Wednesday 23 February 2011

I just noticed ...

I'm going to see Frankenstein at the NT next week, and wanted to re-read the novel before hand. Instead of reaching for my much-read annotated-close-reading-through-Uni print copy, I pulled down the Gutenberg epub, and have been cheerfully reading that on the tube this week. I feel slightly guilty - as if I have crossed some kind of ebook Rubicon...

* Not my book, nor my laptop - photo by Branduno, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Tiny tweaks

Little things - I happened to be walking past the PCs in the library just as a student was logging in several times yesterday. The home page is the OPAC, but an overwhelming majority of them logged the machine in, and immediately went to the address bar to type in the URL for their university webmail.

The OPAC already had a link to InsideND which is supposed to be everyone's initial point of contact, and which links through to webmail, but I generally believe in following the actual use path rather than the theoretical use-path, and that small random sample was pretty conclusive!

I've just added a link to student webmail to the OPAC navigation bar - I don't know how many students will notice, at this point in the semester, but at least it's there now, in addition to the InsideND link.

Sunday 13 February 2011

5+ new London places #2 and #3

New London place #2 in my challenge was one of the ones I had planned from the start, as I'd already booked a spot on a scavenger hunt organised by the London Transport Museum's Collection & You team around Croydon, celebrating the extension of the Overground line to that part of the world. Croydon is about as far south as you can go while still being in London, and although it has a bit of a reputation for being a concrete jungle, there was a surprising amount of history around to explore - no shortage of Victorian civic pride, for one thing! (If the Clocktower - now home to the Croydon Museum, arts centre, library, cafe, etc etc - wasn't enough, check out the water works!)


The scavenger hunt itself was a lot of fun - and the rain held off, thank goodness. Kudos to the clue-setters for a set of cryptic clues that were impenetrable at first, but which made immediate sense as soon as you saw the thing referred to, even though no one on our team knew Croydon at all! As well as solving the clues, there were bonus points for photos of tram stops, and of pubs - Croydon is not short of pubs: I think we got about 30, but the winning team had found 10 more!

If you're interested, you can find my photos here, and the scavenger hunt's group pool here.

__________

For place #3, I took advantage of a visit that one of my colleagues in the Law program set up to join students on a tour of The Mansion House. I've admired the outside often enough, but never had the chance to see inside before. (Unfortunately, photography is not permitted inside, so this is as much of an illustration as I can muster.) I'm very grateful for the opportunity, because it's a stunning building inside - as might be expected for the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London; opulent but elegant. I wish I'd remembered to ask our guide about accessibility in the most recent renovations (1990s), though, as it's very much still a working building hosting thousands of guests over each year's events.

As I was across the road, and on a day off, I also took the chance to dive into the Bank of England museum, which I've never visited before thanks to it's opening hours. I'm fairly familiar with the development of the building itself, but seeing the history of the notes and coins and their designs laid out was fascinating - it's such a ubiquitous part of daily life, but one you hardly ever think about.

Thursday 3 February 2011

UK Freeview news sources

For any of my students who have not yet discovered the various news options available to them on Freeview tv, you should have access to:

24 hour news channels

- BBC News24 (Ch.80)
- Sky News(Ch.82)
- Al Jazeera English (Ch.89, available between 6 and 11pm)
- Russia Today (Ch.85)

BBC World Service radio also broadcasts 24 hours, although not always news, and can be accessed via Freeview on channel 710.

Morning news

BBC1 and ITV both have weekday breakfast shows with regular news content. Similarly, the Today Show on Radio 4, which you can listen to via Freeview on channel 704.

Evening news

- BBC1 (Ch.1) at 6 and 10pm
- ITV (Ch.3) at 6.30 and 10pm
- Channel4(Ch.4) at 7pm.


* Photo by flashpro, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

News from Egypt.

Like almost everyone else, I'm watching the news from Egypt with particular attention.

It's odd, the small ways that large events are made real - for one thing, the last few days have been busy with preparations to welcome several of the students evacuated from the University's Cairo program . Pitched battles in the streets, and I'm running through checklists to try and make sure that I've remembered all the potential loose ends, trying to make their arrival here as smooth as possible... so strange.

Another is that I did some work for the UK Friends of the New Alexandria Library several years ago, during my Masters. The mailing list - dormant for many years - has lurched back to life, sharing messages from the Librarian and library staff. Today's?

"This is just a brief message to let you know that the Library is safe...a statement by Dr. Serageldin that has been posted on our website. It still represents the current situation."

"The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building..."


If any of my students reading are not yet familiar with the Freeview tv options for news, I'll put together a brief list in another post.

* Photo by msmail, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

We have a winner.

Hackney City Farm I have a winner for the treasure-hunt map contest - congratulations Carly, who's going to be exploring some of London's city farms, as well as solving a murder mystery over the coming weeks. And thank you for jumping in!

***

Thinking in terms of the experiment element of that post?

The outcome I wanted was to get the idea of setting yourself a personal goal out there amongst our students, as I personally think it can be a useful way of getting deeper into London, and thinking about what they want to get out of their time here.

The contest post got a big surge in page-views, and I know from conversations that at least some of those readers were my students: so far, so good.

On the other hand, I got very few comments or emails. Maybe the prize wasn't interesting enough, or the idea of setting a self-challenge for the semester came up too soon, or too late, or isn't the sort of thing many people are comfortable discussing in public, or with someone who isn't part of their social circle. Maybe it just wasn't relevant to people, because they don't approach situations the same way I do!

Plus, it takes a certain amount of bravery to be the first person to post a comment in public, and I don't know how intuitive commenting on blogger is for folks who don't regularly read blogs, and I don't know how many of my students do. (I was genuinely startled to discover that less than 10% of last semester's students used RSS or subscribed to blogs, even though about 40% of them were thinking about writing one. It's such a key tool in my information handling toolkit, it's hard to imagine not using them!)

So - not an abject failure, but not a roaring success either: worth the punt, anyway.