Tag Archives: work

25 September 2008

The weather turned cool and rainy today, and SB and I had difficulty getting out of bed as a result.  The last few mornings have been deliciously cool – not so cold that you need a jacket, but cool enough that staying under the thin blankets curled up together seems like a good idea.  We had warm homemade cereal with chopped up bites of apple for breakfast.

I spent pretty close to all day in my office, making progress on assorted things.  This week I’ve had a lot of self-directed time which is a nice change from endless meetings – but also means that I struggle at times to keep motivated or focused or – something.  What’s the word I’m going for?  Yesterday I purged my desk of clutter and made piles organized by project = focus!  In case you’re curious, a few things that I’m working on currently:

  1. An evaluation of statistics tools and processes with the hopeful end result of implementing a consistent (and systematic) workflow in all the public service points.
  2. Transitioning to a different staffing model for our IM service, for which I have basically sole responsibility, having disbanded my committee last week.
  3. Working with other campus units to create library content for the modular University portal site (well, trying to do so).

I battled a throbbing headache all day, then came home a little early and sat with a cup of French press coffee for a bit.  Dinner was perfect for the weather – a sort of cassoulet with from-scratch tomato sauce and tarragon pork sausage.  Rich, flavorful, and filling, though we were snackish later on.  Next time we’ll have some crusty bread and it will be exactly right.

19 September 2008

I’m coming up on my first anniversary at the library, but there are still many, many days when I feel like I haven’t a clue what I’m doing.  Between 12-1 I was swamped at the desk – the phone was ringing and I was juggling multiple patrons in person and on IM.  Each question felt impossible, or was about something that I either had never worked with or never heard of.  I know it really wasn’t THAT bad – well, I hope it wasn’t  – but I was by myself, and I just felt overwhelmed and flustered.

I left early and walked home from the train, meeting Shane at Buzz for coffee and more work.  The weather was perfect – high in the 70s, breezy enough that I wanted my hoodie.  A woman had her baby in a Bjorn and seated him cross-legged in the big lounge-y chairs outside while she got settled.  Shane saw one of our neighbors.  We walked home together, had a disappointing dinner (despite good smells and prepping everything this morning, the recipe – questionable to begin with – just didn’t work), then spent a nice evening puttering, hanging photos, making zucchini muffins, and generally nesting.  After a year of feeling really out of place – this feels like home.

17 September 2008

Today I did the following things:

  • wrote some letters
  • went to EXTREME TRAINING and worked so hard that I felt like I’d throw up
  • wore a long-sleeved shirt for the first time in months
  • rode yellow bike
  • listened to The New Pornographers and also The Watson Twins
  • ate some soup
  • got embroiled in office politics
  • helped a deaf patron
  • drank a mocha
  • learned about fats

I’m too tired to form complete sentences.  Except that one, I guess.

5 September 2008

A long, tired day, and I’m ready for bed at 9pm.  Some good meetings and project planning, and other time just wasted trying to concentrate.  I missed the 5:02 bus and so took a meandering walk through our new neighborhood instead of waiting 20 minutes for the next one – and in doing so, found an adorable Greek restaurant (!!!) that I can’t wait to try.  Baked acorn squash and grilled chicken for dinner = yum.

Tropical Storm (Hurricane?) Hanna is supposed to hit this area tomorrow, which will directly get in the way of our farmers’ market routine.  It’ll be nice to not have to do anything.

4 September 2008

The students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back the students are back.

First day at work since the semester started.  Still under the weather.  Still exhausted.  The commute is very, very easy, though, and I’m definitely not missing waiting for the bus in the Goodwill parking lot, or being leered at by day laborers as I walk home.

Mina just figured out that she can squeeze into a cabinet through the air vent that goes through to the next room.  Very helpful paws indeed.

Another Thursday night at the desk

Just for the sake of having something to write, here’s a short list of the questions I have answered since 5:45pm.

  • A request for guest wireless, which I set up with a smile.
  • Print problem #1: the print server is slow.  Fixed itself before I could get to it, as is generally the case with tech problems.
  • Print problem #2: frames will be the death of us all.  Whenever a patron comes to the desk with a sheaf of half-printed papers, I know they’re trying to print from a) Blackboard or b) Yahoo.  Right on both counts this time, and one more patron now knows how to right-click.
  • Another request for guest wireless.
  • “Do those copiers send faxes?”  No.  Go to Kinko’s.
  • A request for back-issues of GW publications – specifically “By George”, and specifically the most recent one.  Special Collections is closed, so I steal one out of my coworker’s mailbox.  Mental note: put it back before I leave.
  • An IM from a friend who is trying to find publication dates on a series of books.  The reference collection lets me down.  I totally marked this on the stats sheet even though it wasn’t technically a question from one of our patrons.
  • “Where’s the bathroom?”
  • “If I need something from a library in the consortium, can I just go there?” Yes.

