May be I am a little bit irritable.
Working on another computer I couldn’t use my shortcut to UCC library where I had to check something. So http://www.ucc.ie as start and looking for the library shouldn’t make problems. It didn’t make problems, indeed. Still it made me think about problems – or should I say challenges, current structures and processes.
The structure of the website has the following menus – reproduced here in the given order:
Study
Current Students
Research
Staff
Teaching and Learning
Visitors
Alumni and Friends
About UCC
– I am not sure why I expected the library under research, study AND/or teaching ….n and why I then found it under about.
But perhaps somebody else has an idea.
What saddens me about it is that it is not just Cork. As one or the other of the readers may know I am affiliated as correspondent to the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Law [Look forward to go there soonish, to fulfil some duties in the framework of a short-term fellowship though I would love to stay here at ODTUe for a while]. The institut has now a new, i.e. second director, actually an economist which I personally think is (at least in principle) most exciting – I am working myself on different issues around linking Human Rights, Economics and Daily Life.
Now, there is something I don’t understand. This second director and his background in economics means some changes: new people, new orientations, new subjects …, but nothing in that for the library. May be somebody thinks and said: “We don’t need books. All statistics are available online.”
May be …, who knows?
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 
I recently met a chiropracter who was studying for a Masters. His practice is very close to a large teaching hospital. He thought this would be very useful in that he could use the hospital library. On visiting to borrow some books, and to his amazement, there was no library or books. Astonishing!
"Mi piace""Mi piace"
astonishing – yes …, and no. I remember going to the doctor when I moved to Ireland – others may know more exactly when, guess 15, 20 years ago. This guy had been sitting there and I had been sitting there. He did some ‘technical stuff’: blood pressure, listening to the vibrating of my lunges …, and we talked for probably half an hour or more. Later he had been sitting in front of a computer, visits lasted about 10 minutes at most. Later again I didn’t see him anymore. I saw another doctor in that surgery … , after I explained her how to fill in a simple form for the renewal of my driving license (eye-test, the form is not computerised) I never went there again. The last time I went to another doctor: we had been sitting together for about an hour and more, he looking up things on his computer but also engaging in the communicatio.
Well, the last time had been actually recently, here at ODTUe. I went there, several tests had been made – and I went back to get the results. “Do you know where I made notes? Are they in the computer? … after digging into some piles of paper, looking on the screen … – he found something. Well, not just his notes, but after about half an hour writing, looking intensely at results of the different tests … he found a concrete result, something that is at least a concrete step to move forward.
Still, I had to call the health-insurance-emergency line – after 10 minutes somebody from Ireland (a rep of a Spanish company) asked ‘What can I do for you?’ Well, I could not stop myself scoffing: ‘Nothing, too late. In the meantime I passed away.’ – Well, I didn’t – but I still think for an emergence phone line it had been a reasonable reply – probably now somewhere in the computer system.
Still, it is all about humans ..: he was getting faster after I mentioned in one e-mail an apparently magic word: Regulator – the person who really has the right books in the right place.
What I actually mean is: WE STILL HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THERE ARE BOOKS AVAILABLE AND THAT WE, AS CITIZENS (I am not talking as academic now) ARE CO-WRITERS.
"Mi piace""Mi piace"