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Category: Carleton

And We’re Off…

Published by Iris on Monday, September 11th, 2006

School started today at Carleton. This was notable for four reasons. First, I got to start a school year where I was less confused by and anxious than the new freshmen. (This year, I already know where the bathrooms are and which keys will get me into which rooms… except for one room that I’ve never been able to figure out, so I’ve decided not to wonder about it any more.) Second, I was able to skip my very first reference desk shift of the year in order to attend the Opening Convocation (though I didn’t know that I could have processed with everyone else of importance, so next year I’ll have to decide whether or not to resurrect my academic robes). Third, I got to work and promptly spent three hours working through my inbox, which was my first clue that school had started. (Last year nobody knew who I was, nor did they care, so my inbox was quite a bit more manageable.) And fourth, it was September 11th, so it was kind of weird to celebrate the opening of a new school year while working in moments of silence to remember the tragedy. On the other hand, perhaps we were remembering September 11th while working in moments of celebration… I’ll have to decide.

I wish I’d taken my camera to Opening Convo. It’s a Carleton tradition that lots of students sit up in the balcony of the old chapel and shower the processing faculty and staff with bubbles while cheering and generally having a good time. These same students also belted out a boisterous but entirely tone-deaf rendition of “Happy Birthday” to the president of the college just when he thought he’d be starting his speech. I’ve never seen him blush before. What fun.

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Of Penguins and Podcasts

Of Penguins and Podcasts

Published by Iris on Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Wow! What a week. Gone are the days of synching my palm to my desktop calendar once a week. Gone are the days of keeping up with my email. On Tuesday it happened: the library got busy. Classes don’t start for 10 days yet, but freshmen are arriving soon (international students have arrived already), new faculty orientation is soon, and basically the campus has forgotten about summer and is rarin’ for fall.

Preparing for fall, I’ve been thinking a lot about penguins. This isn’t because Minnesota is cold in the winter and I’m thinking of winter (it is cold here, but I’m not thinking about it), nor is it because it’s predicted that we’ll have a colder than normal winter here (though we are). No, it’s because Oscar the Penguin is our unofficial mascot here in the library, and we’ve been putting penguin pictures everywhere. (By the way, Oscar is a stuffed penguin that Mr. Gould brought back with him from his Antarctic adventures.) He’s already on our web site and ready to help (though he’s not very research savvy, being stuffed… and – er- not alive, but we love him).

One thing I’ve noticed about Oscar is that he makes it really hard for us to take ourselves too seriously. How serious can you be when you’ve got penguins everywhere? I love it.


Anyway, this week he’s been put on our new trading cards (they’ll be done soon, I promise), the notepads we put out at the reference desk (they look like this), and all of our new student and new faculty fliers, guides, brochures, etc. That’s a lot of little penguins! (Oh, and that little drawing in the center of the notepads… that’s my clumsy attempt to draw on a computer for the first time. It turned out okay, but it was a PAIN.)

But today we tried something ENTIRELY new to us. We swallowed our fears of recording our voices. We decided not to worry too much about having lots of specialized equipment. And we recorded our very first podcast!!!! It’s not edited yet, but when it is it’ll go up on our web site. It’s nothing fancy, just a library tour, but it’s pretty exciting for us. (I haven’t heard my voice yet, so I may resurrect those fears of recording myself after this, but sometimes ignorance really is bliss. By the time I hear this it’ll be too late for me to back out.)

Oh, another thing that’ll soon be linked from the library’s web page is a video compilation of some interviews we did at the end of last year. I haven’t seen it yet, but I hear it’s quite entertaining (as well as informative, of course). I also hear I get mentioned by name! I hope it’s a good mention…

It’s been so incredibly busy here that I’ve got several other placeholder posts waiting to be written. I just haven’t had the time to write them yet. Ta-ta for now. I’m off to work on shrinking my “to-do” list. (So far every time I work on something it only reminds me of more items to put onto that list, so it’s been growing rather than shrinking, but perseverance should pay off sometime… I hope.)

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Here Come the Trading Cards

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006

I had my photo-shoot for this year’s trading cards. We got a couple of good pictures (I promise I’ll let you know when we’ve decided on one), and I had a blast tapping my inner super-hero… until I found out that the entire shoot had been held during the normal staff break time right outside of the windows to the break room. Apparently our metadata librarian turned to my supervisor and asked, “Why is half your team out there posing for each other.” Oh well. At least we had it better than my co-worker who had the president of the college walk past her while she did the same thing yesterday. (Although, I gotta say, to all of the prospective students and their parents who were in that college tour that walked past us today as we tried to figure out the super-est super-hero poses possible, we really aren’t insane. Really, we aren’t. Please keep Carleton on your radar even if it’s librarians are a little out there.)

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