We've been going through a staffing review for what seems like eternity but I reckon is really around 18 months.

The process has been painfully slow and just when we thought it was about to end, we've reached the top to find it's not the true summit after all. The good news is that we don't have to apply for our own jobs which was one possible outcome, the bad news is it may be several months before everything is 'settled'.

Last week and this the various teams of the Library were gathered to hear the news and how it would relate to them. It's complicated but for the subject liaison team that I'm part of it means that each of the six Faculty Librarians will become responsible for their job and one of six special areas. In no particular order: research, promotion, collection development, enquiries, disability, and international/collaborative students. Each of us has to rank the six areas in an 'expression of interest'. Management then assign them if there's no conflice and we have to do written applications if there are. Some of the areas naturally match with what people have been doing till now, some don't. As you can imagine, the 'who wants what' rumors/worries/gossip/chat has caused no end of tension of late.

Meanwhile, our three assistant faculty librarians will be joined by three new assistant librarians and each of those six will have to express interest in supporting the faculty librarian and their 'area'. This means that an assitant faculty librarian could change subject specialism depending on who they end up supporting which has caused no end of tension of late. Worse still, they can't do that until management have sorted us lot.

To further complicate things there are then five slightly more junior posts which also support the above and have to be properly applied for by other library staff. Too many will want to too few positions. More tension. And worse still, they can't apply until the assitants above have been settled.

In other parts of the library there is stress over building type staff having to help at the issue desk, huge disappointment over the ending of overtime arrangements (worth, in some cases, a couple of thousand dollars a year) and 'weekend supervision' which allowed some junior members of the issue team to get some experience at a higher level.

Human resources are apparently satisfied with some of the oddities about library staffing that will disappear (too many types of contract, faculty librarians taking two year stints at 'team leading' and therefore appraising assistants, overtime, etc), but it would seem that as usual everything looks great on paper but forgets the human element of what it's actually like for real people.