After eight years I'm leaving Job 1

Update 4 Jan 2016
Not that surprisingly, three years after making the team redundant they are now looking for a part-time Information Officer ;)

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Sadly the entire Library and Information Team, where I've worked for the last eight years, is being made redundant and our functions will be taken on by others in the organisation. No hard feelings and all that, but I can't help but be a little bit sad as I have immensely enjoyed (and been rather good at, even if I do say so myself) answering the more obscure scientific questions about diabetes from allcomers, among other rewarding tasks.

These queries came from members of the public, healthcare professionals, researchers, news media (via our Press team), school pupils and students in higher education as well as colleagues in other teams. I and my team-mates answered a huge range of enquiries over the years including questions on medication interactions and insulin allergies as well as helping people find and make sense of statistical information to help them in commissioning services.

One of the things I did quite recently, more for myself than anyone else, is create this ad hoc database of resources for diabetes statistics. It's one part capturing facts, one part capturing the route to finding those facts when the information changes year on year. What with the Office for National Statistics moving all their pages around I thought it best to record my 'footsteps' in trying to find a piece of information.

Diabetes Statistics
https://sites.google.com/site/diabetesstatistics/

Any errors in this database are solely mine (I am the only one who can edit this!) and not my employer or colleagues! Use it with caution... and don't rely on anything.

I hope that people with diabetes will continue to find answers to the questions that bug them and am a bit sad that it's not me answering them. I suspect I will turn into a bit of a sad case trawling the internet looking for questions about diabetes to answer ;) I will possibly blog a bit more about the topic of diabetes too (probably at http://sciencediabetes.posterous.com but here too) - I've not really felt comfortable saying too much about it in case it looks like I'm a spokesperson!

In terms of 'what next?' I shall be working more days at Job 2 so shan't starve, and I'm on gardening leave for two months after next Friday so am still part of the organisation until the end of June.

I thought you might enjoy the secret logo I created for the team back when we were known as the Science Information Team. It was 'drawn' by me in 2003 using the free mspaint (paint.exe) software, which I still use on almost a daily basis.

Ye Olde SIT Logo, 2003 by me.

We used to be the SIT: Science Information Team (our most recent incarnation was as the LIT: Library and Information team). On the left is a sub-Fischer projection of glucose in the 'chair' conformation (it can also form a boat-shape) - I think you can see what I did there with the subtle reference to 'sit' and 'chair'... the letter i was taken from the old alphabetic Info Centre on our website.