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... ;-)