Magical mystery tours

I must admit, I've never been inside Kensington Palace: the strong associations with Diana have always put me off, and there are so many other fascinating places to go - there are four more Royal palaces just in London for a start!

That said, this article about the new Enchanted Palace exhibition has just catapulted it up my to-do list!

* Photo by Ben Oh, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

One foot in front of the other

Reference by walking around - I think I ran into that concept under that name in the One Person Library / OPL Newsletter, about a decade ago, when I was just starting out as a solo librarian, and at least once a week I'm glad that it's a tool in my tool kit.

It's so simple and yet so effective; reducing the 'friction factor' of asking a question to almost nothing. The questions I get asked when I pass someone in a corridor, or when I'm straightening the newspapers or doing any one of a dozen small jobs I intentionally space throughout the day to give me reasons to be walking about the library being visible and ready to be asked, often start 'I wasn't going to bother you but as you're here' or 'I don't suppose you know, but' or 'this is probably a really dumb question, but' - which is to say, exactly the kind of things that people might *not* ask if they had to come up to a desk, or come across to my office, however open-door and accessable I try to make myself. They're very often questions I can answer, so that people get whatever it is they need, whether that's directions to Abbey Road or advice about how to untangle an unclear citation, or where such-and-such a book is shelved. It also gives me some clues about what people are not asking, which is useful when I'm thinking about signing, or 'how do I...' tips, or reminder emails. And the newspaper rack gets straightened. In short - everybody wins.

* Photo by Ben Werdmuller, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Little things

It's a small thing, but I just managed to put together two MySQL queries that extracted the information I needed from the system, without help, in a reasonably sane amount of time. Several different logic-checks seems to prove they're both giving me what I thought I was asking for, and the numbers match up with the pattern I was expecting. It's a long way from mastery, and it might be a small step, but it's a step in the right direction.

Check point

This has been a very productive three day week, and I did achieve my goal and clear my cataloguing backlog. There are just two copies of a single title still on my 'to process' shelf, and they're waiting for a call number to be generated for it by my wonderful colleague back on campus who lends her expertise with particularly tricky titles.

I also did a spot check on the dvd collection, had a couple of really productive conversations with colleagues, got all my paperwork up to date and filed, chased a batch of outstanding book orders, fitted the new shelf-ends, updated the shelf signs, and generally did everything I was hoping I'd get done to make sure I was starting the second half of the semester on a sound footing (except clear all the shelving created by my cataloguing spurt, but if that's not a task for a Monday morning, I don't know what is.)

So, I may still be here 45 minutes after I should have finished for the day, but I'll be off tomorrow with a clear conscience, and come in on Monday to a clear desk in a more organised office, which feels like a good place to leave things.

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

Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll's Alice stories were some of my favourites when I was a child - not my absolute favourite, which was Black Beauty, but books that I read and re-read, and have a great affection for. I never took to the Disney version, but I am a Tim Burton fan, so I've been really looking forward to seeing his take on the stories, and carefully avoiding interviews and reviews so as to go and see it with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Burton's film is not a faithful adaptation of the books, more an 'inspired by' fantasy, and it leaves out some of my favourite moments and characters, but it picked me up and carried me away, and I don't think I stopped smiling or being delighted at any point. The colour-scapes, the design, the use of the 3-d, the costumes, the whole rhythm of the piece, as well as some absolutely fantastic performances - well worth having paid out the extra for the big-screen 3-d screening.

If you want to see just how far both the technical medium and the conventions of our visual language has come since 1903, have a look at the first film version of Alice in Wonderland, restored by the BFI for its centenary. The long version is here, or the 3 minute highlight reel is here.

(If you've been meaning to re-read the originals, Project Gutenberg has the e-text of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.)

* Photo by seriykotik1970, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

World Book Day

Today's World Book Day in the UK, National Grammar Day in the USA, and National Procrastination Week wherever created-by-press-release holidays are celebrated. It's also the last full class day before break week for my students, which is why I'm not using any of those occasions to hang an event on - the library's been getting quieter and quieter all day as people finish their last classes and head off.

I am spending some quality time tonight curled up with my current book, though, which is at least in keeping with the theme of the celebrations.

