Reminding last week of the staff restructuring (more interviews for junior positions today), I was reflecting on one bit of the process that I found encouraging.

I think I mentioned that the six faculty librarians had to take on six areas of special responsibility.

The 'process' called us for us each to express an interest in on of the areas and then if more than one of us wanted a role, we'd have to do formal applications.

With six very different strong personalities I could see this being an awful task and frankly I didn't think I had the energy to face a formal application procedure. So I floated the idea of us sitting around a table and seeing if we couldn't just agree to split the six jobs between us.

There was much harumphing and "it'll never work" and fears that weaker voices might be hassled into doing something they didn't want. A couple were up for it, but the others couldn't see it working. But I persisted in saying, at least let's try. Give it one hour and if we can't hash something out in that time, we're unlikely to. And if there's the slightest doubt from anyone, we do the formal applications.

A few days later, somewhat to my surprise, we did get together for an hour and even more to my surprise we managed to divide the six roles between us quite happily. All the worries folk had had that "so-and-so would be put out if I went for that" and so forth proved unfounded.

The Head was utterly astonished when we all put in an expression of interest for a different role! She had no idea we'd be able to come to any such arrangement!