Sarah Cohen wonders what motivated people to participate in Library Day in the Life and who we are writing these for. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I wanted to share my own reasons for doing it (and since this is a bit long, I thought it better to post it here than to …
8:00 am – Checked my email. Checked reference email accounts. Answered a few reference questions, forwarded a database error on to our Head of Digital Initiatives and a Norwich history question to our Archives. 8:30 am – Director called me into her office to let me know that she’d heard back from the office that …
With many of my colleagues on vacation and no students around, this isn’t the most exciting time to be recording my time at work. I will definitely do something similar during the Fall or Spring semester when I’m knee-deep in instruction. 8:00 am – arrived at work and checked email. Started creating a basic wire …
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 remember the first OCLC Blog Salon at ALA very fondly. It was like fangirl overload for me. I have to laugh now when I remember that I begged Michael Stephens to introduce me to Roy Tennant because I was too nervous to introduce myself to someone so smart and awesome. There was such a …
Adam, Reed and I have been back from Chicago for a few days, but it’s taken a while to recover, unpack, and get back into our routine. I’d been worried about traveling with an infant, and the irony was that traveling with Reed was much less a problem than traveling without the use of my …
I must admit that the last time I read a non-baby-related book was probably last Fall. And now all these great books are coming out from the LIS presses that I’m absolutely dying to read! This is torture! The one I’m probably most excited about is Chrystie Hill’s long-awaited Inside, Outside and Online which is …
I still don’t quite think it’s hit me that I’ll be leaving in a few days for ALA with my husband and baby. Not only is it Reed’s first flight ever (and I sure hope he likes airplanes!), but it’s my first time speaking at an in-person conference since October (I gave two talks online …
Since before my brain was hijacked by baby stuff, I’ve been thinking a lot about how many third party Web 2.0 vendors libraries are dependent upon (not to mention all the ones we’re dependent on personally!). I actually wrote a column for American Libraries on the subject, but 600 words could not reflect the whole …
As a new mother, I spend a a lot of time awake with Reed when most sensible people are asleep. Consequently, I’ve seen plenty of infomercials and commercials that are rarely if ever on television when sensible people are awake (my personal favorite is the Lee Majors Bionic Ear — “it won’t cost six million, …
Paul Pival wrote today and yesterday about “mafia tactics by Harvard Business School Publishing”, wherein they are trying to charge libraries to link to articles from Harvard Business Review in EBSCO for online classroom use and then are turning off PURLs to HBR articles in Business Source products if the school refuses to pay. I’ve …
I recently had a not-so-fun experience with our local hospital which reminded me of how important it is to ensure one’s front-line staff are empowered to question things. During our childbirth class – which was sponsored by the hospital where I was going to be giving birth – we were told by our childbirth educator …
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 …
Yes, I knew I’d have to teach people how to use email. And unjam printers. And help people use copiers. But I don’t think I ever understood in library school how important sales and marketing would be to the success of our profession. Within a month of starting work as the Distance Learning Librarian at …
A while back, I read an excerpt from Aaron Swartz’s blog post about management in the post Upside Down Org Chart: Better Way to Support Employees? by Stewart Mader (his is a great blog to read if you have any interest in wikis). It took me a while to finally read Aaron’s original post, and …
Let me preface this post with the statement that I hate the term Luddite. I think it’s often used to dismiss people and ideas that differ from our own. It’s much easier to dismiss someone as being anti-tech than to try and understand what may be their very rational argument against something you love or …
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 …
Now this is a great project to come from an LIS class! LIS Publications Wiki Welcome to the Library and Information Science (LIS) Publications wiki. This wiki gathers information about publications that LIS professionals might want to write for — whether they want to reach their colleagues or their communities. All editors, publishers, and LIS …
Steven Bell commented in a recent ACRLog post that there hasn’t been much reaction to the Taiga Forum Provocative Statements. I’ve seen a few reactions online and here’s mine — YAWN. Seriously, I found a lot more to like about John Dupuis’ crititicisms of the Taiga Forum Provocative Statements than about the statements themselves. I’m …
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!