Library issues

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

Unfortunately Jenny and I have had a bit of a falling out over certain issues to do with the library. You may remember that Mike Rowe persuaded me to take over the departmental library link role from Patrick Murray. Jenny has been trying to get me to sit down with her and sort out the journal subscriptions and book orders but what with exam and coursework marking, the Hothouse away day and other things we didn't get round to it until the day before yesterday.

Because of the rise in journal subscription prices we have to make some cutbacks. The budget has been increased a bit but not by enough to preserve all the current subscriptions, let alone to add in some others on our wishlist. The added problem is that quite a few of our journals are now ordered through an intermediary rather than directly from the publishers, and what you get is a bundle of journals. You get this too with the big publishers like Elsevier. So you can't just take one or two less useful journals out of the package and get the cost down. In the end it all you can do is to remove some independently published journals, which doesn't have a big impact on the budget but does make it harder for us to access some potential interesting papers.

One thing that occurred to me is that while we do wish to refer students to papers in quite a few journals, there are some others that are really only looked at by members of staff in their research. I wonder really whether these journals should be paid for out of our library budget which is really supposed to support our teaching. It is possible these days to find out who is looking at the various journals as they are now nearly all online, so it would be feasible to identify who is reading what and ask researchers to find the funds to support the more specialist ones. I will need to talk to Mike Rowe about that.

So, after trimming a few journals from the subscription list it means that the share of the library budget going to journals still has to rise, leaving less money for new books. Jenny did point out that we do now have a huge collection of ebooks available and that quite a few of these were free. Bookboon, for example, has quite a good economics and finance section, including a couple of econometrics texts.

The problem with Jenny arose when she said that I needed to take a look at the books that the library wants to withdraw from the collection. Apparently, due to some algorithm that contributes to the university league tables, the proportion of books in the library collection that is less than ten years old has a positive effect on the league table score. Ideally, of course, this ratio would be increased by buying new books. But where this can't be done the only way to make the ratio bigger is to "retire" old books. When I looked at the big pile of books that had been set aside I was horrified. There were some absolute classic texts in there like Samuelson's Foundations and Georgescu-Roegen's book on entropy and the economic process. Surely we shouldn't be getting rid of these books? However, Jenny pointed out to me that neither of these books has been borrowed from the library in the last five years. And the library also needs space for student work areas so that was another reason to clear away some of the bookshelves.

I wondered if these books couldn't be put into a separate departmental library so that we could at least retain access to them when we needed them (assuming that we could find some space for it in our Business School building). But Jenny said that would be impossible. The university had agreed that there could be no separate departmental or faculty libraries, only the central one.

So in the end I gathered up several boxes of old books, including old editions of some texts still currently being used (it is always interesting to see how authors have adapted their books in the different editions published). Both my office at work and my work room at home are now overflowing with books - lovely for me but I guess I must also offer them to colleagues who might want them. I will prepare a list for them to look at.

Email row

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

There has been a bit of a row here today after rumours started circulating that the Dean, Professor Paige Turner, had asked the IT section to search through the email accounts of some Business School staff and students. In a story that has echoes of what happened at Harvard University earlier in the year, reports had reached her that some staff were looking into accusations that final year students had helped some level two students with their coursework in return for money.

Of course all the students concerned denied that this was happening and the plagiarism detection software was unable to show any similarities between the second year students' work and that of any coursework produced by the third year students when they were second years. However it was rumored that Professor Turner was sufficiently concerned about this to request the Head of IT to examine student email accounts to see what email contact there was between level two and level three students. The Head of IT Services, Arthur Milner, said that his department would never look at any staff or student email correspondence, except perhaps if requested to by the police in connection with a criminal investigation. What some people noticed though was that, although this statement said that IT services wouldn't look inside an email message, it didn't rule out reporting information about who had been emailing whom, and what the subject line might suggest.

One or two third year students that I spoke to said that you couldn't rule out third students giving help and advice to second year students. Some had girlfriends in the year below them and they were sure to provide some assistance. But it would be unlikely that anyone offering more than this would leave an electronic trail that could be picked up. Did the Dean really think that they would be that stupid?

What we have noticed, though, is that this year's second year coursework marks are quite a bit better than last year's. Meanwhile the Dean has furiously denied the allegations that she did anything other than ask Heads of Department to look into the potential cheating problem. I wonder if she sent any emails about this?

