Well today was supposed to be my last day at work and I was really looking forward to going in and enjoying the final day before the place shuts down for Christmas.

After an hour in the cold though it became apparent to me and other travellers that the buses had been cancelled thanks to the weather. Which is a bit irritating as its really not that bad where I am. No snow, just rain and ice. Family had gone out for the morning so couldn't even get a lift some of the way.

Still, at least I can work from home and with the silence and lack of distractions managed to get my depressing email down from 200 or more to just 30 or so by dint of some hard labor, the compilation of a to do list which I won't look forward to in January, and accepting that at least one email to a student and one email to a member of academic staff I really should have answered just weren't worth responding to so late in the day. Still, it's already relieved some of the pressure that keeps me awake at nights and catching up with this blog this afternoon has contributed to that as well!

Nearly time to give up for the day but there's still a bit more I could do and the quiet in which to do it. So wishing any readers out there season's greetings, this blog is shutting down till the New Year.

Merry Christmas.

Had hoped to get some scanning done and make some inroads into the 200+ emails still sculling around in my inbox today. But much of the morning was wasted dealing with IT issues when my computer refused to boot.

On the upside, I did put through some book orders as a tiny amount of money has been released for us to get started again after a hiatus due to budgeting issues.

Went mad and have come to work the long way via TheOldPlace.

One of the things I was shown last week was their newly refurbished, redecorated staff room. It does look nicer but it's still stuck in a windowless basement and could use something cheerful on the wall. So I've offered them three of my favorites pictures from the summer trip to Prague.

Remains to be seen if they actually want my 'old holiday snaps' as my wife so rudely put it when she heard about it. But carpe diem and all that.

Annual leave today. Running the AV at a carol service for my daughters' former junior school.

On a day long course on promoting dignity and respect in the workplace today. I think it used to be 'Bullying and Harrassment' but the course leader had a theory about focussing on the negative actually creating the negative thing.

Anyway, although I didn't go with much in the way of expectations, it was a good and interesting day.

The disappointment being that it was so informal and intimate that I couldn't sit at the back and also visit Second Life where colleagues from TheOldPlace were doing a demonstration and had suggested I might drop in. We did have a 20 minute tea break and with 12 minutes of it left after grabbing a drink I thought there was just time to say a virtual 'Hi' - but the break was curtailed and just as I got logged on it was time to go again. I nearly pretended to sit and take notes, but my screen could be overlooked and the presenter had already made some remark about emailing during meetings and respect and so on, so I didn't dare.

The encouragement (if that's the right word) was in a bit role play at the end of the day. The group I was in had a couple of goes with one pair doing a fair job of one being a manager and t'other being a member of staff who was being bullied. Then it was my turn to take on a role with someone else as manager. The role I was assigned turned out, as I skimmed through the briefing, to be someone who'd been inappropriately asked out on several occasions by a line manager. And between nerves at playing the part and realizing that this was what someone talking to their appraiser would feel like anyway plus an empty coffee cup to fiddle with, I was soon 'there' or 'in the zone' as they say. When I surfaced at the end of maybe 7 or 8 minutes of this, the rest of the group were visibly astonished. I didn't think it had gone particularly well as without a script I always feel somewhat at a loss - but they unanimously thought I should quit my job and become an actor tomorrow. If I wasn't so exhausted by the whole process I might think it was good idea - but it was fun in any case.

Not sure I've the energy to go home now.

The university's annual learning and teaching bash this morning. Went very well.

I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't manage to submit an offering for them, but they wanted student involvement this year and there was very little time between the call for papers and the deadline for those of us who have very little constant contact with students and no contact at all with students regarding the project I'd have submitted.

Still, another library project did get a paper in and their session went well and was well attended. The junior colleague who'd been a part of it and for whom this was a novelty with associated nerves did an excellent job.

Went on what I think creativity types called a 'creative swiping' visit this afternoon to TheOldPlace. Well, that sounds better than bunking off for an afternoon just to see their new atrium.

In fact, thanks to the kindness and diligence of three former colleagues who laid on both a detailed tour of the building and a detailed tour of some of their electronic developments, I had an amazingly interesting and useful afternoon. The four of us then visited a closing down bookstore and a restaurant to finish the day and make the trip even more worthwhile. Stupidly I failed to buy anything even with many of the books at greatly reduced prices.

(Did find an empty DVD case which my daughter needed - but they let me take it away for free after I asked nicely.)

Thanks to S, Z and K who gave up so much time and were so gracious.

This morning we had a coffee morning on, well, coffee. Including coffee cakes and drinks and all sorts. A great treat even for non-coffee loving folk such as myself. The thrice a year 'foodie' coffee mornings always go down well - in both senses!

My faculty's library committee met this morning. Still had no formal news to tell them about the money situation. The chair had heard rumors that we were getting more money - but I knew nothing. All very difficult and painful but I survived. Not much fun.

On a much more cheerful note we had our library christmas buffet over lunch. Plenty to eat, games to be played, raffles to be drawn.

I'd submitted my photo for a 'name the baby' contest but recalled just about everyone at TheOldPlace guessing that it was me when we did something similar. Here I wasn't so universally recognized. Given that the one characteristic of the photo is cheeriness have I really got so 'down' the last three years that I no longer resemble my high chair self?

A Czech student popped in with parent, aunt, girlfriend and mother's friend who are all visiting just before Christmas.

I took them all to a coffee shop and as at least two of them didn't speak any more English than I spoke Czech, it was great to be able to practice what little I'd learned for my summer expedition. They were most amused at my delight when, on two occasions, I actually understood a whole sentence immediately. OK, so they weren't complex statements, but it was still something to pick out any meaning from all those consonants!

Had the delight of a very near neighbour of TheOldPlace coming as a group this afternoon to talk about ebooks and show round. Went very well and the colleagues I'd inveigled into coming and talking about their knowledge of or part in the process of buying/using/teaching ebooks kindly made the afternoon a great success.

Be interesting to hear how they go from here with regard to ebooks.

OK, here's odd: I tried buying milk yesterday morning and had one coin rejected because it was a Canadian 25 cent piece.

That's not what was odd.

Book group gang departed at the end of the work day and I'm waiting to run our deep web workshop again. But when only one guy turns up I ask if he would mind picking any time to run the 'hour' but not right now. (In fact I had quite a genuine migraine from a 90 minute transatlantic 'webinar' on a new database).

He was very gracious and happy to meet this morning for an hour.

We sat for 20 minutes (he was 10 minutes early) making sure no one else was coming and I was able to do a mini-workshop on things he didn't know as a distance learner to fill in the time. But the oddness was that rather randomly he turned out to be Canadian. So I gave him my 25c.

Oh and book group was great fun as well - I got a mini construction kit to build on Christmas Day if I can manage the engineering!

Deep web workshop today. Again, the Polish lady brought a whole class over so instead of 3 or 4 I had 22. Seemed to go well.

Bit irritated though. The rerun at 5.30 tomorrow I've realized clashes with the book group's Christmas meeting and gift swapping. Aaaaargh! How likely is it that no one will turn up?

Christmas lunch today with the (extended) team. About 12 or 13 of us. Two hours in a local hostelry. Don't expect much this afternoon!

Day conference went well. I was last up this time instead of first. And my colleague, S, who is not known for such effusiveness - especially where it's not required - thought it the best presentation of the lot. Which was a huge relief as the first one had rather intimidated me by being very researchy and not at all what I had in my bag if that's what they were expecting.

The road trip went well enough as well with a spare battery for my laptop meaning I had power for as long as I could be bothered to work and no major hold ups which was surprising. I even found a taker for my poster so I didn't have to carry *that* home.

Oh, and one oddity. Turned out that I was speaking *after* another poster award winner from the conference a couple of us took the e-book poster to and won the judge's choice award. As she was introduced as one of the winners, I assumed at the time she'd won the 'people's choice' award and made some joke about it. But looking it up afterwards discovered she'd actually been the runner up to us! Probably a good job I didn't know that at the time.

Off to do my 'Ostrava talk' at another university now. 6 hours driving (road trip! [1]) seems a long way to go for a 20 minute talk till I think how far I went in the summer for the same.

The colleague I'm going with *had* agreed to go in a rather nice RV we found for hire. (Worked out the cost was about the same as trains and two hotel rooms). But he repented of the offer (made after nearly bottle of wine) and has in the interim had to suffer much ribbing from other colleagues about the "Brokeback Winnebago" trip. I think it would have been fun - in a sort of interesting way! Ah well, another time.

Delivered my library staff development hour on my trip to Ostrava this morning. Seemed to go down well. I covered the conference in enough detail to satisfy the 'trickle down' requirements but also got to cover some of the non-work bits as well. From a gigabyte of photos I selected 30 ones I thought were the best plus some extra ones that set scenes or were unique in some way.

The highlight though for people seemed to be that they could choose how they navigated through the pictures and stories.

I'd thought of doing it all chronologically but then picked 8 or so 'themes'. On a slide with the 8 themes represented by a word in Czech, the PowerPoint would link off to whichever bit and then return to the 'title' slide. Folk got to guess / pick a word and if we didn't get through everything, it wasn't the end of the world. In fact, we just managed to do them all so I'd got it about right.