My break plans are to take a couple of long weekends*, to dig into a couple of ongoing projects in between, and to blitz my cataloguing backlog, so we can start the second half of the semester with the richest possible array of resources on the shelves, and a clean slate in my office to use as I start to focus on resources for the Summer School classes.



*(although, seeing as the last couple of days have been fuelled by the power of Lemsip and hot and sour soup, I suspect I'll be spending the first weekend succumbing to this cold.)

* Photo by Tania Ho, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

I'll just ....

"I'll just" is such a dangerous phrase! All the major projects I'm working on at the moment are in that 'waiting for someone to get back to me' stage, and I was heartily fed-up with the old, clunky, non-accessible library webpages, so I just spent a couple of hours giving them a new CSS layout.

Thank you to Blue Robot's Layout Reservoir for my foundations! (The long term plan is to integrate them more closely with the library catalogue, but who knows how far away that's going to be, and in the mean time, at least they're not still using tables for layout.)

So, why's this dangerous? Because I'm pretty sure I'll go home, look at the pages, and find at least five things I'll need to fix on Monday morning - which is a risk I'm happy to take, really, given that waiting for a time when I can check and re-check and test and test again to make 100% sure it's perfect in every way is almost a guarantee that the update would never get done at all.

(If anyone follows that link and spots something that seems broken or undesirable, please do let me know!)

words, words, and more words

This post about the term graphic novel reminded me that I've been meaning to write something about the vagaries of terminology.

I'm British, but working primarily with American students, so that's one language divide right there, but I've been talking with various people about library management systems recently, which throws up a whole other array of library-specific terminology choices.

"I want to to borrow / loan / check out / book out / take out this thing, so I'll use the self-check / self-issue / self-service machine or point or station."
"Someone else has an item out at the moment, so I'll request / recall / reserve / book / trap / wait-list it."
"The book we all need to read for our paper is in the reference / reserve / non-circulating / no-loan / closed section, so no one can take it away."

At least renew is pretty stable, although I have heard 're-check'!

It would be invaluable to know which terminology is the most meaningful for our specific users, but it's hard to get that kind of feedback - I suspect most people really don't give it that much thought. Common questions and misconceptions do provide some clues, though - something to use as the basis of experimental changes, at least.

Which terms do you use? Anything else to add to the lists, or ones that you'd never heard before?

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

Just got home after a very interesting RSA lecture by and discussion about Jaron Lanier and his new book 'You are not a gadget' - he's speaking again tomorrow evening at LSE, also for free, but on a first-come first served basis, or, if you wait a few days, the RSA will have audio and video up on their site.

Some very interesting stuff, but I need to read the book to really get into the meat of the matter.

You spent the evening unpacking books from boxes

I spent a fair amount of time last week, and the whole of yesterday morning, updating and correcting condition records for books borrowed through our Textbook Loan Scheme. (The Spring semester always has more corrections, simply because I have less time to check the books myself over the Christmas break than I do between May and September) I really appreciate the students' assistance in keeping our records accurate - I'd much rather be correcting condition records now, that billing people for damage at the end of the semester.

I am very much looking forward, though, to this being either the last or the penultimate time I need to do this task with the current computer system.

Updating - and creating - copy condition records is one of the many bits of back end work where the user interface never got properly finished in our current LMS, so I'm making corrections in the raw database, and it's a fairly fiddly process. There are 782 textbooks currently on loan, and more than twice that in the system, so the prospect of being able to streamline this part of my workload is tempting indeed!

(We're meeting tomorrow with one of our shortlisted LMS suppliers, so prospects for the future are very much on my mind.)

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

Time for tea

I've just hosted the first Library Tea of the semester, and I want to take five minutes to reflect on why I do them.

It's not a huge event, just tea and biscuits, in the Library, over the lunch break once a week. It is something I think is important, though, which is why I've negotiated for the budget for it, the support from our facilities team, and why I don't mind spending my break time loading the dishwasher!

It isn't about the numbers, but the number of people involved does affect both the feel and the purpose. Some semesters, tea has averaged maybe 20 students each week, last semester was nearer to 70, with an all time high of 86! Today was about 45, almost 1/3 of the student body.