Miss USE

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

The university is all abuzz today after last night's local TV news story about the Miss USE beauty contest that the Students Union is running. The Vice Chancellor, Victor Crispin, said that of course he couldn't and wouldn't interfere with Student Union matters, but he urged the Student Union officers to remember the diverse backgrounds and cultures of USE students, with many students coming here from countries where the notion of young women parading about with little in the way of clothing was not just distasteful but abhorrent.

Professor Ruth Russell from the English Department was interviewed and she said that the young women who were taking part were betraying the Feminist Movement. She asked them to consider the struggle for women's rights that was still not over. But Pippa Johnston, who is one of the people involved in organising the Miss USE competition, said that the whole thing was empowering for women, not degrading. Johnston, who is apparently also quite well know internationally for her involvement with Femen, a worldwide movement against patriarchy, said that women's bodies were their own and that they were entitled to exploit their physical features as well as their intellectual ones. She said that she was proud that naked and semi-naked women were not just there on the cover of Playboy and similar magazines. "After all, she said, "it is not as if we are prostitutes".

Chatting with some of my students I got a slightly different take. One of them said that he had never seen the Student Union so full as it was on the night of the first elimination event from which the ten finalists were selected. And it would be even more packed next Thursday for the Final. The Student Union must be making a huge amount of money from the entrance fees and the bar profits. One of my female tutees said she had no problem with the event, although she wouldn't want to take part herself. She also said why couldn't there be a male equivalent event called perhaps Mister USE. There were some very fit young men at USE and it would be great to see them with their shirts off! Another added that most weekends you could see female students going along to the Carnage events with not much more clothing than the Miss USE contestants would be wearing.

Now I think of it I do remember coming across a bunch of half-dressed and fully drunk young students on the streets of the city when I was going home from the theatre and being really shocked at their behaviour. No wonder they couldn't get up in time to come to classes the next day.

Not this year

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

Oh well, Watford lost to Crystal Palace in the Championship Play Off Final yesterday. So it will be the Championship again for them next season. It has to be said that Ian Holloway got the tactics right yesterday and on balance Palace were the better team on the day. Too many Watford players were below par - Deeney, Cassetti and Chabolah in particular. Doyley was immense though and maybe if he had been marking Zaha from the start things would have been different. Gus texted me after the game to say that he was disappointed, not so much that Watford lost, but that they didn't really get into the game until it was too late. It was a clear penalty - no complaints about that either - and Almunia nearly got to it. He had a good game too, keeping the 'Orns in the match with several crisp saves. Gus says he might work from home today as he is exhausted from all the tension yesterday.

I watched the match in the pub with Jack, Richard and the others. There were a few Palace fans there too so it got a bit noisy at times. I wonder how Palace will get on in the Premier league. Without Zaha I can't see them making a big impression. I think Watford would probably have done better with their style of play but we will never know. Next season will be more difficult for them as expectations are high and other teams have had time to work out how to play them, as Crystal Palace have shown.

It is school half-term this week and hardly anyone is in the university today. I am sat here alone in the cafeteria, although Bubbles will be in at lunchtime so I can have another chat with her about the football. Maybe I will go home after that too, although it is raining so I won't be able to sit on the patio and read. At least I have got all my marking done now.

Hornets!

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

Today Watford meet Crystal Palace at Wembley in the Championship Play-Off final to see which of those teams will be in the Premier League next season. My good friend and mentor, Gus Johns, is a fanatical Watford supporter and will be at Wembley cheering on the Hornets, or the 'Orns as he usually calls them. Everyone in the department will be hoping they can do it for him. Watford have been criticised, especially by Palace manager Ian Holloway, for their use of so many loan players from Udinese and Ganada, the two other clubs owned by the Pozzo family. But, apart from Middlesbrough, they have had more home grown players in their squad this season than any other Championship team. The Watford Academy has produced many excellent players over the years and that was one of the things that attracted the Pozzo family to the club. Anyway, along with Jenny, Richard, Bubbles and Lindsay, and Jack and Phoebe I shall be at the pub tomorrow to watch the game on Sky, cheering on the 'Orns.

Gus took his wife Heather to the Chelsea Flower Show on Friday. I know very little about flowers but I watched the programme about it on BBC2 on Saturday night in the hope that I might see Gus and Heather. Of course the chance of them being on screen was very small and I didn't spot them. Still, it was interesting and maybe Molly is right that I am getting more English by the day. I didn't go back to Greece for Easter like the other two Greeks in the department, I have an English girlfriend, I have become interested in gardening and cricket and going to the pub to watch football. I am even getting to like Fullers' beer - although I still love Mythos!

Enjoy the Bank Holiday!

