Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Taking a breath

There's another book on the pile of books I'd like to read. You might think that a librarian would have time to read a book once in a while. The trouble is that information overload effects us too. Today I had to make several attempts to read one short email. It was the sort of day when your interruptions get interrupted. That's why I'm blogging now. Just occasionally I need to

  • stop

  • breathe

  • think

then dive back into the flow again. I think that's one of the main things I get out of blogging - the opportunity for just a few moments reflection now and again.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Reading about searching

There are some interesting books being published lately about that remarkable business success story - Google. Search Me by Neil Taylor, The Google Story by David Vise and John Battelle's The Search are all new in stock this academic year.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Scary things

I keep finding myself standing at the front of rooms full of people lately, doing presentations. It's something that causes me a certain amount of anxiety, which is not surprising, as public speaking is right up there with terrorists, spiders and dentists as something that a lot of people find scary.

Oddly enough, one of the things I was talking about this time was anxiety, specifically library anxiety. Libraries don't make the top 10 most scary things but, rather like spiders, large ones can be daunting.

People tend to deal with anxiety by avoiding the scary thing as much as possible and by trying to appear more confident than they really are, and only admit to being anxious or ask for help as a last resort. (Maybe that's why I spent so much time just outside Bath University library when I was a student?!)

While preparing for this event I discovered that the colleague I was doing the presentation with and I differ significantly in the way we deal with anxiety over this type of thing. I tend to do my panicking earlier on in the process and want to keep on going over the slides and the notes, but I don't get particularly anxious on the day itself. Maybe that's because I'm not a good performer, so I tend to avoid the whole issue of making it into a performance and just read out my notes!

We are going to do a slightly different version of this presentation at a conference next month, and I am trying to wangle it so that I only get a walk on part in that one.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Library open on Bank Holiday Monday

Students have often asked if the library could be open on bank holidays. Well it is going to be open on the one at the end of May. More details here in Library News