Stayed late tonight to hear one of my Heads of Department give his inaugral professorial lecture. Given that it was on math it was surprisingly interesting and accessible. Big crowd attended and well worth bothering with.

Two more goes with Flock and Twitter this morning. Two lectures to computing final year students of about 60 in each group.

Quick straw poll before they'd all arrived suggested *at least* half a dozen had the technology and Twitter logins to participate.

But for whatever reason, and despite my encouragement, none of them chose to do so. Not even in the second session when they should have been more awake. Not quite sure what that's about. They participated verbally. So were they just unsure of me or what I'd do? Not keen on using the technology that way? Shy?

At least one of them was gracious enough to pose for a photo. (From over his shoulder as I took a picture of him with his his cellphone on Twitter and the main screen 'behind' (actually in front of him) showing the Library homepage and the twitter sidebar). I needed a picture of 'active learning' for a workshop I'm attending next week and thought that was about the only opportunity I had to contribute something.

Same trick again but this time with Library staff during one of our training sessions.

As I wasn't actually leading the session I set up the presenter with my Twitter account in the sidebar and once again people could comment or ask questions via the @reply feature.

Didn't work quite as well as the presenter wasn't engaging with it but a couple of people 'played' with comments and questions to each other. Still worked well at that level.

One snag using my own account from two different perspectives as it were: a couple of my followers wanted to know why I was talking to myself!

Tried out the Twitter in a side-bar trick with Flock today. Running a workshop for computing academics as one of their lunchtime briefings. Seemed to go very well with a couple of dozen turning up and lots of input. Better yet, having them Twitter questions and comments meant that I had a record of them next day when I tried to respond to the queries I didn't know the answer to!

Of course, computing academics might not be a 'typical' audience, but it was a promising start and not as distracting or useless as it might have been.

Prompted by a comment to our 'surreal' blog (see, it does have uses), I downloaded a PowerPoint template that allows Twitter to feed straight through to the PowerPoint live as it were.

The practical upshot being (and the reason I looked) that I could have students tweeting direct to a screen that would update itself as I lectured them.

Why? Two reasons:
firstly it allow them to ask questions semi-anonymously
secondly it would allow them to send in their project titles for the moment when I use their examples to show how to analyze for keywords etc.

A lecture this morning to final year computing students was a prime example of why I might want to do this. Using the 'hands up' method that at least has the advantage of technical simplicity, I had a student tell me her project was about 'event management software'. Sounds reasonable I thought and proceeded to scribble it up on the board and start dissecting it. Until - fortunately she was brave enough - she pointed out she'd said 'inventory' not 'event'. Only it took at least three goes before I caught what she was saying. Between her reasonably heavy accent, the appalling acoustics of the lecture theater and my awful (and fast declining it would appear) hearing, it was thoroughly embarrassing for all concerned. And it's happened before when an oriental student with the quietest voice I've ever heard put me (and herself) through the same trauma.

Anyway, the snag with tweeting to PowerPoint I immediately saw was that I don't actually use much PowerPoint for final year students. Typically I'm showing them a live web page. But as I was messing with the PowerPoint solution in one of our coffee shops, an academic came in and pointed out the solution.

Flock - a Firefox based browser I think she said - that handles social media really well in a side bar while your main window holds your ordinary web page. No sooner had she showed me than it was downloaded and installed and appears to do just what she said. I might even dare to use it with some computing staff I'm speaking to tomorrow and the remainder of the final year computing students I see in two sessions on Friday. Bit scary - but could be fun.

Oh, and in my other technological development, I was inspired to solve a problem I've had in my appraisal for a couple of years now.

I've long wanted a second monitor for extra screen real estate - working on documents and web pages and other things all simultaneously. Would be great.

A snag I realized recently would be that it wasn't just the cost of new monitor that would be a stumbling block. I needed a dual graphics card on the PC as well. I don't have one.

However, the light dawned today, my *laptop* does! If the monitor I have has two inputs I may be able to reverse the idea of using my PC as the main screen and use it as the extension. I nabbed a cable from one of our techie guys and after a little bit of fiddling (mainly because I had to tell the PC monitor it no longer needed to display the PC desktop), got it working a treat.

Couple of kinks - can't print to my local printer as my laptop can only print to a networked printer. Have to switch the monitor manually each time. Email behaves in a way that makes it only usable on the primary screen. But nothing unmanageable and at zero cost may yet please the boss! Be interesting to see how useful it actually is.

Workshop for staff this morning on Web 2.0 seemed to go well. Packed with 28 in attendance which is most unusual for our staff workshops. Feedback had some interesting points but almost all postivie which was a relief.

With that and some other teaching today it's been exhausting - and an exhausting week. But done now and time to brave the awful rain and head home.

News just in...

TheOldPlace don't want me. Nice, polite email but the upshot is the same.

Rejection doesn't get any easier to take, but perhaps there's a bit of me that thinks it's something of a relief. In any case, I'm sure all their candidates will be much better qualified and likely to succeed at the job.

I wish them all the best in their search for a new Head and shall watch with interest.

H invited me for coffee this morning to chat over her preparations for a conference next year. I didn't think I'd be able to contribute much but to both our surprises I was able to contribute some useful ideas for people and things she could invite or arrange. From slightly worried to much cheerier - I wish I could do that for people more often!

School visit this afternoon. Supposed to be a class full of 17 year olds but there's a tiny bit of rain and apparently they didn't want to travel from the island.

So we got a rather apologetic call from the teacher in charge saying only four of them could make it, did we still want to continue.

The law librarian and I, detailed off to run the afternoon and already armed with a page long plan of what we'd cover, who'd present it and what activities we'd get them to do, thought about it and decided that we were geared up for it so we might as well. But it's a bit disappointing to prepare and then find the students can't be bothered. I guess they're preparing all too well for their university experience.

Tired now. Four or forty or four hundred - it still takes it out of you.

Asked about the TheOldPlace application I realized it was ten days and I'd not heard anything. You might assume at that point that you weren't going to hear anything.

But then I recalled that TheOldPlace was the employer that 10 days after a job interview hadn't told me I'd got the job and only revealed that I had becaused I called to ask. (Due to having been offered another job but really wanting the first one more).

So I can only be patient and try not to be too stressed. Of course I have no idea if they do actually notify unsuccessful applicants. I did get a nice email saying thank you for the documents after I'd submitted them. I'm still not holding my breath but I hate the waiting all the same.

One of my occasional late nights this evening. However, the day doesn't seem quite as bad for having had a serious lie in this morning, a quiet time reading, an early lunch and the oddest journey to work for a while.

A odd looking young man sitting near me, with a short read beard, was knitting a scarf on giant needles with giant wool. At the same time he was lecturing - that's the only word for it - a drop dead gorgeous girl across the aisle on how to knit (and how he learned), that he was a musical prodigy by the age of 11 (with details on what pieces he'd had to peform at each grade), and that he had read 4000 books in the last 8 years. Even he admitted that it was only a matter of devoting time to it.

It was difficult to tell whether his audience of one (well, two counting me trying hard to read my book but utterly failing) was merely being polite in her interest, resigned to listening, or genuinely agog at gush of words. (I was in the latter camp.) Definitely one of those moments when you want to know the back story - and indeed the forward story - of how they get on.

One of our staff training sessions this morning - "The US government in a nutshell". Great fun and brought back all sorts of memories of 4th and 5th grade for some reason. Our trainer for the morning had all sorts of obscure facts not many knew - she'd really done her homework.

Supposed to be the technology faculty's library committee this morning. But in the light of the delays to the new budget information (it's up somewhere with directorate), it seemed sensible to suggest a postponement and the new chair has gone along with that.

Here's a question:
How much was I influenced by my current reading to put in the job application?

I'm presently 7 books into Lois McMaster Bujold's rather excellent stories set in the Vorkosigan universe. (There are 15 or so all told). And I only started them two weeks ago. I've read them before a couple of years ago but I'd forgotten how much fun they were and how compulsive they can be.

If you're not familiar with Miles Vorkosigan, he's the son of powerful Count on a militarised world - but he's been damaged by poison whilst in the womb and born physically very deformed. However, he more than makes up for his lack of stature and his brittle bones by being very clever, very charismatic, and 'seizing the day'.

While I'd lay no claim whatsoever to his intelligence or charisma, I can't help wondering if his 'can do' attitude and ability to see the bigger picture and persuade those around him to catch the vision, seeped into my thinking enough to convince me that I wasn't wasting my time in the application.

Anyway, enough pop psychology for the day. Onwards.

I suppose I ought to write about yesterday's meeting. (It was a bit overshadowed by events in the rest of the day).

I'd written a couple of reports over a month ago about why we blog and our Web 2.0 activities. The former because certain colleagues think what we do is a bit surreal, pointless or a waste of time; and the latter because I was asked to justify a Facebook page, Twitter, the blog (again) and account for time spent on working with them.

In quite short order I produced a three page report with another page of references supporting the work and a 9 page report with a page of references (and a five page appendix of our tweets just for good measure!) only to have them held over not just one meeting, but a second. I had my revenge by revising them in the intervening time with more ideas and argument and references. I think they finally made sure the agenda included them before they got any longer!

