A Long Way from Home

Extract

Many years ago, not long after I first started work in an academic library in Northern New South Wales, I had a conversation with a colleague about how exciting it would be to work in ‘an old, traditional university like Oxford’ in what seemed from a distance, a ‘real university’ as opposed to the smallish modern one I was currently employed in. This vague musing on a quiet afternoon during the stifling build up of a regular afternoon tropical storm was strangely prophetic. In between assisting individual students with their research into the relationship between aliens and the Internet (I'm not joking), I was dreaming about the musty old collections, academic robes, traditions and reading rooms which reeked of intellectual strain and rigour. Well, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for!