Archive for January, 2011

hello NCLA executive board and farewell #libday6

Published January 29, 2011 the profession Leave a Comment
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This is the last day of my fourth go at Library Day in the Life and I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro.

I spent the entire day at the North Carolina Library Association Executive Board meeting. The chair of the Government Resources Section asked me to attend because I’m the incoming chair. I also ended up representing Reference and Adult Services Section because the section’s chairs had other commitments. It was an interesting experience. I am on governing committees at the university, so I am accustomed to Robert’s Rules of Orders, but it is always fun to compare different groups that use the orders. Some are very strict about following procedure and others make a passable attempt. I definitely prefer meetings that have some kind of order or control. It doesn’t need to be Robert’s Rules, but an outline or agenda that is followed is a definitely must. It keeps meetings from devolving into venting sessions. Beth Filar Williams at UNCG has a great outline that provides a topic, the discussant, and a time estimate, and generally it keeps us on time and focused so the meetings always seem productive.

The overarching theme of the meeting was NCLA’s financial troubles because of declining membership. If you are an NC librarian and not a member, I strongly encourage you to take a look at the association. The sections within it are small enough that you can become quickly involved in the leadership (I was the Secretary-Treasurer of the Government Resources Section after five months as a professional librarian and on the board of the Reference and Adult Services Section after a year). The sections put on good programming–GRS held a SimplyMap training in conjunction with Business Librarianship in NC this past fall, for example. I’ve been trying to do more data programming with the GRS, but we also hope to have virtual workshops on supporting government information that will be open to anyone. Come join us. While yes, joining costs money, it provides a quick and easy way to get involved and make your name in this state. If you joined in the past and didn’t get much out of it, try again. The sections have new blood and are looking to be responsive to the needs of the membership. So, that’s my pitch. Get out; get involved.

And that may be it for library day in the life. I don’t think I’ve ever kept up for an entire round before! It is an interesting exercise to document your days so closely. It isn’t my favorite approach to blogging as I prefer the reflective posts, but I think it serves its purpose as a snapshot of our librarian days.

So, what’s on board for next week? Oh, lots! I’m attending an American FactFinder training for its new interface, teaching our interns about congressional research, and then at the end of the week, presenting at the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching! It is a fun conference with a nice combination of faculty, librarians, and course development staff. Friday morning I’ll be presenting with Jenny Dale and Amy Harris on classroom interactivity. We are all doing some research to beef up this presentation, which we did a version of at the Metrolina Information Literacy Conference, and I was assigned Practical Pedagogy for Library Instructors. Lots to do! More info about all of this and posts from Lilly Conference are on tap for next week.

Thursday = Meetings #libday6

Published January 27, 2011 outreach , the profession Leave a Comment
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Came in an hour late today to use up some more comp time from last week. Also, today is another long day. The theme today may be meetings. I don’t have many but they are both scheduled for strangely long times.

  • 10:00:
    • Arrived at work and checked email. Had a question about advance searching in Lexis Nexis Academic. Always fun, that database. I was trying to describe everything I could and decided that was silly. One part (searching within results using subject terms) was just too difficult, so I created a short jing video just to make sure she could see my steps. Man, I love technology sometimes.
    • Checked out the cover of our book! Here’s a sneak peek.

      book

      I’m so excited. And they chose blue! Like reading my mind.

