June so far
There always seems to be worthy new groups to get involved with! Ian Cockrill has been in touch with me about the Wales Heritage User Group (Heritage being one of the library management systems used in Wales), and it will be interesting to see where that leads. On Friday 8th June I went to a meeting about the Libraries for Life campaign at CyMAL – the body for museums, archives and libraries on Wales (covering all sectors – HE, FE, public and national). Their library marketing toolkit may well be useful, and when it is officially released I will describe it in more detail. Their workforce development grants may be of interest to FE LRC managers as well. If there is time I hope to go on the e-resource purchasing sub-group of Libraries for Life, which may help to increase the FE voice when decisions are made.
In my first post I said I would mention my experiences of public transport. Well, on Wed 6th June I tried to get to Newtown for an all day ILT Champions meeting. However, although I was at the National Express bus stop for 8am (and the bus came 20 minutes late) the driver still wouldn’t let me on, saying that he was expecting to pick up lots of people with tickets later. I even offered to stand at the back, but to no avail… So I was late for the meeting, but the group were friendly and informal so it was okay. I got to meet Berni Tyler of Fforwm, and I will be going to the Fforwm LRS Manager’s Network meeting at Deeside next week (fingers crossed for the public transport links to get there from Aberystwyth!) The day ended with a meeting with Neil Smyth, the Coleg Powys FE LRC manager, that involved some pints and games of pool in a pleasant Newtown pub. By the time the evening train trundled towards Aberystwyth and the setting sun shone over the Dyfi Estuary, I had forgotten the stresses of the morning’s journey, and felt a glowing contentment instead.
