Dumpling in a Hanky

As you’ll have seen if you've been reading this blog this year, it’s been a bit of a bumpy professional time for me recently. The rapid entry of my long-term employer into administration in March, and the changes it brought about, have certainly seen me living through “ interesting times ”.  My various work roles since March have differed in lots of ways, and yet been oddly similar in others, and I've learned a lot about myself along the way. I've moved from the legal sector, to the higher education sector, and into the government information sector: areas which were completely new to me and not ones I’d really considered moving in to while in the security of a permanent job. I've taken a fixed-term project role, and a short-term contract which became a rolling weekly contract, neither of which I would have considered before. The fixed term role also converted into an opportunity for recruitment to a permanent position during the course of the contract. ...

Oh, Thing 14 was the last thing I did, back in August! Life and busyness in work got in the way, but I'm aiming for a full-on assault of lots of Things now, while I have a moment! Ok, so this was about attending, presenting at, and organising events. Now - two of those activities I'm perfectly happy with, and one puts the fear of God into me. Attending events I love doing this: I get to meet lots of interesting people, learn new things, and generally go away from them having gained lots of useful tips or contacts. The only problems for me attending events are: Time Time out of work to attend events is time that I'm not available to deal with enquiries, or do my day-to-day tasks, so it's got to be something relevant enough to my duties that being away from them will be recompensed by better skills to do those duties afterwards. Distance Often the most relevant courses and seminars for me are nowhere near me, usually in London. Attending a course in London woul...

I may be having a minor wobble. I leave on Thursday for the ALLA / NZLLA conference in Melbourne. My suitcase is at my parents - we'll not even get into the massive size of the thing, which I have been informed by my Mum that I have to take, due to the fact that I've to take clothes and gifts for my brother and his girlfriend. They live in New Zealand, and are meeting me in Melbourne for a city break holiday. Oh, and also, clothes for my brothers best friend, who is also currently in New Zealand. And wine gums for another friend of mine. Now, since they're just coming on a short break, they might not be prepared for the fact that they're expected to transport crisps, sweeties, and clothing back home...can you see the flaw in this plan? Can you visualise the piles of random stuff, abandoned in a hotel room due to lack of suitcase space? Can you hear me whimpering as I try and co-ordinate with them, my Mum, the friends Mum, and the girlfriends Mum? So, before I can even c...

Be afraid...be very afraid....I'm being allowed to leave the country! And not only am I being allowed out, but I'm going in the guise of a proper professional! I'm going all the way to Australia, to attend the ALLA and NZLLA joint conference in Melbourne , thanks to some fabulous and generous bursaries from the lovely BIALL and SLLG , yay! It's kind of worrying when you look at a conference programme and think "ohhhh, I'd really like to go to that!". I'm concerned that it may be a sign of becoming grown up. But, never fear, the business cards I've had made up will soon put paid to any such ideas in the people I meet, oh yes indeedy! It is actually ever so slightly terrifying: I know no-one at the conference, my hotel booking's gone a bit wonky already, and I arrive at 1am in the morning, after waaaaay too many hours of travelling...thankfully I've scheduled in a bit of recovery time, otherwise I'd be sporting the Zombie Librarian look....

So, after a busy few weeks, I'm finally ready to sit down and pull together my thoughts on this years BIALL conference, in Dublin. Bear in mind, this is all my persoanl impressions, and my opinions will be coloured by how much relevance I can see various sessions / talks having to my professional life. If I didn't like them, that didn't mean that they were actually rubbish! I hadn't been to a BIALL conference since Harrogate in 2005, (shortly before I changed jobs and moved into a commercial firm from an institutional body), and I was hoping for more talks of relevance to me this time around. Working in a nice old legal body's lovely, but as you're neither academic, or corporate, finding the useful stuff from the conference can be hard. To be honest, I hadn't thought the provisional programme had looked too interesting, but I had some hopes that the blank spaces would be filled in closer to the time, and as these talks were obviously still in discussion, I t...

From BBC News website: "Members of staff at the National Library of Scotland point to an extract taken from one of the first books printed in Scotland, which forms part of the 500 years of the Scottish Printed Word exhibition. Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images." If you're a member of the Scottish Law Librarians Group (SLLG) , you'll have already been sent your invite to this years event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The SLLG likes to try and ensure that members get the maximum benefit from the group, and as last years Book Festival visit proved so popular, it's been decided that this should become an annual jaunt. So, this year, we've selected the following as (hopefully) being of interest to as many members as possible, and at a good time to allow everyone the chance to attend: "Bill Bell, David Finkelstein & Alistair McCleery: Books and Society Tue 19/08/2008 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM As Scotland celebrates 500 years of printing, edito...

I forgot to confirm that I've been allowed to skip off to Dublin in June for the BIALL Conference , for law librarian-type fun, games, and edumacation. I'm looking forward to it - a chance to catch up with the people I already know from Scotland who're going (we like a good conference jaunt, there'll be anything up to a dozen of the Scottish Law Librarians Group going that I know of, and as there's only about 100 of us in total, that's a good showing!), and to meet some of the people I know online, who I haven't actually met in person yet. I'm hoping they'll be nice to me and overlook my inner geekiness...I wonder if any of them can be bribed with tablet, Edinburgh Rock, and C U Jimmy hats.... and you know, what? I may even....learn something new! Although I think Guinness may be involved at some point, and I've never found that to be much of a memory aid before... ;-)

There have been quite a few peeps whose blogs I read who’ve been attending various conferences over the past few months. Quite a few of them seem to ‘liveblog’ the events they go to, which seems like a good idea in concept – you get the ideas and discussions from the event, as they happen, without having to go, very useful if you’re not funded to attend events, or time / location prevent you from being there. But for me, the reality of reading these posts, just seems like looking at the PowerPoint slides of a seminar you’ve not been to – there’s probably some good points in there, but without attending the associated presentation, it can be hard to make sense of. Very often there’s just random statements or key phrases bullet pointed, like: “user interaction” “funding” “databases” Probably good topics, but lists like these are impossible to extrapolate a thread of discussion from. Posts like these that bounce through a presentation and try and condense it into snap...