Tom Roper's Weblog

The Kübler-Ross model: the five stages of grief

Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you my interpretation of the five stages of grief, from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying.

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

Library day in the life 5: Thursday

(Sorry if you came here earlier this evening to read this post. Internet gremlins stole my post)

The main event of the day, which somewhat overshadows everything else, is that I've been made redundant. I hope this is the only time someone has to pass on this news during library day in the life.

Contrast my departure, with the statutory minimum redundancy payment for two years service, to that of the CEO of the Learning and Skills Council, who left with a bonus of £36,000 and a pay-off of £120,000, according to the TES.

Library Day in the Life 5

Now recalled by popular demand for a fifth session, Library Day in the Life is this week. The aim of the project is to give those outside the profession some idea of how we spend our days by blogging or tweeting. Predictably, the Twitter feed is more used than blogs, at least so far. Let me squeeze the first three days of the week all into one post.

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I'm Head of Learning Resources at a London further education college. It's an interesting week. A departmental restructuring shudders to a halt on Thursday with interviews for 'my' job; I and a colleague are competing. It's unclear what happens to the loser. And it's the last week we're known as Learning Resources. Next week we absorb print services and reprographics and become known, as we should be, as Libraries and Learning Resources; we already manage audio-visual services for the college.

Most of the staff are term-time only, but there's quite a lot of us still around. Apart from regular summer jobs such as stock-moves and end of financial year stuff, we stay open to serve an English language summer school, and have recruited two dedicated, in every sense of the word, temporary staff, Ros and Michelle. And this summer we change library management systems, going from Olib to Heritage, and move our VLE from Moodle to Blackboard. Apart from that, not much is happening.

Monday: the day should start, as always in the vacation, with morning prayers, a quick meeting where everyone who's in gets together and we go round the table, bringing each other up to date with whatever we're up to. We have to delay the meeting because of transport difficulties; this is after all London in 2010, so one of the world's biggest capital cities can't be expected to get its workforce to work without fuss or delay. I spend a lot of the day throwing away bits of paper, a regular summer job, and some of it buying more e-resources for the 800 HE business students who descend on us in September in an arrangement with the University of Cumbria (not our nearest neighbours, I know, but it make a sort of sense). I also have a tricky HR issue to deal with which I can't describe, only to say that I don't think it has been resolved.

Tuesday: morning prayers again, and today we have Julia from the Merton campus with us. More paper-shuffling and a last line management meeting with my manager, who's leaving. I've been here just over two years and he's the fifth manager I've had. Do I break them?

Wednesday is enlivened by a a fire alarm and evacuation. Our assembly point, appropriately enough, is the cemetery at the side of the college. Then I have a meeting with the new Head of IT to discuss how our computer access control system will or won't work with our new catalogue. Another issue surfaces; will Shibboleth work for all our sites, with the fragmented staff and student directories? Then I have a line management meeting with one of my direct reports, Ewa, the E-Resources Co-ordinator. We try to sort out her access to the JISC Collections website and the day ends with me trying, and failing, to log into our new e-procurement system.

On note taking

The techniques of study are endlessly fascinating, though a good way to divert one's attention away from actually doing any work towards the way in which one might do some work if only one had the right pen/notebook/computer/time management system.

Two things caught my eye recently:

Keith Thomas in the London Review of Books, discussing a historian's note-taking techniques

Tara Brabazon, in Times Higher Education, with very practical advice on editing essays and not-taking

Market Rasen, Newbury and Newmarket

Some interesting racing today, with the biggest intellectual puzzle posed by the Weatherbys Super Sprint at Newbury. In a field of twenty-five two-year olds, six are trained by Richard Hannon, but I favour Tom Dascombe's Ballista, whose two races so far consist of a win and a place.

215 Newbury: Markab
230 Newmarket: Cill Rialaig
320 Newbury: Ballista
335 Market Rasen: Tempsford
355 Newbury: Prince Siegfried  

The worst meal I ever had

A comment by Mrs Angry, whose Broken Barnet blog should be required reading for all politicians and senior council officers in that benighted borough, prompted me to remember the worst meal of my adult life. I mean here the worst paid-for meal of my adult life. I shall not mention domestic dishes like the liver curry I used to prepare, or the dish of hearts a house-sharer presented us with when, as students, we were on an economy drive.; nor shall I write about school dinners which are in a class of their own.

