Moving on

As some of you may have heard by now, yesterday was my last day working at Eduserv. In a few weeks, I'll be taking up a post at Cambridge University Library, working on metadata for their Digital Library.

This feels like a fantastic opportunity, and I'm very excited about the move. I hope it will allow me to apply some of my existing knowledge and skills and also gain some experience in new areas - and to contribute to the development of a high quality resource. I very much enjoyed meeting the team there, and the library's digital collections are superb - as I think the set of materials available already show. It's not often I get to prepare for a job interview by listening to Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4 talking about Isaac Newton's (not always for the faint-hearted!) accounts of his experiments.

I'm sure it's no secret that as Eduserv's focus has changed the divergence from my own experience and interests has become more marked - probably starting right back with the demise of the Eduserv Foundation, but becoming particularly apparent over the last 12-18 months or so, with the strong shift of emphasis towards the provision of cloud services, and with the rest of my Research & Innovation Group colleagues now working pretty much exclusively in this area.

This move will also mark the end of a period of over 11 years working alongside Andy, first at UKOLN and then at Eduserv. We haven't worked closely together on a project for a while now - the last piece of work we did jointly was probably authoring the JISC RDTF/Discovery metadata guidelines. But on the occasions we did collaborate, I always valued and enjoyed the experience, and I like to think we complemented each other and made a good team.

I'll miss Andy's clear-sightedness and common sense approach - though I imagine I'll still be firing off late night emails saying, "OK, here's the thing: I'm a bit stuck here. I could take solution X, or I could take solution Y. What do you think?". I'm also very grateful for the support I've received for my work and ideas, from Andy, and also from the RIG team leader, Matt Johnson. I wish them and the rest of the team all the best with their future work.

I've had so much work to do over the last few weeks and have been working ridiculous (even by my standards!) hours. Sitting here at home looking out at a sunny spring morning in Bristol, I feel it's the first time in several weeks I've been able to catch my breath, and really start to look forward.

Andy and I haven't had a chance to discuss what this change means for this blog, but I dare say we will manage that in the next few days and something will appear here.

Meanwhile, I'm also trying to take this opportunity to reorganise various bits of my personal Web presence (like I need more to do when I have to tie up lots of things and organise a move across the country...). I'm not sure how that is all going to end up, but in the short term the best places to find me are probably on Twitter, identi.ca or Diaspora.

Comments

[Paul Walk]

All the best Pete! Very glad to know yor're staying in the 'sector'.

Cheers,

Paul

[Wilbert Kraan]

The new job sounds like an ideal match. All the best!

[Sarah Shreeves]

Best of luck in the new position! It sounds like a great match for you.

[Shaun Osborne]

well done Pete!
And welcome aboard at UoC :)

Scarily we're still using:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/pns/pndsdcap/
Just a flash-back...

cheers
Shaun

[Lorcan]

Pete .. just catching up with this, and although you are gone :-), best of luck. I turn up in Cambridge once a year (I am on a committee there) so hope to see you. Lorcan