The Library day-in-the-life project caught my eye, My entries will be atypical: I work in a London further education college and at this time of year we have hardly any students, and not many teaching staff. In any case, this summer is even more unusual, in that we close one of our centres and consolidate services on two sites, with a new Learning Resource Centre. We moved out of our old centres at the end of term and those of us who work through the summer have to use a hot desk room. And, finally, as Head of Learning Resources, i do little more than sit in an office thinking grand strategic thoughts.
Still, this is what happened today. I assembled with the Learning Resource Centre Managers in the hot desk room in the tower block, which is just as vile as it sounds, and, after a judicious period of e-mail checking, we spent the morning discussing how we would run orientation and induction sessions for staff when they return to a completely new working environment in September. I had an agreeable lunch at the Pantry, and then we returned to discuss a list of tasks that staff can perform on service points, a topic that spilled over into time-tabling, grading, line management responsibilities and the fundamental question, what is it that librarians do.
Then we went to inspect the new building. Rational discussion was difficult, because the alarm system was being tested, and a constant message sounded for over twenty minutes: "this is the incident control officer [there is no such person-TR]; the alarm has been activated. Please leave the building." Needless to say, we paid no attention. After work we went to the pub to mark the leaving of two colleagues, one of whom had worked for the college for twenty years