Author: Allison
I am Such a Geek
Academic libraries
Best. Mail. Ever.
My first copy of College and Research Libraries, the journal of the College and Research Libraries division of the American Library Association came today, and I am so excited.
Going Back
Public LibrariesThis morning I tweeted about my visit to the Burton Barr Library. For those of you not in Phoenix, this is the main branch of the Phoenix Public Library, and a very impressive edifice. The tweet, like many tweets, was not particularly important, nor was it particularly clever, but I felt like I had to say something about the fact that I was in a public library. Not to work, not to use the wifi, not to run a hurried after-work errand. I was there just because I had an hour to kill downtown.
Having a free hour in the middle of the day was strange to begin with: this is the first time ever I have not been a student with a part-time job or a librarian working full-time. I have only had a week to adjust to this new state of affairs, and it still feels like I am on some kind of strange vacation.
My high school/college jobs were all at a public library, with the result that I spent nearly 10 years in a public library. When I left, I didn’t quite make the transition from dedicated student worker to dedicated library user, so all the associations I have with public libraries are those of an employee: hands black from handling dirty books, keeping an eye out for trespassed users while working in out-of-the way corners late at night, small children screaming blue murder for no reason in particular, and once, finding a used diaper on a shelf.
Remembering all that, I was really tempted to go to Giant Coffee and sit in their very clean, controlled environment. Then I remembered that I am on a budget (yay marginal employment :/), and technically, I have already paid for the privilege of sitting at Burton Barr for as long as I want to stay. (As many a disgruntled user reminded me when I worked in a public library, public libraries are funded by taxpayer dollars. I’m really glad I never had a patron who knew about IMLS grants, because I’m sure I would have received an angry lecture on those taxpayer dollars too.)
So I climbed to the top floor, found the knitting section, and putzed around. They have the best collection of knitting books I’ve ever seen, and in spite of the open layout of the floor, it was really quiet. Library books are grimy: that’s simply a fact of life, but I found a nice chair to read in, and for the first time in years, had a really nice, relaxed time at a public library.
What about you? When did you last visit a public library, and did the experience make you eager to return?
Oh the Dread
Interviewing, Job HuntingOf interviewing. I put my heart and soul into wanting a job, do the interview, agonize for weeks over every little thing I said, and then, weeks later, a thin little envelope comes in the mail.
It leads me to think that I interview badly. One thing that keeps sheer panic from setting in is walking through the questions I expect to be asked. I had been working off a list collected from former interviews, but it’s not comprehensive, so to beef it up a little bit I did some searching and found the following useful sources:
This page from Northwestern University appears to be geared towards undergraduates seeking a first job or graduate degree, but I like how they have the questions broken down into categories. Based on the fact that I have gotten some variant on most of the Personal and Behavioral category questions before, I’d say those questions don’t change much as you progress through your career.
This page from the University of South Carolina library school, while a bit of an information dump, has good project-related questions that apply to a variety of academic library positions.
http://www.libsci.sc.edu/career/invufaqs.htm
How do you prepare for an interview?
I *heart* Assessment
AssessmentIs that too geeky? I really do, especially web analytics-based assessment. It’s fun to start with raw data, and then get little glimmerings of insight into how these people, who you’ve never seen before, and get little glimmers of insight into how they interact with your institution’s website.
I would like for my methodology to be stronger (I can never get through a project without thinking of at least one thing I’ll do better “next time”), and as a reminder to myself, here are some places one can learn from others doing assessment:
Housekeeping
Uncategorized
Seen this place before?
Blogs with continuity are really good. They tell stories, like little soap operas (hopefully with more normalcy). Each new installation picks up where the old one left off, characters return, and you, the reader, gets to watch the story develop.
I am here today to tell you that this is not that kind of blog. Not yet, anyways. At this time, I am lurching from anecdote to news item to quick shared link, and failing at completing long posts. I wish I wasn’t: I like blogs with continuity. But this little blog is still finding its way into my social media ecosystem.
The start is always a little rocky, more so when we try to make it look marvelous and simple, and I am sorry for that.
Today I’m trying to make my little room pretty with flowers, and perking it up with a Twitter feed. Twitter is also a new shoot in the ecosystem.
While you wait, and wonder when that whole continuity thing will happen, tell me–have you seen that building now featured in the header before?
These are Times
Social MediaThe first I heard of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon was when I logged on to io9 to see what was new.
Here’s the article I found: How the Boston Marathon tragedy revealed the best side of social media.
This article hit home something that is often lost as librarians people argue over whether technology is “good” or “bad”: Technology is a tool people use. Whether it is good or bad is totally dependent on whether the people using it are doing so for good or bad.
I’m glad some people are using technology for good.
What’s Your Community?
Celebrations
The ACRL conference is a terrific lead-in to National Library Week. Get all the librarians pumped up on a mix of new ideas, camaraderie, and vender-funded coffee, and then send them back to their libraries glowing with the joy of librarianship. For the record, I bought my own coffee, but I got pretty hyped up seeing what’s happening in academic libraries and hanging out with my awesome librarian friends.
I’m really pleased this year’s theme is “Communities Matter,” because really they do. As a Horrendously Awkward Teen, my only friends were the ones I met in the library’s teen volunteer group. A few years later, my community was the extremely quirky group of library pages I worked with: the only thing any of us had in common was that each of us was extremely passionate about some utterly random thing. When I graduated library school and left the public library, I didn’t join a book club or a tutoring group, but I was was building a community. It was a community of librarians, sometimes awkward, most working in different libraries, always passionate about some random thing.
Who’s in your community?
Does This Ribbon Make Me Look Desperate?
Academic libraries, Conferences
As if attending a conference wasn’t fraught with enough decisions–which sessions to attend, exhibit hall or no–they also present us with ribbons with which to identify ourselves. Part of me feels just like a Girl Scout collecting badges, and the other part feels like I’m maybe trying too hard to establish a marketable identity.
Oh the agony of decision-making when your body insists it’s only 5:30, not 8:30.
All Right All Ready
Academic libraries, Conferences, Uncategorized
The Association of College and Research Libraries annual conference starts tomorrow, and in the past fee weeks, I have been bombarded with print and e-mail advertisements from what must be every single vendor attending the exhibit hall.
I’m coming already, people. Just be forewarned: I’m not coming with a budget.
Allison Ringness 