Negotiating the UL: in which Gesta fondly reminisces and describes a love affair with a library.

One of the few advantages of being paid part-time (though working full-time) is that I feel no obligation to be around on the days the university doesn’t pay me. To that end, aided and abetted, nay, encouraged even, by a Reivers who is on sabbatical, I escaped to my favourite library for three days, the UL in Cambridge. These three days were exciting, exhilarating and entirely necessary in all sorts of ways and enabled me to achieve far more in that time than I seem to get done in entire semesters here. So, a post in praise of the institution known as the UL with all its wonderful quirks.

Plans and plotting

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write a detailed piece on the cuts currently faced by most areas of education in this country, regressive policies on what constitutes education and why Gove was wrong to call for ‘a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China’. I’ve started the post several times over and every time it has degenerated to a rant bigger than those I am usually given to. I’ve decided it’s time to go back to blogging about Normans for a little while, so herewith, plots and plans in the life of Gesta.

Taking-stock: thinking space and random thoughts

I read about space, I think about space and I write about space, but lately it feels like I have no space to read, write or think! It’s been very quiet on the blog front lately. May/early June is perhaps the busiest time of year for anyone working in British HE. Reivers and I are beginning to emerge from under piles of scripts, spreadsheets and administrivia, in the process discovering we are human again. It’s a time to reflect on what has happened over the past year, see what we’ve achieved and decide where to go next. This process of assessing and questioning is essential to the way we develop as academics and, crucially, teachers. What follows is an end of year stock-take.

Normans on the edge and an edgy Normanist.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a new project at Lancaster called ‘The Norman Edge‘ and briefly commented on its first symposium. Unfortunately, I missed the second one in the summer due to a combination of circumstances, but did make it to the third one on ‘Colonial mentalities’ last week. Not only was this a very interesting collection of high quality papers, but it left me feeling reinvigorated after a long term. There are very few occasions as an historian when you feel part of something much bigger than your own research, but the Norman Edge is really fostering an idea of scholarly community, and what is more, inclusive of people at all stages of their careers from MA students right the way through to distinguished professorial types.

Papers in the offing

Both Reivers and I have been quiet on the blogging front of late as we have moved house. I, at least, have now become a person who gets excited about cookers – it must be middle age creeping up. In amongst all the chaos of moving, proposals for papers and books that I put in with great hope, partial hope and no hope at all, seem to have come back with positive responses, or at least noises which suggest future acceptance. So, for a change, a post on research (yay)!

Are students allergic to libraries?

A recent report on the BBC website reveals there has been a 22% long-term decline in visits by students to their university and college libraries. This equates to an annual fall of 3% apparently. Now as Reivers would confirm there are lies, damned lies and statistics, but does this study tell us anything?

When were the middle ages? Or why do we have them in the first place?

In a comment on my post about the library, Courgettelawn brought up the subject of periodisation in history. Periodisation, that is to say the division of chronological time into separate periods-classical, medieval, early modern and so on-is a handy way of dividing history into discrete sections often separated by significant events or movements, for example the sack of Rome or the renaissance

Or is it?

What’s 2+2 4?

In a previous post, gesta argued that academics in the humanities should be valued for their contributions to human understanding. Clearly I have a much easier job explaining why mathematicians and scientists should be valued, as we improve the lives of everybody through our work on technology and improvements in physics.

Excuse me whilst I kill myself laughing.