Skip to content

Author: Iris

Ooohing and Aaahing at the Universe

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

I love Google Earth. I enjoy zooming around and looking at places I’ve been or places I’ve heard of and especially places I’ve lived. But today I learned that there’s a similar program for the Universe. That’s right, nebulae and solar systems, and planet surfaces. Fun stuff!! It’s called World Wide Telescope, and it’s a free download. And so, because it was free and very very cool, I downloaded it and zoomed around the universe for a while, peeking under Neptune and into the Milky Way, prodding Venus, and spinning Mars around a crazy axis.

I sure hope some student needs something like this sometime and asks me about it at the reference desk. That way I can count what I did for the last 20 minutes as work.

p.s. Contrary to it’s About page, I don’t think this counts as a Web 2.0 tool, no matter how cool and shiny. For one thing, it’s not on the web once you download the application and start zooming. But that’s just me picking nits.

Comments closed

Hello World

Published by Iris on Monday, August 4th, 2008

You wouldn’t know it to look at this blog, but I’ve really wanted to write more here lately. When I started writing this thing, I could never have predicted how much I’d grow to love the act of writing (I typically hate writing and am embarrassed by it, which you’d probably never know seeing as you mostly only know me through writing, which seems like the biggest oxymoron to me and makes me giggle a little inside every time I think of it). But then, I kind of stopped writing very much here in recent months.

It’s not for lack of things happening or anything like that. As far as I can tell, it started with a sudden surge in readership (which made me suddenly quite shy), coupled with extra-crazy-busy schedules, all of which coincided with my starting to work on projects with people that I didn’t think would be comfortable with their work being blogged. I also had a 6-month slump in energy, which didn’t help any of this stuff.

But I don’t think that’s all of what’s changed for me. I think that fundamentally, this space has changed. For one thing, I’m not a brand new librarian any more, no matter how much I know that I still have a world of expertise to acquire. I’m not constantly figuring out what my place is in this profession like I was when I started writing here. But more than that, like Dorothea I’m finding that changing context is changing everything, and that I’m trying to figure out either how to make this back into my living room or how to come to terms with the fact that it’s not my living room. All of which means that I’m kind of inventing a new purpose and context for this space as I go along. It’s turned far more essay-ish than it was before, with far fewer links, and I’ve felt more compelled to have “complete thoughts” than I used to. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad or just different, or if I like it or not, but that’s what’s happened.

I’m hoping to step back into this blog and fit it to myself again. I really do miss the burning desire to get home every night and write something. And while I’ll probably never write every day, I think there’s hope that I’ll figure out my contexts, especially now that I’ve taken some time off this summer and have started to feel a little more energetic.

2 Comments

Busy Busy Busy

Published by Iris on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I don’t know what’s up, but this summer has been crazy busy at work. We’ve had projects and deadlines and research questions and emails and lots of Plan A’s that turned into Plan B’s and then some more projects. I’ve been at work late nearly every night for the past two weeks AND THERE ARE NO STUDENTS ON CAMPUS.

I know I always think that summer will be slower than it is. I always see two an a half months with no classes and think “Ah… I’ll have plenty of time to do all of that and maybe write an article.” I also know that I’m usually wrong. As evidence of this, note my modest (by academic librarian standards) publication count. It’s not for lack of things to say, that’s for sure.

But this summer has felt even more hectic. For a taste, here’s what we’ve done in this first half of the week.

  • We revamped our guidelines on how and what to record and count about our various interactions with students and faculty (reference desk, consultations, and classes). As our services evolved to meet the needs of our campus community, distinctions and practices we used to find uncomplicated now seem a little more confusing, so it was time to discuss some of these trickier scenarios and write down our conclusions so we don’t have to waste time making as many decisions about our statistical collection. In the process, we had to decide what we want to be able to investigate about our services, and how to collect information as accurately as possible and in a way that wouldn’t mess up our ACRL reporting.
  • I took all our discussion notes and actually drafted those guidelines. That took quite a lot of time.
  • We planned and began the planning phase of a pretty big assessment project. (That’s right, we planned to plan. Believe me, this was necessary.) We’re trying to figure out what we can learn about sophomore-level information literacy by reading a subset of the sophomore writing portfolios. This project has monopolized at least half of each day this week, and we have hours and hours more to do this week. If I weren’t deeply intrigued by the project, committed to making it a success, and so so so excited to see what that success looks like, I’d probably resent the amount of time it’s consumed already, before we’ve even gotten off the ground. But instead, it’s become one of those time-intensive projects that seems to energize rather than tire. This is Interesting Stuff, and there’s very little I’d rather be doing.
  • We’re planning to host a librarian from Cornell University, so a couple of us have spent time putting together an agenda for that day.
  • I’ve reorganized the way I keep my calendar (just a little, not a whole lot) so that I’ll be sure to have everything working the way I need it to work when Fall term hits.
  • Research questions don’t stop over the summer, they just get harder. This is when people ask the really hard-to-figure-out stuff. It’s also when I am not forced to find the best I can and then move on with my day, so I find myself obsessing just a little and not letting go of questions that maybe I should.
  • We drafted our departmental goals for the next year. That’s just about as fun as it sounds, but important. We’re getting pulled in many directions these days, so it helps to name our priorities.

And that’s just the stuff I can remember. Meanwhile, at home…

  • My cat spent Monday at the vet. The details are not for the squeamish and involve the words “necrotic” and “abscess” and one very sore paw. Now, twice a day, we get to struggle to decide the questions “Will those antibiotics make it into that stomach? And will the resulting blood on the carpet be yours or mine?”
  • But on the up-side, I’ve gotten completely sucked up in a couple of books, and I try to spend time every morning and every evening on my porch reading and sipping tea. I wouldn’t trade these hours for anything, but they sure do cut into time for things like, for example, sleeping. And eating. Oh, and doing my dishes.
  • I’ve felt like I have my old energy back for the first time in, well, months. I don’t know what was up between January and now, but whatever it was, I hope it’s gone for good.

But since I’ve already been teased for the length of my emails by three people in the last two weeks, I think I’ll stop now. Suffice it to say (which is a coy way to say “that looked like a lot but it wasn’t much, really”), it’s been incredibly busy but mostly in a good way, so I’m pleased.

Comments closed