Guardienne of the Tomes

The Friday of a long week, where I was ill and out of the office on Monday, taught some advanced research classes, and had more than my usual in research appointments. Aside from Monday, it was a bang-up week. A graduate level Education class has a rowdy and fun instruction session Tuesday night, and actively interested students populated the upper-level undergraduate History instruction session on Wednesday afternoon, despite the classroom being near-85 degrees. Yesterday's research appointment showed up on time, and left feeling empowered to find what she needed. Today's research appointment for a student studying linguistics went beyond well, fleshing out research strategies for two different research papers. Five minutes ago, the Political Science department just called to ask if I would spend some time with each of their candidates to talk about library services and resources. (I did this for them in their last search, and apparently got good reviews. Hooray for successful...

I've been working lately to redistribute my time to better fit my goals. This includes accounting for time for swimming and physical therapy (good for my joints), time for cooking (I feel much better having started a new restrictive diet), time for funning with my husband and hounds (good for my mental health and love life), time for good sleep, time for keeping up with the library instruction and pedagogical perspectives world now that I'm teaching again, and time for hobbies, which were the first things I dropped when time became scarce. This commitment to balance has had an interesting (but probably not surprising) effect: I engage in fewer activities, but I believe I do them to a better quality. (Transitioning to fewer but higher-quality activities is something my colleagues and friends have advocated for a few years now, I'm just a stubborn ass who refused to think I couldn't do-and-have everything I wanted. So, hat tip to those who are wiser, and a double-tip to ...

I am blessed beyond belief. I have a husband who is a veritable unicorn, family that love me, friends who support me, a good job, a good education. So why am I always bitching? I've been listening more this year. To birds, water, the wind outside the car on the interstate. To my husband's voice, my friends enjoying their new children, the assorted gurgles, snorts, yelps and barks that make up basset hound communiques. To myself. I found myself complaining a lot. Some of it was general life-stuff that passes quickly - traffic, costs, a run in my tights, a dog-stomped toe, rotten salad in the fridge. Some of it stems from larger sources: work, finances, futurestuffs. Being chronically ill means a near-daily inventory of aches, pains, and difficulties so that I can properly report developments and improvements to the docs. There was a lot of complaining. I am also the sort of person for whom the immediate rage/rant response comes naturally, with thoughtful parsing of situations...

As noted in my previous post, I will join the library folks at CSU Channel Islands as an instruction & reference librarian in July. Since I've been asked about the job search by various folks through DMs, PMs, and IMs, I thought I'd throw some information out into the internet for those who are interested. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and I'll answer as I can. (I wasn't quite brave enough to Open Access Job Hunt while it was in-process.) Let me preface all of this information with two things: (1) I was incredibly, incredibly lucky and I know it. This may not be what the job hunt looks like for everyone, I am relating my own experience. YMMV, and widely. (2) See (1). What & Where Between 7/15/13 and 9/24/13, during evenings and weekends, I submitted 46 job applications. All but four of those were for academic reference and/or instruction positions (those four were for 9-month teaching faculty positions in Education and LIS departments, known ...

Remember that post where I mentioned that I wanted to move back to instruction work ? Well, it looks like I will have that opportunity. As of July 1, 2014, I'll be an instruction and reference librarian on the tenure track with the team at the CSU Channel Islands Broome Library. Let there be confetti and chair-dancing! More exciting news: due to the ongoing UTC Library re-org, I will be joining the Instruction and Reference department here, and will be able to contribute in that capacity at UTC until the move in late June. I've desperately missed the classroom and reference work, so I'm thrilled to move into a more hands-on-instruction role. Some brief notes about the experience at CI, which was vastly different than the other interviews (which followed standard academic scheduling): CSU:CI had a very unique interview process. They bring every candidate for a faculty position to campus on one of two weekends, which means you get to mill about and talk to candidat...

What excites you about librarianship? Most of the readers of this blog are fellow librarians. Most of the librarians I know do the job for the love of it. In conversations I've had in hallways, at conferences, near firepits, by instant message and phone calls I've learned that we love libraries, the idea of libraries, the ideal of information access and transparency to help people make better decisions, to create a more informed citizenry. We love service, knowing that our work contributes to improved lives, improved decision-making, to degree completions and lifelong learning. We love curating information to make sure future users will be able to find and use it, we love advocating for resources that serve our communities. We love that each day is different, that our work tracks hand in hand with technology changes and the march into the future. We love our users, and their oddities, curiosities, we love being able to reduce their stress levels, educate them so they can be ...

