so almost certainly no post.

I'm tired of feeling tired.
I'm tired of looking tired.
I'm tired of people telling me I look tired.

May a day under the duvet will help. (Fat chance, I've been given a list of things to 'do'...)

Waiting for the next ferry after just missing one this morning I slumped onto a seat (not that I'd dignify a bit of plastic barely adequate for the purpose with the word 'seat'), just as someone I know reasonably well rumbled up and said 'hello'.

He then made the mistake of asking how I was doing and I couldn't resist admitting that I was tired and depressed. (He knows about the lost diary etc.)

At which point a stranger next to me chipped in with the observation that was just how she felt.

It was a good reminder as we trundle through life in our private miseries that we're almost certainly not the only one! It was almost cheering...

Update:
a colleague looking through our seminar room bookings stumbled across two teaching sessions I'm booked to do tomorrow.

The good news is that she found it today and not, say, on Friday. (Plus, knowing I'd lost my diary kindly let me know.)
The bad news is that this is exactly the kind of thing that's hard to track down - particularly if it's over in the faculty where I can't check room bookings like that!

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Encountered my first missed meeting today.

Sitting in a skills workshop waiting for (no) students (probably put off by the intricate route involved in getting past the work going on on an external main door), an academic wandered past and asked where I'd been on Monday.

The small project team I'm involved with making learning objects for Second Life had met for the second time.

Most likely I was still at our Christmas lunch, but I'd have still been at the meeting had I had my diary and known that it was happening.

Oh dear.

This isn't strictly true, but it tickled me anyway:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071110.html

Finally threw in the towel with regards to my diary this morning. Got a new diary, made a fresh start. Trying now to track back and work out what long term appointments/events might have been in the old one.

If I'm supposed to be somewhere - just give me a shout would you?!

Living without a diary.
There's a part of me that wants to scream in anguish as this really is one of my nightmares come true. There's another part of me that just wants to say 'stuff it' and enjoy no longer living under its tyranny.

I'm probably ok this week as, for the rest of my team's benefit, I transfer the week's events across to the electronic thing that resides with our email and can be accessed by the Floor Manager, assistants and science librarian etc. But as from next week I shall be into uncharted territory with meetings, training, events and so on that I won't know for sure are happening. But all of those I can probably survive. Meetings in the library I can be called for, training I should have email notifications of my bookings etc. Events I may well be able to miss without too much loss. But the two things that are much harder to 'lose' are the data the diary contains - from a book reading record which isn't the end of the world, to lectures that academics have arranged for me to give and which I may not have another note of.

And why don't I do this all electronically with my Palm? Well I used to at TheOldPlace and it worked a charm. Sync with the PC at least once a day and everything's backed up. But I've also whinged here before about the fact that thanks to the IT set up here I've not been able to ever get that working here. So have been forced to resort to paper again. I always knew I'd eventually come unstuck!

Day off yesterday so no posting, but it didn't really help improve a week that only seems to be 'septduum horribulus' (awful 7 days). Started at the weekend when some drumming went horribly awry (rehearsal had been ok!). Tuesday I've already posted about. By Wednesday the real disaster of the week was certain - I appear to have misplaced my diary rather seriously. And today, just to cap it all with managing to look stupid in front of friends, colleagues and the faculty, a researcher friend dropped into the Library to borrow some books. Whilst saying 'hi' she presented one to me and asked if there was any chance of borrowing it overnight despite it's being a reference only item as she pointed out it's yellow sticker on the spine.

Now super alert readers of this blog might spot what's coming.

As it wasn't in my subject area we went in search of the relevant Faculty Librarian and I introduced the pair of them. The researcher repeated her request and of course he immediately pointed out that there wasn't any difficulty as it was a seven day loan item.

I've written here before that one delightful confusion of changing jobs from TheOldPlace is that there they mark one week loans with a green sticker and reference with yellow. Here we reverse that. And in my treacle like brainstate this week - plus being primed by the initial question that mistakenly identified it as 'reference' - I just didn't twig that it was a loanable book.

As I say, how to look stupid in front of friends and work colleagues. Still, no real damage done. Now if only I could find my wretched diary...

Awoke early this morning (5ish) evidently stressed by the prospect of speaking to the cosmology researchers at lunchtime.

Turns out it was with good reason. I managed to embarrass myself thoroughly at least a couple of times demonstrating my woeful ignorance in front of about 20 of them plus three academics. The latter, sitting up at the front and engaging in lots of discussion which was good, were positive about the session but I couldn't help feeling that in the one thing I'm supposed to be as much of an expert as I'm ever likely to be, I was woefully inadequate.

On the upside, they did at least laugh at my dismissal of them starting four minutes late as not a problem and hardly surprising in the light of the billions-of-years timeframes they're normally dealing with.

By Blogger's reckoning this will be my 333rd post. I hope you think they've been (at least semi-) worthwhile.

Arrived this morning at work at 8:10 and decided NOT to turn my PC on. I would make a start on the terrible heap (or more strictly speaking 'heaps') accumulating on my desk. See how long I could go before I just had to turn the computer on to deal with something.

By putting aside things for scanning and saving up some bib checking (library jargon for 'bibliographic checking' or looking up the publication details of a book) to do later, I managed to get through to about 10:05. But really so much of my job requires access to PC/internet/library resources that it would be difficult to go much longer. Not to mention all the email rapidly piling up in my absence.

Still, I made a good start the desk now looks under control if not tidy!

Last faculty library committee I was at I ventured to suggest (in the face of some surprising ignorance from the most library oriented academics we have) to put together a maybe monthly briefing newsletter that would provide news and highlight 'old' stuff which might not be at the front of their knowledge.

Spent the afternoon putting this together (just one side of paper) and working out what we could include. I thought it might be sensible to broaden it to the Technology faculty and the Science faculty which the Science Librarian was happy with.

Getting back into Publisher though brought back strong (happy/frustrating?) memories of ten years at the typeface of a church magazine.