Nothing to write about today except for the delights of a long lunch celebrating someone's birthday.

The only downer being the number of non-work related friends and relations invited as well which meant polite conversation with people I'm unlikely to see again (well, till next year or something) and feeling a bit cut off due to table arrangements from people it would have been great to be able to chat to.

Who thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting at 4pm on a Friday afternoon? Especially one on how the loans team deal with boards of examiners and students who may or may not have left and/or be in default over borrowed items.

It's not often I find such things a yawn. But permission to do so once?

After a holiday yesterday, great to come to work with both nothing in my diary and knowing I've got two more days off this week (theater trips and late nights involved) before the end of my two day week on Friday. Might even get something done.

Bitty sort of day with a training session on a digital mapping service, a lecture on security, a talk on planning for personal development, a meeting with my boss on progress and developments and another meeting on the perils of Facebook.

Sadly, the only meeting of the day I'd been particularly looking forward - the book group after work - has been cancelled/postponed because so many haven't finished the book (it's 1000 pages) or didn't like the book so didn't bother with it. [1] Irritating as it's the first book of the group that I've actually enjoyed. (Suzanna Clarke's oddly intriguing _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_).

[1] So much for my dutiful plowing through 7 previous books which I didn't much care for just so I could be part of the discussion and feel I'd committed to the group.

Funny sort of day.

We occasionally do late nights here. Usually a Friday every term or so. But recently a colleague has some changes of circumstance at home so for a few months we're filling in and doing an even more 'odd' late night. Means I'm here till 8.45pm which isn't great. But as I had the morning off instead it's not been too bad.

Still, after nearly 4 hours on the enquiry desk I'm about ready to head homewards. Shame the buses have long since stopped for the evening...

Trip out today to the local branch meeting of our professional group.

80 minutes away by rail and 5 of us going. You'd have thought it might quite social. But no, between us we set off for 3 different trains! My boss apparently likes leaving things till the last moment with no margin for error. One of our number was on the committee and was going a little earlier. The other two chose the most sensible train timewise. I plumped for going a bit earlier to keep A company. With laptop in tow I can work anywhere - 'specially if there's mains power to hand. But fate had the last laugh. We got to the station to find our train was cancelled - half an hour's wait reading the article my boss has had published (bit unthrilling to be honest, but worthy) and then the other two caught up with us...

The branch meeting was holding an AGM (about as thrilling as such things can be - but only 15 minutes so not too painful), but also a briefing from a recruitment company on "getting that promotion". Not that I'm looking to do anything of the sort - or expecting much along those lines - but it had some useful pointers.

Best bit of the day was randomly meeting someone I knew at the end of the day who could give me a lift home instead of hanging around for a bus for the best part of an hour.

Had to show off the pre-entry site to a Library team this morning as the lady who did the actual work isn't here today. Good response as people were very positive about it. A few revisions to send in but nothing major. Couple of typos which may have slipped through from us in the first place.

But it suddenly occurred to me as I thought about what it looked like now (transformed from the PowerPoint mock up) that what's really been created is the visual version of the alternative library from TheOldPlace that S and I built and wrote up in a professional journal some years back. Sigh. Am I going round in circles or is this development?

I wonder if we could put a donut machine in a picture somewhere? :-)

Smidgeon of excitement today when I visited a building across the park to see the work that's been done on the Library bit of the pre-entry project I may have mentioned.

This is a project to create a suite of web pages for students about to join the University in the summer before the start. Give them info about the uni, their course - and of course the Library.

Inspired by a Dr from down the coast who'd invented some fun games to engage the students at her university (I think I mentioned her session as being a highlight of the learning and teaching conference I attended here last December), we really didn't want out bit to be boring and tedious.

So after brainstorming with a small group here in the Library, I was left with trying to create a mockup of what we wanted in PowerPoint that would look pictorial/graphicy and encourage 'exploration'.

Some techie web people have turned our 'vision' such as it was into something that looks great and is easily the best bit of the web suite - in our not so humble opinions! Well, it's fun at any rate and not just more text!