While I have been doing water aerobics per doctor's orders for the rheumatoid arthritis/spondylitis issue, I've been wanting to pick up swimming as a sport. Moving in the water is much easier than the impact on my joints of working out in open air. The pool is also a place where (despite having to be in a swimsuit) I'm far more comfortable than the weightlifting or aerobic/floor exercise areas, where I feel like a ridiculous impostor and completely out of my depth. I grew up on Long Island, and spent most of my childhood underwater in the Atlantic or in our huge pool at home. Water I can do. Water I know. I may be chunkier than some others in a Speedo, but all I need for this sport is to show up. I don't need to be buff to even begin thinking about participating. I also like that it's an individual thing; I can compete with myself but not feel like a loser for not being as good as, say, Meaghen Harris , my sister and accomplished triathlete. (See her blog for real...

Fall semester is here! We started off with a bang, and the Library was packed on Monday and Tuesday. Things have slowed down enough to allow us to breathe between to-dos (or pee; Monday and Tuesday that wasn't a guarantee at all), so I thought I'd pop in with an update. We've hired the entirety of our Work Study student allocation; I believe the final tally is 28 new student members of the Library team (and that's only the Work Study folks!). The Library is in the throes of training them up and putting them to work on our service desks, in our stacks, on our scanners, and everywhere else we have work to do. In Access Services, we've been running down two positions for a few months, I'm thrilled to report that we've hired an Evening Circulation Specialist, Mr. Elliott, and that our interviews for the Day Circ Supervisor position will be completed this week. *does the happy dance to appease the gods of staffing* In the past two months we've also acquir...

While I'm sure this isn't a topic Andy meant when he wrote his recent blog post about wanting to see more librarian writing on issues of import , reading his blog did kick me in the pants a bit, because I've been sitting on a handful of drafts that I couldn't bring myself to hit "Publish" on. I hesitate for various reasons - some of the posts are too close to home, and it's hard to tell what's appropriate to discuss and what's not. For some, I need some time to let things settle so I don't publish something in the heat of the moment. Other times, folks like Iris Jastram have simply done the topic justice and there's no need for me to serve my readers leftovers. Sometimes I hesitate because I wonder if it's something that's more personal than librarianship-oriented, or because I know it throws a wrench into any future job hunts. This is one of those, and it goes into being a professional with a chronic illness. I've spent...

I did it again. I forgot. I forgot I was less-than. Texas Republicans reminded me. I don't consider myself disadvantaged. I'm white, which insulates me from all manner of discrimination and prejudice. My parents didn't divorce until I was in my early 20s, giving me and my siblings a stable home, where we were queried on the status of our homework nightly, fed three squares a day, and generally grew up healthy. We weren't rich (though many think that those of us who lived on Long Island must be Hamptons kids - not so) - Dad often had to travel out of state for work, leaving Mom to deal with three relatively well-behaved but still energetic kidlets. Though my parents never went to college, my siblings and I all hold graduate degrees and, considering the state of the economy, are doing well for ourselves. My brother is an accountant, my sister is a sponsored and internationally-competitive triathlete, I'm a faculty librarian. I have been lucky in many, many ways. My...

Frustrated with some data and fed up with my own inability to locate an appropriate statistical technique, I finally posted to Facebook in the hopes that a friend would commiserate with me: "Bending my brain around ILL stats and thinking about exploratory factor analysis with categorical variables, despite the issues with it. Desperately missing [my old group of Emory PoliSci nerdbuddies and profs who were excellent at stats] and brainstorming these sorts of things." Five seconds later, the prof I had tagged in the post replied, "Three words: polychoric correlation matrix." And I had four distinct reactions in rapid succession. They were as follows: First reaction : sarcasm. Well OF COURSE polychoric correlation matrix, duh. Who WOULDN'T know that? Certainly not I. Pshaw. Second reaction : confirmatory exploration. A quick Google search of that conglomeration of words, a quick scan of the Wikipedia description , and yep, this is much closer to what I ne...

