Safely arrived at parents-in-law after a fairly untraumatic journey. Just started snowing over the last five miles or so.

Snag is that mother-in-law has had new internet provider and wifi since the summer and doesn’t know what the password to the latter is. Or at least of the three things she’s got written down and suggested none of them are working. I’ve tried those and other things, I’ve tried combinations and variations – but all to no avail. It’s immensely frustrating and means it’s going to be a very ‘quiet’ Christmas with no online Scrabble, no Twitter, no emailing friends or tidying up the incoming, no looking things up. I’m only able to post this by fighting for time (amongst five teenagers and 6 adults) on the one PC that is internet connected. But after getting used to mobile devices and access being easy, who wants to do that more than occasionally!

As this is probably my last logon of the year – have a Happy Christmas and a great New Year one and all.

Last day of work today before Christmas. The Library is open for two more days but for once I won’t be there till the bitter end. Family calls and the weather is iffy enough that it’s probably for the best we set out in good time. Looking at the news and all the travel chaos, no one is betting yet that we don’t spend Christmas at home by ourselves for the first time ever. (Although my parents are easier to get to if it actually comes to that). Happy Christmas everyone - see you in the New Year.

The University’s annual teaching and learning conference today. Although they’ve cut it from a shortish day to just a morning now. There are still four tracks through the day, however, so the usual trauma of deciding what not to go to.
In the second slot, however, I’ve no choice – we always like to try and contribute something from the Library if we can and this year it’s fallen to me. Basically reporting on the student project we were involved with to produce a mobile app of various library web pages. We had to link it to research informed teaching though which has made it interesting.

Last week I was having something of a crisis of confidence – probably connected with ‘research’ aspect, but H (who’d offered to help but couldn’t make the day itself) took my simple slides and made them really look coherent with brilliant ‘design’ and some lovely images that gave me great confidence. Together with a Bob Dylan title that another colleague had provided (which happened no to include the word ‘library’ for a change which I think always helps to not put people off choosing our session), I felt well armed to ‘perform’.

Had the bright idea of using the Dylan track itself as a welcome to people gathering in the room and that seemed to give the session a real buzz from the start which I managed not to pour cold water on. It’s always difficult to judge and it usually goes well enough, but I think this time everything came together in a way that really worked and was a great success. My favourite comment afterwards was “I won’t see librarians in the same way again” – although I’m not entirely sure how to take that!

Ever since the start of term wifi in the Library seems to have been more than a little flakey. (This is reminding me of a former colleague who used to catalog books about 'whiffy'. Some mocked but it is apparently how the French say it in any case.)

Several of us with iPhones/iPods were struggling to connect and our IT guys told us it was because so many students now had mobile devices that wanted to connect, it was overloading the system. Of course it would be since the beginning of term as during the holidays there is hardly anyone here. An upgrade is promised - but not till January!

Well a fat lot of use that is.

What was odder was that it didn't merely seem to be a wifi issue. For starters I wondered if was my iPod - but others were getting the same and my connection to the wifi network at home was fine.

Then too, laptops seemed to connect with no trouble. At which point IT started blaming the Apple devices themselves.

The nearest I can make out is that a recent Apple upgrade to their OS may have made connecting to the particular kind of wifi network we have here difficult. Or something.

In any case, it's been a real pain as what I hadn't realized until now was just how much I was beginning to use the iPod/wifi for work. Here are just some of the things I realized I was struggling with:

Keeping abreast of other librarians work/interests/URLfinds via Twitter (much more convenient than via PC). *
Posting to the Library twitter feed. *
Tracking my shared email diary when away from PC (and email). *
Managing To Do lists.
Note taking via Evernote. @
PDF journal article reading via GoodReader (iPad will make this rather more doable).
Keeping abreast of ebook developments as part of book chapter writing etc. @
Able to do quick web look ups (Google, Library Catalogue) etc when away from PC. *
Handy to have a good dictionary to hand at all times! @
Collaborating with external academics via Skype. *
Ongoing CPD learning aided by flash cards.
Investigating FourSquare and utility for Library engagement with students. *

* = items which don't work without wifi
@ = items with reduced functionality without wifi


Anyway, I've noticed that over the latter half of last week and today, I seem to be able to connect again. So what's that about? (Not that I'm complaining.)

An interesting meeting with 'Z' in our academic skills unit this afternoon. They're the ones that help students with writing essays and the like. (Sorry, that's a gross simplification! Like libraries help students borrow books!)

A long time back they were going to produce some support for 'academic reading' so I blithely made a place for it as the fifth element of our first floor 'information literacy' links in the pre-entry project I've been involved with (and, no doubt, wittered on about endlessly here).

The resource never came to be so rather than have a dead URL, we linked to the excellent work another university had produced which worked well enough although it seemed a little surreal. *That* link has now vanished forcing me to think again.

Thinking again made me wonder why I just didn't create something. After all, I read. I do academic reading. How hard can it be?

Thinking I'd have time last weekend I had nothing by Monday morning when I was due to turn over what I'd done to Z. Not to worry. I used the bus journey to work to knock out a mindmap and the first hour of work to write two sides of notes on the map which would do as a starter.

That seems to have gone down well and although Z's approach is very different - much more rooted in research and a bit beyond the scope of what I wanted for students about to start Uni - we were able to share some ideas. I'm not sure a fruitful collaboration will result, but it was good to get a closer glimpse of the work they do and also to be assured that what I'd done wasn't completely barking up the wrong tree.

Now if I can just turn it into something 'pretty' that students might enjoy engaging with. (I'm reluctant to hand it over to the pre-entry wizzes as it will almost certainly be turned into Flash and sit behind the login which we've been endeavoring to avoid with the info literacy tools.) Surely I can do something in PowerPoint?

Very gratified to have a doctoral researcher come and see me today.

An unusual event in itself as they seem to manage quite happily without me for the most part. But this one was looking at social networking and library use of it. I understand he was a librarian back in Africa, so that might explain his interest.

He'd not only found (and apparently read!) the papers I'd written which are stored in our institutional repository and found several more that exist online in various places, but he wanted all the rest which aren't either online or in the IR.

So it was a good opportunity to tidy up my bibliography which I was surprised to find now runs to 4 pages (not to mention the further 8 pages of non-professional material). I know it's been a busy year, but it's interesting to see how it builds up and how one thing leads to another.

(If anyone does have nothing better to do with their lives, get in touch and I can send you the list).

Anyway, as I said, it was very gratifying to think that anyone was actually interested. Anyone that I hadn't battered over the head with the stuff, that is.

OK, that must be a candidate for the most humiliating moment of my professional career. [1]

I'd been invited by the head of the math department to deliver a lunchtime seminar to all the academics and researchers in the department about journal access - which is never straightforward at the best of times.

I'd been quite apprehensive about the thing for a few days before as it's always difficult to know what to include and what they know (or more generally don't know) without feeling as if you're patronizing them.