  • 11:00
    • Realized I need to do a bit of collection work before my meetings start. I’m not the greatest collection liaison to be honest, but I’m at least staying on top of my gobis!
    • 11:30 – A psc student stopped by for some help. Apparently she is working with the other student on the Federalist Papers. She wanted to jazz up her presentation so I showed her Prezi. She then asked me “What is it you actually do for your job?” “Oh, everything” should probably be my answer.
  • 12:00
    • Brownbag of mentors and mentees. The untenured librarians all have tenured mentors and this was one of our monthly brownbags. We talked a bit about the new peer evaluations. I’ve never done these before because it is a bit uncomfortable to evaluate someone else who is tenured, but it sounds like we really should, especially those of us who observe each other teaching.
  • 1:30
  • 2:00
    • Ashby residential college office hour: I had my first question of the semester (and third overall). One of the student workers was joking about how I could stand doing all this research. She then waved a paper in my face. I asked her if she needed help and it took some encouragement to get a handle on the problem she was having. She basically was looking up publication information for several books in order to cite them, but she couldn’t find them easily on the internet. Hello, Worldcat! The funny part is she seemed apologetic for having to ask. These students are pretty self-reliant; it makes my job harder in trying to get the questions out of them.
    • Found out that Sam, my Ashby student, had a lengthy consultation with one of the res college students! Yay! Maybe our hardwork is finally paying off!
  • 3:00
    • Department meeting: Good discussion about customer service. We came up with some good ideas, which I can’t recall at this point. Luckily minutes were taken! Also, we had a discussion about creating workflow documents showing how much time we spend doing what in an average week. It wasn’t  the easy thing to talk about and I’m not 100% on what we are doing this for, but it is a good thing I document my work like a nerd!
  • 5:00
    • LIS program town hall meeting: Our LIS program is going up for a review in February and had a town hall meeting to answer questions and get feedback. The faculty has stepped it up, so I have high hopes for the process.
  • 8:00
    • When I arrived home I found an email from another Ashby res college student asking about library school! WOOOHOOOO!!!

Wednesday = research #libday6

Published January 26, 2011 the profession Leave a Comment
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This is my fourth go at Library Day in the Life and I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro.

Because I had collected some comp time, I decided to take the morning off today. Luckily my work week was front loaded, so the rest of this week won’t be as busy as the past two days. Having to go where and when people need you is definitely a feature of librarianship you just have to live with. Sometimes when I’m working on a particularly big project it can be extremely frustrating to drop everything, but it happens. I’ve been trying to schedule my quiet times at the beginning of my days and leave the afternoons open for meetings and consultations. Sometimes it works.

  • 1:30-3:30: The director of Ashby, the director of undergraduate research and I are coming up with info lit/research/integrity modules that can be inserted into the courses at the residential college. It is a hard process because we are creating something new while trying to work within the existing structure of things. The first module is for source evaluations. We will encourage profs to bring students to the library for an intro session, then we’ve created assignment templates that could be used to reinforce the concepts learned. We just have to figure out how to get faculty to implement something like this in an organized way. Today’s meeting was good for coming up with ideas, but more soon on where this will go!
  • 3:30-4:30: Tried to find scholarly articles for a psc undergrad. I’m not 100% on her project but she has to look at federalist 15 and find scholarly resources on that essay. This is crazy difficult to search because most articles are about the topics within the federalist papers and not individual ones. Sigh. The search continues.
  • 4:30-5:00: Jamba Juice and answering emails about our undergraduate research award. I cajoled the political science department into stepping up their game and now have a pile of emails.
  • 5:00-7:00: My reference desk shift! I have two two-hour shifts a week. I will sometimes get political science students to come do consults during this shift, especially the older and Master’s in Public Affairs students. Most of them work therefore it helps them times after working hours.
    • chat: Sources for a project examining the planning of the Denver International Airport; PAIS actually was very useful for this!
    • in-person: Sources for finding african american attorneys in NC in the 1900s-1920s; We talked about the problems with the Census and the possibilities with using directories.
    • Worked on email. Lots of email. And the federalist question a bit more.

Until tomorrow!!

Tuesday = Data! #libday6

Published January 25, 2011 the profession 4 Comments
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This is my fourth go at Library Day in the Life and I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro.

In retrospect Tuesday was a day filled with numbers: crime rates in Cary, demographics of the Hispanic population, and the number of Southern Baptists in NC. Good times.

