Had to give a talk today for an hour not to students, or even to staff, but to computing staff who work with students in the IT suites.

The topic was the new authentication system that is in use for accessing databases (and more). Unfortunately, the new one was supposed to replace the old one but due to politics both are now running in tandem and causing some problems. Not helped by the old one itself supposedly 'replacing' the previous system and actually running in tandem with that. What with those three methods, plus databases that require individual logins (yes, still, in 2008), plus the variations between on and off campus access. Plus the possibility of using a webcache to make your off campus PC appear to be on campus......

Well, you can see that the situation is anything but clear. And you can see why the staff requested the session. You may also be imagine how fun it was trying to explain all this to computing types who actually know about the 'back end stuff' which I'm pretty ignorant about.

I just want to drive from A to B. I do NOT want to stop at point C somewhere along the way and look under the hood.

Oh, and if someone could bang the heads of those responsible for the politics of the authentication schemes.... please do.

Our department for enhancing quality has a new head who thought book clubs would be a fun idea.

Not the Library style one where we meet after work, read (mostly) fiction, and have a great social time.

Nope. These are *serious* reading groups. An academic book, group limited to 6 (though you do get a free copy of the book), meet three times and then meet the author. All very worthy and potentially very dull.

But I thought I'd sign up mainly because I was interested in how it would work and comparing it with the Library book. But of the six titles on offer one of them was about internationalizing higher education, and I thought I could muster some interest in that. And if no 'academic' experience, at least had some practical experience of other countries and cultures - never mind the number of international students who walk through my door.

The reading group's first meeting was today and I was feeling very pleased I'd read half the book already. Plus started on a mind map cover the half I've read so that I could remember the different chapters as otherwise I feared it would all be instantly forgettable. It was marked in ways to show bits I enjoyed, bits I struggled with, bits that were interesting and so on.

Only three of the six of us turned up - plus the 'facilitator'. (Horrible word but at least you know what I mean). Of the four of us, two hadn't really started on the book and the other was finished.

What was particularly amusing given that I generally don't enjoy the social book group picks was that it turned out everyone else hated this one (not enough research too anecdotal), and I'd rather enjoyed it (because it was anecdotal and not too reasarchy!) But we're a bit concerned about how we're going to 'meet the author' and say anything nice. I fear it may be down to me. Just to add to my fanboy embarrassment, it turns out that the best chapter of all was the one that persuaded me to read some 'international reflections' one University produces and the author of that particularly chapter was the editor of the book who is coming to see us.

Ah well, I thought it might be interesting.

As well as book club the Library has a film club. Due to restrictions on travel home I only tend to attend when the movie is less than 90 minutes. Which means I've made one so far. But tonight's film is one I've picked - so I have to attend. Fortunately it comes at 85 minutes. Delightful foreign thing called _Once_ with Irish and Czech connections. Definitely worth staying late for.

Now I'd just better go and write an introduction.

Library is in something of a state of shock today.

A colleague who was a bit unwell last week with the cold everyone was reported on Monday to have had an unplanned operation on his bowel over the weekend. Bit worrying.

But we were all unprepared for the news this morning that he died yesterday of renal failure.

I've not had many close to me die - my grandmother when I was young and could just about appreciate it, my grandfather (on the other side) more recently after two 30 year marriages and still preaching in his 90s. And it's difficult to say I was 'close' to Q. But we had spent the last year, 18 months learning to do cryptic crosswords together in coffee breaks and lunchtimes. We had, after some time, dragged a third person into our cryptic corner. We had spent endless time puzzling over the deranged minds of the setters and treasure the more brilliant of their creations.

There's going to be a definite hole in the breaks R and I take together, and almost certainly going to be blanks in the crosswords that would be Qs clues. (Particularly the literary ones).

R & I did today's crossword 'in memoriam' and managed to finish it which we weren't expecting. Bizarrely Q's surname formed the answer to 14 down.

:-(

Delightful journey to work this morning taking over 2 hours to travel 7 miles.