Anyway, it was all going as well as I might expect until about half way through I was demonstrating an ebook collection and asked the audience for a suggestion of what to search for. "Popular math" came the response from one of the few lecturers in the room I knew reasonably well.

OK, fine. I dutifully type in a nice search term in quotes "popular mathamatics" and realized immediately I'd spelt it wrong. Now of course I'd normally be happy enough to pass it off as a typo, move on, no problems. But for some reaons I'm still not sure of, the stress of it all hit me and my mind just froze. I couldn't see how to correct it, I knew it was wrong, and I couldn't just choose a new search term.

A kindly researcher in the front row put me out of my misery and spelt it for me and they seemed very patient with the incident. But aside from the humiliation, I can't help but think that they must question my competence at quite a fundamental level! Ah well. Nothing I can do now.



[1] Of my non-professional career it might have been when I was driving a cab and was reversing in the dark. My passengers asked if I'd seen the street light which I thought I had (a different one) just before I hit the one they'd seen.

Our appraisal scheme, I think I mentioned, has been revised. It's now a PDR. Not a 'Professional Development Report' I had to produce to become chartered but a 'Personal Development Review' or something.

It seems to be pretty identical to the old appraisal except for two things:
- there's a more regular (very short) review of goals etc three or four times through the year
- your goals and CPD stuff have to be related to the Library's strategic plan

Hopefully, it will make the PDR less of a once a year paper exercise and more of a relevant document.

As my immediate boss (who was promoted to Head of Library) still hasn't been replaced, she's farmed out three of her six PDRs to her former immediate equivalent. So probably for this year only I have O interviewing me. He was fine, not that different to the Head really. And I still got lots of flak for the fact I do the least amount of teaching amongst my colleagues. The other thing I struggle with is the amount of time spent on, for example, on the *two*, just *two* goals I didn't achieve as opposed to the *18* I did achieve. And I tried to make sure I emphasised how I was struggling with (lack of) assistance while we're still in the middle of this staffing review and haven't replaced some key people who my assistant is filling in for. But it was still my fault.

At least I could counter some of that with the very productive year I've had with regard to publications and conference presentations. Only even that led into a sharp conversation about whether I was focussing my energies on the right thing.

Exciting email last night.

Remember the conference I was supposed to be attending last month, but that was amalgamated with another conference and is now taking place in January? The one that was offering a free iPad for all early bookings?

They want delivery instructions for the iPad (or apparently I could opt for one of the new iPod touches with a camera).

Does that mean it's coming soon?

Given that I've spent a loooong time waiting (what happened to the hope to get them out "by the end of summer"), and been very frustrated in the meantime by the desirability of the thing, *and* been teased by colleagues that the whole thing is a scam, that I tweeted something along the lines of "perhaps it is real after all".

But the conference organizer saw it and tweeted back that that was a bit harsh! (Although he did it with a smiley face). I guess it was and he did explain that they'd had some huge logistical nightmares to over come. But it was a salutory reminder that Twitter isn't private and I'm certainly glad I wasn't ruder!

Great news today!

Last year - at the end of the financial year - the Library was given quite a large amount of money by all the Faculties. Partly because the Faculties hadn't spent it and partly because we could - and had need!

Despite me dutifully spending absolutely every cent of the book budget as we'd been warned we'd lose it if we didn't get through it, the Library *did* underspend on what the Head called 'paperclips and people'. This was largely because of our staffing review and the voluntary severance exercise which has meant several people have left and not been replaced. (Not becasue I suddenly stopped using paperclips!)

Anyway, the University instructed the Library to offer this money back to the faculties but Technology (and I believe the others may be following suit) have decided not to take it so that we can pay for the IEEE Xplore database for another year *and* have a book fund!

Wow! I thought it might be one or the other but never dreamed that both might really be a possibility.

Of course, it only delays the IEEE pain for another year. But that's 12 months away. In the meantime, I'd better get buying boooks.

Over to the psychology department again today to be a guinea pig in another of their experiments.

This time they had people either lying about an upcoming holiday or telling the truth. I was picked for the former which was a bit scary - people tell me they can read me like a book so I doubted I could succeed at convincing the questioner.

Anyway, I was detailed off to invent a trip to Chile where I've never been and was told I could do as much or as little research as I wanted before the day of the experiment. In fact - aside from looking up flight time, a reasonable ticket cost and finding a suitable 'town' - I didn't really research anything.

What I did was think through an amalgam of a lot of previous travel, a couple of trips to Brazil and then relocated the Columbian researcher I met in the Czech Republic last year as a Chilean friend I was flying out to visit.

By enthusing about all of that kind of semi-real stuff I got through the questions that were being asked without quite as much stress as I might of imagined. Although I started so nervously I thought the game would be up immediately.

When the researcher returned to the room to debrief me she also asked the questioner whether I'd been telling the truth or lying and I was somewhat surprised to find that I had indeed convinced her. "You're either lying or have done a huge amount of research."

The trouble is, that although I 'succeeded', I'm not really sure that that's a good thing. Nor do I feel proud of myself.

At least they revealed that *they* had been lying when they had said in the preparatory material that those who do well at the task are more successful in their jobs. Apparently that's to motivate you to succeed - but I should have remembered that they always mess with your head!

Good job I normally liaise with the engineering and computing academics. Now, I'm not saying anything about them in *particular* but today I've been doing a 'guest' spot for someone from the economics department.

It was on mind-mapping and apparently I'd come recommended from a computing academic (who has just retired) but who had often invited me to come and teach mind mapping techniques to his students.

The library's subject specialist for economics isn't comfortable with the technique at all so it made a lot of sense for me to fill in. Especially as previous appraisals [1] have pointed out that I do the least amount of teaching of all my colleagues. (Not for lack of me touting myself around the departments.)

The snag has been that my pre-meetings with the economics academic, let's call her F, revealed her to be a new member of staff. Apparently a real go-getter I've learned and very bright and on the ball. And drop dead gorgeous....


[1] Speaking of which we have a new appraisal system being introduced and so yesterday I had an afternoon of training on how to appraise someone. The (external) trainers introduced us to 'forum theater' which was new to me and not uninteresting. The guy was a good actor - he really sucked me into his two roles!

Freshers' Fayre yesterday and today.

Our contribution is somewhat scaled down compared with previous years but we're promoting our zones with traffic light colored candy and a giant floor plan of the Library for students to stick in a pin into closest to where they think the only book in the Library with the words 'traffic light' in the title might be shelved.

But all that's by-the-bye compared to my rather interesting 'first' that happened today. One final thing I brought up with the Dean last week was the possibility of the Faculty having a spare janitor's closet that they weren't using that I might use as a base of operations when I'm down at that end of the campus.

I thought it unlikely given there's so much pressure on space and I thought it unlikely because it might have political implications. But as it happens a room too small to give to an academic as an office has just become available. I was given the keys this morning and have already 'tried it on for size' between various bits of teaching today.

