Guardienne of the Tomes

I received an email from a colleague who keeps us all reminded of faculty development opportunities. One of the things she regularly emails about are the regular weekly faculty writing groups that have been established--a way for faculty to set aside time to write alongside colleagues. My personal favorite is the Friday morning silent writing group that history professor and fabulous colleague Dr. Robin Mitchell set up--no discussion, no talking, just a handful of us around the table, plugged in and surrounded by our notes, clattering away at keyboards. It's my preferred way of group writing. Some of the other groups do regular shares or colleague critiques. I find that what I need most is really just the set-aside block of time where I can focus and dive deep for three or four hours. There's no good way to make that happen in my office with the myriad distractions, and I don't like writing from home because pajamas, dog, tv, bed, couch--you get the idea. I need something w...

How I say BOOM to this day: 1. Two surprise student consults this morning because their professors told them to come see me specifically. 2. A professor just called in an emergency status, needs some research to support a major NIH grant, thought immediately of me. Yep, I can help with that. Due Thursday? No problem. 3. Finished and submitted a complicated "revise & resubmit" research article to one of the top journals in my field. 4. Chatted with a friend about researching grants for her business idea. 5. Made comments on a group report submitted by one of the groups of students in my experiential learning social justice class. 6. Had a phone call to clear up some things about the library leadership book manuscript. 7. Rejoined the local CSA - 12 biweekly deliveries of a giant box of farm fresh veggies. Back onto the Autoimmune Protocol. 8. Submitted a poetry book manuscript to a press 9. Already located some good sources for #2 - sent 5 articles to the faculty member 1...

Things on my librarian brain: Our library team is working on our MOU (Memo of Understanding) in response to the program review we recently had (where outside folks come in and evaluate us). [Side note: in my previous life as an Access Services manager, an MOU was the first step in the disciplinary process of an employee. Not so with this MOU, this is just a normal response with a 2 and 5 year plan to address each item where needs were noted.] Sort of related to the above, the 2015 ACRL Immersion Program has begun! Though I won't head to Seattle until the beginning of August, the Moodle course is up and running, our readings and pre-assignments have been posted. I'm hoping to leverage the Immersion program to inform how we want our information literacy program to evolve for a growing campus with semistatic resources. A "freemium " model of peer-review, where authors could pay for faster review of their articles, was pretty much unanimously shot down as privileg...