Surprisingly - after all that - and expecting something of a debate the reception was quite positive. In fact a couple of voices suggested we didn't spend *enough* time on Web 2.0 activities. One naysayer expressed a couple of opinions which were fair enough but one of the biggest critics (in a couple of senses), who's loudly proclaimed he doesn't know why we keep our blog up and doesn't get it; who's boasted about not having read my explanation; chose to absent himself from the meeting. He may have had good reasons but if I hear any "anti"-ness again, I won't let it slide!

Best encouragement was Head (and chair) suggesting the work should be published. (I'd thought of that but wasn't sure if some of the content was a bit sensitive. So it was nice to hear that unprompted.) Of course it means more work!

I can't believe I'm doing this but I've filled in the form for the Head of Library post.

I can't believe it's a good idea:
- my 'qualifications' must be right on the border of acceptable and depend somewhat on how you interpret their requirements
- they know me and what they'd be getting and I can't imagine them seeing me as 'Head'
- I'm not sure *I* see me as Head!
- I'm not encouraged by the former colleague who reckoned he/she/it wouldn't touch it with a bargepole because it wasn't a real job. (I don't think 'management' per se was the target there, just that it wouldn't be working with students directly). And I can sympathise.

On the other hand I saw the calibre of some of the candidates doing their presentations for our Head post.
Maybe I am ready for a step up when I look at some of what I do now.
And I may be making a difference for students now, but perhaps I can make a bigger one in a larger scheme of things elsewhere.
Plus there's the 'encouragement' that I started this year thinking I'd never have my 'non-technical' paper accepted for a technical conference or subsequent publication etc - and look what persevering at that resulted in!

So who knows. But I'm still not holding my breath...

Usually we have staff training (aka 'coffee mornings') on Thursday between 9 and 10. Or sometimes starting at 9.15 (if the content doesn't demand an hour) to allow part-timers to attend as they start a little later.

However, there had been comments from said part-time staff that other times of the day would be useful. So we had one at 2pm this afternoon. Not a marvellously convenient time but I was interested in seeing how it affected attendance.

Not well. Too many of my colleagues involved in teaching or counter duties. Just 6 of us in the end - including the presenter. Number of part-timers present: zero.

Sigh.

I can't believe I'm seriously contemplating applying for the post of Head at TheOldPlace. But a few people have pointed out 'what have you got to lose' and H joined the voices this week.

At least they have a nice online form which isn't too horrendous in terms of the detail it requires... I've downloaded it anyway.

Back with the same group I did mind mapping with a couple of weeks ago. Not quite so much fun this time - referencing (and plagiarism). 90 minute session.

Short talk for 20 minutes and then handed out a photocopy consisting of:
title page and imprint page of a single author book
title page and imprint page of a multiple editor book
front cover (i.e. contents page) of a scholarly journal with particular article highlighted
cover and (much reduced) article from a popular science magazine
web page with academic type article on but no 'publisher'
web page with academic article from one of our databases

Also handed out the Library's printed guide on referencing in the correct style.

Their assignment for the next 30 minutes or so (I'd planned on 20 but it took longer) was to reference the items accurately and then I went through the answers pointing out problems, pitfalls and peculiarities.

It was quite rambunctious with 70 or so students (mostly international) but they seemed to get on with it and find it quite helpful.

I saw some of their mind map assignments being handed in at the start and there were some truly impressive ones - both in content and design. Wonder if I can get hold of some for a display?

Arrived at work this morning to find a very curious splatter pattern of grey almost toner like marks all across various paperwork on my desk.

Bit mystified at first. Looked like some accident and I did wonder if anyone had been messing with a printer toner cartridge or something. The trouble is that the only people who could have been in the office since I was last there were the cleaners, so it seemed unlikely.

Tracking the splats' extent and working out a 'ground zero' finally gave the clue that solved the riddle. A book with a black, 'cloth' cover had an interesting stain on it. And it eventually became obvious that a leak had come through the ceiling again, dripped onto the book long enough to make it wet enough that a small black puddle formed and then 'splatted' around in a way that then had time to dry out before I arrived.

Sigh, I've complained about the leak before but it appears there's nothing they can do as they fix one bit and it just moves elsewhere!

Yesterday afternoon was devoted to the Faculty's learning and teaching committee. They never finish in time to make it worth returning to the Library. But this one was slightly different. It's only taken me three years but I now have my own permanent slot on the agenda which is good.

'course it means I really need to find things to report on or whatever, but that's normally not a problem as long as I think about it for more than a minute.

OK, now my Head has let me know about the Head's post at TheOldPlace. I think it was a hint except that she sent to all the senior staff. I think it was just for interest really rather than suggesting anyone should go for it.

Fortunately I'm too snowed under to even think about it, and get into worrying about my lack of ambition.

Off sick again yesterday. Just don't seem to be able to shake whatever it is down in my lungs. Thought I'd better save my strength for today as there is an accreditation visit going on for Civil Engineering.

I attended the lunch and then had to do a tour for the visitors plus a couple of University staff. Not a couple of academics I really knew. It was amusing to do my standard waffle and enthuse about the Library and see their faces admit that maybe I really had put on a good show after all. I don't quite know what they expect from me. Evidently not very much.

S from TheOldPlace sent an interesting email today.

Pointing out that the post of Head of Library of TheOldPlace was being advertised.

Kind of her to think of me, but I really can't see them considering me for more than about a millisecond. I mean after all, they know me!

Worryingly though, I can actually tick all the boxes required on the person spec. Probably depends how you define a couple of things but I can't rule it out immediately on the grounds of meeting a requirement. Bother.

Rare outing for my mind mapping lecture today.

50+ (mostly international) students in computing. Direct entry to the third year.

The lecturer has them doing an assignment due in two weeks which will be them submitting a mind map - so I guess they're reasonably interested.

Still, there was a little reluctance to let me have a handful of examples to put on the visualizer and discuss. Despite my assurances I wasn't going to be rude about them.

Until I'd done a few. Then they saw that a) it was interesting looking at people's maps; b) I really wasn't rude about them; c) could always point out some feature of interest and compliment at least one thing about each one. Then there was a positive stampede to get their maps sent up to the front. Not time for them all but they seemed to enjoy it.

Certainly going to be more fun that referencing which I have the same lot for in a fortnight!

(Oh and thank you to S from TheOldPlace for her contribution to the lecture).

Been off sick for a few days. Not really better now but I can't keep lying in bed. And I've heard others have had this bug for several weeks. Not 'flu though. Certainly not swine 'flu. Not even piglet 'flu.

Now far too much to catch up on. My email has gone mad. I'll never get this under control. And it just keeps getting worse even as I try to staunch the tide. Aaaaargh!

Freshers' Fayre this year a much subdued event on the part of the Library. We're still not back in the tent but trying a table near an exit sort of on the way to the main tents.

But with no one taking on overall coordination and the poor foot soldiers who've done such great work in past years being under appreciated and not really allowed the time to do anything this year, we have no over arching theme or 'draw' and so it's much harder to enthuse about selling ourselves to the students. What with teaching and feeling so under the weather I just about managed an hour to show willing, but I could tell my heart wasn't in it.

Seems a shame. Doesn't take much to get me going - a pirate or Dalek or dead body or two. Past years have been great fun. Perhaps a 'fallow' year will do us good and we come back with a bang next year. Or perhaps our new Head will continue to 'under appreciate' the staff who work hard on designs and energy for the day.

Teaching... training... lectures... you name it. It's going to be busy for a bit. Don't expect much!

Shattered now.

Our International Fayre day with a Library stall promoting our services and facilities to hordes of students from all over the world.

Most sensible colleagues volunteer to do 90 minutes or so, but I've somehow become the Library contact and end up helping out throughout. Exhausting, but great fun meeting folk from all over and getting the chance - as ever - to practice the odd phrase, word or even national anthem in the relevant language.

Interestingly a new colleague for whom this was a first was observing at one point and told me afterwards that she would again and again see tired, shell-shocked, confused looking students (they'd just arrived in the country the day before) trawling around the stalls and arrive in front of our Library table. I'd accost them, she said and try out a greeting, and their eyes would light up at just a fragment of home.

I'd not actually seen that, but she could see it was well worthwhile. I was just relieved they weren't irritated at the feebleness of my pronounciation or knowledge or something.

Loving the ebook reader already. Finished _Around the World in 80 Days_ (Jules Verne) last night. Though that was cheating a bit as I'd read 3/4 of it on my daughter's Nintendo DS as an experiment to compare the experience. (Nintendo wasn't bad actually although pages a *little* small).

Survey for the ebook reader gave me the chance to suggest a fair few things I might improve, so it's by no means perfect. But a lot better than I was expecting and very comfortable on the eyes not being another 'screen'.

Went mad and bought an ebook reader today.

Been looking at it for a week or two after seeing a colleague demonstrate with hers that it could cope with Word docs and PDFs. I'd never seen one in real life before and had also got some vague idea it would only handle DRM ebooks which I wasn't interested in. I have enough that I've already got to read without wanting to limit myself to just what gets sold as an ebook.

So, now I can read:
- ebooks I've bought from Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) for my Palm
- ebooks Fictionwise have given away for free
- role playing game material I've bought as PDFs
- journal articles etc I have to read for work (usually either PDF or Word docs)
- free ebooks found on the web - Cory Doctorow for example or 'The Tower and the Cloud'
- loads of classics that came with the reader or yet more from Gutenberg and the like

OK, so that's me occupied for the next decade....

