For some reason my login seems to still work! Maybe Library I.T. can sort that or maybe it happens automatically at some point.

One week in and finally over the jet lag.

Lots of things work just the same as back there – LC classifications etc. Some of the books are even exactly the same.

A few different things:

Heat – Low today 33°C – High today 42° C
As you can imagine people spend most of their day in air conditioning (around 20°C)

Food – Lots of processed american rubbish, lots of european brand processed food and lots of amazing and yummy local and indian food.

Money – there is a ridiculous amount of it and millions of people chasing after it everywhere – Lots of things are supersized. Cars, buildings and some of the staff from Texas.

Library is small – about the size of one floor of EPS. About 10,000 print books. Printed serials (mostly popular magazines) are not bar-coded individually, issued in a barcoded folder and chucked out after 6 months. There are 500,000+ ebooks and an equally ridiculous number of databases and electronic journals – I think they/we (Texas A&M as a whole) spend $US10m+ a year on electronic resources.

The Library opens at the moment ramadan hours 7am – sunset. We are only allowed to work 6 hours during ramadan. Normally opens 7am – 7pm though the study area of it is open until midnight (used to be 24×7 but they just changed it) Students are about 60% Qatari, a number of the rest are arabs speaking english in heavily american accents to each other and often with US passports too. Plenty of students from everywhere else in the world too but mostly from nearby parts of Africa & Asia.

There are five of us on staff. One from California, one from Jordan, one from Sudan, one from Texas and me.

There are another four American universities on campus each focusing on other disciplines.

Apart from books we issue lots of leisure DVDs (family viewing only), iPads, eReaders and whole bunch of other bits and pieces i haven’t got the hang of yet. There are no security gates but then the door is right by the front desk.

Once I figure my way around most of my work will be with research staff. They seem to have millions for research – especially petrochemical and chemical engineering but also some pure science, mechanical and electrical and computer engineering.

Anyway better go and earn my Riyals

Ramadan Kareem!
adam (the guy who used to work there)