Inductions: nearing the end

Nearly there - almost. Another busy week but there was some variety in terms of student groups.

The week began with a session for the new PhD recruits - the group spanned a range of subjects and specialist topics. Myself and a colleague attempted to engage them in conversation about the resources they already use, how they feel about literature searching and what sort of problems they have faced before when searching for literature. We wanted to gauge their confidence levels in terms of searching and - as we had guessed beforehand - there were some who seemed to bury their heads in the sand and ignore the fact that they might have to search for something and those who did it but didn't enjoy it. We tried to get them to share their favourite resources with each other and we've set up a wiki so they can continue to share as their researcher development course continues.

Mid-week I met some Foundation Degree students who - and obviously I'm making a sweeping general statement - always seem up for a laugh. No use for PhD type discussions with this group - they were desperate to know what a journal was. Their tutors and handbooks had all prattled on about journals and yet they had not actually shown them one, told them what it was or why it was useful. Once I had demystified journals we messed about putting search strategies together (they had to swap their keyword thoughts with the person next to them who had to try and think of more keywords on the same topic) and merrily clicked around on databases whilst working out what all the buttons did. This was their gentle starter workshop - next week I will whip them all into shape and get them started on their assignment.

I ended one day this week with a call from a publisher who wanted to ask about budgets and my selection criteria for online resources. I can't remember the exact details but my replies were along the lines of 'I do indeed have a policy I refer to when selecting new resources for the online collections but it all goes out the window when you tell me the cost of the resource'. Still they were very nice and got the feeling that they had heard that response a lot that day.

I managed to fit in three walking tours of our 4 storey building and another orientation activity complete with tour/worksheet/freebies. Plus a couple of student tutorials; writing my appraisal objectives for this academic year and planning some upcoming workshops.

I have endless emails tagged with little red flags but they'll sort themselves out at some point....