Guardienne of the Tomes

6:45 - Alarm goes off. Otto the basset slinks up from against my knees puts his warmback against my chest, and lays his heavy (very heavy) head on my arm at my elbow. I obey the dog. Hit snooze until 8:00am- Groan, knowing this means I will not get my desired early start on the day. Un-groan, as my joints seem willing to move today for the first time in awhile. 9:00-9:15 - Get into the office. Check in with my day circ manager to make sure everything is on the level, sign timesheets and drop them off in the Admin office. Talk shoes with Anna, laugh at the meanface my boss is giving her monitor when she thinks no one can see her, hit up the supply closet for tape. 9:15-10:00 - Email triage. Among the important ones is one from the faculty president; as secretary I need to get the discussion board up for the full faculty to do the second reading of the proposed Bachelor of Integrated Studies degree. 10:00-10:30 - After email, into Blackboard to post the degree proposal and executive summ...

I am thrilled to announce that Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching , a collection of essays by talented women poets that I helped co-edit with Carol Smallwood and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, is ready for ordering from McFarland! (Amazon currently reads as out of stock, we're working on fixing that.) With a foreword by inimitable sonneteer and novelist Molly Peacock , and contributions from state poets laureate, Pushcart Prize nominees and winners, professors, workshop leaders, editors, and publishers, my hope is that this collection will have something for everyone. There are chapters for busy moms, chapters on using meter, chapters on publishing, blogging, promotion, journaling, contests, self-publishing, and more. You can see the entire table of contents here . I learned an incredible amount while working with Carol and Cynthia on this collection. I learned about the difficulties of soliciting work by email only (and have slightly more sympathy for editors w...

The libraryverse is a-twitter with talk of the town hall meeting about Harvard University Library's massive re-org project. Chris Bourg collected all of the commentary, sifting fact from fiction from hyperbole when #hlth was fresh (a #hlth search in Twitter will garner you lots of commentary). Tom Bruno's blog post on the facts of the meeting he attended is another must-read. Go see them now before continuing with this. It's necessary background info. I'll wait. Reorganizations can be a scary business. I was involved in a minor organization at an ARL, my last place of work. It was teeny compared to the scale of the project Harvard is taking on. But know this: the reactions, from librarians and staff, were eerily similar. Everyone wanted to know, at the very least: (1) Exactly what positions were being eliminated (2) What would happen to the folks in the eliminated position (3) How the reorg would affect everyone else in terms of reporting/employment/etc (4) When we wo...

Of the 98 books I remembered to log as read in 2011, the breakdown is as follows: 5 horror 5 paranormal romance 11 nonfiction 5 short story 6 scifi 14 fantasy 1 memoir 3 mystery 21 paranormal/urban fantasy 6 thriller 5 YA fantasy 5 poetry 1 parody Definitely heavy on the braincandy reading; most of the nonfiction were education and LIS books related to my coursework and research, with a few essay collections and books on writing thrown in. favorites included Kevin Wilson's short story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth , discovering Cathrynne M. Valente, Peter V. Brett and Scott Sigler as new-to-me fiction writers (fantasy, fantasy and sci-fi/thriller, respectively), and Karen Marie Moning's Fever series in the paranormal/urban fantasy genre. The lowest points were Meyer's Twilight series and Janine Cross's Dragon Temple Saga series, whcih I would heartily recommend steering clear of. For 2012 I'd like to make sure I get a lot more poetry in (I have ...