Just another dent in the damage...

Jim Toomey’s comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon has been going for about 15 years and appears in over 150 newspapers in North America but to raise awareness about the awful practice of shark finning he had to kill off his main character to make a point! Have a look at his TED talk below (concentrate from 11 minutes in)… it’s fantastic.

Imagine you’re in an enormous room and it’s dark as a cave, and you can have anything in that room, anything you want, but you can’t see anything. You’ve been given one tool – a hammer. So you wander around in the darkness and you bump into something and it feels like it’s made of stone. It’s big, it’s heavy, you can’t carry it away so you bang it with your hammer and you break off a piece and take the piece out into the daylight and you see you have a beautiful piece of white alabaster. (more…)

Yesterday I found out that I get to see Andrea Marshall talk about her fascinating manta ray research again at the Birmingham Dive Show in October. I’m so excited about this and thought it’s about time we got up to speed with what she’s been upto.

Following the discovery of a second, larger species of manta ray in Mozambique and the successful tagging of two manta birostris (as documented in Andrea: Queen of the Mantas) Andrea and her team (Simon Pierce and Juerg Brunnschweiler) have gone global. Ray of Hope is a worldwide research project, funded by the Save our Seas Foundation, to study the migratory patterns of giant manta rays across six major aggregation sites (Brazil, Mozambique, Japan, Mexico, Thailand and Australia or the Red Sea).

Initial findings from the tagging efforts in Mozambique support speculation that unlike the smaller reef manta, typically resident to coastlines or island groups, these giants travel through great distances and depths in search of food – making them more ‘oceanic’. The aim of the project is to find out ‘where and how far [...] individuals travel’ to establish migratory habits and raise awareness about conservation issues to ‘manage populations effectively in the future’. (more…)

Want to get up to speed with some of the tech trends in library work but don’t know where to start? Well, the Tech Set may well be for you. I’ve just picked up the first three from the ten part series at the library and was so impressed by the short introductions I’ve just read that I thought I needed to spread the word.

These short fieldguides basically take you through the whole process – from planning, implementation and marketing to best practice and measures of success. Definitely worth a quick flick through if you’re unsure about what any of these are.

Click on the pictures for more information about each guide.

Today is the final day of Library Day in the Life, an international initiative where library workers share their daily activities to illustrate what it’s like to be a librarian (read my earlier posts here). Our roles vary considerably and it’s been really interesting to read more about librarians in different sectors to me. I’m not entirely sure whether #libday5 will break out of the echo chamber but I’ve enjoyed participating this time around.

So this morning I arrived slightly later than usual to a two and a half hour Faculty Liaison Team meeting. Generally we stick to monthly meetings to discuss activities within the team and up-date each other on project work. On this occasion the director of library services was invited along to share news of the library budget for next year and what the impact of this may be. Later another colleague from our procurement section came along to talk about his role and the development of a new procurement strategy – approved suppliers, processes etc. for purchases. (more…)

I’m back in the office today! Well, not my office as such… On Thursdays I spend all day at St George’s Library. Usually I’d be included on the counter rota for at least two hours but as I did this earlier in the week I’m free to get on with some other activities. These two hours are the only face-to-face contact I get with library users on a weekly basis. The only other opportunities I get to see students is if they ask for help directly or during induction.

Induction takes place over the first few weeks of term (mid Septemberish) and as most of my induction groups include 100+ people a time I don’t really refer to this as face-to-face. It’s also one of the few opportunities I get to broadcast key messages from the library on such a grand scale.

So this morning started with catching up with emails from yesterday – not too many of these luckily but there are a few I’ll have to keep pending until after year-end e.g. book recommendations. One email in particular stood out and that was some exciting news about the assessment of the Information Commons for the SCONUL Library Design Award (that stands for Society of College, National and University Libraries – and is quite prestigious in the higher education sector). I think I’m probably biased but it’s a pretty awesome building and hopefully the Working Group on Space Planning will agree! (more…)