Just another dent in the damage…

Hurray, my mystery flowers have been identified. As part of the What on Earth project I decided to upload a photo of these really cute flowers we grew last year. The aim is:

to get as many people across the country to go outside into their parks and gardens, to take photos of the plants and creatures they don’t recognise and to get these identified.

It’s such a great idea and I’m mega excited about the National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW) that I thought it’d be worth mentioning again! I also managed to get Phil Bradley blogging about it.

If you’re interested in hearing more about what’s happening during NSEW have a look at the events pages and check out the Librarians’ Blog for Science and Engineering as I’ll be running a mini-series on the history of going upside down!

The world’s greatest showman Phineas Taylor Barnum has come to Sheffield! Well considering he died in 1891 this isn’t exactly true but almost. Humbug is the first exhibition to make use of the new Exhibition Gallery at the University of Sheffield’s Western Bank Library and this past weekend I brought some of the family over to take a look.

Barnum, the showman, the circus proprietor, the impresario, famed for his traveling circus and hoaxes (humbugs) like the Feejee Mermaid and Tom Thumb was the first circus owner to move his circus by train and credited with being the pioneer of the modern entertainment industry. Whilst mainly associated with his circus sideshow and display of freaks Barnum also commissioned Jenny Lind’s American tour and set out to change attitudes about the theater from ‘dens of evil’ to palaces of edification and delight.

I was particularly interested in hearing what my grand-parents made of it all and they were suitably impressed with the exhibition on a whole. The celebration of 200 years of Barnum includes bannered artwork from Mark Copeland (of the Insect Circus Museum) and the most amazing/creepiest sculpture of all time by Anthony Bennett. Have a look at my Flickr photostream for a taster but better yet come down and have a look! The exhibition is on until May 30th 2010 and is open daily – Monday to Friday 9 til 9 and weekends 9 til 6.

I submitted a proposal for this year’s New Professionals Conference. It wasn’t accepted but I thought the process was worth saying something about. I’ve never really written a proposal for anything before, my last attempt was for a grant to attend the IATUL conference last year, but the powers that be encouraged me to submit a version that wasn’t really my own. I didn’t get the grant. I got one of those ‘the submissions were of such a high standard this year’ so thanks, but no.

I think what really made me what to take part in the New Professionals Conference this year is that it’s being hosted at Sheffield. Our library (in general) has a habit of not particularly interacting with the Information Studies department or even the wider CILIP community for that matter – correct me if I’m wrong, please – and I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the work we’re doing.

Anyway, I decided to publish the proposal I wrote here hoping that someone could offer me some advice. I know the ideas were not particularly original or the proposal particularly well written so I’m after some tips on proposal writing in general, you know just in case I ever feel the urge to try again – although I’m not really sure how much longer I can call myself a ‘new professional’.

So, here’s the proposal, make of it what you will:

Because we’re worth it too – Beyond shushing and shelving in an academic library

Budget cuts and reduced funding are not new. Librarians have been coping with these for years – reviewing subscriptions, haggling with suppliers, devising strategies to manage impacts – it’s part of the job. But with the ubiquity of the Internet, electronic services and mobile technologies our users are claiming that they no longer use the library and thus our skills increasingly redundant. So with more cuts looming (following HEFCE’s announcement of a £600 million reduction in higher education funding) and a commitment to a ‘faster, better, cheaper’ work ethic we need to be proving our worth now more than ever by promoting services, marketing resources and communicating knowledge.

Today there’s a greater need for students to demonstrate their own skills in acquiring knowledge, judging sources and conducting research. The role of the academic librarian is transforming. New opportunities are arising for us to proactively engage with learning and teaching – conducting skills sessions, supporting workshops and offering practical solutions to complex enquiries. Transferable skills are a key attribute employers are looking for in our graduates and it’s therefore essential for us, as librarians, to proactively seek new ways to support, teach and develop information literacy in our users to carry with them into the workplace and their professional maturity.

In my discussion I’ll consider some of the ways in which the University of Sheffield is working to continually improve services and student satisfaction by meeting the demands of higher user expectations and the new learning environment, through our physical spaces (the collaboration of library and computing services in the Information Commons and Western Bank Library’s £3.4 million redevelopment); web 2.0 technologies (weblogs, Twitter, QR codes and social networking in uSpace – our online collaboration tool); mobile applications (the University’s iPhone app, CampusM); and online skills tutorials (the Information Skills Resource).

