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!!