Deadline for submitting my paper to the 'international journal' today. Never quite feels real when it's only online. But beggars can't be choosers.

Got the thing formatted and checked and so on and sent in. Nothing more I can do now.

OK, didn't go so badly as I perhaps feared. Still some angst over the fact that I do the least teaching amongst my colleagues (and even less than I did myself last year). Not for wanting of touting myself about the bazaars but there's only so much you can do. Not sure I had any new strategies for getting more this year, but I'll keep at it.

Book group second anniversary party this evening. That's something to look forward to.

Appraisal time again.

Hope I'm not as 'thin' as last year. Can't say I'm looking forward to it - they never bothered me before.

Tour of the new cosmology building with the academic I liaise with over there.

Very nice. Although half the height of the six storey building they've vacated which seems to me to take them further from their subject matter...

Particularly nice were the offices on one side of the three storey building with a balcony. Probably big enough to park a small telescope on although I didn't see any in evidence.

I was amused by at least two whiteboards in a row that looked like something straight out of Big Bang Theory. Which would make sense of course because the BBT guys are mocking the types who live up there.

Two frustrations of the new build: security access involving having to swipe through just to go to the john; a long 'ramp' (with rails) right through the middle of a not overly large staff room to allow disabled access to the balcony. (Apparently they forgot to put the provision in originally and were made to do it subsequently.)

Today is our great office tidy. Colleague and I endeavour to clear out the detritus that's accumulated over the year (or more). We did it last year and it went quite well. It's only a start though as it usually doesn't get as far as files and filing cabinets or even drawers.

Spent most of the day preparing to deliver a three hour session on Web 2.0 not just to staff as usual, but to IT staff who'd specially asked for it. Fortunately there's lots of hands on (and my patent paper based blogging exercise) so it's not just me talking for 180 minutes.

But it's pretty daunting doing something IT related to IT staff. You kind of think they know it all. As it happens I'm assured that they sit in their bunkers doing their narrow jobs and actually don't necessarily have any wider knowledge than your typical member of staff. We'll see.

The little team I've been given to help with our fun library blog met again today. But our brief has been expanded really to cover Facebook and Twitter as well, so we're a nascent Web 2.0 team which everyone seems happy with.

I'm now detailed off to write some reports which could be interesting.

(Somewhat amusingly I thought we were about done 90 minutes in, although we'd booked the room for a couple of hours. I was told in no uncertain terms by the two issue desk staff that we should find something else to talk about for half an hour as otherwise they'd have to go back to 'work'. As it happens there's always plenty to discuss so we obliged.)

Spent much of the day rewriting the article I took the conference for possible publication in a journal. Even after my experience I'm still not convinced the *journal* will want it as untechnical as it is. But I'll play the game till the end and they reject me rather than just give up.

As part of the project I'm working on that took me abroad, I met a local imam today. In our brief chat during which I'm not entirely sure I explained what I was doing in a way that he comprehended, he did complain about the difficulties he has spiritually over the way women in the UK dress. (i.e. skimpily at this time of year).

He was rather surprised to find that actually I quite agreed with him.

(This wasn't to suggest I hasten to add that I don't think women should dress how they wish, just that I'm not entirely sure they understand just how it effects men in general. Or if they do fully get that, are being unkind in abusing the freedom in a way that would be completely unacceptable if the shoe were, as it were, on the other foot).

On leave all next week and most of next - don't expect any posts! :-)

Our new Head, (my boss promoted), has been meeting each member of staff for half an hour 'to get to know them'. Of course, as she's been doing my appraisals these last three years, my meeting was more a chat than anything more formal. But interesting to see how she's beginning to get her feet under the desk as it were. Certainly nothing immediately dramatic or worrisome which is probably a relief to most people. Although I took the opportunity to point out that under the previous Head we had something of a reputation for being, perhaps, overly cautious.

Bookgroup this month on The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. Very 'bookgroup' type of book but spoiled the run of favorites. This wasn't widely loved.

Back at work again. More's the pity.

I think I could have stayed forever. Am I allowed to admit to having far too much fun for something that was ostensibly work? My boss has already taken me aside to make it clear that the outgoing Head was probably demob happy when he signed the ok - so I doubt I'll be doing anything of the sort again. Still, at least I enjoyed it while I could. Still can't quite believe I was able to go at all.

The travel worked out brilliantly. I also managed to survive the heat which on some days was roasting. And throughout was nice. (One rain shower in Prague but it gave my guide and I time in a pub to chat and find out that he'd managed to get a job already on the basis of some of the English I'd been teaching him!).

The conference went well:
- my paper seemed to go down ok even though it wasn't anywhere near as technical as almost everything else (but maybe as I went first they were still getting used to everything)
- I was told I'd represented my own Uni very well
- going first in my track I learned I was to be the 'chair' of the session and then had extra speakers slotted in so had to cut people short. Went ok after I got everyone to agree that it just had to be done
- scored bonus points for being able to thank each speaker in their own language (I lucked out really)
- interesting to note some very technical and incomprehensible papers, some presented in very accessible ways, the remainder somewhere in between
- had a couple of extracurricular tours and ended up 'leading' one of the tours when it turned out the guide didn't speak much English but had a script... great fun
- Uni conference suite very nice
- managed to visit the Uni library (just - it was only open once due to summer hours)

The tourist side went well as well:
- several marvellous days in beautiful Prague (and Kutna Hora) with two great guides
- discovering how good (and cheap) Czech (and other European trains) were
- trip to Auschwitz - not easy but worth doing when only two hours away
- returning from Poland revisited Cesky Tesin which I last passed through nearly quarter of a century ago
- finding the 1000+ words of Czech I'd made the effort to learn more than repaid the time and energy it took to batter them into my brain. Shame that will probably last about two minutes.

But the highlights were meeting up with the two friends I knew in the country and meeting their friends and so on. Visiting A's home village and feeling spoken too very clearly by God about his love across time and space (or at least geography) and language barriers.

I have a feeling it will be a while before I match that trip for fun and learning and interest and excitement. No wonder work seems rather, bleah as Snoopy says.

Very very excited about the last (and most exciting) conference of the year. Off to the Czech Republic tomorrow. May or may not get 'connected' but don't expect posts even there is internet. I shall no doubt be otherwise occupied with paper, language, networking, meeting up with a friend, doing the tourist bit and just travelling. Sleep might be a luxury.

Graduation day!

Both 'my' ceremonies were on one day (AM and PM) so it was a bit of day of it. But last year's buzz about sitting there seeing the students finish was still there and though it was hot I had a good seat with good view. No exciting honorary degrees - but well done to all those who've succeeded in graduating.

Conference went really well.

Low lights:
conference dinner disappointing and after dinner speaker more so
seeing a well known blogger ruin his reputation by twitter needlessly rude remarks about some karaoke particpants

Highlights:

getting on well with work colleague over managing our poster

internet connection

twittering with the best of them through conference and enjoying the additional networking opps

stalking a presenter on Second Life whilst in Second Life (I sat at the back and could access SL via wireless connection and laptop)

but best of all:

winning a trophy for best poster! Yay! After all that work and revision, something to trumpet!

More conferencing - I really have overdone it this year! This time off to the professional association's annual jamboree which I've never attended before.

The humanties librarian and I are going to present the poster we've been working which presents (along with a handout) some of the results of the e-book survey we've been conducting.

Off on the train after lunch. Back Thursday. No idea if I will have internet access. (Not holding my breath).

Book group again last night. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. We're three for three now on books people have liked. This was the first, I think, that I'd read before. But I dutifully reread it as of course it's one book that is NOT the same a second time around. I still love it.

Not so successful at the quiz this time - I hadn't intended to stay but we only came third. However, I did uniquely know the fashion company a young movie star is now working for. Which so astonished everyone that they nearly put another answer not believing I could be right. Fortunately I insisted.

Still stuck in the depths of the shelves. No escape.

However, the loans team lend me some staff for 4 or 5 hours a day to help either identify the not borrowed for 10 years items or deal with some of the multiple copies that I am removing immediately from the shelves. It can be quite sociable with three of us working at the same time.

Keep getting dragged away from the weeding by my colleague.

She and I are working on a poster and handout for a conference next week. Huge poster - nearly as tall as me!

The snag is that she's a Belbin 'Completer-finisher' and I'm a Belbin 'Plant' so you can imagine the fun we have trying not drive each other mad.

Fortunately I've worked with a former colleague from TheOldPlace who was much better at 'completing' than I will ever be, so I've some experience of reining myself in and trying not to be *too* irritating. Although I've no doubt that S would say I wasn't always successful.

As it's really been my colleague's project till now and she'd already done a first pass at the poster, I was feeling a bit like a spare part, but a particular delight was when she let me loose with the poster for a hour or so to see if I could improve it and as it happened she did like the changes I made. And my ideas for the handout. It feels much more of a shared project now. (And we'd both like to win the competition they have for best poster/handout). [1]


[1] In fact my colleague reminded me the other day that she'd originally invited me to come and help present the poster because there's a third element to the prize and that's on how the delegates stand beside their poster promoting it.

Weeding really gets under way this week. Oh joy.

Computing and math areas this year for me. Apparently math was looked at four years ago and lots marked for removal.

