Dumpling in a Hanky

I've got a new home, over at Wordpress. Find me there in future, at dumplinginahanky.com . 👋👋👋😊

Well, in January this year, I submitted my Fellowship portfolio, and heard in April that it had been successful, making me now officially a Ladyfellow and able to add FCLIP after my name, yay! Me registration fees were paid in September 2015, so technically it took less than 18 months from registration to submission. However, that doesn’t include the good few months before that, preparing my thoughts, talking to my mentor, and plotting out just how I would Get This Damn Thing Done, so realistically, it was more like a 2 year process. So, how big a task was it? In a “dear god, what have I done” moment, I totalled up the word count of all items in the portfolio, and it came to approximately 30,000 words. That’s easily the largest piece of work I’ve ever produced (I’m a rubbish student, so I’ve never had to produce an academic dissertation). So yes, it turns out that reviewing your career and achievements to date, and reflecting on what you’ve learned from all of your experiences is quite...

This article discusses the decline in ebook sales, and explains some of the potential future challenges, once of which is that the main growth area seems to be audiobooks. Publishers are now seeing audiobooks as their best area for growth rather than ebooks. This does not make me happy! I am not an old fashioned person who expects a book to be a physical object - I have both a well-stuffed Kindle and a rapidly read-and-returned collection of charity shop purchased books at home. Physical books are merely containers for the exciting contents, and the contents work as well digitally as they do physically. What I don’t have in my home however is any audiobooks. Because I hate the damn things. I just cannot get on with them. For a while a few years ago I commuted by driving for about 30 minutes each way in often-semi-static traffic. So I thought I’d put some audiobooks on in the car so the time was a little bit more productive. Nope: it didn’t work for me. I was focused on the driv...

Well, THAT was a busy year! And it's not going to get any quieter this year either.... So, why was it so hard? Well, last year involved these things in the library: Implementing a brand new Library Management System Getting the core library materials (textbooks and looseleafs) recatalogued (1,200+ items by the end of the year) on the new LMS Reclassifying all library materials to a new in-house classification system Setting up the subscription records for hundreds of journals and looseleafs Relocating all stock to match the new classification system, over a three floor library Driven to the Borders and back three times, to pack and relocate 40 sacks of books and law reports Setting up and stocking a new room with library materials Coping with recruiting and training three different assistants in six months* Spending a month running the library on my own Me having two different managers Managing a mid-year wholesale move of the library from the oversight of one depart...