Tales from the CDG Tardis

Good morning blog pickers, I’ve been neglecting you again, haven’t I? Am in some turmoil as I await the result of my interview last Friday. Definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but maybe emergency booster rockets will have compensated. Hard to concentrate when your brain is simultaneously working on two different prognoses and all their associated implications.

Monday: went at the emails like Kim and Aggie, swept away many and even answered a few, down to a less frightening array now but it can all turn on a dime. Pleasant evening watching Murray play actual tennis, you know the kind of match where chaps actually run about and look interesting instead of just exerting brute force from baseline. Packing mini suitcase again for another trip down to Lullon Tahn.

Tuesday: planning day at a colleague’s house; also known as ‘playing on the wii’ (we didn’t, even, so it was very unfair of management to make such accusations). Got our heads round a few information literacy documents and tasklists and future plans and WebCT evaluation templates, all without having our heads nipped or being interrupted. Lovely lunch too although the crisp Chablis I longed for had to be downgraded to elderflower. Jumped on train to London and finally made a start on that Emotional Intelligence book I bought 3 months ago. Also finished When we were bad for book group, quite a jolly Jewish London romp, although not exactly profound.

So to Wednesday, down in London for the CILIP Equal Opportunities Panel. Still quite new to this outfit so lots of listening and less talking than usual, although I’m interested in how CDG can support the new Positive Action Scheme and also thinking ahead to the next Umbrella debate (aka the Trevor Knight award for gallantry in the face of deliberate provocation), getting my head together with the Diversity Group rep.

Still hoping the mobile will ring with promise of pastures new…

So, fresh (or rather excited but a little exhausted!) after my trip to London and the success of Raising the bar, I now find myself in sunny Liverpool Hope University for the UC&R/COFHE joint study conference. Actually travelled down Saturday to stay with cousins and catch up with my four great-aunties. This involved a pub crawl which took in The Grapes, Rigby’s, The Saddle Inn, Masquerade, The Postie and the Crown Vaults. Soft drinks are a wonderful invention; it’s too humiliating to be drunk under the table by septuagenerians.

Am safely delivered to Hope Park nonetheless and immediately bump into one of the RTB delegates who says how much she enjoyed Thursday’s event. Also catch up with a former colleague and a few other sundry professional contacts.

Bijou gripettes: my room is fine but lacks soap, coathangers, a chair and anything to drink out of. Improvise 3 of these but stuck on the coathanger front. Will have to just be creased or make use of shared iron and put clothes straight on hot off the board.

Liverpool is host not only to the European Capital of Culture but to SuperLambBanana, a joyous spectacle of public art that picks up where Edinburgh’s Cow Parade left off, i.e. same principle (sponsored brightly decorated animal structures, only this time with lambs. That have a pointy back end. For some reason. I plan to snap as many as I see - they brighten up any powerpoint presentation.

We are warmly welcomed by Linda Taylor, Director of Library Services at Liverpool Hope Uni, who gives us the history of her institution which started from just two students training to be schoolmistresses in the mid 19th century.

Joyce Little, Head of Libraries & Information Services for the City of Liverpool then gave a spirited and honest keynote address. She described her service’s mission as being to inspire, inform and entertain; to be the street corner university; to empower residents. The capital of culture offers the promise of lifting what is still a very deprived city, through culture and regeneration. She mentioned some key projects and investment in transforming heritage buildings, balanced with the need to attract new audiences. One interesting comment was that she felt a ‘huge disappointment’ that more has not been invested in electrionic resources for public libraries. Student user numbers are falling in Liverpool’s Central Library, and this is one contributing factor, along with the investment in many LRCs at HEIs in the area.

Dr David Collins CBE, Principal of high-achieving South Cheshire College, spoke next. He emphasised leadership, clarity of vision, values; feels that staff needed to feel secure before they could welcome change; believes that ‘management is more concerned with guidance and support than with regulation and control’. He was vocal ont he topic of meetings: says we should never take minutes, but only record the names of those present, the cost of their time, and any changes or major decisions resulting from the meeting. A sobering thought.  He believes that the time-honoured technique of MBWA needs to have a purpose, and that the purpose should be only to thank or acknowledge individuals for their contributions to the college. We shoul cut down on emails and use more varied means of communication. We should fit structures to people and never the other way around. Above all, we should show that we care.

After a quick coffee break, we reconvened for the first workshop (there was no choice for this one so it was either accept the 3 line whip or skive with impunity!) Debbi Boden and Ronan O’Beirne battled technical hitches (I maintain this was LOLcats breaking in…) to deliver a lively and interactive information literacy session. They considered digital immigrants and natives and digital citizenship, and described their work on the POP-i and LolliPop projects.

Well now, I’ve duly blogged and now I need to freshen up in time for for the rigours of dinner, Hollywood Librarian (for the second time!), drinks and a quiz.

37 today… getting dangerously close to the big four-oh. Am I still in my mid-thirties or have I crossed into the shark-infested waters of the late thirties? Never mind, I get to play my lovely new cherrywood recorder that smells all yummy. Mr Amazon may smile upon me also.