Turns out it's the former room of a (former) chaplain I know quite well who'd been using it for personal development planning tutorials and who has now moved onto other things. As they're not replacing the post, I happen to be in luck. Although it feels somewhat like treading on ghosts, it also feels extra blessed!

One of my biggest audiences of the year - 300 seat lecture theater packed to the rafters with new mechanical engineering students. I've only got half an hour to enthuse about the Library and its resources/facilities to them, but it's a great space to 'perform' in.

(The lecture hall where the delightful Ms Elena Bodnar dragged me up to demonstrate her bra that turns into a pair of facemasks in an emergency when the Ig Nobel gang came to visit.)

OK, two journals are going. I'm not even going to wait for the usual liaison with academics - there isn't time. I'm cancelling now.

I've just had some usage statistics that show that between their (huge) cost and their (low) use, it's around $200 / downloaded article. Or more. (I'm looking at nearly three years worth of data and it varies).

??!?! For that money they could have almost as many inter-library loans as they cared to before it became rationale to subscribe again. They're history. [1]


[1] Well strictly speaking they're mathematical (one in French/English and one in German).

Possibly one of the hardest days of my professional career today as I had to meet with the Dean of my faculty this morning and explain basically that we've got no book budget and that we cannot renew the database we've had for the last year which many academics in the faculty really love.

Well of course - I think it's great too - it's full text and that's why when we had some money last year that we'd lose if we didn't spend, we bought into for a year knowing that it almost certainly was going to be a year and then we'd cancel it. In fact we were given 18 months access due to when we subscribed and that ends in a couple of months.

The snag is that two senior people who agreed to the 'one year' have moved on and those in their positions now are seeing it as a 'cut' rather than as a bonus for the last 18 months. Sigh.

Meanwhile, journal price increases have finally eroded the information resource provision portions of the budgets sufficiently that with no increase to the budget due to the economic situation, once we've cancelled the database and replaced the subscriptions to print journals that we cancelled to help pay for it, our book budget for the coming year will be zero. That'll be a first for my fifteen years doing this job.

Possibilities include accepting a book buying moratorium for a year. If we can start again next year, it shouldn't be a huge problem.
We could possibly NOT replace the cancelled journals to give us a small book fund for the year.
Or, and this is what I'm rather desperately hoping from the meeting, the Faculty itself might have some pennies lying around that they could contribute.

The meeting went as well as I might expect and I went armed with paperwork about decisions taken at past meetings (before he was Dean), allocation formulae, spreadsheets of costs and prices and anything else I could think of. He's a nice guy and I warm to him - and he sounds very pro-library which is good.

But my sleeplessness over this - which I knew would be a time all summer and had not been looking forward to it - isn't quite over yet as he's going to look at the papers and then get together with myself, the Head of Library and the acquisitions librarian at a later date. He's very keen to keep the database even at the expense of a book budget but at least sees how impossible it is with the library finances as they are at present.

I've spent the rest of the day trying to wrangle journal subscriptions and work out what we might cancel as we've been given a reprieve on a deadline for cancellations that I'd been told was past.

Quite exhausted now.

Been feeling oddly vulnerable the last month or so.

You may not recall this post from a couple of summers ago:
http://doosouth.blogspot.com/2008/08/yesterday-art-librarian-h-bemoaned.html

But I've been on display again. This time my bright idea was to use the four shelves to display artifacts and memorabilia from four different times and places in my life: the two and bit years I lived in Virginia, the five years I spent at boarding school, the year I spent in Nigeria, the two years I spent in South East Asia...

Give it a posh title 'Remembrance of things and times past...' or something and get the arty types to select and 'display' everything and hey presto, one miniature exhibition. Thanks to H for liking the idea enough to host it and thanks to V and D who've done a marvelous job of setting out everything.

Of course my somewhat cynical wife has titled it 'junk from the attic' and won't deign to come and see it, but my Mom and Dad came over today with my nephew and niece they were looking after for the day. They were quite taken with it as of course lots of the objects brought back memories for them!

It has been odd how 'vulnerable' I guess is the best word, that it's made me feel. I wasn't expecting that. Having things on display such as an exercise book in which I 'catalogged' 438 of my books [1], or a notebook with short stories written as a teenager, or even just cub scout badges - makes me feel oddly naked in front of work colleagues.

But it's certainly fascinating to see my life laid out as a musuem piece!

[1] Of course that same catalogue is now an Access database and recently added its 4300th item.

Had fun the last couple of afternoons attempting to knock out an article.

Month or so ago S from TheOldPlace had a request from a journal to write something - the editor had dug up her contact details from an article we co-authored a while back. S, however, didn't feel she could contribute so passed it to me.

I floated three possible ideas past the editor and she like the sound of one. My favorite as it happened as two thoughts would have been a new version of things I've written about before.

This one was to be on a subject I've been thinking about for a while and thought might make an article. Creativity, synergy, consilience - yes, lots of buzz words - and getting even junior staff involved in projects to let them use their creativity and foster professional development.

This seemed the perfect opportunity except that between my vacation and her deadline there was very little time. She needed 1200 words by today and I only had Tuesday and Wednesday at work before two days off now. My bright (and obvious) idea to actually include a junior (non-professional) member of staff in the writing of the article however, meant that she might be able to get just enough done in the way of background reading and interviewing yet another colleague which we needed to do, that two afternoons of solid writing might just get it done.

Better yet, the head of the library and R's immediate bosses okayed her time (one subject of the article!) and she was prepared to do some of the reading at home in her own time.

Having experimented with GoogleDocs before for collaborative writing, we both sat in the same room working on the same document. This wasn't quite the success as when I wrote a sketch with the map librarian. Possibly because then we were both adding to the bottom of the document all the time. This time we were both writing paragraphs all over the place - as they came to mind, as we found a quote we wanted to use, as we helped each other out. GoogleDocs did seem to slow down a little bit under these conditions and I even managed to crash it twice. (Nothing lost though, so no great problem). Just occasionally it seemed a little easier to bash out a complex paragraph in Word and then cut and paste it in so that we could 'share' again. On the whole though, it worked quite well.

And by dint of two really dense afternoons Tuesday and yesterday in which we barely paused for breath - and a bit of proofreading last night - we got it done. With one rather major snag. We'd produced 2400 words and nearly 400 hundred more of references. Oh dear. It said what we wanted to say but could I cut it in half today - supposed to be a day off if required? (One uncharitable colleague said it wouldn't be a problem as I never used one word when three would do.)

But before doing anything rash I had a suspicion it might just be worth submitting. After all the editor could reject it out of hand, in which case I had a plan B for submitting it elsewhere; or she could ask for it to be trimmed; or just maybe she'd have been let down by someone else and be happy to take the whole thing.

