Category: Uncategorized

Posted on
by
Moving into my new office
Moving into my new office

In 2015, I pledged to simplify and to do better. Despite a series of increasingly troubling health issues that consistently limited my professional output, I’m happy to say that I am in a better place now than where I was this time last year. Moreover, I am looking forward to 2016 as possibly being one of the most productive years of my career as a librarian so far.

Professional goals

My professional goals for this year are quite simple:

  • finish my IRDL research project (finally)
  • apply for one grant
  • submit one proposal to a conference
  • create one new sustainable program at MPOW
  • strategically develop better relationships

The last one of these is the most nebulous, but essentially I want to spend more time reflecting upon my professional relationships/networks and how they can be mutually beneficial to all the parties involved.

Personal goals

My personal goals are also simple and focus on ways to increase my creative output both at work and at home as well as contribute to self-fulfillment:

read my own tomes

My partner and I are currently using the Konmari method to organize our home and despite our deep love of books we recognize the need to slim down our collection. In doing so, I’ve realized just how many books I own but have never read. Inspired by a LibraryThing group of similar name, I’ll be focusing on reading books that have sat long neglected on my shelves.

give to things I like

Each month, I plan to give a donation of money or time to something that I love. It could be a non-profit, podcast creator, software program designer, or a local group. It is a simple step toward being more appreciative of the things that enrich my life (and hopefully the lives of others).

track my health

I’m not pledging to exercise more or eat more vegetables, but I will commit to tracking my food, sleep, and exercise habits using my recently purchased Fitbit. Tracking this information in and of itself will improve my health and after a few months of data collection I’ll be in a better position to make concrete health goals.

commit to one 30-day challenge each month

Rather than set a year-long goal that in all likelihood would fail, I will commit to doing one 30-day challenge each month. The focus for each challenge will be improving either my health, creativity, or kindness.

review my mantra daily

I’ve been constantly tweaking a “mantras.txt” file over the past year and slowly making it a weekly, if not daily, habit. I’m ready to make this my daily mantra:

Be grateful. Be present. Smile. Breath. Listen. Make eye contact. I acknowledge that there will always be more things to do, more projects to start, more progress that could be made. I acknowledge that I cannot do everything, but I can choose what I focus on in a given space of time. There is rarely a “best” choice, and the fear-of-missing-out is a distraction.

That is the plan for 2016. As always, writing more is a perennial goal and which for better or worse will happen in this space. Happy New Year!

Posted on
by

Thinking back over this past year’s library reads, Michael Agresta’s Slate piece, “What will become of the library?” was one of my favorites. It perfectly captures the zeitgeist of libraries in the second decade of this millennium and it is a good reminder of the social and intellectual potential that libraries offer their communities.

Libraries will only survive if the communities they serve want and need them to. […] In the end, it’s up to us—scholars, makers, and artists, seekers of community, access, and safe haven, and above all, readers in the old, human sense of the word—to rise to the level of these monuments we’ve built.

As I think about 2016 and my role as a librarian in the future of higher ed, this article puts me in useful state of mind. 

Posted on
by

In summarizing the recent success of the ACRL Library Marketing and Outreach Interest Group, one of the coordinators noted that “this past year, we all decided we loved Canva so much that we decided to marry it.” We chuckled, but I’m sure some of us where thinking “hm, I wonder if I could marry Canva?”

Canva is an elegant online tool used by many librarians for developing visually stunning digital graphics, but as Lindsay Davis tells us on Librarian Design Share, Canva can also be used to create print handouts as well. Check out this flyer Davis created for students at Merced College:

los-banos-1