Like hers it was in Ireland, in Arklow. I was on holiday with my then-girlfriend. It was early evening, and we were looking for somewhere to eat. We drove for miles, failing to find anywhere. Desperate, I suggested that a town the size of Arklow must have a restaurant. We headed for the town and found one, attached to a large hotel in the centre. Reception was unstaffed, but behind it was an empty dining room. We walked in. Ten or fifteen minutes must have passed before a frightened waitress emerged. 'Are you serving supper?', I asked. She was unsure and retreated to the kitchen, returning with some menus. We ordered pâté, followed by a main I can't remember. The pâté came after half an hour or so. My companion looked at it. 'Excuse me', she said to the waitress, 'this is spam'. The waitress giggled and fled back to the ktichen. We left. We did not pay.

Ascot and York

Ascot 145: Greyfriarschorista
Ascot 250: Ouqba
York 305: Wigmore Hall

Blog posted here.

Artichokes

Grown from seed last year, nursed through the cold winter, my artichokes are now ready. I take considerable pleasure in their heraldic appearance. I once visited a country house where the outside walls were decorated with carved artichokes; the leaves look well in stone.

I first saw an artichoke eaten in a Norfolk hotel, on the last day of a family holiday. I would have been five or six. My father, whose usual doctor's asceticism was tempered with tendencies to gourmandisme when away from home, ordered artichokes. They came, with great ceremony, melted butter, finger bowls and a receptacle for the discarded leaves. He demonstrated how to eat them, first tearing away the leaves and nibbling the base, then, when the centre was exposed, deftly removing the hairy choke and eating the base.

I shall eat some of these, but leave at least one to flower.

Eclipse

One year I will take myself to for the Eclipse meeting. Ever since I was head of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons library, I have been fascinated by the story of this horse. Painted by Stubbs, anatomised by St Bel and his skeleton now in possession of the Royal Veterinary College, this narrative appeals to the historian manqué in me. So today I choose:
Sandown 200: Triple Aspect
Sandown 235: Oratory
Haydock 250: Barshiba
Sandown 310: Zacinto
Haydock 325: Hillview Boy

The College Library in Changing Time: Len Closs, final plenary

The conference programme had a pleasing symmetry to it: having started with an address from a university vice-chancellor, we ended with an FE college principal, Len Closs, Principal of Northampton College. One of those too-rare beasts, a principal who values libraries, he showed his philosophical training with a presentation that quoted Schopenhauer, Sartre and Frank Zappa.

Libraries are the future of universities and colleges, he said and library staff are full of creative ideas for college development. But are we valued and respected? He took a brighter view of the national situation than Steve Smith, believing that the crisis would not last as long as Steve's valley of death metaphor would suggest, but referred to the closure of the Middlesex University philosophy department, of which he was an alumnus.

There's a plethora of ways in to knowledge, and libraries can support them all, with relevant materials to support learning. In further education learners have a greater range of needs and can be challenging, both individually and in groups. He expected class sizes to become bigger, programmes to become leaner, and students to have fewer taught hours and undertake more independent learning.The raising of the participation age (RPA) would bring more challenges, but here is an opportunity for librarians.

Len recognised the barriers: senior manager priorities, teacher attitudes, closed doors; resources constraints and poor accommodation; he thought marketing and PR the key to establishing FE libraries as the learners best weapon.

At Northampton the library is consistently nominated for staff awards and in spite of the LSC building debacle, Northampton got some of their bid and the library will be at the heart of a new site, so as to demonstrate that learning is pivotal. The college library at Northampton is heavily involved in networking through the CULN (Colleges University of Leicester Network), through links with the University of Northampton and with the JISC RSC. They have two studies on the LSIS Excellence gateway, on ClickView for capturing television for use in the classroom and on embedding information skills into the curriculum. The college supports staff development, with two staff doing a level 3 non-professional qualification and three on postgraduate diplomas.

He concluded by offering us the motto, 'hands on, hands off' and by quoting Franz Zappa's dictum, 'if you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library' (though I have searched for a precise citation for the latter and have not located one yet).

I asked a question about the future of the relationship between HE and FE. Len answered that he thought that shared services would become much more important and that there would be a great deal more delivery of HE in FE, and closer working.