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Full Moon: Full Moon University
Readers of the first three Full Moons may not have realized that far from being free-standing froth about the mad behavior and unreasonable demands of library users, this column is solidly grounded in a prestigious academic library environment — the Full Moon University Library and Information Sector.
Tony McSeán, Elsevier's Director of Library Relations and erstwhile librarian, is advisor to the FMU.
The scholarly credentials of Full Moon University (FMU) need no introduction, being grounded on our founder’s vision that no one should be exempt from higher education. At FMU traditional barriers to academic life (literacy, numeracy, etc.) are swept away. The doors of scholarly life are flung wide to anyone able to reply to our familiar OUTSTANDING OPPORTUNITY email broadcasts, correctly answering up to one of our 25 multiple choice questions and attaching full details of someone’s bank account. Our recently endorsed Planned Sustained Progress initiative has the target of moving FMU into the top 99% of all the world’s universities within the next eight years.
So, as the northern hemisphere summer turns to ashes, FMULIS staff are putting aside the traditional summer diversions of the academic librarian — restoring unbound pamphlets to random order in their boxes, tucking booklist material into offsite storage, taking down all the signage, locking down USB ports on terminals and the rest. As the leaves turn brown and the new intake of students turns eau-de-nil, library staff activities move on to the traditional term-time tasks of making sure all the clocks run seven minutes fast,* starting large scale demolition and rebuilding work, replacing the reserve collection management module and taking all the reference specialists on week-long retreats.
It’s also the time when the good ideas emanating from last year’s brainstorming sessions are tested in the grim light of reality. In previous years the university’s public liability insurance has been tested to the full by unexpected hitches with reshelving trolleys designed to return automatically to the paraprofessional mess room once full, and by the brave but ultimately tragic fiasco of the self-directed reshelving machine. We have, then, learned hard lessons about the dangers of mixing amateur mechanical engineering with the children of lawyers.
For the 2006 attempt to win the Nobel Prize for Librarianship, FMU has gone out to see if we can learn lessons from the way young people study away from traditional disciplines and constraints of the library environment. It has become clear from these scientific observations that most students only work at full effectiveness when enveloped in a sound system playing music at more than 110 decibels. So, slaves as we are to evidence-based practice, from the start of the new academic year students using our study areas will find an environment especially tailored to their requirements. Most quick-reference bookshelves have been replaced by loudspeaker equipment purchased from the popular singing troupe Iron Maiden. Pre-acceptance tests (using volunteer system librarians in their 50s) have shown that the necessary sound levels can be comfortably (sic) exceeded. The only problem remaining is what music to play. It would be too easy, and of course against all accepted principles of collection management, to simply give students what they want. So we are seeking a mixed repertoire of library-and study-related songs. We’ve made a start, but even FMU’s cost-conscious schedule of 5 hours a day** leaves a lot of time to fill, and even the whole output of the Stax label and Lloyd Weber’s much loved Don’t Cry For Me Ranganathan, Juliet Turner’s On Short Loan Only, and Frank Zappa’s classic Library Card aren’t going to be enough for a whole term.
We are looking, then, for LC readers to please send in suggestions for study-enhancing melodies to rattle the windows and shake the walls of FMU’s undergraduate library. Small tokens of appreciation will be sent to all whose suggestions we print, and even if your suggestion does not make it into LC you will at least have the consolation of knowing that you have contributed to a notable professional innovation and, just maybe, helped bring our undergraduate drop-out rate down into the mid-to low 90 percents.
*For new entrants into the library profession: This may not seem a lot but over a 30-week academic year this can save you up to three and a half days' work.
**FMU thinks that user-centric planning has its place but ought not to become an obsession.
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