Ash clouds and critical appraisal

Well there was a bit of drama in the Healthcare Library this week when my manager was caught up in the ash cloud mayhem and ended up being stuck in South Africa for over a week when he was only supposed to be there for 5 days. I think he's getting a flight out tomorrow and should be back with us on Tuesday, a week later than expected. To make things even harder on himself he's planning on flying out again on Friday, this time to Bulgaria! I bet you never thought librarians had such a jet-setting lifestyle....

I on the other hand had my feet firmly on the ground this week and had two group training sessions - one on Finding High Quality Websites (thinking I need a more catchy title...) and Critical Appraisal: Qualitative. The websites session ended up being a one-to-one as I didn't get many takers but there were four at the Critical Appraisal. I'd already run one of these back in early March so was feeling fairly confident but this one didn't go as well. The group was very quiet and then at some point one of attendees suddenly burst out complaining how qualitative research was all rubbish anyway as it was really down to personal opinion etc etc and although I tried very hard to steer it all back to the critical appraisal checklist it really never got back on track. At the beginning of every critical appraisal session I ask everyone how they would rate the article before appraising it and give them a choice of happy face, middling face and sad face. Weirdly the same guy who complained about qual research gave the article a middling face at the beginning and a happy face at the end! Maybe he was feeling bad about giving me such a hard time but it just made me even more confused...

Quite a few one-to-ones this week and one exciting outcome from one was the potential of being asked along to the Microbiology journal club to give a little talk on critical appraisal. I have also been trying to put together my dates for group training for the next 3 months - always very frustrating as I feel I'm picking dates and times out of the air and have no idea whether they fit in with people's work schedules. We also had a very inspiring talk on Map of Medicine at the London trainer's (CLIST) meeting on Thursday so am planning on sending out an email tomorrow encouraging people in the trust to give it a go.

Also coming up this week - another critical appraisal session, quantitative this time. Which I'm dreading even more now considering what happened this week. I also may be spending a bit of time out on the front desk as our library assistant is on holiday and I really must get my new dates out and do a bit of publicity this week. And apparently the D-Day for HLG conference bursaries is on Thursday so I will have my fingers and toes crossed for that. Oh and I really need to start thinking about thr the article I have been asked to write on Twitter for the Libraries for Nursing bulletin as copy must be in by mid-May! Looks like it's gonna be another busy one....