Guardienne Update

Awright, folks. I am back from a week and a half in Louisville for the 'res' part of my low-res MFA program. Funnily (or horribly) enough, I actually missed MPOW. It's a busy summer, with the projects we've got going on (which include developing podcasts, building a plan for our instruction program to break into upper level courses, collection development, etc.), Annual coming up in a few weeks, and the book chapters I need to get written. Factor in all of my June weekends out of town (I just returned from a trip to Lexington to see my best pal), and, well, let's just say I'm really looking forward to July.


Random news from the Guardienne's world: June 3rd was my birthday, and I felt absolutely loved between my Twitterpals' wellwishes and all of the people writing on my Facebook wall. An Internet Librarian 2008 proposal put together by Cindi and involving myriad Twitterpals has actually been picked up as a preconference for Monterey in October, so we'll be getting together virtually after Annual to plan that out, since our original PechaKucha format won't work for a half-day preconference. Over the past week and a half I've written two of the three book chapters I need to get done, and I have two days of research leave this week to deal with the monster chapter that's hanging over my head.


I've got some posts percolating in my head that I plan to get up on here this weekend, pertaining to what we can all learn from the Republican Party's presidential election strategies (no, really, I promise, there's some good stuff) and some thoughts on chasing the gold ring of tenure. I've also been pondering questions of leadership that Rudy brings up here, and may decide to blog my opinions for the world to see (once I double check to make sure they're kosher enough to not lose me my job). Just wanted to let you all know that the blog isn't dead, just on a mini hiatus while I put out some deadline fires. Hopefully I should have something up for you to chew on within the next few days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Impressions & Customer Service Failures

We all know how important first impressions are, right? It's sort of like how Anne McCaffrey's dragons "impress" on new dragonriders-to-be. (Yes, I'm feeling nostalgic with a new herd of freshmen on campus.) First impressions are essential, particularly when you're talking about freshmen, wet behind the ears, completely disoriented and overwhelmed by being at a state school for their first college experience, and stressed out by trying to find their classrooms and last-minute add/drops on their schedule. I usually don't think of them this way, because I'm not a fundraiser or in the alumni office, but the University at large should also think about the fact that these are the kids we hope will call this university 'home' even after they leave. (That could be my small liberal arts college experience shining through, though.) If nothing else, due to UTC's abysmal retention rates, you'd think the entire university would be bending over back...
Read more

Email Lists: A Dose of Common Sense

Let's chat, folks. I know there are tons of things in LibraryLand we could discuss, but for a moment, let's talk about e-mail lists. I know quite a few people (like Griffey ) who think that email lists are the (outdated) devil. I happen to like receiving things in email because I haven't yet figured how to acceptably integrate feedreaders into my life, and I prefer conversations via e-mail than via the comment section of blogs, whcih I never remember to go back and check after I've left some inflammatory comment. Anyway, we can discuss fuddy-duddies like myself and our love of the e-mail later. We need to chat about lists, though. If you've been on the NEWLIB list lately, you likely know why. Lists are good things, if only to keep yourself updated on conversations/arguments/discussion/resource lists that generally make the rounds when people query via email. Lists are very often archived somewhere for future reference, which is super-useful is you know that someo...
Read more

On the Great Myth of the Librarian Grays

Lately, there's been a lot of discussion (and bitching) about the promised graying/retirement within the library profession that was supposed to open up endless job opportunities for new librarians. The LITA-L email list, a recent American Libraries article , and a post by Peter Brantley calling for an overthrow by the young'uns have all been pretty popular topics of late. January 15, 2004, Rachel Singer Gordon published a piece in Library Journal titled "NextGen: Get Over the "Graying" Profession Hype" . I say again: this was 2004. It would appear no one took the advice, given that today - despite very obvious evidence to the contrary, American Libraries just printed an ill-advised article on recruiting undergrads to the profession , citing the graying of the profession as a reason for folks to sign up for library work. Jessamyn West, in her recent post "show us the numbers re: new librarian jobs" , calls for more than the ever-present empty a...
Read more