Some days at work form a harmonious whole. One leaves at the end of the day aware of concentrated and satisfying effort. There are others, and today was one of those.
I had a team meeting with my delightful manager. I have been managed by various people over the years. Being managed by other librarians is fine; we speak the same language. I've been managed by some people who have been quite outstanding, and others who, ahem, have perhaps been less inspiring. That's the luck of the draw. Sometimes I have been managed by doctors, and that's wonderful. They can be capricious, demanding, and quite maddening at times (my present one is none of these, just intellectually stimulating and clever and fun) but even when they ask you to produce something at five minutes notice which in fact requires five hours work, there is always a sense of intellectual excitement, of worthwhileness. The worst times have been when I have been managed by managers, that is to say people who have bargained away whatever professional roots they once had in exchange for money and a meaningless job title. That's rarely been good.
The rest of the day I prepared some information I need to send back to the centre for the transfer to the private company who will take over the evidence hubs at the end of March, lists of patient organisations we use, and professional bodies we have links with. I wrote up some notes from the management meeting and thought about a session I'm going to run with a group of registrars on information management. After the first session, I may offer them a critical appraisal session. I played with lists of members of our External Reference Group, bringing them up to date and putting them into Access.
Today's lesson for the young would-be librarian: choose your manager with care. You can't have mine!