Way back in 2005, I wrote a post about tenure for librarians in which I argued against it. Since then, I’ve spent six years as a librarian with faculty rank and no tenure and three years as a librarian on the tenure track, and I can say that my feelings against tenure status for librarians has …
Lisa Hinchliffe and I are currently analyzing data from a survey looking at factors that facilitate the creation of an assessment culture in community college libraries (it’s a sister study to the one we did with Amy Harris Houk on four-year and above schools reported on in C&RL). We’ll be presenting the results at the Library …
You know you’re a real blogger when, no matter how absurdly busy the rest of your life is, the thing you can’t do that you miss the most is blogging. It’s been a crazy almost two months and isn’t looking to get any better in the near future. Isn’t it funny when you look back …
I have been wanting to write a post on work-life balance for a while, especially after spending a week at ACRL Assessment Immersion with a bunch of people who are deeply committed to their work and all define balance in their lives differently. Some of the people there are so active in the profession, so …
I am a huge fan of research log and research process reflection assignments. Because research is a means to an end (the paper) and because people are often doing it in a rush, there is little reflection on process. What worked? What didn’t? What can I take from this experience for the next time I …
I’ve never felt like a particularly optimistic person. When we were getting ready to move to Portland, I fully expected that we’d lose furniture on the way or that much of it would arrive severely damaged. It didn’t happen. I expected my son to scream and cry the entire way from my parents’ house in …
Greetings from Portland, Oregon! I’ve been wanting to post about so many things in the past two months (especially just about everything Barbara Fister has been writing over at Library Babel Fish — gosh she is insightful!), but it’s been difficult to find the time. The learning curve at my new place of work has …
Roy Tennant wrote a terrific post recently about his work habits and personality the other day that got me thinking (see “Living the Just in Time Life”). My first thought was “wow, it’s amazing how much Roy and I like each other given how completely differently we operate.” My second thought was how important it …
This is a post mainly for those professionals who are passionate about their careers and are considering having children but wonder/worry what impact it might have on their life and their career. I’m going to talk about my own experience finding an identity as a working mother over the past year. Remember that your mileage …
Going into a new decade (I know technically it’s not a new decade until 2011, but don’t be such a kill-joy!) is a good time for reflection. After seeing all of the #10yearsago posts on Twitter, I started to think about where I was 10 years ago vs. where I am today. My life could …
This is part of the Library Day in the Life meme going on this week. What an awesome idea! I cheated on this a little — I wrote this up on Thursday since I’m not working until Wednesday. Until mid-August, I’m only working 2 days per week so that Reed can wait until he’s 4 …
I realize that while there have been little blurbs about this on FriendFeed, Facebook, Flickr, etc., I haven’t actually blogged anything about the new man in my life. Probably has something to do with the fact that the only opportunities to go online have been when I’m nursing him and it’s difficult to write an …
Friday was my very last day at work and I’m now officially on maternity leave. Our little boy is due April 7th, so hopefully I’ll have a few days to relax and catch up on sleep before baby time (sleep has become more difficult in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, but I’ve been …
I’ve been trying to clean up my email, aggregator and life to some extent before the baby arrives, and it’s kind of pathetic how liberated I feel looking at this message: Now, if you all can just stop posting things for the next month or so, that would be great. K thx!
I have been so touched by the kind words people have written about me with respect to my winning the LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology (or as my father-in-law started calling it to everyone he saw last weekend “tech librarian of the year” — lol). I always feel …
Last April, I started in my new position as Head of Instructional Initiatives, though for the first four months, I was also still doing the job of Distance Learning Librarian. Since taking this on at the end of July as my only job, it’s been a wild ride. I took a lot of risks, tried …
I often tease my husband about his need to always be involved in a project. He’s always got to be working on something outside of his “day job”, whether it’s cleaning out his storage room (better known as the troll room), digitizing his parents’ slides, digitizing all of our documents, or creating the most awesome …
A student in the class I’m teaching for San Jose State University asked me the following the other day: How did people first learn about your blog? Do you have a previous blog post on how it became popular? It would be an interesting read! It’s a good question and one I thought I’d post …
Wordle is a fun little tool! You can put in your del.icio.us username or paste in some text and get a pretty neat-looking word cloud. Here’s my CV as a cloud: Here’s a list of the titles of my presentations over the past 2 1/2 years as a cloud:
While I didn’t get tagged yet, the passion quilt meme really spoke to me. For this meme, you’re supposed to post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about. Here’s mine: Original image Vikings Originally …
