Marking. Lovely, lovely marking.....

At this time of year the life of an academic takes a dark turn as the marking appears, as if by magic, on your desk. Anyone would think that we'd actually set assignments for the students to do. The thought of marking is, actually, much worse than the doing it. The piles sit glowering at you until you finally have to rid yourself of all displacement activities (aka top priorities that you'd rather be doing like counting paper clips or arranging your bookshelf in Dewey order) and knuckle down and do it.


Actually, I'm fairly far on with it this year (but, ssshhh, don't tell the rest of the department that) and this is probably down to the fact that things will get busy again on the Presidential front from the middle of next week. So I have been disciplined this year. The one downside of this mark carry-on is that, very unfortunately, I won't be able to make the CILIP Cymru conference at the end of this week. This is a pity as I would have really like to have gone and because Mandy Powell, the Policy Officer in Wales, is one of our former student (they get everywhere don't they?). Anyway, I will certainly be following events in Wales on Twitter #CILIPW12.


One of the best bits of the assessment period is seeing some of the really good and creative assignments that the students produce. I was marking research proposals yesterday. These are, basically, the feasibility study for the topic students will take through to their dissertation. As you might imagine, I have a clutch of ones around local studies but I also have a really interesting one looking at the way the Public Library Quality Improvement Matrix is used by library services, after the PLQIM visit, to help drive up quality of provision. A really interesting topic indeed. I've also a lovely one based on one of the special collections in St Andrews University Library, a good old-fashioned (in the best sense) piece of historical bibliography.


There is light at the end of the tunnel with the marking and when you get really creative and really interesting ideas being explored then it is hugely rewarding. Right, I've now got to go off to Aberdeen University's wonderful new library for meeting. I'm also going to meet up with Alistair Campbell of Moray Libraries in Elgin on Friday to plot some conference shenanigans......so watch this space. I feel some mischief coming on.