{"id":1265,"date":"2009-07-28T18:58:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T23:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/?p=1265"},"modified":"2009-07-28T19:34:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T00:34:10","slug":"day-1-in-the-life-of-a-head-of-instructional-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/28\/day-1-in-the-life-of-a-head-of-instructional-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 1 in the life of a head of instructional initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of the Library Day in the Life<\/a> meme going on this week. What an awesome idea! <\/p>\n

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 months old to start daycare. I’ll also write up the days I work this week (Wednesday and Thursday).<\/p>\n

So here’s a day in my life as a Head of Instructional Initiatives. I don’t think this is a particularly typical day since the students aren’t here so I’m not teaching, but I also don’t think I even have “typical days” during the school year.<\/p>\n

8:00 \u2013 arrived at work with husband and Reed in tow since I can\u2019t drive due to a sprained shoulder. Colleagues oohed and ahhed over Reed (who wouldn\u2019t?) \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n

8:10 \u2013 Fed Reed while computer booted up and went through several updates<\/p>\n

8:30 \u2013 Checked email and talked to colleague about redesigning our web portal for distance learners (which we just found out we got funding for \u2013 awesome!) . We\u2019re going Drupal, baby!<\/p>\n

9:00 \u2013 Engineering liaison and I met with Dean of the School of Engineering and Civil Engineering faculty member about information literacy instruction for engineering students. It was a great meeting because we all pretty much wanted the exact same thing (problem-based active learning, teaching students to critically evaluate sources, etc.). We\u2019ll be teaching 6 3-hour classes in the Fall, reaching all of the Freshmen engineering majors. YAY! Also talked to them about getting library instruction in somewhere else in the curriculum, like when they have their big senior project and have to do all sorts of in-depth research. It was something they hadn\u2019t considered, but they seemed open to the idea. I talked about what I\u2019ve done with the senior History seminars.<\/p>\n

10:00 \u2013 Checked reference email accounts and answered several reference questions that came in overnight.<\/p>\n

10:30 \u2013 opened up spreadsheet of journals in the social sciences and continued to work on making cuts. Mulling over whether to cancel some journals that we get in EBSCO with a one year embargo, since we could get the articles for students and faculty through ILL. It drives me crazy to be paying $1000-$3000 for essentially one year\u2019s worth of content.<\/p>\n

10:45 \u2013 Emailed political science faculty member with a list of journals I\u2019m considering cutting and requesting feedback. Put a few on the list that I doubt I\u2019ll cancel, but I wanted his feedback as to whether it was an essential title or not. <\/p>\n

11:00 \u2013 Pumped some milk for Reed (ah, the joys of being a working mom) \u2013 browsed RSS feeds during that time.<\/p>\n

11:30 \u2013 Worked on a course guide for a senior seminar on the Civil War in which I\u2019ll be providing library instruction in September. There are way too many resources on the Civil War and it can be hard to create a guide that includes only the best\/essential resources.<\/p>\n

11:45 \u2013 Spoke to a Drupal developer about the redesign of our library portal for distance learners. His company seems to be the Cadillac of Drupal web redesigns. Very impressive, but we don\u2019t need all the bells and whistles and those bells and whistles come with a hefty price tag. <\/p>\n

12:30 \u2013 Ate a quick lunch while going through the journal spreadsheet. Why is it that I love trimming the fat off our budget? It\u2019s like spring cleaning. I\u2019m hoping to cut enough that we can get some collections we really need that will likely get a lot of use. Students use databases much more than single title subscriptions.<\/p>\n

1:00 \u2013 Worked on getting quotes and hourly rates from Drupal-experienced web designers. Hit up folks on Twitter and Friend Feed for suggestions. Got some crazy expensive quotes and some reasonable ones. Continued to check reference email accounts and answered a couple more email queries.<\/p>\n

1:45 \u2013 D\u2019oh! Forgot that I was supposed to be on Meebo. Quickly logged in.<\/p>\n

2:00 \u2013 talked to colleague about cutting journals and making the difficult decisions. We both tend to not be as sentimental about the collection as some of our colleagues, so he\u2019s always a good person to get advice from. <\/p>\n

2:30 \u2013 Put in more work on the Civil War course guide.<\/p>\n

3:30 – Asked colleague if we could get usage stats for political science journals I\u2019m considering canceling as faculty member has requested them. Got click-through stats from Serials Solutions and sent them on. Ugh \u2013 only 5 hits in two years for one of the journals (and not a cheap one either). <\/p>\n

3:45 \u2013 Emailed criminal justice faculty about journals I\u2019m considering canceling. Got a quick response about a one that they consider essential and a few that they\u2019d rather not lose if at all possible. Will really depend on how much the SAGE collection they want us to get costs.<\/p>\n

4:00 \u2013 More milk making and RSS feed browsing<\/p>\n

4:20 \u2013 Glanced at email and saw one about Freshman orientations (for which there is a library component). We did a fun activity last year, but it was a heck of a lot of work, so I\u2019m a little nervous about prepping for it on my limited schedule.<\/p>\n

4:30 \u2013 Shut down computer and ran outside to meet Adam.<\/p>\n

6:00 \u2013 Checked email from home and emailed Criminal Justice faculty member back to reassure that I would not cut any journals considered essential by his faculty.<\/p>\n

6:15 \u2013 Emailed Drupal designer that I\u2019m considering hiring for the redesign. He seems to understand the scope and isn\u2019t trying to up-sell us on stuff we don\u2019t need right now. Draft email to the powers-that-be about getting the go-ahead to start working with him.<\/p>\n

6:45 \u2013 Went through RSS feeds while watching Hell\u2019s Kitchen<\/em> in bed with Adam and Reed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,56,21],"tags":[95],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-me","category-librarydayinthelife","category-work","tag-librarydayinthelife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}