The car had had a 'recall' notice served on it thanks to a faulty oil something-or-other and left on the side of the road waiting for public transport that was over 50 minutes away, I read for as long as I could before I got cold and decided that just possibly a McDonalds breakfast wouldn't be a bad idea. In fact their bacon thingy and hash brown was quite nice and certainly made a change. At least it was out of the rain.

Dull, dull, dull.

How can educationalists be so boring. And tedious. And did I mention dull?

Went today to a lunchtime lecture by a visiting speaker who's renowned (apparently) in his field and has many books to his name. He was speaking on 'informal learning' and I thought it would be quite interesting.

Now I now that the lack of sleep I had and arriving a couple of minutes late (thanks to a student enquiry) so I had to take the last remaining chair right at the front under the speaker's nose probably didn't predispose me to the very best of lecture experiences. But I wasn't the only one who thought he took a potentially interesting topic and managed to utterly kill it with total dullness, dull slides, dull presentation, dull examples (where he had them at all which was all too infrequently), and dull manner. It was a textbook example of dull and even I, who will extract *something* out of almost anything, really failed to do so today.

I shan't be seeking out his books to see if he writes better than he talks. I've already wasted enough time.

The staff association arranged a murder mystery evening with a western theme which went well despite the perhaps disappointing numbers who came. The library had a very strong presence as you'd expect accounting for about 1/4 of the 40 or so who were there.

The acting company that had been employed were excellent and we had a great time. But got nowhere near the right solution. No one did. Still, we were very pleased with our (apparently very coveted by cop groups who book them) award for the best "fit up" of an entirely innocent person. We're thinking of hanging it above the plaque of the crime writer that opened our extension 18 months back.

I believe there may be photos on Facebook if you need blackmail material...

But it's gone 1am now and I'm still too hyper to sleep.

Farewell today to one of the chaplains.

Actually, not really farewell as I seem at church as well. And besides, he's got a part time post with my faculty implementing the personal development plan stuff the students do. The University Librarian attended as well as even more senior staff, but the former complained that the chaplaincy included a very short 'service' of committal for the outgoing guy and his incoming replacement who was in attendance. What did he expect?!

Skills drop in starts again today. One visitor for the 'writing / numeracy' expert (who lends me her Poirot DVDs). Not a sign of anyone wanting to ask me a question about the library or information retrieval. Still, at least it's a change from the office and allows me to get on with other things.

Annual leave on Friday as I was on a cruise at the weekend. Just a short one. But great fun nevertheless. Brought back lots of memories of time at sea, time as a student and gave me the chance to meet some young Navy types, see one of the most fabulous 'rooms' on the planet, and also encounter Anduril (Aragorn's sword) for the second time. Terrific.

Met a potty chap today. Newish lecturer in my faculty. Of mature age shall we say.

Wanted help with replacing a textbook which covered exactly what he wanted but now had to be reproduced online. He had a grand plan for 10 'chapters' (segments) really in the virtual learning environment with 10 sub-headings in each. And amongst other things wanted advice on how much he could copy from printed books to use in his work. Oh dear.

Still, with some help from the Business Librarian (who he should probably have been talking to in the first place) we managed to provide him with books, URLs, journal material and perhaps most importantly copyright advice.

If nothing else the deluge means he'll be kept occupied for a bit... I hope.

The delights of three consecutive and identical lectures this morning. Three hours of math 1st years. Our seminar room only handles 30 at time sitting in front of PCs and they've massively over recruited this year. I have two more hours of them next week.

Still, they seemed to go well and were reasonably responsive which is good for Freshers.

Whatever happened to the customer is always right?

I month or three back and for no very apparent reason, everytime I opened Internet Explorer it would open in 'full screen' mode (i.e. with the menus and things invisible) and with a window that was small and oddly placed.

