I am very pleased that Professor Sally Brown, PVC at Leeds Met, has also agreed to participate on our Info Lit event in Newcastle on 2nd April 2007, along with Christine Bruce from QUT. Christine is an internationally renowned expert in IL, while Sally is an expert in assessment. It promises to be an interesting day.

Just thought I’d add a photo of Mount Cook to entertain you

One of the things I am interested in is what impact my NTF has on people other than me, so at each library I am visiting I am asking staff to fill ina Wandering Minds sheet during my talk, to tell me of anything they think about (apart from their shopping lists!) while I am talking. I have had some fascinating responses so far and I’ll try to follow a few up next year to see how they have developed. I thought this might also work with my blog, so if you read a post and it makes you think, or do anything, please let me know (my email is on the left)so that I can document it as part of the ripples in my NTF pond

This is a picture of the outside of the main library here at UC

I hear it was pink day in Newcastle Library on Friday, so I have a pic of me wearing pink outside Otago University Medical Library, which I’ll add to the blog when I can get to a PC at which I can download my photos again. (one for the wall in the staffroom too?) Otago University in Dunedin boasts the only medical school in New Zealand, so not a very big group of medical librarians! There are only 8 universities in New Zealand in total.

Ok – 2 photos – wearing pink outside a different library!

It seems I can’t escape from EndNote, even at the other side of the world! I went to a very good demo of Endnote yesterday and hope to bring some useful info home with me. This pic is the campus at Christchurch – rhododenrons everywhere and a wonderful smell from the eucalyptus trees!

This is for Louise! I went to the Christchurch Polytechnic Library yesterday afternoon. As always, I was made very welcome and given an interesting tour. They will be starting a podcasting project which sounds fascinating, as it will include signing videos, so I hope we’ll keep in touch over that. However, Louise would have loved their recycling – there are bins everywhere, never more than 20 feet away. Staff have also all been issued with a tiny wheelie bin to encourage them to cut down on waste. The pics show Alan with a set of bins and Fiona with a baby wheelie bin!

We saw a colony of seals yesterday on the way back from Kaikoura – this one seemed to be waving to us!

I spent the day at the University Library today, where all the staff were extremely welcoming. The pic shows Janette at the Library Help Desk, which is staffed by the subject staff (of whom there are many more than at Newcastle!). The Library has some interesting initiatives – setting up blogs within departments, a great online staff newsletter which allows for comments and questions, a revamp of signage and communications and more! Everyone participated in my research activities and I gathered some fascinating comments in the Wandering Minds exercise.

As expected, New Zealand is amazingly beautiful, even seen through the rain! I am staying with Alison Holmes, who is the Director of Learning at Teaching at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and also a good friend from our days at Northumbria University. I’ll add a pic of the view from her house as soon as I have downloaded it. We have managed to spend some time sightseeing around KaiKoura and Marlborough Sound over the weekend and Alison is also advising me on T&L aspects of my project, which is tremendously helpful.
Tomorrow I shall be spending the day at the university library – as well as meeting the staff and touring the library, I’ll be giving a talk to some of the staff and hopefully getting them to participate in my research.

Well, here I am in Changi airport in Singapore, en route for Christchurch. I had a 12hr flight to get here but as I can sleep anywhere it was quite ok. Now I have 2 hrs to wait for the next plane and have managed to find some free internet access to keep me occupied! The temperature here in Singapore is about 86 degrees, but pleasant in the airport, which has far too many shops and some beautiful orchids.

It’s taken me a while to decide what to take on my trip (not helped by Pippin carefully depositing a dead mouse in my case!) but the case is all packed now and I’m off to the airport shortly. Hopefully my next post will have some good pics of New Zealand to make everyone jealous! Do please email me to let me know if you’re reading the blog.