First proper day in the office all week which meant there was a lot of catching up to do. Difficult to get into it though knowing it's Friday already.

Still, no team meetings of any sort today so at least there were no distractions like that.

And it was also our book group meeting tonight. Been going almost a year and tonight was the discussion on the title I selected way back when. Chinua Achebe's _Things Fall Apart_. Unfortunately, no one had enjoyed it. Even me. It was just too depressing. And it's the first book that *someone* at least hasn't liked.

Still, they were very gracious about it. I think buying the round of drinks probably helped.

So, today was the turn of the Technology Faculty Learning and Teaching day.

Good time keeping in the morning but a bit lax in the afternoon and a later finish meant the day seemed to drag on. Isn't it typical that the most boring speaker (in everyone's opinion not just mine) is the one that over runs?!

Great talk on using humor in math teaching that may cross over to the kinds of things I do.

But highlight for me was a foreign national turning up who I've met a couple of times before and being asked to translate Acronyms and any difficult words. Made the day much more interesting (and kept me on my toes). Although I nearly caused trouble when as a joke I spelled out DVD and nearly caused a suffocation as laughter was stifled.

This week each of our faculties has a Learning & Teaching conference. I've attended the Technology one before but I don't recall hitting any of the other ones. Not that they're not intersting, it's just fitting them in.

Well I've missed the last couple of days thanks to leave, but today was the Science Faculty's turn and particularly because I'd been asked to present something, I thought I'd attend the whole thing.

It was very good. Aside from the usual complaint of having to choose between two sessions you wanted to see both of. Twice. Full marks to the organizers for keeping the day nice and tight. (Starting at 10.30 finishing at 3 and always on time.) Nice slot in the afternoon about the similarities between stand-up comedians and lecturing - and what lecturers can learn from the former. Good slot in the morning on using more interaction with students even in big classes. You can improve retention of the material from something dire like 20% to around 50%.

My slot in the middle of the day seemed to go well given that the three of us hadn't really rehearsed beyond a quick sketch of what we thought we might do. People seemed interested and I even managed to tout the article that S from TheOldPlace and I wrote about alternative libraries. Good to be an interloper with the Science Faculty and be able to point to some research and peer-reviewed material in support of the 'fun' stuff.

Gravid sister's farewell (for the moment) do now so I must run...

Off several days next week and conferences when I'm technically "in"... so don't expect many posts.

Destination: information
Our library staff development day today. Training on Information Literacy without mentioning those two words. Set up by our inhouse training lady we had 5 teams of 6 each given a holiday to plan. (From two center trips to Russia to hen night shopping sprees in New York to slightly more local ecoholidays).

In the morning each team collected the info they needed (and had a briefing from the map librarian on his resources including printing vast posters) and in the afternoon they had to create a poster of whatever size they wanted and then do a presentation.

The presentation wasn't so much on their holiday as in their process of finding out what they needed.

Meanwhile some of us weren't allowed to 'play' because we'd be detailed off to be various experts (I was an "IT consultant") which meant roaming around the different teams and helping, offering advice, and resisting the urge to tell them I'd put them on a 3 day waiting list for assistance.

Then our boss wrapped it up with some theory, learning points and discussion.

It was interesting watching library staff from all grades reverting to student stereotype and almost exclusively relying on Google - despite all sorts of other material that was available. But everyone had a great day and some terrific posters were produced.

Two days of working with my email have reduced my inbox to just 5! It's difficult to describe the weight that feels as though it's been lifted. It'll start piling up again but just for the moment it feels good.

No meetings today! Even though it's Friday!

been great to catch up on all those emails that have been lurking at the back of my consciousness for a while. Not easy to answer, not really ones I could just ignore...

Also expected to come up with a better workshop title than 'Good Googling' to see if we can't drum up more student attendance next year. 'Great Googling' didn't seem like much of a change. 'Googling with gusto' didn't really appeal. Something along the lines of a "long title" like 'All you ever wanted to know about Google but were afraid to ask' was ruled out for advertising reasons (this workshop is one of a series and none of the others were labelled like that).

I'm still of the opinion that we could use classic films and their posters to attract attention (assuming it's ok under copyright as parody or fair-use or something). Perhaps I could do 'The Google, the Bad and the Ugly' as I spend some time on Google's censorship deals with China or utlization of things like the fascist press for (part of) its news gathering.

Any suggestions more than welcome...

Why oh why oh why do I find it so hard to organize even a wet paper bag?

How hard can it be?

Few weeks ago one of our database providers phoned offering to do some training for us. I could manage to arrange myself and my assistant so it was worth the trainer coming. Even managed to email another library colleague over in another building in case she was interested. But what with conferences and other busyness didn't get round to emailing the Faculty rep or the rest of my colleagues in the Library till this morning. Not surprising the academics didn't come. But just to gratify me, 6 other colleagues from the Library came and made the 90 minutes really worthwhile. Including the woman I'd not thought could come because she was on leave - she came in 'specially.

Phew. But really, next time...

Attended a day conference today on creativity.

Not like the last one I went to 18 months back which was very 'serious'.

This one started with a woman in a bag 'dancing' on the floor very slowly. Quite compelling. And then had poetry and even a song or two all as a 15 minute welcome to the conference.

Great keynote speech from one of four acting brothers.

Good opportunities to network and discuss how and if creativity can be measured (the practical upshot was 'not easily' but there were things that could contribute to a kind of measuring process).

Once again I felt very much the 'outsider' as a librarian amongst all these creative types (the rest of the delegates were either artists of some sort or members of the creative technology faculty here at the university). But that paid off as they were pleased to attract what they saw as the creatively challenged! (I didn't tell them about my extra-curricular activities that would count as performance or art or both). But did get a chance to talk about 'guerilla creativity' which one delegate was very taken with and make sure they knew that the Library wasn't completely uncreative.

Great day, well organized and more useful than my boss thought it might be!

Mini conference cum workshop today on Second Life held here on campus. To my shame (muddling it up with something else) I thought I'd mentioned its existence to former colleagues at TheOldPlace. My apologies to them for missing passing on the news; and my apologies to those here running the thing for not spreading the word more diligently.

It was interesting - scripting workshop very useful. Lunch was good. :-)

But the highlight of the day was the visitor from TheOldPlace (who'd heard about it from elsewhere!) who showed off the as yet not public space that TheOldPlace is building in Second Life. It looks absolutely fabulous and I'm very envious. It makes the speed at which we're doing anything look positively glacial. But then apparently they've farmed out the actual work to a foreign whizz which would explain a lot. But the design is great and it will be fascinating to see how it works in practice - 'specially the Library bit. Best of luck to them with it though. Even if we caught up I fear our vision might not look as attractive!

To a lunchtime presentation today based on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q

(only without the music which rather lessened it's emotional impact)

Or available as PowerPoint from:
http://entrepreneur.iiee.org/new/about.php
(under 'Shift Happens' towards the bottom right).

While I'd seen it before a couple of times on YouTube, it was good to be reminded of it and the discussion it provoked afterwards about how it affects us in University teaching was interesting. But no real 'answers'.