But one of the biggest differences with this job and TheOldPlace is that academics have a say in what's weeded (or not). Apparently a huge amount of the math material was then put back on the shelves - which is why the shelves look so tired and jaded with all the old material. Not very inviting; although I appreciate that mathematics doesn't go out of date quite as fast as the computing stock!

So we'll see what happens this time round. I've already got one list of 'not used in 10 years' items marked by a lecturer with ticks to say 'don't weed this'. Has she actually *looked* at some of these volumes?

Depressing to have eye tests and hearing tests in the same 24 hour period. Definitely getting old and wearing out!

Actually at work today and able to get some work done! Also true of the next 7 days - remarkable!

Summers in the Library used to include two or three visits to other libraries or similar. This year we only have one.

So today saw 17 of us drive 80 odd miles to some national archives where the geanealogists amongst us had an absolute field day. After a tour and a lecture and some lunch even I was inspired to dig out the old census records that were freely accessible while we were on site and go back to find my great-great-great grandfather. Apparently I come from quite a line of either shipbuilders or preachers. No wonder I ended up on a Christian bookship for two years!

Tonight was the official opening of the new building the cosmologists inhabit. Having initially been overlooked I'd managed to wangle a ticket to the opening and the lecture.

Quite an event it was too with some very very notable people in attendance. The top astronomer in the country giving the lecture, famous TV astronomers, my office colleague's observatory Head and many many others.

What was particularly brilliant about the lecture looking at the next couple of decades in astronomy and cosmology was how it managed to appeal to the school kids in the front row and the senior researchers further back. The professional astronomers in attendance and the interested laypeople such as myself. Very clever. And some mindblowing stuff about alternate universes or dark energy and so on that sound like they're straight from science fiction.

"Library" trip (day off actually) to see Shakespeare at a replica theater. 'As you like it' which I didn't know until today. So another day of not getting any work done. Aaaaargh.

Still, it was a great trip, great play and great production so the five of us who went had a good time. My only frustration was not being able to make a side trip to a decent bookshop to buy a Czech/English dictionary.

Another day out today - no wonder I'm not getting anything done! - as the law librarian roped me into doing a presentation to a meeting of college librarians. We kind of did a 'dark side of the web / light side of the web' double act where I enthused about the positive aspects of Web 2.0 things and how we were using them in the Library and she warned about some of the downsides and negatives (e.g. privacy or the undeleteable nature of some content people blithely publish about themselves).

I even got in some stuff on creativity and how to encourage it in the Library and reference my former colleague S and some of the papers / work we've done together.

Seemed to go down well - although as ever I really should learn to self-edit better. I was fine - but could have been excellent perhaps if I contained some of my sidetracks and enthusiasm. On the other hand it's kind of why I'd been invited to present so it's a fine balance.

A new peer review system is being introduced to the university and poor H has been tasked with getting the faculty librarians up to speed on what we have to do.

No one is very 'engaged' with the process yet (and seeing that coming H actually volunteered to spearhead the project so it wasn't done by someone who didn't care), so there was a three line whip on us all to attend the 2.5 hour planning session.

H did a marvellous job of explaining it and getting us to work out what it would mean for us in reality and in fact it was much less 'scary' than everyone had anticipated. More a question of just getting going really like many supposedly awful jobs.

But woebetide my senior colleague who deliberately managed to avoid attending by 'scheduling' some teaching for the morning long after we knew what the deal was, if he either complains he doesn't know what he's supposed to do, or doesn't make his contribution to what we have to do as a team.

University grievance procedures have been revised and hectic though work is at the moment I had to spend two hours in a seminar on the new system this morning. The only saving grace of the experience was that was on the 9th floor of a building with great views over the city.

Weekend update: Stop Press!

Just had an email from the conference in the Czech Republic. They've accepted my paper!

Looks like I really will be going after all.

Three tours today of school children visiting the university.

The first lot I showed round were 16 years old, the next lot 15, the final lot 14.

It was both interesting and shocking to see how they behaved and how increasingly rambunctious they became the younger they were.

I quickly realized that most of my 'set text' just didn't work and I had to engage them at a completely different level.

My biggest mistake the first time was standing in the atrium saying we were going up to the 3rd floor - and just as I would for any tour group offered the elevator for those who needed it. Of course they all *needed* it. So as they piled into the elevator I realized I'd better go too. Just as I got in and the doors closed it dawned on me that a) my entire group were girls; b) this was our flakiest lift in the building and prone to breaking down at a moment's notice.

Fortunately we made it to the third floor in short order but it wasn't a mistake I repeated!

Today was the Library's summer event of training for any library staff who wanted to attend. Some 35-40 did.

Not quite as fun as last years extravaganza where teams had to research 6 holiday options and then we examined our information literacy in how we'd gone about the task.

This year was useful and interesting though:
- interactive quiz on e-learning
- exploration of various e-learning sites (in pairs or threes) with free rein to comment and criticize design and so on
- demo from our own e-learning folk of various things they were up to (including the project I'm involved with which I mentioned last Monday - rather quietly I discovered that they'd put everything 'back' how it was realizing that maybe we did have a point and an actual pedagogical reason for what we were doing!)
- then we visited various University e-learning sites and again commented and noted what worked and what didn't
- and then we had a session on how the Library might develop tools from wikis to Meebo for reference enquiries.

Now it's off to an evening meal to say farewell to our ground floor Manager of several years standing.

Away at a conference the last couple of days. City I've never been to before and expected to be a bit dingy and industrial. Turns out it's really lovely. Great city center, friendly people and possibly the highlight of the conference was the hour walk I took round on the first night after arrived.

For 'electronic information group' of our professional body it was a bit disappointing that there was no wireless access. (Just two computers in a lounge you could fight for time on!) So no live Twittering or anything for me. Although I did sit behind a well known blogger and enjoyed watching her blog live from a couple of sessions.

I'm trying to think of what I 'got' from the conference but I fear that it was one of those when I probably contributed more in workshops and the like talking about some of the work and projects I've been involved in the last couple of years.

Feeling a bit guilty I cut my stay short to make it back for our Head's leaving do in the Atrium of the Library. Quite a crowd there. Glad I came back though - mostly for the sense of closure for myself rather than any suspicion he'd have missed me had I not been there!

Have managed to revise my paper for the conference I'd like to go to.

As I don't think I've mentioned this before, bit of a catch-up: the project to create a website for students 'offered a place but not yet here' contains a Library section I've had a big hand in designing. I wrote up the rationale, method, design and so on as a journal article and then started looking for places to have it published. The Second Life gang I work with were also doing the same for Second Life things. I noticed a conference in eastern europe that might fit the bill for both subjects.

My paper came back from the reviewers with two comments: 'no scientific merit and no technical mead' (whatever that is) 'but a good description of the project'. Thank you. I'd quite agree. It's an IEEE sponsored technical conference and I was surprised they were even considering it but I was willing to see what I could do about it.

There wasn't *much* I could do to change it but I did change one of the diagrams into something that looked much more like a wiring diagram than a screen shot, the lady who actually does the Flash building (and who I've now added as co-author) gave me a couple of sentences on the technical behind the scenes stuff and I added a couple of references and tweaked another sentence. So, there's nothing more I can do. We'll see.

Book group met last night. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - absolutely brilliant and it's one of only two books that has been universally liked. Highly recommended.

We stayed for the quiz afterwards as well and managed to win - despite the lack of our staunch senior colleague who will no doubt be most miffed that we coped without him!

Somewhat shocked to go to a meeting today to check on the Library's contribution to a university wide project and find that they've changed around some of work so that it no longer makes 'sense'.

I tried to stay calm and consider objectively whether I was just being some kind of diva about our work or not liking change, but the more I think about it the more I realize that it makes what we've done seem a bit random and unhelpful. At the very least they could have asked or mentioned what they were doing.

I've asked for an appointment to see the senior manager on the project to see whether we (they) can't think again.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I'll make my own fun most anywhere even if something is not that thrilling.
But I'd really been looking forward to a day of 'creativity' and using my Belbin 'plantyness' and so forth.

In fairness the workshop itself was great, but...

The workshop we (myself and two computing academics) had travelled to attend had some 30 others present. The aim was to generate some 'nifty tools' that could be built and used in Second Life. We were split into 6 tables of 5 or 6 so we were divided up as much as we could be in terms of skills, background and experience with Second Life.

My table consisted of a very young lady who seemed overly shy, a transexual (guy presenting as a female), an Asian lady who's English seemed fine, a very obese lady, and myself. (I'm not suggesting I was any less odd than anyone else!) There didn't seem to be any problems with anyone individually, but they just sucked the life out of me. I tried not to get volunteered to report back to the whole group after discussions, I tried not to talk a lot, but there was just nothing going on with anyone. In fact, a couple of times I actively experimented for several minutes of not saying anything and the group just ground to a halt. Although we functioned in a basic sort of way to do the assigned tasks there just seemed to be no ooomph or engagement. None of my efforts to draw people out or anything seemed to achieve anything.

I'm not one to give up easily but had I not been being driven back by one of my colleagues at another table I might well have called it a day around 3pm. It wasn't helped by lunch being in the same room and due to lack of room to manouver, we ended up eating in our 'groups'. I could bear it no longer and said I'd always wanted to see the library of the university we were visiting and made my excuses for half an hour. (Glad that I did - the library had just introduced a lab of digital tools and toys to explore with physical e-books, toys, comfy seating and all sorts to inspire. Well worth a look round).