  • 8:15: Arrive and COFFEE!
  • 8:30: Looked at air travel to IASSIST in Vancouver for our annual data conference.
  • 9:00: Met with Susan Farr, our documents manager, about upcoming personnel stuff.
  • 9:30-10:00: Found a flight to Vancouver. Not the greatest flight, but it gets me to where I’m going and I won’t have to pay for an extra hotel night.
  • 10:00: Worked on notes and handout for Political Science 302
  • 10:30: Researched question on whether Brazil is a consensual democracy for psc 350 student. The consensual democracy idea is contrasted with majoritarianism. Check out Patterns of Democracy by Lijphart if you are really bored and want to know more.
  • 11:00: Looked up sources for English PhD student studying the rhetoric of presidential speeches. Not quite sure what he was asking, so hopefully I’ll get more info back from him.
  • 11:15: Spent lunch reading through some interesting blog posts. Here are my faves:
  • 12:00-12:15: Wrap up lunch and head off for Political Science 302
  • 12:30-2:00: Political Science 302. I’ve taught this class three times now and I love it, even though it is the most basic demonstration class you could ever do. I have plenty of activities for the students, but I can’t really just let them jump into SimplyMap and World dataBank without some guidance first. I guess that is the nature of some sources, especially numeric databases. Data libs and friends: How have you taught these in your sessions? If so, what activities worked?
  • 2:00-2:45: Consultation with an undergraduate research assistant looking up demographic statistics on Hispanics in NC. SimplyMap and American FactFinder go head to head for the love and approval of all.
  • 3:00-3:30: FREEDOM! I have hit a slow period in which I will get some more coffee (I am falling asleep as we speak) and catch up on random to do’s. Thank you RTM for being my brain.
  • 3:30-4:30: I started doing a quick check-in (look through my inbox, go through to do’s) but suddenly got an urge to write a blog post on the Assoc of Religion Data Archives. The PSC 302 prof and I were talking about it and I realized it had never been featured on the dataland blog. For shame!
  • 4:30-5:00: emails
  • 5:00-5:30: Listened to the ICPSR recording of the ARDA and Roper Center presentations. I had never gotten around to listening to them and I’m on a kick! A cool feature is the religion family tree. Sweet!

  • 6:00-7:00: Meeting of the UNCG LIS Alumni Association Executive Board. I’m the Communications Director, which means I maintain our blog, Minerva’s Library, and Facebook and keep the contact database current. I also tell Kathy Shields, our Assistant Communications Director, what to do :)   Amy Harris and Erin Sapienza are joining our Executive Board, which is super fun!
  • 9:00: Hopefully I can stay awake for the State of the Union Address. Granted these aren’t as much fun as the days when I would yell constantly at the screen (Ah, I kinda miss you Georgie…Only kinda).  I can’t wait to try out the enhanced SOTU materials on this website (fingers-crossed that it doesn’t crash!).

gym. consultations. outreach. repeat. #libday6

Published January 24, 2011 outreach , the profession Leave a Comment
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I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro and this is my fourth go at Library Day in the Life.

So, the title is an attempt at levity, but it is also my new mantra. I feel ten times better on days that I exercise before work (even if just a quick walk). I’m a nicer person too. Thank you endorphins. I also discovered that I could read the Kindle New York Times while using the elliptical without killing myself in the process. Lynda is a happy girl.