As it happened, the final possibility turned out to be what happened. This morning we got an email accepting it as it stood. R now very pleased so have had her first professional publication accepted and given we were told it was 'high quality' I'm now wondering if I should have sent it somewhere peer-reviewed. But the editor did ask for it, so she gets it.

My only other 'worry' is that possibly I've made the whole process look a little bit easy to R who was surprised we did so much in so little time. Partly it's my whole 'motivated by a deadline' personality; partly it's practice; partly it's that a lot of it has been buzzing around in my head for a while and some of it was turning up in the presentations I've been doing at conferences this summer. But I hope I've not given a false impression of the work needed!

Back at work today after nearly 3 weeks vacation. Some of it actually 'away', some of it at home as I've annual leave to use up or lose.

Feeling rested but still very tired. And quite enjoyed being, for the most part, 'unplugged' (from the internet and Twitter etc). Haven't really got going with Twitter again yet - although my experiments with FourSquare did mean that I became mayor of my own street recently but lost the mayorship of the library. I'm sure we can soon rectify that last!

Fair bit of email to return to - but it doesn't seem quite so bad (120 or so) because I did get free wifi a couple of times whilst away and deleted a whole load of rubbish and because I started from inbox zero which helps a great deal.

More scary are 'big issues' I return to such as the finance difficulties.

Lot of folk leaving this summer so many are feeling the worse for wear this morning after a mega leaving thrash in the Library atrium last night. Catered with food, wine and even live musicians it all went off very well. Great cake as well made like a book complete with bookmark, Uni logo and the like.

While I don't think I had too much to drink, I certainly overdosed on sugar after eating rather too large a slice from the edge/corner because I like the icing. May not eat for the rest of the day.

Another 'surprise' of the summer has been writing a chapter on our ebook survey of last year for, ironically enough, a print book.

Yet another thing I've probably not mentioned was a session I went to at one of the conferences a week or three back. It was a session on ebooks so I thought I might attend out of both personal interest (thanks to my reading of the things on various devices) and professional (thanks to the survey).

In an otherwise good session I was somewhat astonished when the presenters said they'd surveyed 50 people and only had 24 responses. But here were the results and they were having a chapter published in a forthcoming book.

Hang on a minute, I thought. 24 responses?! We surveyed over 1000 students. Why on earth aren't we writing a chapter of this book?! I guess it still niggled a little that the colleague and I who'd run the survey hadn't managed to get round to writing a journal article on it or something. But she was the lead so I could hardly push it.

Anyway, at lunch after the session I bounced up to said colleague (and a third colleague also attending the conference) and said we should at least ask if we're not too late. And, to give her credit, no sooner had we got back to the university after our travels but she fired off an email and had a reply saying that yes there was time and they were interested and they'd get back to us with deadlines and the like. (Possibly having apparently had someone drop out may have aided our cause!)

Three weeks later we get an email inviting us to contribute and setting out the details and requirements and the like. The only snag is that the deadline is such that with my colleague's leave, we've only got abotu ten days to put this together. Good job the results are already 'in' and much of what we want to say is in our heads and I've been collecting articles and reading for some time on the subject. But there followed a rather intense few days (working till late, getting up early, 5am one morning) of both of us either reading and highlighting and noting references or hammering away at the keyboard on the bulk of the text to get it done.

In fact, we were pretty pleased with the results and although my colleague was rather apprehensive that it wasn't what they wanted, I was unsurprised when we got an email back about the draft to say it was just what they had hoped. (As well as being impressed with hitting their deadline so promptly).

Anyway, it's done now. No idea when it's due out and have, in signing some of the documents, learned we get paid $200 and get a free copy of the book. Better not give up the day job.

But an interesting process and a first for me in my writing CV.

Attended three conferences this week - one at another university three hours away, two here on 'home ground'.

The first was a 140 librarians getting together (once every other year) - college and university librarians - which I attended with two colleagues. Excellent three days in lovely surroundings. Highlights included my table winning the quiz on the first evening (and $20 worth of book tokens each); the reception that the presentation we gave got - even though we didn't cover all the material we had; learning about QR codes (not exactly new!) for the first time.

The second conference was a day thing combining three faculties here (business, technology and creative industries). Again I was presenting, this time a slight variation on the one I've been touting about of late and this time jointly with H rather than our law librarian. I think she was a bit apprehensive about my laid back approach (but when you're on your fourth outing with the same subject material(ish), even I don't get quite so stressed about it). Again, it seemed to go down remarkably well given that as library staff we always feel a bit like interlopers at these 'academic' things.

The final conference was the science faculty version of yesterday, but focussed on the tutorial process and professional development. For once I wasn't presenting which made a change - although I was surprised by how much I could contribute in discussions. Particularly enjoyed a presentation from another support staff lady who I normally do my best to avoid. I knew she was very gorgeous and very bright - but I discovered she can also give a cracking presentation as well. Which didn't really surprise me.

All three conferences were interesting but what was most obvious from the close juxtaposition of them was the quality of presentation. With the first conference I didn't go to a bad workshop. All were engaging and well presented with good audience interaction (but not, generally, too much!). These were librarians who are not as a rule paid as academics (though some were). On the other hand, at the internal conferences I had to listen to several presentations from people who are indeed paid to professionally present information. They were very worthy and not generally uninformative and mostly very relevant - but just so dull. What is that?!

Good to see S from TheOldPlace who came down for a morning event. We were able to fit in a cafe visit and catch up. Thanks for coming down - on a day off no less!

Not sure I've mentioned (it all happened rather quickly) one of the delights of the last few days which has been a design competition our new extension has been entered for. I was invited - by virtue of having written an article on it for a librarian trade journal - to the 'how-do-we-go-about-preparing-for-this' and obviously didn't duck quick enough when my boss was looking for the ideal person to front the actual presentation to the judges.

Sigh. Still, I suppose it was something I could usefully do. Worked up a good script that covered the points in the competition and said the things we wanted to say - and dared to include some not so good points which we're addressing. I then went off to make a PowerPoint to go with it. Now if I say it was 60 odd slides, you might be horrified as it was only a 20 minute presentation. But it wasn't quite as bad as that. Firstly, there were next to no words and secondly there was a certain 'power' to they way I had full screen photos (occasionally 4 photos quartering the screen or three in a tritych and so on) which showed off the building and its design. They were great pictures (done by the Uni photographer although some of mine were in there) and often included students which made it look active and exciting.

I've no idea what the judges actually made of it all - although of course they were polite enough. But frustratingly, although they decide in the next week or two, we won't hear for some time as they announce the winner at a conference. However, pleased though everyone was with our 'performance' (the tour, the display, the presentation, the Q&A), I've seen some of the competition and it's stiff. So I'm not holding my breath.

Interesting process though.

H has organized a small conference for architecture librarians which started late yesterday afternoon. I attended all of this morning including a 'poster' session presenting one of the projects I've been involved with. Tomorrow is the presentation I've been touting around the bazaars of late. Also looking forward to seeing colleagues from TheOldPlace in action with their Second Life presentation.