Saturday this and that (work related)

You know what is kind of lonely? The reference desk on a stormy Saturday in May. I’ve had 7 questions since noon.

I’m feeling better about work these days – there are still definitely moments when I feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and totally unqualified, but there have been many others where I feel like I can contribute to the conversation in a significant way. We continue to hire bright, sharp, forward-thinking individuals, and that gives me hope for substantive changes in the near future. Three individuals with whom I work closely are leaving in the near future or have left already, and that makes things hard – but I’m hopeful that we’ll hire fantastic people to replace them, and that the new folks will bring interesting perspectives and good ideas to add to the fray.

Right now we’re hard at work wrapping up our Facebook study, which was accepted for the RUSA Reference Renaissance conference in August. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to build on this study in interesting ways, although we’re already moving on to the next project, with a third in the wings for fall. I’m taking advantage of my six hours on the desk to wrap up this lit review, and get started on the next one. Hooray for self-directed research that directly informs practice.

Bending and Growing

I haven’t posted here about Project Bamboo, but that’s not for lack of thinking about it.

I spent a few days in Chicago earlier this month participating in Workshop 1b in the Bamboo planning process. Bamboo bills itself as

a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and inter-organizational effort that brings together researchers in arts and humanities, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists to tackle the question:

How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?

Basically, it’s just that – a bunch of technologists, librarians, and faculty members in the arts and humanities getting together to brainstorm the possible. GW is interested in getting involved, so I attended on behalf of my library. It was an overwhelming, challenging, invigorating experience, despite the fact that I felt very young and green amongst the university librarians, the CIOs, and the tenured faculty members.

Bamboo offers a really exciting opportunity for all the stakeholders in the process to be involved, and to collectively develop something – a tool, a tool set, a development environment, a network – that will be mutually beneficial, facilitating discovery, collaboration, and advocacy for research in the humanities. Over the course of the workshops we talked about the need for change in promotion and tenure processes in the humanities to recognize collaborative, “tool-building”, and digital work. We talked about transformation versus improvement in research practices. We talked about smashing boundaries between faculty, staff, and students – between disciplines – between the public and the academy – to encourage more authentic collaboration and feedback. It was tremendously exciting to be sitting on a bus with people from all over the country – and for them to be so excited about what we were working on that the chatter was deafening.

On the final day, the CIO of the University of Chicago framed the discussion in terms of “I’m OK, you’re OK.” He said that we’ve gone through many iterations of this relationship over the years. We have said to those doing research or using technology in different or unfamiliar ways: “I’m OK, you’re not OK.” We’ve said “I’m not OK, you’re OK” in situations where we’ve felt overwhelmed by the technology or the process. We’ve also said “I’m not OK, you’re not OK” in situations where we’ve been asked to collaborate with others, but just haven’t spoken the same language. Bamboo offers an opportunity to say “I’m OK, you’re OK” in the context of a respectful partnership.

Regardless of what GW ends up doing, I’m terribly excited to see what happens with Bamboo, and delighted that I was able to be a part of the process.

Sertralini Dreams

Since going on Sertraline last month, I have had extremely lucid dreams almost every night. Fortunately I have yet to dream about my cats being cooked in a sandwich – but they’re no less weird. In the last two weeks, some highlights have included:

  • Worrying about the link structure of our website changing when we go to a CMS, and so writing a note on my hand to remember to talk to David about redirects
  • Receiving mashed potatoes as a gift from my boss’s boss
  • Mint chocolate chip ice cream is now called ‘Chinese tea’ ice cream
  • A particularly inept candidate interviewed for an electronic resources-type job at the library (not necessarily mine). He previously worked at the library, and as part of his application packet had included something with citations, most of which were formatted incorrectly. A coworker pointed out that he didn’t cite the databases from which he retrieved the articles. OMG. The interview ended abruptly after he casually put his arm around me, and then everyone was uncomfortable.
  • Wandering around a festival or fun fair in a type of convention center, trying to figure out why a man was singing a Carla Bruni song.
  • I was engaged, and we called off the wedding, but somehow it got rescheduled and was going to happen at my grandparents’ house. I had just gotten back from a run and didn’t have time to get cleaned up and was going to call the thing off anyway, so I went downstairs in my sports bra and a skirt (I think) to explain to all of these people in black tie dress that a wedding was definitely not happening. Someone told me I did the right thing.

I have to say that if this is the main side effect of the medication, I’m totally cool with it.