I survived the day and was fascinated to hear my colleagues had had great experiences at their tables so they weren't so keen on my feedback of us being moved around periodically.
What surprised me was that this wasn't some random work group that didn't really want to engage in any brainstorming or something. It wasn't a group of pressed me. It was people who had seen the advertising, chosen to come, travelled some distance in some cases and presumably wanted to contribute.

Interesting. But odd.

My turn to lead one of our coffee mornings today.

On Twitter.

While I threatned that it would be the shortest training session ever - there's very little to say really - by the time I'd shown them Twitter generally, the Library's feed specifically and then responded to questions and debate about how we should use it, the 40 minutes or so passed rapidly.

It seemed to go down well with even the sceptics admitting there might be some point to it. I understand a couple of people have signed up to give it a go.

Off on the train in a moment with the prospect of a five hour journey as I'm at a workshop tomorrow which starts early.

Back now from 10 days leave which involved three days of camping which was 'fun'. Wet, cold, back breaking and possibly too much family. But there were highlights amongst some of the heritage sites / sights we took in.

And swam in the sea for the first time this year on the way home. Not that the weather warranted it. But it washed away the grim(e) of the vacation.

Then 5 days running the AV element of a conference which turned out to be exhaustingly demanding but a huge privilege with some top speakers and almost a free hand to annotate their talks. The main points I'd been putting up on screen the first day or two were apparently so useful to the large number of non-English speakers that by the end I was doing as near full-text as I could, in the manner of subtitles. Throwing in images as and when appropriate just added to the fun. Demanding but interesting.

Weekly library staff training session this morning on genealogy. Particularly interesting was the connection made between general library searching skills and how knowledge of such has improved searches for relatives.

Farewell to the lead chaplain today.
It's been a huge privilege to meet him and I wish him all the best for his future role as 'rector'. (Looking that up gave me the chance to edit a wikipedia article I rarely get to do!)

He's been a great inspiration with his calm and his wisdom - and his calm wisdom now I think about it and the chaplaincy won't be the same without him.

Here's a great word:
technishererfolgangabemangelsfrust

"the frustration caused by having a sense of achievement for completing a technical task but being unable to boast about it because it is too boring"

And by the time I can say the word adequately I'll be experiencing it again!

As part of a program for adult learners this week, I signed up for a demo of one our Virtual Reality Labs. (The session on Monday about Lego, Coke and trashy mags was unfortunately cancelled due to lack of interest - shame!)

But this one had it's own disappointment. I don't know. Somehow I expected more.

Perhaps I'm spoilt by Star Trek's holodecks or Red Dwarf's 'Better than Life' but even Second Life with all it's limitations seemed a bit more engaging than this suite seemed to be. With screens forming three of the walls in the room and I don't know how many projectors, much of what they showed us was indeed very clever. But I don't know... the giant insect buzzing into our faces out of the screen seemed very Disneyland of more than a decade ago (or more). The walk around famous monuments in 3D wasn't unimpressive in its own way but made Second Life look like the height of interface simplicity. I don't know, I just expected more.

The highlight for me was the haptic pen with a kind of pen mounted on an arm/ball kind of mechanism which - when you pressed against an object on the nearby PC screen - responded as though you were pressing on something in real life. Sculpting what felt for all the world like an invisible bit of plant oasis, was quite interesting. Although it was immediately obvious just how much training you'd need to be any good at it. Even the academic and the research student in charge weren't very good at it.

Still, the lab gives students a chance to make and do things that I could only have dreamed of when at university.

Before the days of FaceBook, I could escape work colleagues knowing when my birthday was. Now of course the cat is out of the bag as it were and greetings and cards and demands for lunchtime drink outings are just what you might expect.

I was going out for a meal after work. But the movie club in the Library took it into their heads to show _Closely Observed Trains_ this evening so I've decided to stay for that. Partly because I've managed to invite not one but two Czechs to attend. The meal will just have to start later.

First day off sick in I don't know how long. :-(

Brilliant training session this morning from R, one of the junior staff from the loans desk.

She was telling us about the pre-history and archaeology of our neck of the woods. And she was very good. Her structure was good, her manner was engaging, her enthusiasm was obvious, her knowledge was lightly held but deep, and her content was fascinating.

She's a natural and should do more. I think she's already been asked to do a repeat session and lead a field trip.

While we wait for the latter however several of us hung out like groupies at a nearby TV archaeology program 'dig' that just happens to be going on for 3 days. Went down at lunchtime to find they were at lunch, went back after work to see lots of tv personalities and assorted activity.

Knock on effects from yesterday's network troubles mean that there will a planned outage of all systems this afternoon from 3.30pm onwards (for the rest of the day).

So now I'm planning what reading I can catch up on. For example the dissertation from the student who built us a Library presence in Second Life. And she's cited the work I did with S from TheOldPlace which was kind. Plus some more of S's work several times.

Much quieter diary this week - so I had been hoping to do a bit of catching up.

But of course the students are all up against deadlines and I'm getting a lot of them (and staff) at the door needing help (or via email or on the phone).

So, not so much done after all.

Not helped by a network failure this morning for a couple of hours. Fortunately, I had just saved a new and involved piece of work a minute before the crash. Or that would have been another hour down the drain.

Over to our new refectory thingy today to meet with some computing staff I've been involved with on various Second Life stuff. The four of us had put into to contribute to a workshop on virtual worlds and ideas for practical things to build in them for teaching purposes.

However, only two of us had been accepted so we were picking who went.

I offered to step back as I use Second Life least from a teaching point of view, but no, they were keen I was one of the two. I guess there are some advantages to being a Belbin 'plant' type when ideas are being asked for.

Great staff training this morning. Not so much because of its subject (humanities databases - ho hum), but because of the nifty diagrammy, mindmap thing my colleague had produced to help explain what we had, what it was useful for and where it fitted into the bigger picture of things.

I spent the session taking notes but also sketching out my own version for my (ho hum) databases.

No surprise that others liked the format too and at the end suggestions were coming that we could produce a pack of these as more friendly that text based equivalents. (Or perhaps text on one side of a leaflet and the map on the other - take your pick!)

Two interesting meetings today. I think.

One real about the virtual.

One virtual (and real) about the real (and virtual).

The first was this morning when the Head of Library had invited my boss and myself to come and talk about Second Life (and Twitter). He was concerned about the resource implications for our Second Life presence. How we manage virtual enquiries from it, how (if) we develop it, what we'll do with it. I think he's mostly worried that were I run over by a bus we'd not be able to do anything with it.

I assured him that it wasn't that dependent on me (in fact I don't think it's at all dependent on me) and that the Masters' student doing the work would be submitting both her project and her documentation so we'd have resources to handle management and/or development. He was also concerned about Twitter and how we decide what we Twitter and who actually does it.

I guess he's right to be cautious but it's difficult to fit the cautious approach often taken by a university with a 'jump in and try' approach of much of Web 2.0 (or virtual world) type applications. It was interesting having my boss (soon to be Head) in there as referee.


The second meeting was a librarian professional body meeting in the real world while those of who couldn't/wouldn't attend joined in virtually via Twitter.

So I was introduced to the delights of Twitterfall which worked brilliantly and (just) made it possible to keep up with all that was being said. (There was a blog being updated live from within the room as well). The subject this time was about how the professional body can engage more widely (or at all in some people's view) with its membership (and non-members). But it also covered subjects such as how Twitter could or should be used for work purposes.

I'm sure I learned things from the content - but my two biggest learning points were from the process.
1. I really really need two monitors - which I've argued before.
(I might have tried using my laptop as a second screen but Twitterfall didn't seem to work on the uni's install of Internet Explorer so I had to resort to Firefox which is still newish to me and I can't get to work on my uni installed laptop).

2. I really need some means of telling students and also my office colleague that, yes, actually I am busy now and involved in a meeting even if it just looks like I'm sitting at my desk on my own. I'd have gone elsewhere with my laptop except for the IE issues mentioned above.

Those following my twitter feed will know that my boss has been offered the job (and accepted) as Head of Library when our current one retires.

All the best to her and it will be interesting to see how much (or how little) changes.

I'll keep you posted.

Lots of speculation; still no news. I'm taking that as a bad sign that they've not offered it to my boss.

Slight stir the last couple of days because of the arrangements for the interviews for the head of library post. The senior uni person responsible for the day failed to invite any library staff to the presentations the candidates had to give and failed to arrange any tours for the candidates.

After our Head (who retires in June) complained they allowed one 'nominee' and so one of our two 'Associate' librarians was invited. (He's not interested in promotion as he has his eye on a place in France he'll be retiring to soonish).

Some of us, however, continued to press for a more open process. When a new Dean is appointed the presentations are open to anyone in the faculty to attend. Several others apart from myself thought the head of the library post should be treated in the same way. I'd just got our staff association rep on the case, when our Head, who'd heard what was going on pushed again and got four more places to attend the presentations.

So it was that I ended up being one of the four and going off to the exalted towers of University House to spend the morning listening to four 20 minute talks on library problems and strategies. There had been five but one candidate had withdrawn.