One of the committee members is doing something on Twitter too which I'm looking forward to. Noticing her contribution on a programme I started 'following' her last week but didn't do anything formal like introduce myself or anything. We've never met. (What is the netiquette for that?) Of course, I'm not identifiable from my name or (non-existant) bio. Didn't plan on interacting till today but perhaps unsurprisingly in retrospect she tweeted a couple of things about the conference which I couldn't resist replying to.

Not surprised to find this morning that she had thought it a little weird and was very relieved to find I wasn't a stalker but just me.

They're all off on a coach tour of the city now while I'm trying to deal with the emails that have piled up in various absences. Getting Things Done was working but I've just not been here to get things done so am a little behind. Still, I'm confident the processes will stand me in good stead if only I could past this oppressive heat. Pain killers and Cherry Coke not yet helping.

Still planning on attempting both book group which is unfortunately this evening (Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby as our glorious leader has been in Thailand for the best part of a month) and the conference dinner. Possibly optimistic to try either given how I feel...

Am back at work after a day off sick. I'm am not reporting in detail on the state of my innards except to say I'm glad I wasn't here yesterday morning. Still not feeling great now but need to be at work for various engagements.

Although it's obviously physical and not mental, it would be interesting to know whether it's a bug of some sort or stress related. Not sure it's the latter, but can't rule it out.

In any case, the major stress of Tuesday is now over. Shattered by end of the day.

Went just as I expected - even to predicting the 1, 2, 3, 4 order. And the hard choice between the top two (big gap between 2 and 3 and 4 trailing along virtually out of sight). In the end we assigned points for each question making a possible score of 80 on the 8 questions. I wasn't surprised when we added them up and found just one point in it. Still, one person has to get the job and three have to be disappointed. And while I think friend (and friendship) is big enough to rise over her disappointment, reality can often feel a lot harsher than you imagine. So I'll watch this space.

Of course one of the most interesting things from my perspective was the insight it gave into the processes on the other side of the table. Should I be interviewed for another job I hope it will stand in me in good stead.

Oh and good luck to the successful candidate. Hope it goes well for you.

Penultimate stress of the summer (although I'm sure there's lots more really). I've done most of the presentations I have to do - just one more on Friday, but today is a first for me.

It's interview morning. The ones delayed from last week (it's a long story - see 9th & 11th June).

I don't suppose I'm more nervous than the candidates but I'm vaguely surprised by how nervous I am! I woke up early this morning with an interesting dream about wondering the university (actually, a university, I didn't recognize any of it) looking for a room to sit quietly in just an hour before the interviews to look through the paperwork one last time. No where was free but I stumbled into the Refectory only to find several people smoking and President of the Uni there eating. He wasn't condoning them smoking but was giving excuses or something. I eventually found another room where just a couple of colleagues were sitting quietly getting on with their own work (H was one of them), and I could finally sit down in there. But now with only 15 minutes to go.

The stress about the interviews I get - but what was the smoking thing about?!

In any case, I'm still predicting 1,2,3 4 for the results today with a tough choice between 1 and 2. We'll see.

Livid this afternoon.

For some weeks now there's been a large donation of journals (and some books) outside my office. 8 or 9 large boxes full. Mostly math or civil engineering stuff.

Simple task passed on to a junior member of staff (JMoS): check our holdings, set aside anything we don't have, the rest (probably the vast majority) can go for recycling. (Or more likely charitable giving to the third world.)

Today, the JMoS handed it back with lists of what we have and didn't have. Carefully marked with blue highlighter as to what we don't have. I check the first marked thing on the list - actually the first thing on the lists in any case. It's on the shelf. That's odd. I check another one; we have that too. I randomly check a couple of others from elsewere on the lists and get even more confused as to what's what.

Thinking maybe I'd misunderstood something I went back to the JMoS. He barely bats an eyelid before explaining, well, yes, the job had gone on over so many weeks that he may have started highlighting what we had and somewhere along the line switched to marking what we didn't have. No apology, no explanation of where the switch might be I'm left with lists that are so worthless I can't face even beginning to work out what the deal with them is.

Trying not to go incandescent I realize that the easiest thing is just to start from scratch. Drag the journals over to the shelves and in a bit under four hours have cranked through the whole lot. Tired now (and dusty), but it's done. Not in weeks or even days, but in four hours. I can see out the office again and am just left with wondering whether I should complain to his supervisor or let it go.

The biggest frustration is that he's one of the candidates I have to interview for a secondment post next week. Do I go to my boss and say I can't do this fairly any more? Be professional and just get on with it? Hopefully I'll have calmed down by next week.

Lecture this morning from a shuttle astronaut.

Really excellent presentation as you might expect. 12-13 minutes upbeat video, slides of his two missions (Hubble and ISS), questions and answers. Good crowd in one of our biggest lecture theaters.

But it was a mistake to go. I'd forgotten how easy it is to reawaken the desire to one day venture into space and the frustration that it's so unlikely to ever happen. Left feeling very melancholic. Back the to fantasy of SF books and my Traveller collection, I guess.

Away at three conferences next week - doing presentations at two of them - so I'll probably go quiet for a bit.

;-)

The sketch at the staff training this afternoon - on the theme of 'change' as there's a lot of it coming - went down exceptionally well. I'm (almost) embarrassed to say. They laughed in the right places, took the relevant teaching points from it and many of the 60 or so in the 'audience' remarked that it was the best part of the afternoon. At one point we were using the five inflatable 'pod' thingies we have in what used to be an old nightclub but is now a student study/eat/play space, but my plan to deflate one came to nothing when I pulled the wrong plug out.

Shortlisting this afternoon went very well. Easier than I expected. HR guy happy to invite all four.

The irony is that he revealed it is not HR that is insisting on the interview date being when both two interviewers and one interviewee can't make it; he revealed it's a Library decision.

So mid-meeting I was despatched to the Head to find out why they couldn't simply be delayed a week.

"Ah well, umm, urh, there should be a handover period for such a complex job and all that." Or words to that effect.

Hold on a minute, given the actual departure date in question there's no way the outgoing incumbent is going to spend the last day of work delivering a week's worth of quality training to the new person, so effectively there isn't going to be a handover period.

So... no objections from HR on doing the interviews a week later and my senior colleague (and assistant) could have done the wretched job after all.

At least t'other colleague/friend will be able to attend no problem although my head said surely it would have been better to let the whole thing slide, blame it on HR, reduce the options, and avoid having to choose a friend or not choose a friend. It's lose/lose really. But we'll see what happens at their interviews. (I was considered a bit cruel for wanting them to do a presentation to see what they're made of and because I'd enjoy that part of the process!)

One of our team is retiring soon and so we're interviewing for a replacement. Internal library staff only.