  • 7:00-8:00: Gym & newspaper: I count the newspaper in my work duties because if as a political science and government information librarian I didn’t keep up with current events, I would have some difficulty. Of course these aren’t counted in my actual work hours, but it is the overall package of professional life. Just trust me on this one.
  • 9:00-10:00: Coffee! And prepped for outreach talk with the Warren Ashby Residential College and for a consultation on coup d’etat data.
  • 10:00-10:30: Coup d’etat consultation (A prof is building a event data set on coups, coup attempts, and failed coups in Latin America. I got to show ICPSR to an undergrad research assistant. Fun times.)
  • 11:00-11:30: Met with Warren Ashby Residential College to promote our librarian-in-residence service.
  • 11:30-12:00: Quick lunch and look through email
  • 12:00-1:00: Taught Political Science 240 (international system) instruction session. I will miss working with this professor. He now has a full-time gig at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse (I’m jealous of you, Rachel Slough).
  • 1:00-2:00: Went to Ashby for an office hour. No questions yet, but it is early.
  • 2:00-3:00: Attended the Ashby Residential College staff meeting. We talked about the upcoming class offerings. They have classes set through Spring 2013, which is super helpful for me in planning how to support them.
  • 3:00-3:30: Agraphia group. Our untenured library faculty have a writing support group. Read more about Paul Silvia’s idea in my previous post.
  • 3:30-4:00: Catch up on email and buy a chocolate treat!
  • 4:00-4:30: Created flier for RIS intern program for recruiting in our LIS classes and typed up notes for the short presentation I am doing at 5:30.
  • 4:30-5:00: Got photos of our Game Night on Friday and uploaded to Irma’s Flickr and Facebook
  • 5:00-5:30: Mad rush to finish printing fliers for …
  • 5:30-5:45: Presentation on our Reference & Instructional Services Internship Program to new LIS students. Woohoo. Come join us!
  • 5:45-6:00: Talked with a political science professor about traveling and budget woes. I think I offered to teach a class. I am insane.
  • 6:00-7:00: Dinner at the office. Yummy! Talked to one of our former interns about his recent job interview (woohoo Will!).
  • 7:00-?: Friends of the UNCG Libraries book club meeting. We are reading The Ghost Map. You can read my thoughts (if yer bored) at my blog-in-the-works.

(Yes, the title is a reference to Jersey Shore. And yes, I know I should cite my sources. And no, I don’t watch Jersey Shore. … At all.)

Voices of librarianship and #librarydayinthelife

Published January 22, 2011 outreach , the profession Leave a Comment
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Round 6 of library day in the life (LDITL)! Oh my! So, for the past three years a group of fearless librarians have been documenting their days for a week at a time and the next round starts on Monday. The justifications behind it have been presented and Annoyed Librarian has made his snide remarks (I firmly believe AL is a man and probably Stephen Abrams.)

Personally I like the project. Sure, it is navel gazing, but every profession does that once in a while, even political scientists (Hello, Mr. Perestroika). We have heard the reasons. Yes, someone interested in the profession could read a post and say “That’s is exactly what I want to do do!” Yes, it provides for reflection on daily work, which is something we don’t do enough anyway. Yes, my interns and other LIS graduate students can see what madness they getting into. And yes, it provides a window into the profession for those wondering about the value of libraries.

For me, the striking thing about LDITL is that we aren’t ever really doing the same jobs. Entries have common themes usually: technology, collections, instruction (both group and one-on-one), professional work. But if you were to put my posts up against a technician you’d probably think we had different professions altogether. First, you don’t want me anywhere near cataloging rules (or rules in general). Second, the daily work is pretty different. I spend most of my day running from meetings to instruction sessions to remote office hours to having impromptu research consultations in the middle of the library lobby (or the line of the coffee shop). I have to fight to find times to sit in my office uninterrupted (actually that is called working from home).

I’m not saying this is a better approach. The technician probably gets way more to do’s checked off her list on average and therefore can demonstrate Productivity much easier than I can. But, the daily job is just not the same and this is what is interesting about LDITL. I call myself a librarian, but what I do in my daily work does not necessarily resemble the librarian beside me. Factor in my focus on numeric data, stats, and the government and the world becomes even more different. I’m sure this is true in many professions, but librarianship is stereotyped more than most (“NO! I do not shelve books!). So, LDITL is way for us “librarians” to document the differences.

The one thing I would like to see coming from LDITL is some sort of curation of the posts. Now that we have hit the sixth round I’m worried that the voices from the past are going to be overlooked. I got hooked on this because of Lauren Pressley’s thoughtful posts from the first round and I had tons of fun reading Dennis Nangle’s hilarious and prolific tweets from rounds 4 & 5. Bobbie Newman’s wiki helps to keep the posts together, but I had in mind an online archive with a representation of voices featured on a rotation and then links into the older posts. Different types of librarianship could be highlighted by choosing some key/funny/representative posts: Hey! here’s instruction in libraries or Hey! here’s cataloging in libraries or Hey! here’s writing in the library profession. Maybe it is the “traditional” librarian coming out, but it could be an interesting project. Any other visions for on how it could be done? Thoughts on how to use the LDITL posts?