And fascinating it was too. At all sorts of levels. I may even have learned things which may stand me in good stead for the future should I ever go to do anything similar. I remember - and you go back to the early days of this blog to read about - my own presentation for my job. So nervous and stressed that I pretty much read it which wasn't great.

Two things I did learn from the day: one - I'm getting older and am no longer going to be having bosses more senior to me in age! two - it wouldn't have been *such* a stretch me going for the job when you saw some of the candidates.

Of the four, there were two men, two women. One of the latter was my boss (the other Associate Librarian). The two guys were unimpressive although one did manage to include the only diagram in his PowerPoint which I liked and he had a natural style (although it included a lot of 'yeahs' which weren't loved). The other only seemed to come alive at the point when we could ask questions. The first woman certainly seemed more like head material although her presentation was a bit theoretical and dry. My boss had good content (and the only handout) but was obviously as stressed as I was and read her 2000 odd words) which didn't impress even though we knew it wasn't her.

Of course I have no idea how the interviews went but I was certainly glad to sit through part of the process. One of my colleagues, the science librarian, has expressed the opinion that we should have an external appointee for a change and some 'new blood' after several internal promotions to the position. We shall see.

Last formal day of the open day tours for students making final uni choices. (There's a 'wash-up' day next week - don't quite know what that will mean).

All got a bit hectic with the last tour arriving just late enough to then have to run over to a library committee for the science faculty. Yes, I know I deal with the technology faculty but I'd been asked to attend by my science colleague who was unable to make it. So interesting to see how the other half live. Much nicer committee meeting - mainly because it was chaired effectively.

Busy at the drop in today. Strange going from sometimes not seeing anyone to being occupied for nearly all the two hour period. Didn't get a lot of things I took 'to do' done, but great to be useful and the students seemed glad of the help. Mostly on referencing and some nicely arcane stuff such as referencing film stills or Google Earth.

This blog is shutting down for the Easter break and a week's vacation afterwards.

Have fun and back again later in April.

Spent the day finished up my contribution to a project for pre-entry students. One of the more creative things I get to do. The Library section is having an 'extension' up on to a first floor where there will be links to an information literacy project that others have been working on. There will also be the friendly (?!) faces of the faculty librarians introducing themselves via photo, text and sound file. And a couple of other things too.

I've also created an 'international' section for students from other countries and tweaked some other parts of it. Fun, but complex.

Just spent $60,475 on a new database. IEEE full text papers and conference proceedings. There's been lots and lots of requests for this from students and staff.
But we're buying it out of savings rather than money that will necessarily be there next year. So it could be just the year trial. We'll see how usage goes (I foresee the next 18 months 'selling' it around the bazaars).

Right. New week. New morning. Easter break with not only the students hopefully somewhere else but my office co-worker somewhere else today at least. Empty diary for a change. Emails are going to die by the dozen today. (Huge backlog from my preoccupation with writing the paper last week and being sick the week before).

Goal: down to 300 by tea break.

A colleague, S, and I are working on a poster sesssion for a conference on our ebook usage - which apparently is very high for a university.

It's based on a survey we've been running but she now has 500+ results and I'm still at 120 or so - not for want of badgering my faculty to let me come and survey their students.

Anyway, I'd arranged with a lecturer to come and survey his 70 odd engineering students for just a few minutes at the start of a class today. Which was fine, except...

- the class was in the middle of our fortnightly library meeting that I always hate missing because I get volunteered for things
- of the 70 students only about 20 had turned up. The rest have evidently decided to take an early Easter break
- the academic involved wasn't even there but one of his colleagues was showing a video.

Despite having arranged the time, and despite having arrived a few minutes early, he was a few minutes into showing a 45/50 minute National Geographic program. So I was invited to sit through it.

I thought it would be something dull but worthy on mechanical engineering and there wasn't much point in returning to the office for 3 minutes so I decided to sit through it.

It turned out to be all about a Japan Air 747 crash in 1985 which killed over 500 people (and if I understood correctly is still the largest single such air disaster). It reconstructed the final half hour or so of flight and finished with the reasons for the crash. It was gripping and fascinating and harrowing. But the reconstruction and the 8 year old girl dying and the tragedy of much of the story left me wracked - not what I was expecting of a Friday morning!

Turns out that somewhat astoundingly 4 people actually survived. Just. And the reason? A previous repair being done incorrectly so that one line of rivets was doing the job of two. Panel blows out, destroys the tail and all the hydraulics, leaving the pilots with next to no control.

The (mostly young) students didn't seemed fazed by it - or by the implications of how vital their future jobs could be. At least if I make a mistake the worst that can happen is a book lies unread on a shelf or some such.

Visitors today from TheOldPlace.

My successor and one of her colleagues who started after I left.

They'd come down to pick the brains of three of us as to how/what we teach and the like. Unfortunately H is sick today so she couldn't make it which is a shame as I think she'd have some great input on her creative side and how she introduces all sorts of things to classes to perk up the students' interest.

But the visit seemed to go well and despite me probably talking too much I think our visitors had a productive time. If nothing else it was encouraging to hear that the problems we think of as 'ours' are pretty widespread and we're not the only ones.

There! It's sent.

The last five days (since Saturday morning) have been spent devoted mostly to getting a paper written to submit to a conference. The deadline was today. I've just found out they've stretched it 10 days. But it's gone now - I can't live with it any longer.

I'm pleased with on the whole but I don't think it's anywhere near technical enough for an IEEE sponsored conference and the journals such papers end up in if they're accepted.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained. And at least the deadline got me motivated to write the wretched thing and when they turn it down I can try some more likely possibilities.

Now I just need to start on the huge backlog of email I've been ignoring the growing mound that I sometimes know as a desk...

Today quite a large number of staff were involved in a library website review. Very wide ranging rather than looking at details.

Common concensus was that we have too much on our homepage (although it's not as bad as some). Could clarify some of what we do have. Could simplify some of the overall structure.

The biggest pain is still that there's no sensible way of searching across *all* the resources we have and so it becomes complicated to explain to students where to go and what to do. (Especially if they're sold, like us all, on the simplicity of Google). I can't help thinking we'll look back on the situation now as a dark age just as we look back now at Gopher and menu surfing from earlier days of the internet.

Brain still full of last night's presentation and what I should have said and didn't and what I didn't say and should have. But in fact, the feedback I've had suggested it went really well. Despite the catastrophic PowerPoint failure half way through when all my photos (I had no words in the presentation at all [1]) suddenly turned into white rectangles with red Xs in. What's that about?

As it happens, I had a hard drive in my bag with a version of the slides that was only a day old. It didn't have a couple of late additions but nothing critical. I gave the drive to the guy running the laptop and he managed to have Plan B up and running before I'd finished talking about the picture I was on. Very impressive.

Anyway, that aside, it did go well. Nearly 50 turned up which I was surprised by. The discussion time seemed to get people going (rather than leave some groups in awkward silence as it did on the opening evening of the series). Questions at the end showed people had engaged (even if they did seem to focus on Second Life which was only the last few minutes of the talk). A couple of people talked to me afterwards and when you'd sorted the 'pet theory' rabidness out of some of it, had interesting contributions to make.

[1] Actually, there was - very deliberately - just one word in the whole thing. It was to kind of counterbalance the previous week when we'd the very wordiest kind of PowerPoint with too much text, too small and not a picture in sight.

My thanks to those who've taken the time and trouble to comment this week after the hiatus. Their speed and warmth have been a great encouragement and I really appreciate them.

Pretty full diary today with tours and other things, but the afternoon was devoted to a sub-branch meeting of our professional association. Ostensibly it's AGM but to make it worth librarians from all over gathering for 15 minutes of business, there's normally some CPD element as well.

Today it was on routes to further qualifications from our professional association and wasn't uninteresting. Though it raised questions in my mind about how much it seems to suit those for whom reflection is their strong suit and perhaps less so for whom action is more their style.

I was impressed with the polish and presence of the presenter - I have to present one of a Lent series of talks tonight (on communication ironically) and I only wish I could have that poise. On the other hand he was a tad dry. And I don't plan to emulate that!

The university's internet connection was down all morning (apparently there was a problem with an ISP server). We were told it wouldn't be back all day.

It's perhaps not remarkable that much of my job requires an internet connection for one reason or another. But just about everything I picked up to do yesterday required me to check on this, look at that, use the other. Eventually I did some writing that just needed Word (well, it needed the internet too - but that bit could wait).

At lunch R, from the loans desk, brightly said "oh, is the internet down?" and made a barbed remark how would she know give she's not being allowed to do the work we should be doing on our Facebook page. (That's a rant for another day).

I know we've come to view the internet as 'always there' and very very reliable these days. I remember a decade or more ago when I'd take OHP backups of my training to students just in case I couldn't get a connection for live demonstrations. (And had to use them once with a poor colleague turning over a huge pile of them over the hour...) It's not helped in my case by having the internet at home as well, and thanks to a friend's wireless help available to my laptop as well as the PC. But with that reliability comes reliance... and then the suspicion that is so mission critical for some of our jobs that it's a surprise there's no back up Plan B.

Fortunately the ISP had evidently pulled their finger out and we had our connection back after lunch. Much audible relief from around the campus.

But it gives me pause for thought about just how much I'm plugged in a feel disconnected when it's gone. For the ultimate case of that... try Manfred Macx's nightmare when he's mugged in Charles Stross' novel _Accelerando_.