When it's a small group of students attending, it does mean that the teas tend more towards being about the students talking with me, which is an opportunity to spread information about London and about the Program in an informal setting, as well as a chance for me to get to know some of the students.

When it's a very big group, the teas are much more about providing a venue for students to talk with each other, to build a community and make - or catch up with - friends, and for a program like ours, that matters too.

Either way, it encourages students into the library, and makes it very easy for them to ask me questions, academic or otherwise.

Today's tea was a really nice mix of the two things, where it developed it's own social momentum, but I also had the chance to sit down and join the conversation, to start getting to know some of the students a little.

Also, it never fails to impress me that I've almost never had to announce that tea is over, or ask people to quiet down when the end of the lunch break comes around.

One of the concerns about my hosting the teas was that it would encourage people to use the Library as a purely social space, and I'm pleased that the students recognise that, when it's time for their friends to go to class, it's also time for the Library to switch back to being primarily a study space. (I say primarily, because the boundaries between 'studying' and 'socialising' are much less defined that some people think.)

Here's hoping that continues as the semester goes on.

* Photo by me.

No it's time for change

So - new year, and as you may have noticed, not that much in the way of new posts.

That's mostly been because I've been super busy, not just with new students arriving, but also with my new niece arriving. It's also been because I've been thinking about how I want to use this blog, and how that's changed.

When I started this, I basically wanted a way to tell students about some of the nifty stuff going on in London.

We don't want to flood people's email with a thousand and one messages, so email is reserved for the official stuff. There wasn't anywhere to put the more general stuff, so I started blogging here, in the hope that the folks who were interested enough to follow a link in my sig file might find out about something they wouldn't otherwise have done.

And that worked - I've had a few students tell me that they did such-and-such because they saw it here.

It worked well enough that, at the start of last semester, we launched the LUP blog. That gets more regular updates than this blog ever did, because it's a team blog, and because we've made a commitment to daily posts. The rectors also decided to experiment with twitter, tweeting about once a day with links to interesting stuff going on in London - another opt-in offering, which wouldn't swamp the official lines of communication.

That also worked pretty well, but looking at the feedback we got last semester, we've made some changes for the new year.

We're going to continue with the LUP blog, but we've just, today, launched a Facebook page, which also crossposts to a new Twitter account.

The rectors will be retiring their old Twitter account, and I'll be retiring the LUP Library Twitter, and we'll all be using these new accounts instead, to see how that works out. As always, it's an experiment, and a lot will depend on how - and if - our students use the resources.

As well as library related updates, I'm planning to use the facebook / twitter pair for more of the 'nifty thing that's happening in London' content I might once have posted here, and the LUP group blog will absorb a lot of the rest.

So what's left for this blog?

I'm not going to stop loving London, or writing about London, but I think I am also going to post more of this kind of thing: the more reflective, process-oriented, library and librarianship posts that I've not really shared here before, and just - see how that works.

* Photo by David Reece, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Planning ahead - short term

There are two things on the immediate horizon that I need to fix plans for:

- at least one night of the Resolution! dance festival at The Place

- the Walk London Winter Wander Weekend

* Photo by Luis Barreto, used under Creative Commons.

Like a flashmob, but - more subtle.

For any of our students looking to squeeze one more London-ish thing into their final week, there will be a subtlemob event on Wednesday, near the London Centre - check this page for your instructions.

I am an agent

This past Thursday I was over at the Wellcome for another of their 'Exchanges at the Frontier' series. (They're being broadcast on the World Service on Wednesdays through December & available on iplayer).

This time was Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer of the SETI institute, who was a very entertaining speaker indeed, and he and A.C. Grayling get a great many points for their very gracious handling of the crazier audience questions. Their events are always interesting, and this was no exception.

I also managed to get there in time to take a look around their new Identity exhibition. In brief: highly recommended - go if you can.

I keep thinking I'll have time to write an actual review, but reality suggests that I won't, so here's the Londonist one, which I think covers the ground well. It's impressing me with how different they make the usual exhibition space feel from theme to theme. As an ex classicist and ex lit student, one of my favourite touches were the ancient mirrors from Freud's collection that were tucked into corners outside the eight 'rooms' - something so evocative about them and their provenance.

* Photo by lady Vic, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.