Day off without touching the computer (partly enforced) - but probably very good for me.



Spent some of today looking through the PowerPoint slides brought back by a senior colleague who went to a day of presentations by ebook publishers and the like. He was contributing his own presentation on our perspective as academic institution users.

Although it's hard to judge the tone from just the slides you can't help feeling that even now as the publishers boast about how they're getting in touch with users that they're only just beginning to get anywhere near thinking about what users actually want. Our usage is (apparently) pretty impressive compared to other universities - but I still think we've yet to see how ebooks could be used once all the technology/rights issues stop getting in the way.

Full day today including showing round some design students interested in the design aspects of the building (and getting the University Librarian to take them through the process from his point of view) , a somewhat surreal friday meeting (aren't they all?), and highlight of the day going to a lunchtime thing with a metaverse researcher who was excellent - and even thought I might be able to contribute something to research on motion sickness in Second Life!

I also saw for the first time, one of those "$100" (aren't they $200 now?) laptops that are supposed to be great for developing/third world countries. It looked great (if odd) and although limited in memory was very usable and the screen was better than I'd expected. Be interesting to see what comes of them.

No blog on Monday. Day off.

Well. The workshop went about as well as might be expected.

The quiz *was* too hard but I suggested doing it in pairs which helped. We ran through it as a memory test and then turned on the computers to try tackling it with the pages in front of everyone (even then there were difficulties).

Still, it seems to have improved people's awareness of certain features of our web site and it certainly generated discussion on design, layout, expectations and so forth. Which I guess was the point.

I don't *think* too many people were utterly demoralized...

Trying to prepare for a little workshop I'm leading tomorrow on 'How well do you know your web page'.

I started by trying to create a massively complicated (and far too small to read on the handout) graphical representation of our library web pages.

Gave that up as a bad job and created a quiz instead.

But I've just tested it on the University Librarian and am now worried it's much too difficult to be any fun for anyone. Oh dear.

The swamp, otherwise known as my desk (and virtual email desk) is back again.

Astonishing how quickly it builds up.
Astonishing how much of my day it consumes if I let it (and if I don't I'm back to the building up again).

Ah well. The sun is out, surely summer is on its way and things should quiet down a bit.

At work late tonight getting caught up which is great.

Sounds of a student carnival going on the park next door which makes me feel as though I'm missing out on a party. I might have to wander over later to hear the Brazilian batala band.

But still lots to do. Sad that it is being here on a Friday night...

Great staff training session this morning from H on databases for the visual arts. Not only was it well thought out and clearly explained, but her slides were really attractively designed as well. I mean I know she looks after the art and design area, but I wish I had a tenth the design ability!

Visit today from a couple of our 'colloborative partners' at a college a couple of hours drive away. H and I gave them a tour and showed them the electronic side of things which they can access (and show their students how to access).

Very sociable.

Followed immediately by a birthday lunch for a couple of colleagues and fortunately just enough alcohol to get me through some humiliation in the afternoon.

I managed to not only answer a student enquiry completely incorrectly, but was then told by R - one of our loans team - the correct answer. That would have been fine only I didn't know about a peculiar 'quirk' of the database involved and told R what I thought was the 'correct' answer.

Fortunately, I didn't actually give up at that point, discovered my mistake and was graciously received when I went to grovel in apology. But maybe we could just switch jobs and I could be spared being stressed about all the email that's piling up while I show people round, take 90 minute lunches and also fit in another visitor who'd dropped in for something else entirely but by chance I could introduce to our map librarian who shares a common interest.

At least today I had nothing happening in the evening so I could stay late and work in the relative peace of just the rain tapping on the window and dripping in the newly acquired bucket.

Yes, I'm now the proud owner of one of the leaks that the old part of the building is renowned for. I don't know why it's suddenly manifesting itself now, but I shall make sure the University Librarian gets some of the water damaged paperwork just to make the point.