Time passes...

Yesterday I received a long service award, which came as something of a reminder of the passage of time!

I've been doing what is supposedly the 'same' job for the last 15 years. The good thing about it is that it's not the same at all. For example, when I started here almost everything the library provided was print based. There was one computer for online searching, and the librarians searched databases on behalf of researchers. It was too arcane an art for anyone to be expected to do it for themselves. Not to mention it being charged on a per minute basis. Then came CD-ROMs, then came the internet.

Goodness only knows what this 'same' job will be like in another, say, five years. My prediction, which I will rashly publish here, is that the boundaries between life offline and online will blur and merge to the extent that terms like 'e-learning', 'distance learning' and 'blended learning' will become quaint and old-fashioned, because distance won't matter and all of life will be blended.