It should be my senior colleague (and assistant) doing the interviews with someone from HR but they're both on leave the relevant week so they've asked me and another long time member of staff who is also leaving but doing a similar job to the one we're replacing.

It's a bit of a scary prospect as I've never sat on that side of the table before, but I can't really say no and I suppose it will be good for me.

The thing that's causing the most stress though is that instead of having, say, half a dozen external candidates I've never met, we've got four internals who happen to be friends (one of them a good friend) as they all participate in the library's book group with me.

Added complexity from the fact that one is in Thailand on holiday at the time of the interviews - specifically away at this time rather than a time more convenient at the request of the department in the Library she works for. There's been much talk about whether it would be 'fair' to not invite her for interview, or to invite her to a date we know she can't make.

Anyway, today a very new member of staff from HR came over to set some of my fears at rest, answer questions I had and to plan for the meeting we have on Friday to actually shortlist the candidates. (Though frankly all four would be able to do the job.)

Also finalized the script for the sketch next week.

Lunch today and lunch yesterday marking the departures of various members of staff who've taken voluntary redundancy to help the University make cut backs. Fun but sad at the same time.

PC has been increasingly flakey of late.

Finally took the plunge and had it reimaged by our IT guys today. :-(

(Will take at least a week to get everything reinstalled and what not again. Nothing's going to be quite right for a bit, but I guess it will be worth it if the machine works for another four years.)

Down to do the final (university) staff workshop of the season, I was supposed to be doing a couple of hours on the deep web this morning. A dozen people turned up which was gratifying. But then a major power outage rather put paid to that. (Apparently a power failure in our server building had then had a knock on effect on the backup servers (in another building) would you believe). So it was very unusual but not much we could do with a workshop so based on the internet and no electricity, internet etc.

However, I happened to have a poster on my window with the main PowerPoint slide on it to keep my thinking about the session. With the attendees keen not to have a total loss of their time, they patiently sat through a fifteen minute version of the 'workshop' with me talking to my poster and giving them 'homework' of some of the interactivity I had planned. They seemed quite impressed that I could do that and it be useful to them.

I was tired enough at that point of the week to be relieved that I was spared two hours worth of presenting, but it did make me wonder if perhaps we should create 15 minute versions of all of our workshops. Market them for busy people with little time!

In any case, several of my workshops have a 'key' slide which is very graphic and which I work from a fair bit. Definitely worth making posters of all them just in case!

Lusting after an iPad really badly but my wife thinks I'm just being greedy with an iPod Touch and a Sony ebook reader. (Not to mention the work laptop). Trying to explain it fits a niche between all of those isn't working!

Still, I have a plan. There's a conference on handheld learning that's giving one to every delegate who books before the end of June. As I've been tasked with representing the Library on the handheld learning committee at the university, it seems only right I should attend...

Interesting use of Google Docs this afternoon.

In a couple of weeks it's the Library staff training afternoon and the Map Librarian and I have been asked to put on a little sketch. (Evidently the sketch we did for a recent event on customer service went down altogether too well.)

F wrote the last script but as I hated my lines so much I thought I'd see if I could persuade him to let me help write this time. We used Google Docs but not at a distance. We sat in the same room and took turns writing lines - him at a PC being projected onto the wall and me on a laptop. It's probably about as close as we're going to come to the kind of things we've both seen on TV with teams of scriptwriters for sitcoms.

It was a good laugh and we both really buzzed with the ideas and such that we came up with and both liked the process of writing together and using Google Docs for the purpose. Highly recommend it.

Doctor's appointment this morning. :-(

Difficult meeting today with my new liaison officer for the electronic and electrical engineering department. She's lobbying the (also new) Dean not to have a major database 'cancelled'. We bouhgt it 18 months back with some left over money we had that we'd lose if we didn't spend. We knew it was just for one year but even a year's worth of use was better than nothing. I need to explain to her that characterising it as a 'cancellation' might be politically useful to her, but isn't true of the decisions that were actually taken.

Of course, if the Faculty want to come up with some money to contribute to its admittedly rather large cost, then brilliant. It is an excellent database. Even though it's only been available for a short while we're already get enough hits on it to make the cost about $5/hit which I think would improve over time. But even if we cancelled a fair few journals to pay for it, we'd still be left with no book fund for the next year.

Managing this kind of stuff is probably the part of my job that I like least.

Read Getting Things Done by David Allen over the last few days and been trying to implement it. I'd heard good reports of it and am feeling so overwhelmed I just had to try something. I've surprised myself (a tad cynical about managing my time any better) about how well it works. I think I've got the process weighed off, now it's a matter of getting into the discipline which follows - reviewing and tracking everything.

The key points for me have been:
- track everything - so your brain is not trying to keep stuff in mind
- tweak the process to suit your own situation - but don't skip bits
- timetable the weekly review - so it doesn't get lost in all the stuff you're doing.

What's been best for me has been having a 'zero inbox' for several days now which relieves a lot of stress, shows the system works and makes it worth doing just for that.

More info and some freebies here: http://www.davidco.com/

Back from a (short notice) trip to Sweden for five days to help a friend sail the small boat he'd bought from Stockholm down to Kalmar.

The weather could have been kinder. Often it's 16 degrees at this time of year, can be 26. We had 6. And boy was it cold. At one point I had layers of just about all the clothes I'd taken. The full set of waterproofs and two lots of thermal underwear were a crucial bit of packing.

But it was a great adventure and good to spend time with my friend and his two young lads. Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'm very glad my fairly full diary just happened to have a few days free at the right time.

On the way home I stopped at a science and technology librarian get together for about 60 of us. That was good too and somehow I've been volunteered to do the write up.

Birthday today and had thought it would be quiet (!) and I could catch up. Fat chance...

Colleague asked me to step into his faculty's library committee this afternoon as he was away. There was a part of me that didn't mind, but the more I 'uncovered' the more I found the whole thing a bit frustrating.

First I found out his daughter's wedding (the excuse) wasn't until the weekend; second he hadn't been to his last library committee meeting either; third, these are rather crucial times finance wise. He didn't brief me at all save to say that there were no 'issues' to worry about but the head of our acquisitions, J, was wiser than that and came the day before to tell me all sorts of things I had to understand and convey to them.

I know that numbers aren't really my thing - give me words anyday! - and the meeting seemed to go well enough. But I was frustrated to find afterwards that some of what J picked up on afterwards from the meeting just wasn't adequate to our needs. Well... several obvious responses leapt to mind. Ah well.

Melancholic moment this afternoon as we dedicated a bench in the memorial garden (i.e. the patch of grass just outside the Library's back door where we can sit when it's sunny). It was dedicated to the member of staff who died in post and who sat with me doing cryptic crosswords. His widow did the honors; photos were taken; memories were shared.

I know, I know, I know... it's been dreadfully quiet here of late.

I've not given up but have found that Twitter has perhaps taken some of energy/news/psychological space that might otherwise have found its way here.