After an hour and a half of nerve-wracking discussion with my comps committee last Thursday, doctoral comps went swimmingly, I was given a pass, and I am proud to announce that I'm now a doctoral candidate for the EdD in Learning and Leadership here at UTC! There are four members of my doctoral committee, all have committed and now I just need to get them to sign the requisite Graduate School form. Dr. Ted Miller, my advisor for the past two years, has agreed to serve as my chair; Dr. David Rausch who coordinates the EdD program and specializes in leadership and organizational effectiveness theory is serving, Dr. Pamala Carter is serving as my methodologist, and Maureen Sullivan who serves as professor of practice and current ALA President is serving as my LIS subject expert. I have to get everyone's signatures on a graduate school form to make it Officially Official And now, I'm working on drafting the dissertation prospectus and proposal, and am hoping to clear bot...

I'm about a day behind myself on all the due dates I'm facing, but since I'm tired, and my mind is racing so badly I'm not very productive, I thought I'd blog a bit. This Thursday I have my comprehensive assessment for my doctorate. I've been working on the EdD in Learning and Leadership at UTC since Fall 2010. I'm in my last semester of coursework this summer (my courses finish the first week in August - two weeks!) And in our last semester, we also register for a "dissertation seminar," which is not actually a seminar at all, but a preparation for comps. Our version of comps is a bit different than some other doctoral programs that I'm familiar with. Instead of either receiving research paper prompts in our major and minor fields, or being grilled by a committee on a number of books off of a reading list. Instead, our comps (usually short for "comprehensive exams" or "comprehensive assessment") focus on the seven comp...

UTC's Lupton Library is moving forward with our transition to OCLC's Webscale Management Service. This is a transition we've been working on for two years as we've kicked the tires on the new service, asked for additional development and functionality out of the brand-new system, and tested it to within an inch of its (and our) life. Our ILS administrator, web guru and all around data-mogul-of-awesomeness Andrea Schurr has moved on to bigger and better things and now works for OCLC, but (thank the gods) is doing our data migration for us. I can't express how big a boon this is, especially since this is her third (?) time doing the data load, so she's an expert at it. No one else knows our data so intimately. Having Andrea with us for this massive move is something we are all grateful for. Andrea was also our former Head of Access Services before UTC hired me back, so having her upstairs in IT has been a huge help to me in terms of helping me figure out what ...

If you haven't yet read Nobel-Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow , get a copy and read it. Read it three times - it's dense enough, though written to be understandable for the average non-economist. For any academic librarian, educator, or anyone else interested in decision-making, critical thinking, and flaws in logic that people employ, it's an excellent book. I haven't even finished it yet (I'm about halfway through) so you won't get the full review until later, but go buy this book - it will change your life. It will cause you to reassess your own reactions to episodes in daily life and professional practice.

After returning from Computers in Libraries 2012 (another successful year in DC) full of energy and ideas, I slammed immediately back into end-of-semester madness, and as we finish finals this week, our library enters the madness of once again preparing for an ILS migration. If all goes well in terms of the next release and functionality testing, we'll make the permanent move OCLC's WorldShare Management System and WorldCat Local this summer. And there's that little project of the new building that is coming along and set to open next summer, which will also have an impact on our activities this summer. And I managed to close out this semester, so this summer also brings with it my last 3 classes in the EdD program before I comp and move onto dissertation. In any case, posts to expect in the next week or six: - Brief recap of my experience at CiL 2012 - ILS migration thoughts - ILL projects for the summer - New building thoughts - Thoughts on my worlds of librarian ...

6:10am - Ugh, too early. Dog steals the pillow as I roll out of bed. I brighten slightly knowing I have a breakfast meeting where the host usually feeds us. Ugh. Morning. Grunt. Hrmp. Mrf. 7:30 - walk into the library. Greeted by my day circ super who asks knowingly, "Early meeting?" I am not known to be a kind morning person, so he is not offended by my grunted response. This is about the time I wish I could stand the taste of coffee. I check the emails, grab my notebook and the list of items the Faculty Senate president noted that she wanted to bring up at the meeting. And an umbrella - it's misting, but with my luck by the end of the meeting it will be pouring. 8:10 - I'm in the Chancellor's conference room waiting on our 8:30 meeting; the faculty Senate Exec members usually arrive a little early, so I always feel like a latecomer if I get there at 8:30. I'm scanning through a case study on flu vaccinations that I'll need to write a paper on after work....