Extremism on campus

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

All staff and students at USE had an email message yesterday from the Vice Chancellor, Victor Crispin, about religious and political extremism.

Crispin said that in the light of recent events such as the Boston bombing and the savage killing of a British soldier in Woolwich on Wednesday, it was important that we all consider how best to balance the right to freedom of speech (which was particularly important at a university) with the need to avoid all types of religious and political extremism on campus. He had held meetings with student union officers and representatives of the teaching unions to agree some guidelines that were now up on the university intranet.

In line with NUS policy some organisations are banned from the university campus, most notably the British National Party (BNP) and Hizbut-Tahrir (HuT), an extreme Islamic group. Some recent stories in the media had focused on alleged attempts by Islamic students to force gender segregation in lectures or other meetings on university campuses. UCL had banned the Islamic Education and Research Agency (iERA) after it had enforced gender segregation, with women made to sit at the back of the room, at an event in March called "Islam or Atheism: What makes more sense?". Crispin said that there was no evidence that enforced gender segregation had been attempted at any meetings at USE.

Crispin drew our attention to a new website that had been launched this week at a Universities UK conference in London. It could be found at http://www.safecampuscommunities.ac.uk/. The site provide information and a range of resources that could help with such issues as external speaker protocols, effective community and police engagement and interfaith relationships on campus. He also recommended a website belonging to the Information Network on Religious Movements at www.inform.ac/ which had produced a leaflet for University Chaplains and student union officers.

Crispin went on to say that he wasn't asking staff or students to spy on other members of the university. However, if they had concerns that certain individuals might have been radicalised, or that groups or societies (not just Islamic ones) were fostering hatred against people on the grounds of religion or sexual orientation, they should let him know immediately. He reminded us that we have links with all three armed services at the university with some students sponsored for their studies and funded research activity that was supported by the MoD.

Not so hothouse research

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

From a Faculty perspective the Hothouse research day was not really a success. Only about twenty people turned up. There were just six from our department: me, Mike, Gus, Tony, Jack and Sian. Richard, along with many people from other departments, said that he had far too much marking still to do and he couldn't spare the time. Whoever thought that arranging such a research day in the middle of the exam period was obviously not doing any teaching. Similar complaints had been made from people in other departments. Others said that they just hadn't had time to get set up for the day with possible topics and collaborators for their research. Only one person from the accounting department came to the session. Gus told me afterwards that Mike was quite happy since he would be able to point this out to the Dean, stressing how engaged our department has been with her plans, compared with other parts of the faculty.

Geoff Baxter was there though, and so I was personally able to satisfy Mike, Tony and the Dean that I had found a potential research topic to work on with someone in another department. Geoff had been in touch with his contact at Waitrose and the initial response had been that the company might be willing to sponsor a study of English wine, provided they could also make use of it in their weekend magazine and their advertising. Geoff said that we would need to put together a formal proposal that would be considered by Head Office. It was likely that we would also be asked to produce a paper on a related topic, namely wine tourism. This would be the main source of material for Waitrose's marketing group. In many other wine producing countries wine tourism is big business. One only has to think of what happens in different parts of France, especially the Rhone valley. You can see it too in the Nappa Valley in the US or in the Western Cape in South Africa. That side of things was relatively undeveloped in the UK and Geoff wondered if we might bring someone in from the marketing subject group to help on that. He had found a paper on developing wine tourism in England in the 2008 Journal of Vacation Marketing but he reckoned there was now scope for an update, perhaps looking at some other countries for comparative purposes.

Geoff thought there might also be scope for a paper on the development of the online wine business, both through supermarkets and from other suppliers such as Laithwaites and the Naked Wine company. A number of newspapers, such as the Times, the Telegraph and the Guardian also had reader offers for cases of wine. Another development which we might look at is the growing influence of China in wine production, consumption and vineyard ownership. Geoff said that China is now the fourth largest export market for burgundy behind Japan, Britain and the US.He had also seen a report that in 2011 Chinese buyers had bought 21 vineyards and 23 Chateaux in Bordeaux alone.

I have also been looking at recent contributions to the literature on hedonic price models. One issue which we would need to take on board would be the potential simultaneous equation bias of any single equation models that include jointly dependent variables such as quality and reputation. Recent papers have used Two Stage Least Squares rather than simple single equation Ordinary Least Squares to estimate the models.

So, we spent the rest of the time at the hothouse session putting together a bid for Waitrose to look at, confining ourselves now to wine tourism and hedonic price models. This research could be a lot of fun!