Hurray it’s almost time for the National Science and Engineering Week again. From March 12th until March 21st the University of Sheffield has once again teamed up with Sheffield Hallam University, local schools, industry, commerce and museums throughout South Yorkshire to celebrate the best in British research and innovation.

This year’s theme is Earth in support of the International Year of Biodiversity and the What on Earth project – an initiative ‘encouraging everyone to get outside into their gardens and local parks and take photos of the wildlife they don’t recognise’. If you come across something unusual (or not so unusual) head over to www.whatonearth.org.uk armed with your image and get it identified by a team of scientific experts. If anyone can help me out with the name of this flower I’d appreciate it:

I’ve also uploaded an image of some flowers to the site, which I grew last year. I’m desperate to know the name of them. If you have any suggestions please add an identification.

The program of events for the NSEW (mostly free and open to the public) includes a David Allen-Booth Memorial Lecture entitled Shapes and Patterns: Crystals, leaves, leopards and zebras by Professor Gillian Gehring, What on Earth… will we do about energy? by staff and students from the Mechanical Engineering Subject Group (Sheffield Hallam) and the return of Rock Around the General Cemetery.

The University Library in collaboration with the National Fairground Archive will also be taking part to celebrate the engineering feats of fairgrounds and roller coasters. I’m really excited about this one because we’ve been trying to think of ways to encourage our students to make use of this amazing resource for ages. Once the display is up I’ll get more details posted up here.

I’m a fan of technology… always have been. From my Dad’s first home-made ‘beeb’ computer I used to play what I consider to be some of the best computer games of all time on, to my first film-loading camera, to my first Walkman, to my first (and only) Playstation, to my first mobile phone, to my first iPod, to my first handheld games console, to my first laptop, to my first digital camera, to my first Mac, to my first iPhone, to my first ebook reader. Oh wait. It’s not actually my ebook reader. No no, it’s the library’s ebook reader. But still, there’s an ebook reader in my hand and for this week I’m calling it mine (it’s a pocket edition Sony eBook Reader)!

So why do I have one? Well, we’re looking into how we can make use of them in the library – whether ebook readers are an appropriate means to deliver content to our students, whether this is feasible or not and whether our users would even be interested in having access to electronic readers – and we have both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony eBook Reader to evaluate. I must admit, one comes in pretty handy when you’ve a load of PDFs to read – simple drag and drop them on and away you go (the Kindle even allows you to annotate, highlight and save clippings). It’s small and light enough to carry anywhere and everywhere and the long-life battery means you only need to charge every couple of thousand page turns. Now being used to charging my phone most days this actually blows my mind!

However, I’m not entirely sold. I found that rather than being as technologically advanced as expected the devices were actually rather painful from a usability perspective. They feel clunky, content is difficult to browse, page turns are slow and it does bother me that they don’t have backlights. Oh and did I mention that because we’re UK customers a lot of the Kindle functionality is not available – wireless access to Wikipedia/blogs etc – and we are unable to buy content for the Sony eBook Reader from the Sony eBook store. How bizarre.

What I will say is that when it came to reading I did rather enjoy using it. I don’t know much about this e-ink display thing but it’s not like reading from a mini computer screen (which to be honest is what I expected) and it was handy being able to just hold the reader and turn pages in one hand and eat my soup with the other.

As for the content, if you want to read classics fine but if not I’m afraid you’re rather limited. eBooks are expensive still and generally not particularly of interest to me (well of interest enough to warrant the initial expenditure) and in a library setting they’re not particular scholarly (unless we’re talking the study of classics). I’m definitely more sold on the idea of storing and reading PDFs or Word files on the device and being able to annotate documents is certainly useful. Princeton University for example went as far as handing out devices to students preloaded with content – but I don’t think this really went down so well either.

Generally I think I’m swaying more to the side of buying ebooks that are compatible with ebook readers to loan to students rather than loaning out the devices. But is this managable? Would we have the ability to remove content from a user’s device once the loan period had expired? Something worth looking into eh? I think what I’m really waiting for is the iPad! Now this looks like a handy piece of kit.

