Each year I guess you try and learn from the  mistakes you made the year before… you want one less person to nod off, one less person glazing over and one less person “Facebooking” (is this a verb yet?) for half an hour. I’m always really interested in how other subject librarians conduct inductions but there never seems to be much discussion about it. So, I thought I’d dump all my materials here and maybe someone might want to say something about them?

Here’s the presentation I’ve been using this year (best viewed full screen, as always):

It includes a video I made… yep, I’m a YouTube sensation:

Oh and I unashamedly ripped off a Ned Potter original and created an infograph as a “final word” type thing (click to enlarge):

Isn’t it amazing how easily we fall back into our old routines! I’ve been back from Mozambique a week and it honestly feels like I never even went. I’m looking at my pictures and thinking is that actually me there, doing that? The time flew and with only four weeks til Intro Week I’m trying to gear myself up for new student inductions and working through training materials for our new ‘resource discovery layer’… where have all the Whale Sharks gone? Why am I not on the beach, picking up plastic and watching the Humpbacks breach?

Tofo is a place I guess you instantly fall in love with. It’s sprawling coastline, it’s soft sands, it’s laid back attitude, it’s warm waters. It’s like paradise, or as close to paradise as I can imagine, even in winter. I challenge you to sit on the sand dunes, look out to sea and not feel at peace with the world. It’s a place where life really could be a beach!

However, my reason for enduring the terrifying 30 seater mini-plane ride from Johannesburg to Inhambane wasn’t to lounge around the sands, it was to go find some Whale Sharks and have a poke around the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Megafauna. For the last couple of years I’ve been considering various options to go see what’s out there – as a solo holiday maker, as part of an organised dive trip or as a member of a group tour of South Africa more generally. Finally I stumbled upon the All Out Africa route and managed to tick all the requirement boxes… and then some!

By volunteering with All Out Africa I got to use my time in the sun contributing to something way more worthwhile than satisfying my need to dive with Manta Rays (although that happened too!) The Whale Shark Conservation Project gives volunteers the opportunity to participate in data collection processes through monitoring populations, recording encounters and cleaning up environments (i.e. helping out with more long-term assessments of species). They call it ‘Citizen Science’, I call it ‘Freakin’ Awesome’. Generally what this meant was heading out on ocean safaris to find Whale Sharks, capture ID shots and survey behaviours. Once spotted we’d slip into the water, wait for the shark/s to appear (which is far less scary than it sounds) and attempt to photograph their spot patterns. At the same time we needed to record their location, whether they carried any scarring and how it responded to the people around it (if at all). (more…)

This whole Thing thing is already moving too quickly for me… although I’m not going to write about all the blogs I’ve visited and the comments I’ve left you’ll be pleased to hear that I have actually been doing this. Commenting on other blogs is something I do do, just not very often. I find Twitter a much better way to have a conversation about something written in a blog post as I can’t be bothered to keep checking back for replies or subscribing to email updates. I’m lazy like that you see.

Now, for me, the good thing about Thing 2 has been discovering new blogs to subscribe to and making the effort to leave the comforts of Google Reader. I’ve revisited a lot of my old faves and it’s been particularly interesting to see how layouts have changed, what widgets/links people have on display and the way they write their ‘about’ bits. It’s got me thinking more about the way my website looks, which I guess leads nicely on to Thing 3.

Although Lex Rigby isn’t an exceptionally unusual name it’s unusual enough for me to literally dominate Google. After scrolling through the first 10 result pages to find a fake Lex Rigby I gave up, it’s all me. Like commenting, vainity searches are also something I do quite often. This is mainly because when I look at my blog stats there’s always someone Googling my name and I like knowing that what they find is OK with me (I still find it unnerving when I see it’s someone from my own institution looking me up though). (more…)

Whenever I go anywhere (I’m talking about conferences or training events in particular) I always dread lunch! Yes, I DREAD lunch. Wanna know why? Well it’s because I usually get a crappy salad. Bizarrely most caterers are useless at providing me with something that doesn’t resemble rabbit food.

If you know me (even just a little bit) this unleashes a giant ball of rage… it bursts out from my insides before I can do anything about it. The most annoying thing about it is that I’m usually having a great time, then lunch comes around and my day becomes a total write off (that may or may not be an exaggeration but I’m really fed up with it).

So, in order to rectify this I thought I’d share with you some of the salads I like! You’ll be surprised to hear that I do in real life eat a lot of salad.

What I don’t like

Crap Salad Number One:

Now this had potential! They realised vegans eat rice (shocker) and they even chucked on a little pot of hummus as a sweetener. Problem is, how uninspiring is dry salad? Seriously! Especially when it was prepared a few hours ago and left out on the side to dry out even more! There’s very little protein and no slow-releasing energy carbs or good fats in there. White rice I’m afraid doesn’t cut it!

(more…)

OK OK I give in… I’ve signed up to 23 Things for Professional Development (CPD23) having previously decided I’d much rather spectate. To all the non-library people that may read this the CPD23 programme is a self-directed course, set up by a group of information professionals, aimed at introducing participants to a range of tools that could help with personal and professional development. Each week there is a different Thing to do and we’re starting off with blogging. To all the other CPD23 peeps that may read this… Hi!

So why am I doing this?

This isn’t something I think others will find particularly interesting to read about but it’s something I want to do for myself… to get me ‘back in the game’ I guess. I’ve been getting bored with blogging/tweeting and contributing in general. People write better blogs, articulate their ideas much better than I ever could, link to really interesting things that I can’t be bothered to track down myself and I guess are a lot more enthusiastic about our profession than I have been lately. There never seems to be any good news and so I think I’ve just started doing other things with my time that makes me happy and keeping my head down.

I find all the ‘you must be an activist if you want to progress your career’ intimidating… I want to break out of the echochamber as much as the next guy but I just haven’t found a creative enough way to do this yet. I want to advocate the work of librarianship but as soon as I open my mouth I’ve already bored myself to death. So in a way I’m kinda hoping that getting involved with CPD23 might give me a giant kick up the ass on the participation front and keep the post-Chartership momentum going. It’ll also be an opportunity to try out some of the ‘things’ I’ve forgotten about (an excuse to start these up again maybe) as well as try out some new ‘things’ that could actually be really useful for me. I’ll probably not do all the ‘things’ but at least I can say I’ve got good intentions eh!