Well.

Christmas is nearly here! How does that work then? We all start complaining when we see Christmas things vying for shelf room in the shops with the increasing amounts of Halloween paraphernalia and then allofasudden its here! Or nearly anyway.

In Huddersfield Inter-library Loans land we are still liking Clioweb, our ILL system that utilizes the BLDSS API. Being able to check holdings at BL and on COPAC as an intrinsic part of processing the request is FAB and then being able to check actual availability at BL...well… the team are still in raptures. The irony has not been lost on them, shall we say, that  since we merged our own catalogue with our e-resources search engine, it has actually been easier to search everyone else’s stuff than it is our own! Though our guy has been working on that and it’s getting better. On Clio we’ve also had a few problems with search speeds, but the suppliers have improved that a bit too and are still working to make it even better. Sending a request off after it has been matched with an actual record at the BL is so easy that a bit of complacency has even crept in recently, and we’ve fired off a couple where, as is inevitable with any catalogue search, the record returned wasn’t actually an exact match for what we wanted. The adage “Read the screen carefully” still holds true with the best of systems!

We’ve been watching the new University Learning and Leisure Centre, now branded Student Central, develop out of the window. It’s nearly finished and due to open in the New Year. It’s one of those modern buildings that lights up Multi-colours and they can project all sorts onto it. We’ve been having our own Christmas light show as they’ve been testing it.

We’ve also been trying to join in this year’s Christmas Jumper craze. Bridget Jones or was it Colin Firth? Eat your heart out! Even FIL the Frog was getting in on the act as I was enjoying my proof copy of the FIL journal. A modest donation is winging its way to Save the Children as we speak!

Well Hope you all have a well deserved rest over Christmas, I think we probably all deserve it.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A FANTASTIC 2014

from the Interloaners at the University of Huddersfield

Cheers

Chris

Customer Services Librarian

University of Huddersfield

Conference thoughts

Library Camp 2013

Along with a couple of hundred other ‘ librarians’ (I use the term loosely, although we were mainly librarians!), I attended Library Camp 2013 last Saturday. Our host was the new library in Birmingham.

Several people have blogged about the day, including our former Chair, Gareth Johnson: http://llordllama.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/hello-campers-2013-edition/

As I’m busy helping to organise Interlend 2014, it was interesting to see how the un-conference style worked. Suffice to say that I don’t think ‘the rule of two feet’ would go down too well with our speakers. But I could be wrong…….

I suppose the main difference is that Library Camp is attended at your own expense and in your own time, whereas Interlend is more usually work-related. To that end, the committee works hard to listen to delegate feedback and make the conference relevant to the Interlending issues of the day. Which is why we are always happy to hear from you, whether or not you are a member of FIL, and why we try to attract as many interesting speakers and workshops as we can around the conference theme.

So please think about it when the call for speakers goes out. And save the dates in June 2014!

If we don’t hear from you, or don’t meet you at events, we can’t reflect your interests.

And we’d hate you to use your feet and walk.