I'm reviewing whether I continue, whether I change the subject of the blog entirely, or whether I decide to move all such commentary just to Twitter. I think the latter would be a shame as 140 characters isn't always enough for the required catharsis, the middle option is probably too scary - but I don't want to "just" carry on out of habit.

Will keep you posted. One way or the other.

Library visit today. 10 of us from university libraries all over this neck of the woods.

Possibly the most powerful/moving one I'm ever likely to attend.

It was a visit to a small, city center jail - about 200 inmates - and included seeing a couple of different (emtpy) cells, the workshops, gym, chapel and so on. Then the library itself and getting to meet any of the prisoners who cared to be spending half an hour of their time coming to borrow a book or DVD.

What with the stringent entry security and some hassles there, plus the knowledge that all the inmate were in for serious crimes and some had been there 30 or 40 years, it affected all of us more than we expected. Although it was just like you see on tv or in movies, there was something very different about standing on a landing full of locked doors contemplating the reality of this being pretty much the totality of existence for any length of time.

I think everyone should experience this at least once - although I'm very aware that we were very fortunate to see much more of the place than any ordinary visitors would be allowed. Likely to be a highlight of the year.

Another creative thinking course today.

Yes, I know I did one three years back, but although this is being run by the same (external) guy, this was a revised course and had dropped the 'managing change' and added 'problem solving'.

I checked beforehand and it was different enough to make it worth revisiting.

We did Belbin team roles once again and it was interesting to see that although I'd done the 'homework' trying to deemphasise 'plant' type answers, I still came out as a very very strong plant. And once again could contribute various bits of experience at certain points. (Including a segment on random words as a technique). [1]

Nice to visit our other, quieter bit of campus as well. Some lovely geese to admire at lunchtime.



[1] I was delighted to find a week or three back a free App for my iPod Touch (WordWeb) that's a great dictionary and also had a random word facility!

Just finished one of my busiest teaching weeks ever with 2 to 3 hours of lecturing a day. Now utterly exhausted and just want to sit down. Should head home at some point though.

Next week looks a bit quieter which is a relief.

OK, I want to rant.

ebooks - they really haven't 'arrived' yet...

I've bought books for some time from an excellent provider of ebooks - both fiction and non-fiction. I've mentioned them here before but am not going to do so here because they're not at fault.

I regularly get promotional emails from them highlighting books in categories I've asked for and sometimes I see something I'd like to buy.

Of late, however, I've noticed that I've been unable to buy a title on several occasions. Why? Because I don't happen to live in the right country. This wasn't previously a problem but apparently now publishers are tightening up.

One book that I spent a lot of money on buying in Palm format and which I read and refer to regularly, I now *cannot* have on my iPod Touch simply because this restriction has come in since my original purchase of the book and my purchase of the Touch.

Aaaaargh!

Query this morning from one of the folk who attended the ebook afternoon on Wednesday. Not about devices but about the actual ebook I was showing on my old Palm.

I happened to be reading an e-version of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology which I bought a while back for reference. It sounds as dull as ditchwater and is a monstrous book in print of over 1200 pages. (9000+ on the small Palm screen!) However, it's exceedingly well written and approachable to the layperson and can even be used in a devotional way. So I thought I might read it slowly over the course of this year.

It made a good demo as it's a reasonably complex book with detailed contents pages, footnotes and small line diagrams which the Palm version reproduces faithfully. But I didn't expect anyone to care about the book itself. Only goes to show.

Anyway, must run... our President is coming to talk to us about university finances. He doesn't often make an appearance in the Library and this is the first time in the three and a half years I've been here that we've shut the issue desk and all the enquiry desks so that staff can attend.

Two days off and of course although I unwound nicely - all it means now is that I'm again stressed and oppressed by all that's piled up in my absence.

Still, this afternoon was interesting. The library hosted some 33 librarians from the region for a session promoting ebooks. We had three slots: one colleague presenting the results of a survey that she and I did on student ebook usage; one sales rep selling and doing a demo of our most popular ebook platform (on which we have 44,000 titles); and myself talking about my experiences with ebooks over more than a decade and showing off everything from an old Palm IIIx through to a couple of iPhones taking in a Palm T3, Nokia phone, couple of Sony 505s, Sony 600, and 2 iTouches on the way. Oh and the iPad courtesy of Steve Jobs himself on a video link!

My thanks to the colleagues (and my Mom!) who bravely lent me the devices to allow everyone a go with the devices. And my special thanks to whatever delegate wrote on a feedback form "quite taken with last session" ! Quite made my day.

(Particularly after a sermon preached at the weekend got an "I warmed to the last third" comment from the vicar...)

No one turned up to last week's lunchtime edition of my google workshop and only 2 turned up to the following evening session. This week 3 came on Wednesday to the deep web workshop I run and another 3 came to the evening edition yesterday.

For those that come to the workshops (which are part of a series run by myself and other colleagues on everything from referencing to getting the most out of journals) they're really useful and they seem to get a lot out of them. At least my feedback forms would suggest to.

But questions are being asked about the value of doing this for such low numbers. (I said that the 20 I had coming last time was a blip as a Polish teacher turned up with an international class en masse both weeks running!)

A new bus timetable introduced in the new year now also means that my last bus home leaves at 18:55 instead of 19:45 which is incredibly frustrating. Just about anything after normal hours at work will now cost a $20 cab fare.

And continuing the crime themed week, I visited our mock courtroom today.

This is a new suite of rooms that's replaced our old refectory which is a bit of a shame as it was a great place to eat cheaply when necessary.

Anyway, it was designed for the law students of course, but my digital forensics masters students had use of it for three hours to be 'expert witnesses' in a trial involving a defendent accused of having child pornography on his computer.

Before I knew what the actual crime involved I'd said that sounded interesting and could I come and watch the proceedings... but the academic telling me about it could go one better. They didn't actually have a judge so could I sit at the front and ask questions as appropriate and referee the prosecution and defence counsels? Certainly, sounded daunting but interesting.

Fortunately, there was no requirement to review any of the 'evidence' and in fact I wasn't judging a trial in any case, it was in effect the same quarter of an hour over and over again as each of the dozen students in the class did their expert witness stint on the witness stand. Two academics were the lawyers for and against and went through the same set of questions.

So it revolved around their qualifications as a witness, what processes/tools/software they'd used to analyse the hard drive in question and what they'd found etc. If they used any heavy duty jargon I could interrupt and ask them to explain to the jury what that meant - and I loved the way the student would then address the 12 chairs of the imaginary jury for a moment or two!

