Richard Scarry’s What do people do all day was my favourite book as a child and I’ve given it to many other children as presents. I thought I would give you an indication of what an academic does. It’s nice when people thing that I get lots of holidays (true to an extent) and that my job revolves around the students being present (it doesn’t). As Head of Department, the students’ presence makes little material difference to what I do, other than having teaching. It may come as a surprise that I only do about eighty hours of face-to-face teaching a year in classrooms. I do, however, do double that online to our distance learning students through our Virtual Campus. More than two-thirds of my Department’s student are distance learners, spread across the globe. My main teaching is Managing Library Services and I’ve just finished marking the distance learners’ assignments. My main role as Head of Department is running the department and managing the staff team. This involves annual planning, budgets, staff workload and timetabling, curriculum development, staff appraisals and the daily ‘fire-fighting’ of issues. It also means being the Department representative on a number of committees such as our Faculty Senior Management Group and the Quality Enhancement Committee. I also represent the Faculty on some committees of the University such as the Academic Regulations Committee or the Visiting Professors Appointment Committee. Every year there are working parties which I’m asked to join looking at specific issues. This year these include the Professorial Roles Review working party and the Cultural Regeneration working group. A chunk of my time is taken up supervising my Masters and PhD students who are scattered across the world too and are investigating a bewildering array of topics. When I can, I do bits of my own research. This is centred around library history or historical bibliography, local studies librarianship (basically how libraries serve the local history field) and increasingly this includes the use of digital technology. My other big area of research is public library management and quality and last year I conducted two large projects for the Scottish Library and Information Council (on behalf of the government) to review and revise the quality standards used for Scottish Public Libraries (this received regular mention in the press in locally because of Moray Council’s recent deliberations over libraries). The new Quality Framework will be
Richard Scarry’s What do people do all day was my favourite book as a child and I’ve given it to many other children as presents. I thought I would give you an indication of what an academic does. It’s nice when people thing that I get lots of holidays (true to an extent) and that my job revolves around the students being present (it doesn’t). As Head of Department, the students’ presence makes little material difference to what I do, other than having teaching. It may come as a surprise that I only do about eighty hours of face-to-face teaching a year in classrooms. I do, however, do double that online to our distance learning students through our Virtual Campus. More than two-thirds of my Department’s student are distance learners, spread across the globe. My main teaching is Managing Library Services and I’ve just finished marking the distance learners’ assignments. My main role as Head of Department is running the department and managing the staff team. This involves annual planning, budgets, staff workload and timetabling, curriculum development, staff appraisals and the daily ‘fire-fighting’ of issues. It also means being the Department representative on a number of committees such as our Faculty Senior Management Group and the Quality Enhancement Committee. I also represent the Faculty on some committees of the University such as the Academic Regulations Committee or the Visiting Professors Appointment Committee. Every year there are working parties which I’m asked to join looking at specific issues. This year these include the Professorial Roles Review working party and the Cultural Regeneration working group. A chunk of my time is taken up supervising my Masters and PhD students who are scattered across the world too and are investigating a bewildering array of topics. When I can, I do bits of my own research. This is centred around library history or historical bibliography, local studies librarianship (basically how libraries serve the local history field) and increasingly this includes the use of digital technology. My other big area of research is public library management and quality and last year I conducted two large projects for the Scottish Library and Information Council (on behalf of the government) to review and revise the quality standards used for Scottish Public Libraries (this received regular mention in the press in locally because of Moray Council’s recent deliberations over libraries). The new Quality Framework will be
21_newsletter_january_2014.docx