Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I’ve been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I’m a troubled by the way that some academic libraries tend to measure how well they are supporting the academic mission of the institution. Librarians keep a lot of statistics and measure a lot …
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about finding a balance between honoring history and promoting change. Then I read a post by Kendra entitled “The tension between ‘memory’ and ‘complacency’” where she talks about the struggle to find “the balance between memory/history and change/innovation in my library community.” She says that while it’s important to …
Last year, Michelle Boule and I organized what ended up being a FANTASTIC first Unconference at ALA Annual. I was so impressed with the quality of the talks and discussions, and how everyone took on the roles of both teacher and learner. I think the best kind of conference is one where everyone can teach …
This was another amazing semester teaching at San Jose State University. I had significantly more students in my class this semester than in the past (more than double), which at first made me nervous about the workload I’d have to take on. But it actually ended up leading to an even better class experience, IMHO. …
Another semester of teaching at San Jose State’s SLIS program has ended. Many of my students are graduating and others are starting to think about applying for jobs so they’ll have one when they do graduate. For so many of them, the job search is going to be a struggle. It wasn’t an easy job …
I took an absolutely obscene amount of notes from Ken Haycock’s keynote, because it was just one pearl of wisdom after another (I’m only including some choice bits here). I’ve seen Ken speak once before, and he is someone I would go out of my way to hear speak because he has such deep knowledge …
Day 2 was just as full and wonderful as Day 1. I continued my mostly staying offline during the conference and I think it really helped me to keep focused on what was going on in front of me. While I do like Twitter in a lot of ways and think it’s great for conferences, …
Since it had been two years since I’d been to an Information Today Conference, I was really excited to attend Computers in Libraries and it did not disappoint. It was a fantastic learning and social experience with a much more diverse array of sessions than in previous years. I was really happy to see a …
I’ve been teaching a class on Web 2.0 since 2007, and this semester is the first time that I’ve actually had a full week on Twitter (well, microblogging and lifestreaming to be specific). Before, I treated it sort of as an afterthought, including some information on Twitter during the two weeks that I covered blogging. …
In response to my post a few days ago about EBSCO, Sarah Houghton-Jan just wrote an impassioned post about unethical vendor practices, suggesting that we let our vendors know when we are not happy with what they’re doing. While I do agree that libraries should make their dissatisfaction with specific vendors or vendor practices known …
Absolutely. I was less than thrilled with the way EBSCO has dealt with some of its customers vis-à-vis Harvard Business Review. I thought it was pretty evil that they signed exclusive deals for all of those Time, Inc. magazines. But what they’ve done now has really sent me through the roof. We used to get …
In the Fall, I wrote a post about my own thoughts on who should teach information literacy in academic libraries. In theory, I don’t care who teaches information literacy as long as it’s taught by someone (faculty member, librarian, etc.). In practice, I still struggle with this in my own mind, mainly because of how …
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 …
This will be my last Day in the Life, as Reed and I got sick with RSV (and him with bronchiolitis as well) so I’m feverish, wiped out, and confined to bed. I wrote this Thursday evening before the worst of the illness had hit (and man, it hit like a ton of bricks during …
This morning I felt really sick to my stomach and dizzy, so after helping to get Reed dressed, Adam ended up taking him to daycare. I spent 20 minutes lying in bed after they’d left before I headed to work (arrived at 7:40). I was tied to my desk this morning since I was on-call …
My day started at 6:00 am when my husband and I got Reed fed, dressed, and ready for daycare. Adam drove him to daycare today since I was nearly out of gas and didn’t want to stop with him in the car. I’ll pick him up in the afternoon. I took a quick shower myself, …
This week’s “days in the life” are very different from the ones I did back in July. In July, I was still in the midst of maternity leave and was working only half-time. I was taking care of a three-month-old child and often felt so overwhelmed by that responsibility that I was having trouble finding …
A lot of people have written about Clay Shirky’s post “A rant about women” and I’m here to give my two cents FWIW. First of all, who in their right mind entitles a post “A Rant about women”? While he made some valid points in his post, the title and his gross over-generalizations really made …
After a year off from teaching to take care of baby Reed, I’m getting back up on the horse. I’ll be teaching a class on Web 2.0 and Social Networking Software for San Jose State University’s SLIS program starting this Tuesday. As usual, I’ll be using Drupal for my online classroom (rather than Angel, which …
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 …