Day Four and the fun has continued.

Joan has learned how to deal with us; the unruly group we are! But today it was a great surprise to see our tea and coffee in attractive containers. Thanks Joan.
And then, we were treated to a pizza lunch at the Dept of Information Science in the IT Dept. These unexpected treats are very welcome.

 Erin and Werner discussed cloud services issues with the group. It was a great session; very inciteful. I love using Zotero so was quite excited that were going to be working with it. As it turned out, technology slowed down the whole session and together with the Google Group/DropBox exercise, we skimmed the surface of Zotero, which was quite disappointing. I was hoping to learn more about this software.

 We worked in groups for this session which was useful at first as it gave us a chance to work through things together. However, as one person (Krishni) had to invite the group members to the Group posting in which w had to download the articles, I feel particularly uncomfortable with the fact that the lack of time to complete the exercise, now lies solely with Krishni. In addition, we don't get to do the exercise ourselves.

 Dr Pienaar and Dr Henning presented an afternoon of innovation and ICT in libraries. I can't wait to explore some of the platforms and software they spoke about. The 'balance scorecard' group exercise was interesting, even though we did not complete it on time. It was fun, however, for the group to reach a consensus about MakerSpaces; diverse group dynamics can be very enlightening!
Our team did present a strategy that, given time and the right motivation, can be achieved in our own libraries and countries.

 As someone said today, it was a day filled with wonderful ideas and technologies, but a frustrating one because no one really seemed to have the time to get to grips with any of the technologies and activities. This is a huge pity.

We arrived in Pretoria on Sunday 25th May 2014, filled with anticipation for the wonderful opportunity that i have applied for, and was granted. I am fully aware that I am also representing my institution, Rhodes University. I am very pleased to be participating in this programme with my colleague Vuyo Gontshi.

We met Carren Mushi who is from University of Dodoma which is a public university in central Tanzania. Meeting librarians from other African countries was one of the reasons I was attracted to this programme.
Our 'Setting the Context' discussions on the first day helped in orientating ourselves at University of Pretoria, and get to know the faces (not yet all the names) of fellow participants. Pretty exciting!!!

 Carren and I meeting each other     It was a great surprise to hear
at the Welcome Dinner                   Archie Dick speak about                                                             África Rising'; firstly I heard Archie speak at the Research Libraries Academy in Mont Fleur, and secondly, I have been thinking about how to encourage our own RU research more visible (starting with our RU Repository).

Prof Theo Bothma welcomes participants.

Prof Bothma spoke about technologies and their place in our academic libraries. By placing these technologies in the context of our programme, we are definitely in the right place to learn and discuss issues that are affecting us all in our respective libraries.

At the same time, Prof outlined the details of our Group assignments. I have to say that this has unnerved me because it involves teamwork with colleagues from other countries who have varying experiences, infrastructure and library support. While this is a very exciting prospect,

 it is also a huge task to ensure that all our individual experiences and policies are collated into one report. I am very excited about our Group 4 project title; this feeds directly into a research project I have in mind for my Honours course work with UKZN. Some groups met immediately after the announcement as seen by Group 1 (left picture).

 Soon after tea, we were given a great campus tour led by Nyasha and Amelia. They were very patient with all the photographs and casual stroll throughout the tour. UP is a very beautiful campus, and i found the stories behind the buildings to be quite intriguing.

After the campus tour we moved into a new venue, the training Room. It's a wonderful training facility. The Library, by the way, is a lovely space and one can see students feeling very comfortable in this space.

We were given workshops surrounding FaceBook, the Google Suite (of which this blogger is one), Academia/Researchgate, Twitter, LinkedIn. These are all social media that I am either using on a daily basis, or have experimented with so I found it exciting to learn different features surrounding each of them. I like the idea of the homework for most of these because it allows you time to play with them at home (hotel) which gives you an idea of where you would use it to support the research process at Rhodes.

Training Room Workshops.

Our hotel accommodation is quite comfortable. I have not had any bad experience but listening to colleagues, it has been quite a bit of confusion about apartment self-catering kits (where there have not been enough in stock by the hotel), and that our international students have different cullinary tastes to my own, and the smells in the passage are most distracting!! I have also noticed these same students have been more affected by the delay in stipend payment that the South African students.
So in essence this wraps up the first three days of the programme. In between, there has been the socialising and networking with colleagues on the campus, at tea, and back at the hotel. Our Group 4 held our first meeting last night at the lounge area in the hotel ; this made for a comfortable space for greeting each other, and to discuss our topic as well as the way forward. We meet next Monday to collate our findings!!