I have a problem remembering to keep track of my reference transactions on the little clipboard we keep at the reference desk. My office is three floors above where the reference desk is and, more often than not, I am answering reference questions from my desk (or even from home). By the time I get …
I am not one of those people — like Steven Cohen or Jessamyn — who is very comfortable giving talks. No matter how well I know the material, I still get insanely nervous when I have to get up in front of people to talk. I’ve never had a talk go badly, but it doesn’t …
The big buzz on my campus (and probably many others) is that Blackboard is buying WebCT. Here’s a snippet from a very long press release at PRNewswire: The merger of Blackboard and WebCT marks a major milestone in the build-out of networked learning environments by colleges, universities, schools and other education providers. It creates a …
There’s been a lot of talk about the place of librarians in academia. It’s something I thought about a great deal in the during the job search as I applied for tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. I would have been happy with either position since I’m going to publish and speak regardless of whether or not …
I got our Virtual Private Server all set up at work so now I can get to the business of actually putting up webby things. I’d really love to create some sort of Staff Intranet where we can post announcements and info so that our email boxes don’t become clogged with them. I was thinking …
I’m nearly two months into my job as a Distance Learning Librarian. When I think back to what my dream job was in library school, I am shocked by how close my reality fits the dream (other than the fact that Michael Stephens, Jessamyn West and all my other favorite bloggers don’t work with me). …
I am in charge of our website redesign at my job, and I’ve been putting my graduate coursework in Web Usability to work over the past few weeks. This week, I’ve been doing usability testing of students (all Freshman and Sophomores) and here are a few interesting things I’ve learned: The average Freshman doesn’t know …
I was about halfway through my Masters of Social Work program when I realized that I did not want to be a social worker. It’s not that I don’t love working with people (I do. Very much), but being a therapist never came naturally to me. Most of the time I just felt as if …