I never got to the bottom of why it started doing that and I quickly learned that F11 fixed the 'full screen' mode back to its normal state and maximising the window sorted the other issue. The snag is that I had to do that *every* time I opened up Internet Explorer. I do that dozens and dozens of times a day. It wasn't a major thing in the bigger scheme of things, but it was annoying.

Anyway, I finally had an IT guy come today in response to my request for a proper fix. Only a month or so after the initial request (I had the email as evidence). [1]

He spent some time fiddling around and determining (it seemed) that I was telling the truth. At least that's how it felt. And then told me it wasn't a bug it was just how it was. No, he couldn't put it back how it's been for a couple of years, no it wasn't an actual 'fault', it was just life. He told me this several times as though that would somehow make it better.

But it didn't.

Ah well.


[1] In actual fact he didn't come in response to the initial request. He came because I was having *another* IT issue sorted by a woman who, on hearing about my Internet Explorer hassles said it wasn't her team but would get on to the team whose problem it was. I guess she went back and kicked some...

Went to a training session/workshop on the University's anti-plagiarism software today. Along with around 20 others from the Library.

First we were briefed on the software, then we were let loose on it with the instructions to put together some text that we could upload and test for plagiarism. (We were given the topic 'criminals: born not made' as it's easy to find stuff on the web on the subject, but could have tackled anything if we wished.)

Anyway, I cobbled something together from hits that I found 100 or more hits into a Google search result and other did similar things.

Some, scored 52% of their work being identifiable as plagiarism, some the software reckoned had copied 60% or 70%. But I managed a score of 98%! I'm really NOT sure that's something to be proud of!

I'm in shock.

Long time readers may recall that this time last year I was tasked with starting a blog that would find fun/weird things from around the web and be a 'fun' side to the library that people could read or become fans of on Facebook. The blog is a year old next week and part of my appraisal was to report on the experience at our board meeting this morning.

I put together five pages of report and statistics and so on and seem to have persuaded them to let us go on for another year at least.

But the shock came in a revelation that the University Librarian made.

Through the year there's been a reasonably regular contributor with a Scottish sounding name who's only occasionally wound me up somewhat with his pernickty comments. On the whole I've just been glad that someone's been taking an interest and contributing items as well as comments. But I'm really glad my responses were polite.

Yes, you've seen it coming way before I did. It turns out that the Scot (who for some reason I'd vaguely thought came from a university there), is in fact my own bosses' boss, the Head.

Oh dear. Apparently my face was a picture when he owned up to this and several others were quite surprised/shocked/appalled as well.

I don't know if I'm disappointed our 'fan' isn't really someone "out there" whom we've engaged with; pleased that he was taking an interest; humiliated by the whole experience. It's certainly a lesson learned and I hope it doesn't put me off bothering with the thing...

Freshers' Fayre yesterday and today.

This year the theme has been 'the body in the Library' with a 'murder' that's been committed. Perhaps inspired by the crime writer who opened our new extension at the beginning of last year. Answer five questions and you'll find the murderer (one of the Faculty Librarians - could it be me?!), the weapon, the motive and so on. More importantly you'll familiarise yourself with certain parts of the Library (e.g. the catalog, the enquiry desk and so on).

We chose not to have a stall in the marquee this year as the rates that are charged have nearly doubled to $1000. Instead, we've set ourselves up on a thoroughfare just across from the tents and right outside the Library. The 'design' of the stall/game has been brilliant. It looks like the board game Clue/Cluedo and I've even been turned into a suspect card which is fun.

To catch people's eye and their attention as we walked past I was persuaded to lie on the concrete while they chalked around my body. We'd borrowed some cones and got some police crime scene tape and the whole effect worked really well. So much so that some students who perhaps didn't 'get' our sense of humor really did think there'd been a murder. Oh dear.

Anyway, entries are already waaaaay up on previous years and hopefully it's engaging people with the Library in a way that's fun.

Students back yesterday - and of course loads of induction and training to do. In the Library, over in the Faculty, in my office as one-to-one sessions. Going to be a busy few days. But kind of fun and, umm, invigorating in an exhausting sort of way.