Cloning for beginners?

Timetables. A fine way to dampen any spirits, if they weren’t already sodden through with the current weather. Eveybody wants a piece of us. There are only so many bodies, so many suitable rooms and so many hours in the day. But of course everyone wants the same slots. And no I can’t teach 32 people in a room with 27 PCs, not if any of them need any help or attention at all.

Take all day to update one modest summer school presentation, due to constant interruptions, mainly involving simultaneous consultation of six different documents. Brain all to pot.

Manage to escape to the gym at lunchtime and get some exercise while hearing good news about Chris Hoy (pretty much the only athlete as far as the Scots are concerned).

Umbrellas at the ready; it’s time to go home.

Hurry hurry for the sky is falling in

OK so this morning I’d like to share with you a picture of my home town: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7557834.stm

Scary, soggy stuff. My train was duly cancelled and my nearest and dearest drove me to work through an assortment of lakes and closed roads. For some reason our car doesn’t have a hovercraft attachment. Sadly had a meeting to attend otherwise might have angled for a day’s home working.

Two people have commented on this blog today. A worrying trend to visibility. Some of them are not librarians, so my musings will make even less sense to them than they do to the regulars at this poorly-stocked bar.

Need to come up with a slogan to put on some bookmarks, promoting our new Library web pages. All out of inspiration. As you may have noticed. General mood not helped by regular calls from a fax machine. Next time I pick up I may just beep back and try to engage it in conversation.

Launch yet another stock editing exercise today. Boy am I going to be popular. Have provided detailed instructions and pleas for people to mark spreadsheets using actual characters and not just colour highlights - you’d think database specialists would appreciate the finer points of Excel sorting, but not always.

All for now. My morning snack grapes tasted of the pepper salami I had packed for my lunch, consequently my appetite for said carnivorous sandwich is building. Hopefully I will get home without actually needing webbed feet tonight.

The barefoot librarian

What is the weather about? Pouring rain this morning so out come the winter coat, boots and such like. Now it has gone all muggy and my feet are burning up. Dare I risk letting them out or is that just too unkind to colleagues?

Shibboleth day so lots of things changing. Need to update guides that I’ve only just written with great behemoth URLs that hopefully will take students where they want to go. (Shibboleth and behemoth in one paragraph… very biblical… just bring on the dugong and away we go).

Finally manage to email staff about information literacy classes. The main aim being to make my spreadsheet look nice and tidy. Much mapping of this to that and the other. Perhaps today I will even get to start writing up staff development events I attended 2 months ago.

CDG still in a bit of a summer lull but many missives from CILIP to read and digest and inwardly mark. Also signs of pre-officer meeting activity. I think we are all dusting off our to-do lists and reminding ourselves what it’s all about.

In which we traverse the hump of the week

Afternoon, the sun is shining today and despire being woken up obscenely early by said burning orb, am definitely feeling perkier today. This may have something to do with Developments on the career progression front…

Day job wise, have a couple of reasonably productive meetings and - shock horror - actually complete the task of drafting 6 programme annual reports.

Also looking forward to Raising the bar in London. UCL is a great venue and if we get sunny weather it will be idyllic. We have a strong programme and it’ s a joint effort between CDG and PTEG, exciting and possibly could lead to more joint working in future.  I hope the delegates enjoy themselves and I know they will come ready to contribute and network enthusiastically. And maybe we will be raiding the bar afterwards.

Must have plenty of train reading about my person - I have Allende’s Paula; When we were bad (Charlotte Mendelson); Update; and no doubt some suitably trashy magazines.

Old friends and new approaches

RSVPs to my Presidential Reception invites are trickling in. Today I hear back from several colleagues I’ve served with on the group over the years - it will be great to see them and catch up. There is a real sense of commonality, even dare I say it of family. The thing about committee work is that it can develop bonds of trust and a shared sense of achievement as you work together to make an event or a publication or project happen, while juggling the day job and everything else. These are the people who have endured the same travel troubles, dodgy hotel breakfasts, stressful moments along the way as well as memorable special events and the odd glass or three of wine.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the new academic year can already be spotted riding into town with every intent of bursting open the saloon doors and drinking the place dry. Module descriptors are being revisited - it’s time to think about how we increase the strategic visibility of our information literacy programme. Also thinking about how to streamline and improve our assessment procedures, making the most of online submission tools. But part of me is screaming inside “NO NO I can’t deal with this yet!” Always a weird time of year. The clocks may have changed but the mental and biorhythms are confused by the constantly shifting work focus and unpredictable weather.

I know weather is coming up a lot in this blog but let’s face it, this is Britain, it’s a national preoccupation!