Work

The Monkey Song (with a hat tip to Louis Prima)

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Every few months, I get an email from someone in library school or a new librarian basically asking me how I’ve accomplished all that I have in this profession in three years and how they can do the same. It’s an awkward question to answer, because there are always so many factors that come into […]

Help Wanted!

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

I just got back to work this evening and was pleased to find that the job ad for the Distance Learning Librarian position at Norwich has been posted. If you’re interested in a job where you get to do a little bit of everything, work in a change-oriented environment, and get bossed around by me […]

Chutes and ladders

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

In spite of the fact that I’ve had one of those all-day sinus headaches, I’m walking on a cloud. Starting April 1, I’m going to be the Head of Instructional Initiatives here at Norwich, which means that I will lead and coordinate all instruction (and most assessment) work at the library. I’m also going to […]

2.0 and don’t even know it

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

While I was working on compiling all of the survey data from our graduate students, I had what I thought was a crazy idea. The idea came from a common suggestion and complaint from the military history grad students in the surveys. The suggestion was that we provide more eBooks in their subject area. The […]

Getting out of a rut

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Since our Coordinator of Public Services left, I’ve been the liaison to the social sciences along with being the liaison to the School of Graduate Studies (whose programs are all online). That means that I’m basically the liaison to over 2/3 of the Norwich population, but it made good sense because of my strong background […]

Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Sometimes we start a project or create a new service and it’s an instant success. Other times, we try something and it becomes obvious that it’s not meeting patron needs. Too often though, a project is neither an obvious success or failure. Even with statistics, it can be difficult to know what constitutes success and […]

We have wiki!

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Library Research Guides wiki

Originally uploaded by librarianmer

A while back, I wrote about the challenges I had in finding the right platform for our subject guides. Well, I’m pleased to say that I just linked to our subject guides from the front page of the library […]

Don’t take what you know for granted

Friday, January 4th, 2008

As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can’t do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance learners because the loan times do not allow sufficient time for us to ship the materials to the student and for the student to consult […]

Saying goodbye to 2007

Monday, December 31st, 2007

When I look back to the beginning of 2007, I’m really surprised at how much has happened in just one year. At the end of December last year, we were just contacting the students we’d accepted into the Five Weeks to a Social Library course. I don’t think any of us knew how incredibly successful […]

Sharing the bad stuff, learning from failures

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

There are some libraries that most of us think must be the best places to work ever because of the innovation that goes on there. And in some cases, we may be right. But not always. I think we often assume that places that have good people are good places to work, and that doesn’t […]

When are we doing enough?

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

Since I got to Norwich, my main priority has been to ensure that the distance learners have access to all the information they need to do research through the library. I have information all over the place about our resources and services. I’ve created screencast tutorials, HTML tutorials and FAQs. Some of the tutorials are […]

The long road towards subject guide 2.0

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

When I finally got control over the library’s Web presence last year (a long process better discussed in a post of its own), the first thing I did was take down the library “subject guides.” You could hardly call these things subject guides; they were just a bunch of Web links in different areas. Some […]

Welcoming my friend and colleague to the blogosphere

Monday, October 8th, 2007

Since July, I’ve been sharing an office. I thought I would absolutely hate it, but it turns out that it’s been terrific. Sharing an office with the right person can lead to increased creativity (if perhaps slightly decreased productivity), and that’s exactly what I’ve found since I started sharing an office with Josh Petrusa. Josh […]

Looking forward and finding balance

Sunday, May 6th, 2007

I’m coming to the point in my year when things really start to get crazy. I’ve got in the neighborhood of six or seven talks coming up in the next seven weeks. I have a book chapter on librarians and library services being embedded into online courseware due at the end of this month for […]

Now it can be told!

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

I’m so happy to finally be able to publicly congratulate Dorothea Salo on her new job as Digital Repository Librarian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I knew Dorothea enjoyed her job at George Mason, but like me, she is not a city person and I know how city life can wear on someone […]

Why transparency is important (or, how to lose your customers)

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

Let me preface this by saying that when I first started my job over a year ago, I was a big fan of EBSCO. Students found their interface easy to use, they were always improving their interface and offerings, and our local Rep was really responsive to our e-mails and questions. But something has […]

Information Literacy Online: If you build it… will they come?

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Before I started my job, there were no instructional materials provided to online students on how to use the library resources (there also was no distance learning librarian to create instructional materials). Not surprisingly, there were lots of students e-mailing the library every week with access problems and research questions. Students in certain […]

Wanna be in my book? Librarians needed.

Monday, March 27th, 2006

For one chapter in my book on social software in libraries, I’m discussing how librarians can determine which tools are the best for their library and population. To that end, I’ve been interviewing folks who work in all different kinds of libraries (and with different populations) to offer their two cents on which social […]

Let’s make libraries better, ok?

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

Since the fall, I’ve pretty much been processing my thoughts about Library 2.0 on this blog in real-time. If one is going for ideological consistency, it’s probably not the best way to do things, but it is the most human way. I’ve been learning and reflecting and sharing those reflections with you. […]

Remember to share and play nice

Friday, November 11th, 2005

My mother tells me that I was terrible about sharing when I was a little girl. My toys were MY toys. I would lick cookies so that no one would ask to have a bite. My dad even has video footage of me at age three grabbing my book away from my […]