Book group today, fairly much did a hatchet job on Notes from an exhibition by Patrick Gale. Contrived? Possibly. So much tragedy in the family and yet so hard to really care about any of the people. Have agreed no more tortured artists and something fun for next time (jury still out…)

Reporting is taking over - information literacy seems to be one strategic document after another these days. Trying to write programme reports, made stupid decision to start with programme where I have the most extensive input (biomedical sciences). Need to map so many variables against each other that I will require at least seven dimensions. Analysing things brings me dangerously close to uncontrollable weeping fits. (So decided extra cake and clothes shopping trip were in order…)

Frined reports that her nearly 2 year old has a vocabulary of 10 words, one of which is TARDIS. Good lad: he’ll go far.

Hopefully succeeded in convincing PGCHET examiner that she wants us to include information literacy input intot he taught module. We have all-singing all-dancing plans plus theory and content to go. Fortunately she is a social software enthusiast so we may be able to satisfy that angle. Programme tutor keen on fireside chats over nice wine in the local Tasting Rooms, he wants to start including IL tutors as regular part of the team, can you see where I’m going with this?! (Excellent conflict of interests as I am also a reluctant student ont he course, and have just hopefully scraped a C in the second module, aka Curriculum Deisgn, aka Module of Doom). If I write module 3 based on reflections on teaching input to the PGCHET I may in fact disappear right up my own module descriptor.

Surely it must be time for a little scampi and chardonnay?

Bother it, another day nearly over and I have failed to plant any more seeds in the blog patch. Day Job was taken up with urgent stuff, finishing a key paper, some meetings with reps (who were mnore than averagely personable for company reps), making difficult decisions about collection management (stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before…)

Also having a little personal dilemma about whether or not to apply for a job I’ve seen. It’s appealing but there would be material sacrifices. Also sense that my appetite for change, which has always been quite healthy, is on the wane and I’m starting to lose confidence in my ability to seize new opportunities. That is evidence if anything is that I really should be thinking about moving on…

Write a little review piece for CDG Scottish Division newsletter, reflecting on my first two months as CDG President. It’s been challenging, sometimes stressful, but there have been some real highs. I’m trying to stay on top of everything and hold it all together, but I don’t know whether it’s working. Still feel quite daunted by the whole thing.

Busy the rest of this week - tomorrow I join in a Show & Tell day for SALCTG, speaking about my use of wikis in 1st year information literacy. On Thursday it’s the CILIPS day at Peebles and I’m looking forward to co-leading a workshop on the Timelord’s Guide to CPD. Who makes up these titles?!

Stay out of the shadows… and don’t blink…

Skived off blogging yesterday so missed the opportunity to say pinch, punch, first day of the month, *no return* - as we used to do in the playground. (I’m coming over all Iona Opie…)

Tried to cram a quart into a pint pot’s worth of time today. Felt a lot like packing for one of my holidays, kitchen-sink style.

Trying to regain the plot on information literacy. What kind of reports do we need to write this year, bearing in mind new currents that are afoot in the uni and the feedback from our IL review? How can we make reporting our friend and not duplicate effort needlessly?

New electronic resources are in the pipeline but it’s a full time job catching up with the details of the packages, prices and mechanics of them all. Oh, and letting people know what we’ve got. Need to go and make some hard decisions about print stock too, but couldn’t quite face it this afternoon. I need to write a report on scholarly electronic provision soon and have not a clue what to put in it - line manager made helpful suggestions and assured me there were number crunching experts on hand - but still feeling just that wee bit of panic.

Prepared a short presentation for SALCTG (Scottish Academic Libraries Consortium Training Group) - they’re having a Web 2.0 show and tell day on Wednesday in Edinburgh. I’m going to chat a bit about a wiki we used in some first year teaching and assessment.

Marked a few reassessments and sighed. Why resubmit and not include all the necessary components of the assessment? Why bother if you don’t improve your mark or in some cases actually fare worse than first time around?

Evening off tonight? Oh yes; I think so.

Spend some time today with MSc Bionformatics students. They’re coming up to project time so I give them a refresher on literature searching and also introduce them to Endnote. Some resources are only available on campus which is a bit of a problem for this group, in which most students come from the Indian subcontinent and want to return home during the summer. They have some questions about multiple authors. Their tutor has asked them to look for an original research paper that they can bring to discuss at a Journal club.

After a long period of neglect, I decide to submit the coursework for module 2 of the PGCHET qualification. I’m les than motivated (set topic is curriculum design) but decide in the end to just put the thing to bed. If I get through this double module, modules 3 and 4 are more individual action research projects, which are potentially much more fun and relevant.

Ongoing rumbles and ramifications re budgets, product subscription renewals etc - lots of unexpected phone calls reminding me of things I need to do or think about

Bit of a chat with other CDG officers about how we can market the group more effectively. Looking forward to a trip down to Nottingham tonight for the East Midlands Division AGM, joint with EMBOC.