I know, I know. I've not posted through nearly all of March.

I've been way too busy, I've been off sick the last few days, and I've been stressed. They're not excuses... and I really thought that tucked up in bed I might finally catch up. As I haven't. Let's write the month off and just get started again. If that's ok with any of you still reading... ;-)

My turn taking a coffee morning this morning. On the subject of mindmapping. So I recycled much of what the students got on Monday.

With a couple of tweaks. Firstly I had to work harder on presenting the positive uses for all the linear nay sayers I had (two vocal ones), and second I tried to give a practical demo of why they work by in effect running two PowerPoints simultaneously. Boring bullet point types slides interleaved with much more graphical image based ones. I warned them at the start there would be something to look out for with the slides and then quizzed them at the end. No one had particularly noticed but the point became apparent when I asked them to think about which ones they remembered. Even the 'linear' folk who weren't into the connectivity, colours and sketches of a mindmap got the message. I think.

It was a fun session anyway and everyone joined in with having a go at a map or two.

Two straight hours on our busy, at the moment, enquiry desk due to staff leave, absence, sickness etc. That and a couple of hours over in the 'drop-in' in the afternoon meant it's been hard to get much done. More enquiry work tomorrow as I do my normal shifts from 10-11 and 12-1, so I don't think it's going to improve. Not with a course committee in the afternoon as well.

My once a year mindmapping lecture this morning. To 130 computing students.

Seemed to go down about as well as it did last year (i.e. some not overly thrilled) but the vast lecture theater meant interaction was tougher. Probably the nicest, and I think the biggest, place we have for sense of 'lecturing' and 'power' but quite intimidating. First time I've been in that space at the front. I rather liked it.

I got some nice mindmaps from those who were engaging and the lecturer who invites me was as enthusiastic as ever.

Be interesting to see how much the same content goes down with my colleagues in the coffee morning on Thursday.

They've been resurfacing a quarter mile of street just out side the Library the last few days. What's been impressive - aside from some of the machinery they've deployed - is just how fast they've been. The mess the place was in yesterday and the day before you'd think they'd be several more days.

No, today, they were rolling out the last of the asphalt just with a line painting gang right on their heels and just moments before the road was open to traffic once again. For once there seemed some sense of urgency and getting on with the job rather than men standing around smoking and chatting. As I say, impressive.

I'm having a hard enough time managing my own diary let alone room changes I'm not informed about.

Turned up at one lecture today to find I was in the wrong place. No sign of the students I was supposed to be seeing in any nearby classes. Panic phone call back to the office to see if they can track down any other info. Eventually found a reception desk lady (who happened to know my sister) who was from a completely different department but was able to get in touch with the right place and find out where the class had been moved to.

Went very well when I got there (15 minutes late) but they are distance learners who are only on campus for two days when they get a huge amount of info dumped on them. I don't think I helped - but they seemed glad of the extra quarter hour break!

"Having a mind like a Jedi may not help a body that fails to deliver" writes a newsletter from sport and recreation across the street.

Do they have to address articles to me so personally?

Busy sort of day with teaching occupying the first couple of hours, a lunch date with someone I met at the retreat of a week or three back, and a bitty afternoon trying to pick up the pieces of a complicated relationship I've inherited from the semi-closure of the last remaining 'library outpost' 18 months ago. (Long standing member of staff updating leaflets we now write, but incorrectly). I think it's time to go home but there's more to do before I can feel 'done' for the day.

Lunch today in a new eatery on the ground floor of a new building the University has just erected.

Mixed experience - the real downside is that it replaces a cafeteria where you could get a proper meal (cheap and cheerful - but at least a proper main meal of the day). Now you can get sandwiches, baguettes, jacket potatoes and even a pie - but nothing in the way of cooked vegetables or carbohydrates (i.e. chips or rice) to go with them. Rather a shame for the nights I'm at work till 9 or so. There are other places to eat, but cheap and cheerful was sometimes the order of the day and no longer available.

In its defence I suppose you could say it was nice enough venue. Staff separated from students, comfy sofas and newspapers provided, pleasant touches such as the sciencey quotes on the flags for food orders (to go with the cosmologists who have moved onto the second floor (teaching space on the floor in between).

I feel bad enough about my occasionally erratic posting, and then I read this:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/how-to-kill-a-blog-in-ten-days.php

Lunchtime workshop today on concept mapping. Not mindmapping. Definitely two different things.

The visiting academic had previously sent us one of his papers to read on the subject and to be honest it was as dull as ditchwater and quite dense. So we feared the worst.

But in person, he was much more engaging and had a really interesting session for us.

It was my mindmapping interests that drew me (and others) but we learned that one of the primary differences was that a concept map labels the links as well as the concepts to show the relationships between concepts. An example is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

His thesis was that too often our teaching concentrates on one particular part of a map (say a lecture on one concept of an overall structure), but that we never make explicit to students what the overall plan is. We assume they know or can work out and his contention was that this is rarely the case.

Better yet, by getting the students themselves to consider what they think they know on a subject; to generate concept maps for themselves; to swap notes with each other on what they've produced; and to revisit it after a course of study, can pay off tremendously in terms of their learning.

One success of the year - call it a resolution if you will - has been what I call my mason jar meetings with my Assistant.

You must have come across the illustration - certainly if you've been on any time management courses. This is typical: http://256.com/gray/quotes/time.html

My idea was to formalize this with myself and with my colleague (who'd expressed concerns in her appraisal along the lines of distributing her time between myself and the other librarian she works for).

So now, come Monday morning, I try to assign slots to the big rocks of work in my diary and then D joins me and I let her know what the plan is. Then we do the same for the work I'm giving her, and the work we share. GroupWise allows us to mark such events in our diary so that we know they can be moved if need by (by sudden teaching commitments or the like). But that doesn't happen too often and in general it works in letting us get to some of the 'big rocks' rather than drowning in the tyrannical water of the urgent but not necessarily important (like email!).

This is probably really obvious to everyone but the formality and discipline of doing it regularly and being accountable on the subject is something I'm finding helpful.

Today a class of direct entry computing students. All Nigerians as it happens.

What was different for me was that a junior colleague came along to 'peer review' the session. She was very impressed that I could pick up on a couple of clues to greet them in a local language and introduce the sesssion with an encomium on the year I spent in their country.

I'm hoping though that I can winkle out of her though any formal comments she makes in the process but I understand how hard it can be to allow such things to be seen by their subject. The one commiseration I did receive as we walked back to the Library was the oft noted observation that we get very little time to convey an awful lot of information.

Which I could take as a criticism of how much I cover, or just as sympathy that there's little way round it. (If we assume that persuading academics to give us more time is a non-starter). I'm more and more inclined to think that perhaps such sessions shouldn't be an attempt to tell them anything at all except here's the Library homepage, here's all the help we offer to navigate this stuff whether electronic or print.

Here, now, on one of my odd late Friday nights. (Till 8.45pm)

And just to add that the haiku buzz at book group continued. With, amongst others, some that could only be described as 'heavy metal haiku' I think.

Better yet, we (8 from the Library which is a little too large a team when you realize that we're penalized for every player we have) stayed on for the quiz after we'd finished with _The Place of Fallen Leaves_ and just managed to win! Mainly I think due to two of our number being the world's experts on children's cartoon characters which populated the picture round.

Wow! Great morning. Busy but seems to have gone well.

Started with the bad news that my Assistant was sick. Oh dear... she was booked to do a 10 minute presentation on the Library in general to the International students which I've blogged about enjoying doing before. Sent out an urgent email for help but didn't get a single response even to say sorry but no...

Meanwhile, the events I'd been responsible for arranging for the morning were fast arriving. Plus the external visitors.

Two former colleagues from TheOldPlace - thank you S and Z - had come down. S was running our coffee morning on haiku first thing and then both of them were telling us about Second Life and the presence that TheOldPlace has in there.

The coffee morning went well. More than a dozen of us there in the end and S did a great session that was streets better than what they'd have got from me. I'd have probably covered structure and maybe some history or something and been quite dull. S got us sitting in silence, walking in the rain and actually writing. Which is the key thing. Much buzz around the Library for the rest of the day.

The session on Second Life also went well with not only a fair crowd turning out for it, but also enough engagement to keep us there well after the advertised finish time. S and Z had to work hard for their lunch! We were shown what TheOldPlace has had built for them - very impressive, how it's being extended and what they plan to do with it. Marked difference with the approach taken here which is much more cautious.

In the middle of all that I'd switched to Plan B for the international students and was dragged out to do the presentation myself as no one else was willing to help. Stood listening to the previous speaker and then was the last of 6, I think it was, telling 70 odd students with varying levels of ability in English about various University services.

While I waited for previous speaker to finish I met a very late student at the door who just happened to be Czech so I could greet him with a 'Good day. How are you?' much to his astonishment. And I did my usual routine (if somewhat more briefly) of welcoming/greeting various languages in my talk which seemed to wake up a rather overwhelmed crowd and get them smiling. Hopefully it was more engaging than what they'd just had an hour of...

I was done in time to get back to Second Life for the last few questions...

Then lunch with S & Z over at the rather nice nearby cafe.

It'd be nice to be thinking about going home now... but book group this evening...