I wasn't certain before I started that it wouldn't be deadly dull, but in fact it was interesting in any number of ways.
I was intrigued by the deference and respect I got just because of where I was sitting.
The poor students found the whole set up much more real and nerve wracking than they expected and so were much more nervous. In fairness they almost all did pretty credible jobs without too much incomprehensibility.
The two academics got more and more into it until I really was refereeing them towards the end with their objections and deliberate attempts to lead the witness or confuse them etc.
Given that all the students were working to the same scenario and hard drive that they'd dissected, it was astonishing how varied your view of the case/testimony/witnesses actions you could get depending on their responses to the questions.
And there was absolutely no chance to fall asleep or do the crossword as you really had to pay attention if you wanted to not only follow the witness but to follow the way the questions were being asked to ensure fairplay.

All in all, a really fascinating experience.

Just taken part in a bit of research. Such opportunities occasionally come up and it's always interesting to see what's going on in various parts of the university.

This one was looking at how to get the best recall from a witness of a crime. I had to watch a video for a couple of minutes and rather than be tested on what I remembered, had to fill in as many lines as I cared to with a fact or observation and then mark on a percentage scale how reliable I thought the memory of it was.

I understand this was being compared with other subjects who were asked to recall what they could in a more narrative fashion.

Just to really stretch the memory, in between the video and the recollection of it, I had to listen to two very short stories and then write down what I recalled of *them*.

The researcher gave me his 'form' (with sets of blank lines and percentage scales) running to about 20 pages. "Use as many as you like - you won't fill it all." I came pretty close though with just a page left by the end. On the other hand I'd started on negative comments such as 'it wasn't raining' (or snowing!) and could have done those forever, so I decided I'd extracted what I could from the sieve of my memory.

I'll look forward to seeing the published results but won't ever get to find out how accurate - or otherwise - I was. Pity.

Scary session this morning as the science librarian had arranged for me to do a 90 minutes session to a group of his "prof doc" students (PhDs with a bit more teaching and a bit less research I think he explained) on 'new technologies in information dissemination'.

I think a computing academic has run the session before but for some reason it's devolved to me now. I'd complain that it ought to be the science librarian teaching his own students except that as I come bottom of our league table on number of teaching hours [1], I'll take anything I can get. Plus it was an interesting topic I've not done before.

Although I was very uncertain what the group would be like, how the session would 'work', how the session would go down, in actual fact they seemed very appreciative of it and found it quite useful. Even the first section I did on Twitter just to get the controversial out of the way!


[1] If I've not mentioned this before, it comes up in my appraisal each year. It's not for want of touting my services and abilities about the faculty at any opportunity.

I was leading one of our weekly library staff training events this morning. On the pre-entry project I must go on about ad infinitum. (Both here and at work). The last such session I did was on the trip to the Czech Republic and the conference presenting a paper on the subject. That drew a full house of maybe 20 people.

This one, looking at the project itself - developments in 2009 and where it might go in 2010 - was evidently less inviting. Just 8 or so.

What was interesting was that at least one person still knew very little about the whole thing and how much in the way of thoughts about future directions and utility even a small group could develop very quickly.

An e-learning forum today debated whether we need the "e" in e-learning. Not sure it covered anything new, but I was twittering from the back with a computing academic which at least kept me engaged.

(I couldn't but help pointing out that actually e-learning needs two ees.)

It was interesting to note that not only were a couple of people I knew following the tweets, but someone I vaguely knew from having met once at a conference last year who took the trouble to thank me for the 'coverage' as it was useful. Presumably as an unemployed librarian with a job interview it's helpful to keep up with current concerns. But it reminded me that Twitter can actually be useful.

Odd sort of event today. Some of the museum and heritage students are filming their case studies about an invented public library. A couple of us from the library and someone from the public library have been invited to come and be the 'audience'.

We'd kind of understood we were just being invited to see what they did, how they did it and take an interest in the whole process. Turned out on arrival that we were expected to sit on seats under the glare of the lights and not only be a 'real' tv audience but to ask questions of the presenters at the end of each group's talk and slides.

Given that absolutely nothing hung on it from our point of view, it wasn't go to be broadcast any where at all, and it really mattered not a jot - it's amazing how intimidating big broadcast quality cameras, studio lights, floor managers, microphones and 'sets' can be. On the other hand, it was interesting to see a bit of behind the scenes television and if nothing else sitting under the lights was the first time I've been warm in days.

The students did pretty well with what was clearly a really nerve wracking experience for them and I shall be interested to see the DVD product. If anyone has any tips on how to *look* relaxed while just sitting there, I'd love to hear. I was suddenly aware of every facial expression, every movement of hand, arm, leg - I've a lot more sympathy for politicians having to sit in front of audiences like that.

University still shut but Library now open from 10-4.

As the buses have completely given up where I am (even though they're apparently fine in the city center) I'm still at home but feeling so rough that I'm not sure it wouldn't be a sick day even if I could get in. Still, I can do more from a laptop in bed than I can with distractions in the office so it's actually been quite productive.

University shut due to 'extremely hazardous' conditions. But unfortunately so are my children's and wife's school - so any dream of a peaceful day working from home shattered.

Then, as I follow email and Twitter, I find the Library is under pressure to open and is going to see what it can do with whatever staff can walk in from 12-3.

Hang on... what happened to the 'extremely hazardous' conditions for the rest of the university?

At least a 7 mile tramp in the snow isn't expected of me so I just feel mildly guilty about not being there.

Day of annual leave today. As well as a dental appointment I thought I'd attempt to get started on a sermon for the end of the month.

As it happens the Library along with the rest of the University was closed by 10.30 thanks to the exceptional snowfall. At least the leave meant I didn't have to feel guilty about trying to work from home as I was beginning to feel decidedly lousy.

Got the dentist just before lunch to find they were somewhat surprised to see me (although it was only a 200 yard walk for me) and they were all packing up to go home themselves. Still, at least I got seen before they gave up.

Somewhat stressed today by the once a year (well, I did it last year and it seems to be becoming a fixture), computing lecture that is entirely online to students all over the world. Primarily Africa and Asia it seems.

It wouldn't be so bad but they use their own (non-standard) virtual learning environment and chat space which I don't have regular access to, don't use but this one time, and found flaky last year.

What's more my login doesn't appear to be working and emailing people 8 hours ahead of my time zone never makes for quick communication.

But the lunchtime edition of the session went ok (logged in with the host lecturer's account in the end but that meant she couldn't be present directly - could only follow the chat logs a minute or so behind and then email me if there was something to clarify - not ideal).

It's a marathon session of typing for the best part of an hour, but I was able to cover the basics I needed to get through and respond to their questions. Even managed to chat for a few moments before the class started about where they were from and ended up playing is-there-a-student-here-from-a-country-I-haven't-visited? (No.) (Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong...)

There was a 'repeat' session at 6pm for those who couldn't make the first due to time zone differences but as no one turned up for that I was free to go home... which was a relief as by then the promised snow was falling and travelling home was beginning to look iffy.

Back to work after a break... is there *anyone* who finds that easy?

On the other hand after (probably) too much family, food and fun it's good to take a break from *that*.