If you’re interested in finding out more about ebook readers there are seriously hundreds of review sites but some of the ones I looked at include: eBook Readers Review; eBook Readers and Wired.

It’s actually amazing what you can teach yourself given an hour or ’sew’ to focus. After finally fixing up Max’s gi (one of the bigger boys at Brazilian Ju-Jitsu ripped it up) I decided it was time to teach myself the buttonhole! For Christmas I received Cath Kidston’s awesome book Sew, complete with bag project. Problem is I’ve been too scared to tackle the project because of those dreaded buttonholes required to attach the bag strap. Well, turns out they’re not so bad! With not so much help from Alison Smith and surprisingly my machine’s manual I set to work and with a few tweaks managed something that resembles a buttonhole in about an hour (and most of that time was spent threading my machine because the naff cotton I’m using keeps snapping).

Anyway given The Sewing Book’s reputation as a seamsters’ Bible (which I have to agree is, most of the time) I was a bit disappointed to find it lacking a clear step-by-step explanation of how to actually create a buttonhole – how to position the foot, which stitch to use, what to do to adjust the stitch balance etc. Sure enough it includes beautiful photographs of each stage and when you’d use the different types, it even gives instructions for the more fancy buttonholes but honestly I’m a total beginner you have to spell this all out for me. I still haven’t managed to work out how to round the corner for a keyhole buttonhole but I will. So… take a look at what I did, all by myself!

Here I’m learning how to build the stitches:

My buttonholing foot:

And here’s a close up!

My house is full of vegans – bar Bella, she eats fish with her Amicat – and it means there are a lot of cook books. I make it sound like there are a lot of people in my house but in fact there’s just the two of us and our cat, Bella. And I guess the reason we have so many cook books is due to Max’s obsession with recipe clippings, he has a whole lever arch file full! Being vegan is not difficult, it just means you have to think more about your food, plan your meals, your pack lunches for work and check menus before you agree to a night out. But to make veganism really work for you at home you’ve got to learn some darn cooking skills, make your food exciting and never settle for just a hummus sandwich or a dreadlock burger or that god awful sos mix. Veganism is better than that! But I hate cooking – I hate waiting for things to cook – anything that takes longer than 20 minutes makes my stomach hurt and I end up eating most of it out of the pan before it even hits my plate. Max calls me a picker, I can’t help it! Say you’re cooking with a pepper and you’ve got it nicely chopped up ready, for every piece the pan gets my mouth gets the other. It’s just the way it goes.

Max caught on to my dislike of cooking early on and figured the way to my heart would definitely be through my stomach. It worked. Five years on I eat like royalty… every day. Even if there’s absolutely nothing in he never fails to cook up a feast of feasts. Leave it to me and we’d be eating chilli and wedges every day, not that there is anything wrong with that either though.

So just as I was getting used to letting Max own the kitchen, except on my occasional baking days when I crack out super tasty cookies or cupcakes, in walks Vegan Yum Yum and turns my culinary failings into something more at home on Masterchef. I’ve turned a corner, I get excited about coating my tofu with a corn flour batter, whizzing up a tahini paste for my steamed broccoli and turning tomato ketchup into an incredibly mouth watering sweet and sour sauce. I’ve followed Lauren’s amazing blog for a while and always been insanely jealous of these rather special cupcakes from the Martha Stewart show but I never really thought I (the world’s most reluctant cook) could make any of this incredible food myself. Then I get a copy of the cook book and how wrong I was.

What makes the book so special for me and what makes me rate this more highly than any other book on our shelves are the beautifully shot images of the finished meal. Pictures of the food is something a great deal of our cook books lack and by being so anal about following craft patterns to the T I’m one of these that literally follows every instruction within the recipe and I like my food to look like the picture. Without pictures how can you really make your recipe appealing? Really? I like to decide what I want to eat by seeing how tasty it looks. And there are many many tasty things to choose from in this.