Today I have been installed as a semi-permanent feature in one of our seminar rooms, there to lie in wait for MSc Computing students.They’ve had formal classes with me already; today is a mop-up, drop-in, clinic and general rescue mission. 4 turn up at 9 sharp, expecting formal presentations. They get informal one to one chat and various supporting documents. Some stay to do some litertaure searching and cut their teeth on Endnote; as the day goes on, more turn up and I get asked various questions. Some of them are doing very current topics such as Wii remote and we can’t find much. Others just need to play jigsaws with their keyword combinations. Referencing inevitably rears its head.

Light relief at lunchtime. The boss has returned from holiday and left a mysterious foodstuff in the tearoom. It looks like a giant pork pie. I know her better than this though and we dive in with a knife to discover yummy apple cinnamon cake.

It’s quiet in the seminar room - those students who do drop in are working hard. Feels like the calm before the dissertation storm though…

This afternoon was the first instalment of Abertay’s annual enhancement conference, which runs for the whole of tomorrow as well. It’s a chance to get folk together from across the University to share ideas, good practice, experiences, thoughts and new directions. A sprinkling of guest speakers helps us to find perspective and gain new insights. Our keynote speaker - though this suggests a more grandiose conference than ours - this is really quite homegrown, in a good way - is Prof Brent MacGregor (writing at home from memory, may not get name right!) from Edinburgh Art College. He speaks on ‘Employability: Homer, Marx and the Beatles’ and is both engaging and relevant. He also manages to reference both Marxes (Karl and Groucho) and both Homers (Iliad and Simpson) which I think is quite impressive; the Beatles only get a general mention and John and Paul a nod each - nothing for Ringo or George. (Though I’d love to hear what the drummer of the Fab Four, voice of Thomas the Tank Engine and regular at the Chelsea Flower Show had to say about employability!) He makes me giggle though by mentioning ‘live briefs’ (for the uninitiated that means students working with real world clients) in the same breath as a reference to Mantz Yorke, the highly respected academic. This won’t strike you as the least bit funny. But a guest slot from Mantz Yorke a year or two ago came at a hectic time, got forgotten about periodically and mutated into ‘Pants Yorke’ with no disrespect intended. Underpants just ARE funny, I don’t care how old you are.

Also attend a really interesting session in which one of our sports lecturers reports the results of some research that has been conducted into student attendance at Abertay. We learn that bad times for lectures are: mornings; afternoons; Wednesdays; Thursdays. Our one-man timetabling team (the series Baldrick didn’t make) takes it on the chin but points out that not everyone can have 11.30-1.30 on a Tuesday. Students have work commitments, family commitments, travel problems, and a certain amount of poor motivation - all of this we know - and they want absolutely everything tied in to assessment.

Final slot of the day, by which time a lot of folk have sloped off, sees my colleagues speaking on the links between Information Literacy and employability - they echo a lot of the keynote speech and worry that people will think they just wrote it in half an hour - evidently it’s just proof that great minds think alike! It’s a tough brief but they generate food for thought and receive some interesting questions afterwards.

A stimulating afternoon and always good to get out and talk to people - to be continued.

I find myself constantly having to switch between modes. Today I go to two big meetings of different sections of the same Division. We’re negotiating the content of different modules for next year. I’m horribly confused as everybody has different ideas about what’s happening to a particular module which has always been the biggest piece of my information literacy jigsaw. Is it getting scrapped? Updated? Left alone? Feel like I’m at an auction, primed to bid at every possible opportunity. One meeting ends up with a free for all on library issues - seeing me there has reminded everyone that they haven’t answered my several consultations about trial resources, budgets, stock edits, etc etc.

Decide to have the evening off professional stuff - but have a Bible study to prepare for a housegroup tomorrow. Decide on a sort of existential theme: what are we doing at that group and what is it for anyway? Is this the SIG Presidency affecting my judgement? Put in seven Scripture readings so that no one will notice I don’t actually have a sound hypothesis - just more questions than answers!

Arrived home this evening with a million and one things going round my head. Spent some of the day dealing with train and air travel, always guaranteed to bring out my sunny side. Why does stuff have to be so complicated? Why does it take so long to get everywhere? Why don’t teleports exist? Then again can you imagine a CDG TARDIS - I could arrive at any event in history or have to advise someone about an ancient qualification…

Go to meet with a member of academic staff, planning to update her on our external review of information literacy. We want to get more inclusion at strategic level. Discover the whole programme for two major subject areas is being completely rewritteen - this sounds like a golden opportunity except that we already have substantial IL involvement in these programmes and now we may have to fight our corner all over again. What looked like a quiet week is now full of meetings, which I am warned may involve arguments.

Go home, put the washing on, feed the kittycats and then eke out an hour’s effort for CDG. I’m trying to write papers for our National Council, particularly a tricky one on financial sustainability. Want to tell it like it is but be positive and affirming at the same time.

But now it’s time to leave work aside and listen to the rumbly in my tumbly…