Category: Random Thoughts

I’ve been composing an email to the new faculty members in the departments I serve this afternoon, and another librarian I know has been composing a similar email to faculty in a particular program at her library. And you know what? These emails are hard. I want to come across as helpful and practical and not the least bit overwhelming or pushy or beggy.

I don’t really need a response from these people or anything, but I’d hate to see this email just get deleted and forgotten. There’s good stuff in there. Or at least I think so, though I may be a tad biased. Still, I know that I’m competing with a deluge of similarly information-full emails from other places on campus, not to mention the mountain of getting-hired paperwork, or the chaos of moving to a new town. So I’ve decided that the key is to start with the one or two things that are most likely worrying these new faculty. After that, the rest will probably fall into place on its own, but this first interaction has to be about them and their upcoming instructional challenges, not about me and my work. If they read no more than the first sentence or two, what will grab their attention and let them know that I have their interests at heart, not my own?

In this case I think that “I have to fit all this into ten weeks?!?” is probably foremost on these new faculty members’ minds. So I’ll start off by saying something about how I can help them fit research projects into a ten-week term without derailing their course content.

But I think that as I move forward, I’ll try to keep this shift from “here’s what I can do” to “here’s how I can help solve this problem you have” in mind whenever I write these emails. When I first started here, I wanted to prove to people that I could help them, so I gave lots of details about all the various kinds of help I could give. Then I shifted towards giving a couple of examples that illustrated many things, or that would spark people’s imaginations. And I still like using specific examples, but I’ve gone off the idea of telling them Everything They Must Know (here and in my instruction). No, my goal now is much more modest: I would like them to know at least one thing they really wanted to know. After that, details seem to work themselves out and they end up learning what they need as they need it. At least, I hope they do.

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Starting August 9th (one day after the Summer Olympics, by the way) The Orwell Prize will start publishing Orwell’s diary entries from 70 years ago in what I like to think of as “Real Time Plus 70 Years.” I can’t wait to see this unfold.

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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.

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