The added bonus of planning my every meal around the Lauren Ulm Bible is being able to take her recipes everywhere I go via my phone! Yes, she has an iPhone app [iTunes link] too that includes many of the recipes from the book and updates as and when she updates the blog. And again, as well as a handy ‘tick’ function to mark off your ingredients, there’s pictures!! Don’t just relay on making your food sound good… make it look good! Have a look at some of these master pieces from my very own kitchen:

Broccoli Almond Sweet and Sour Tofu

Nearly Raw Tahini Noodles

Spicy Tomato and Chickpea Soup (pp. 180) with a pepper, onion and avocado salsa topping

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread (pp. 13)

Creamy Broccoli Dal (pp. 173) with homemade roti

And tonight we ate Hurry Up Alfredo (sorry about the poor image quality on this one):

We added black olives on top for a little extra bite, and it was wicked! This cook book is amazing… seriously. It’s probably the best cook book in the world. When Lauren says ‘decadent (BUT DOABLE) animal-free recipes for entertaining and every day’ she actually means it! They are the most doable recipes I’ve ever read and some of the most yummy food I’ve ever tasted.

I’m not much of a New Year’s Resolution type person but last year I did write a list of 25 things I wanted to do in 2009. I thought it’d be worth going over what I did and didn’t do ready to prepare a new list of 26 things I want to do in 2010. So let’s see:

1) Set up an Etsy store and start selling small crafts: Well, I got the Etsy store bit sorted but getting the stuff to sell has been harder. I thought it’d just be a case of make a load of stuff and get it listed but it turns out a lot of the patterns I’ve been using to make consumables are all copyrighted and you can’t sell the stuff you make using them. Turns out I need to start writing my own patterns if I want to sell anything I make. The only things I really have for sale are my SSCS crochet whales as it’s OK to make money you intend to donate to charity, but a store with only one item to sell would be pretty naff right? I’ll work on this one. Promise.

2) Make more use of sewing machine and create at least one skirt from scratch: Again I kinda half did this. I reorganised my craft room so I can actually get at my machine without having to carry it about everywhere and I sorted out all the stuff I need to get on with making things – I just didn’t get round to making the skirt. But, I did make a lovely cushion (and embroidered it) and ploughed through one of my sewing books so I can learn more about what my machine does. I think this coming year will be my skirt making year so watch this space!

3) Learn to dive: CHECK! I actually did this one. This year I not only got my PADI Open Water but I completed my PADI Advanced Open Water and got qualified in Enriched Air diving. I’ve got about 20 dives logged now and am super excited about getting out and seeing more of the world’s oceans. At Christmas I went to Malaysia and got to play about with my new camera, here’s Nemo:

4) Learn Photoshop basics to improve photographs: So Photoshop is harder than I thought and there is definitely a lot to learn on this… but I’ve made a start. I’ve managed to cut three people out of one image and put them in to another, I’ve rubbed out plastic bottles and lamp-posts and learnt about image size and how to crop (ya’know – the simple stuff). My cutting out skills definitely need working on though. Max also showed me how to open my eyes – i.e. cut out Claire’s open eyes and stick them over my closed eyes!

This is a photo taken of Claire and I with Todd Kowalski from Propagandhi. On the original picture we were outside a pub and my eyes were closed. Here we are in Hawaii with my eyes open (if you look very closely you’ll notice they’re very similar to Claire’s eyes).

5) Take more photos and get uploading to Flickr: My new camera has helped with this one. On my last holiday I took about 1000 photos! Can you ever imagine doing this with an old camera that needed film? Crazy! Anyway I’ve slowly been making more use of Flickr and you can go and see my photos any time – lexrigby’s Photostream.

6) Make Donna a big granny blanket: Yes yes I did this. It got completed on March 18th for her birthday. Here is a picture of me admiring the finished product:

7) Print some Moo cards: Totally failed on this one. I figured I didn’t really need any if I didn’t get the store up and going. They’ll come eventually when I’m all business like.

8) Get funding for the IATUL conference in Belgium: I failed this too but it was kinda out of my hands. I wrote my statement about why I should be awarded the funding but at the last minute one of my bosses decided to write the entire thing himself on my behalf. I don’t blame him for not getting it or anything as I was told the application was exceptional, just not exceptional enough. Life goes on.

9) Design a cross-stitch pattern to raise more funds for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society: This was another one of those half did/half didn’t ones. Whilst I didn’t get around to design the pattern I longed to do I did get all subversive after buying Subversive Cross Stitch and started writing some cross stitch patterns inspired by Propagandhi lyrics.

