Guardienne of the Tomes

A recent Chronicle article titled " The No-Matter-What Rule of Academic Motherhood " caught my attention recently, not least because a good many of my similarly-aged colleagues around the country have recently become mothers in the past two years. Childless, I cannot imagine the extra work of raising a whole human being while also working the academic track. After thinking about it some more, I thought perhaps I could add a little something. There is also a No-Matter-What rule of Academic Chronic Illness, though it is less written about, and perhaps less known as a challenge. I got sick in 2010, but wasn't diagnosed until a complete physical collapse in summer of 2011. Swollen and painful joints, extreme fatigue, complete collapse after working too many hours, or doing anything physical, and constant bouts of colitis finally landed me at a rheumatologist who diagnosed me with Ankylosing Spondylitis and/or Rheumatoid Arthritis. I worked in a boom-and-bust mode. I was embar...

A recent Chronicle article titled " The No-Matter-What Rule of Academic Motherhood " caught my attention recently, not least because a good many of my similarly-aged colleagues around the country have recently become mothers in the past two years. Childless, I cannot imagine the extra work of raising a whole human being while also working the academic track. After thinking about it some more, I thought perhaps I could add a little something. There is also a No-Matter-What rule of Academic Chronic Illness, though it is less written about, and perhaps less known as a challenge. I got sick in 2010, but wasn't diagnosed until a complete physical collapse in summer of 2011. Swollen and painful joints, extreme fatigue, complete collapse after working too many hours, or doing anything physical, and constant bouts of colitis finally landed me at a rheumatologist who diagnosed me with Ankylosing Spondylitis and/or Rheumatoid Arthritis. I worked in a boom-and-bust mode. I w...

It has been a busy summer. In late June, my husband and I packed all our things, drugged our anxious Basset hounds Otto and Igor, and headed west. We drove from Chattanooga, TN to Camarillo, CA for our next big adventure. We decided to splurge on a bigger home than our tiny 1BR back in Chattanooga. We now live in a 3BR, 2.5BA townhome. We made the decision not just for size, but because the property is practically on campus at CSU Channel Islands and is only a half-mile walk to the library where I work. Additional bonuses include a two car garage, and being across the street from the dog walking and running trail. Coming home from errands, we drive through strawberry fields and a lemon/lime tree orchard. It is beautiful here in Southern California. It seems bizarre to live in a place where we don't allow the weather to dictate what we wear. In fact, we don't ask about the weather at all. It is always sunny and beautiful with azure skies. Always. Constant sunshine, friendly neig...

It has been a busy summer. In late June, my husband and I packed all our things, drugged our anxious Basset hounds Otto and Igor, and headed west. We drove from Chattanooga, TN to Camarillo, CA for our next big adventure. We decided to splurge on a bigger home than our tiny 1BR back in Chattanooga. We now live in a 3BR, 2.5BA townhome. We made the decision not just for size, but because the property is practically on campus at CSU Channel Islands and is only a half-mile walk to the library where I work. Additional bonuses include a two car garage, and being across the street from the dog walking and running trail. Coming home from errands, we drive through strawberry fields and a lemon/lime tree orchard. It is beautiful here in Southern California. It seems bizarre to live in a place where we don't allow the weather to dictate what we wear. In fact, we don't ask about the weather at all. It is always sunny and beautiful with azure skies. Always. Constant sunshine, friendly neig...

Changing lanes and speaking as a woman-librarian, and not just a librarian: I feel I can take care of myself. Years of working in customer service have honed my skills of talking folks down from anger and frustration. I'm not a small woman, and I consider myself more aggressive than most. I've taken numerous RAD classes for self-defense, and succeeded in defending myself again one attacker, then two. I went to the 54th largest high school in America  in an area still riddled with gang violence, drugs and crime, and managed to stay clean. I worked the second and third shift for a number of years, walking home in the dark, dodging requests for a light, and for other less savory things. I pack a mean right hook and I've got a nasty mouth learned from growing up in NY with a former sailor for a dad. I'm heavy and solid, you probably can't carry me away unless you've got some serious towing power. It takes a lot to rattle me. But I have been rattled. Years ago, I rep...

Changing lanes and speaking as a woman-librarian, and not just a librarian: I feel I can take care of myself. Years of working in customer service have honed my skills of talking folks down from anger and frustration. I'm not a small woman, and I consider myself more aggressive than most. I've taken numerous RAD classes for self-defense, and succeeded in defending myself again one attacker, then two. I went to the 54th largest high school in America  in an area still riddled with gang violence, drugs and crime, and managed to stay clean. I worked the second and third shift for a number of years, walking home in the dark, dodging requests for a light, and for other less savory things. I pack a mean right hook and I've got a nasty mouth learned from growing up in NY with a former sailor for a dad. I'm heavy and solid, you probably can't carry me away unless you've got some serious towing power. It takes a lot to rattle me. But I have been rattled. Years ago,...

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...