Oh, and btw, you may see a bunch of LDITL posts coming from this spot on the internets over the next week. Word of warning…

the girl down at the library is so funny…

Published January 8, 2011 work , writing 1 Comment
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I’m back. I haven’t posted in a while simply because I couldn’t. I had neither the time nor the words. Now we’ve hit 2011 and I have to decide whether it is worth keeping this blog. I will have more time to write this year and some really awesome things are coming up in libraryland (and lyndaland). I like to write and a few people seem to read it, so why not. In the words of the Everybodyfields, it’s so good to be home…

As for a quick 2010 recap, here’s the newsflash.

  • I got married, bought a house, and moved. While our house rocks and the wedding was tremendous fun, those activities take up a ridiculous amount of time. Not doing them again anytime soon.
  • In 2009 I was contracted to write a book with my friend Katharin Peter introducing non-data librarians to the wild wonderful world of data reference and data instruction. As you can imagine, this project took up much of  2010. The book will be published in March 2011, so if you are curious look for it in your local academic library (hopefully). Since finishing this book in October (although I’m still working on the index), I haven’t had much interest in writing anything, even piddly little blog posts. Mostly I just wanted to sleep. I seem to have gotten over that, but I have promised myself I will never again agree to a book project. Let’s see how long that promise lasts.
  • I had some major swings in liking or disliking instruction in the fall. Some classes, especially with upper-level and graduate students, were kick ass. A couple were the most depressing and distressing experiences of my young life. (Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration). A goal for spring is to concentrate on mixing things up more in my lower-level political science sessions. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to rethink the same boring stuff I’ve been doing forever and I’m starting to bore myself. Wish me luck on this one.
  • Libguides were introduced and I am in love. They are easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and do really cool things. When we first started with them, I thought I might move away from creating guides for each course. It hasn’t happened yet because I really like embedding my instruction activities into the webguide. I asked polisigh students what they think and only heard positive comments. So, I think this was a success and have to thank Amy Harris and Jenny Dale for getting our library to buy them.
  • Research consultations are the new black. OMG, I’m so not kidding. I’ve always kept good track of my consults, emails, chats, etc (because I’m an ocd data librarian), but my 2010 goal was to document fully my personal research/reference interactions. And, lordy, it has been through the roof. Certainly I’ve not had as many as our business librarian. Still to go from 1 personal chat in spring 2010 to 8 in fall 2010 is awesome!  And those were just the chats I actually picked up (I had a few at 2am on days I forgot to turn off my chat client, but I don’t count those). Also a good number of political science students feel very comfortable just walking into my office and asking “quick questions”.
  • Traveling is fun and I traveled a lot (for me) in 2010. ALA midwinter, ALA annual, computers in libraries, IASSIST were the main conferences I attended. My data conference, IASSIST, was fabulous and informative as always. The ALA conferences were also good for networking and stepping out of the academic library world. I developed my own skills through the Emerging Leaders Program and its projects. I couldn’t justify going every time though because I had difficulty seeing how attendance would directly help my users and my position. But, this may be a side affect of burn out more than anything else :) After a year of relatively little travel (2011), I’ll probably be itching for more in 2012.
  • What does in-house librarianship mean to me? Well, I’m still figuring it out, but I’ve been working on a pilot program where I serve as the “in-house librarian” for our Warren Ashby Residential College. In the fall this meant holding office hours (rarely attended) and working with the faculty in the college (more productive). I also trained a student who lives in the dorm to work with library resources. In  the spring we are going to develop the program a bit more by putting my information in all of the ARC syllabi, doing short presentations, and giving a full library instruction session in at least one class. I also realized we were missing a bit of the virtual aspects of “in-house librarianship” and created a libguide just for ARC students. If the polisigh students are willing to ask questions through chat, then maybe the ARC students would be up for it. More to come soon I am sure.

Beyond committee work and all the other usual things, this was my 2010. Some exciting things are coming up for 2011: the book’s publication, a chapter in the works, IASSIST in Vancouver, some new instruction sessions on the books, and the development of our in-house librarian program.  Let’s see where the road takes us…

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