10) Organise another SSCS fundraiser: This one is another ’still to do’. I think time ran away with me on this one. Whilst I didn’t organise a fundraiser myself I did volunteer at a number of events this year (including the International Dive Show at the NEC) and completed the first round of volunteer training. I’m now listed as an official volunteer on the Sea Shepherd UK website, so it’s all good in the hood still.

11) Make sushi: No making but plenty of eating. I’m going to get Donna to show me how to do this, she makes amazing sushi!

12) Finish Ursula tattoo: Yep, done and dusted. This is on my back:

13) Start work on Kali tattoo: I didn’t do this but I did get a whale instead, I think Kali needs more thinking about. This one is on my left inner arm – it was pretty swollen so excuse the chubbiness, I think the photo is a bit squished too (I got it off Myspace because I couldn’t be bothered to take a photo):

14) Keep up the weekly postings on my work blog: I did this! Want proof? See Librarians’ Blog for Science and Engineering.

15) Master the art of false lashes (just because there’s got to be at least one vanity thing in here): I did this too but none of my pictures are close enough for you to see them clearly. I’ll work on getting proof of this.

16) Keep up with the personal training sessions: After a year I figured these were just getting far too expensive to continue. I went from about August 2008 to August 2009. I fully intended to restart them but really £120 a month on top of my £42 a month gym membership… really.

17) Tick off the to-do list and write up results: I guess the result of this is this blog post. I did tick items off in my book and did refer back to my list to remind me what I needed to do, I just didn’t do as much as I wanted. I had planned to do a scrap book but I definitely think a blog post is more my thing.

18) Start open uni short course on marine biology: The Open Uni course I wanted to do is a short module called Life in the Oceans: Exploring our Blue Planet. It looks like the greatest short course of all time but a las I’ve not had a spare £150 to do it yet. I will though, studying Richard Attenborough’s Blue Planet sounds like the best thing ever.

19) Prepare for Cilip (this is the professional association of librarians) chartership: I simply changed my mind on this one I’m afraid. I just don’t know if I want to charter just yet. The chartership means doing a lot of work I just don’t want to do at the moment. Career development portfolios and all that malarky… snore.

20) Cook for Max at least once a month: I managed this one I think for a few months. I mainly make him puddings like cookies and cake. This will change this year though as I’ve a new cook book and it’s amazing. I won’t tell you anything else yet as I’m working on a post for this beauty that stands alone.

21) Visit Stef in Canterbury: Sorry Stef, you just come home too much. I’ll visit her this year for sure.

22) Read Moby Dick: I didn’t do this either, but I did read a lot about other whales!

23) Cycle to work at least twice a week in the Summer: This is my main regret I think. I should have done this, but I didn’t. Curse me.

24) Watch a broadway show: For my 25th birthday Sarah got me some gift vouchers for a London show and after loads of faffing about she never got to come with me. Instead, Max and I went to see Wicked… and it was wicked. I’d already read the book (and thought it very strange) so was interested to see how it would translate to stage. I liked it, it worked well and luckily they kept all the sexy scenes out.

25) Finish decorating the kitchen: YES, YES and YES and it’s the greatest kitchen of all time.

I’ve already written this year’s list… I might put it up later but in the meantime, thanks for reading.

Last week saw the return of Sheffield’s FREE vegan food fair. We had a great time making up soups, chillis, curries, pizzas, vol au vonts, dips, cakes, cookies, displaying fresh fruit and serving up jo-public. Although essentially the fair was 100% free, donations were welcomed and ended up covering the entire cost of the venue and extras. What a result! We welcomed the homeless and the Big Issue sellers – sending them on their ways with full tummies and take outs. Take a look at some of these!

There seems to be a lot of stuff flying around at the moment about what the Noughties will be remembered for. What has happened in the last decade that will make it stand out from other decades? Well…

In general:

9/11?
The ‘War on Terror’ (i.e. two unjustified unending wars)?
America’s first black President?
Iran’s disputed elections?
The Large Hadron Collider?
The horrific Mumbai terror attacks?
The death of Michael Jackson?
Global warming?
Google?
The Indian Ocean tsunami?
Swine flu?

(notice a theme?)

Personally:

A whole load a shit and not so much shit.