As I type this, the heavens have opened up outside. The rain is pouring down in sheets turning the alley behind our building into a rather fast moving stream. I did not know it was supposed to rain today. Glad I got my lunch walk in before this happened. 
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Aside from being distracted by the rain, here's where my attention is going at the moment.

WORK

• This week, we're conducting interviews for an open position at our library. It's a lot of Zoom. A lot. This is my second round of doing interviews remotely and, I gotta say, I don't like it. It's just weird trying to hire a colleague when we're not in the same space. The candidates are doing great, but I wish we got to see each other in person.
• I attended and presented at the Computers in Libraries conference last week. Since all the session were recorded I am slowly making my way through the archives to check out the ones I could not attend live.
• We held another session in our Faculty Webinar Series this week. Just two more to go! I'm already making plans with my colleagues to bring back this series in the fall. We're going to spend time this summer assessing this semester's events and thinking up what we want the next events to look like.
• One of our interns is working on LibGuides for our community college programs. I've been handling my end of the review and edits. This week, I was able to hit publish on three more guides.
• The monthly staff newsletter I write goes out tomorrow. I spent today drafting up content and tracking down appropriate GIFs.
• Last week, I cohosted a webinar with DCPL introducing our students to what the public library offers them. We recorded it so I'm using that in our post-event marketing.

PERSONAL

• My newsletter launched this past weekend. I am doing some marketing and sharing of the first issue to grow my audience a little bit. I don't expect this to be one of those viral newsletters, but I am proud of it and want to share it widely. 
• April kicks off tomorrow. (How?!?) I'm drawing up the new slate of monthly pages in my bullet journal. I will also spend time reviewing how I think March went.
• I'm in week 2 of my 5K training program. Still don't like running but there is one upside - I run back from daycare drop-off which means I get home earlier than I used to. Not much earlier but still earlier. I'm hoping I can get most of the training program done before the DC summer kicks into gear. Also, I think I need new shoes. Mine are over a year old and not as cushy as they once were.

The ALA catalog showed up in my mailbox last week. I spent 15 minutes flipping through it and adding items to my professional TBR list

You can see my complete TBR list on Pinterest. You can also find my professional TBR list here.

First, I have some (possibly exciting) information. I've decided to turn this weekly post into a newsletter over on Substack. I greatly enjoy putting it together each week and I want to share it more broadly. While the links and all that will be the same, I do plan to add some new content to the newsletter in case you want to subscribe. If you're interested, head on over to my substack page and click subscribe. Like this blog, the newsletter is totally free. 

Second, the local Capital Weather Gang declared winter officially over in the DC area. Good. I am done with the cold and am very excited to talk lunchtime walks in the sunshine.

Sometimes the most random things end up as research. Here's what I looked up this week.
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• ​Languages of Uganda - We were watching the Africa Top Gear special and I thought I heard someone off-camera speaking in French. I was curious if I was right. My quick research (hello, Wikipedia) says, "Not likely." 43 languages are spoken in Uganda and French is not one of them. 
• Scare the Dickens - I had to stop by the office this week and I startled one of my colleagues who didn't expect anyone else to be there. That made me think of this phrase. I 've used it before and never know the history behind it. Turns out it's from Shakespeare and not Charles Dickens.
• Arborvitaes - This word came up on a local list-serv in reference to some continuing plant thefts. I wanted to know just what was being stolen. These are not exactly small.
• Differential Equations - A colleague was talking about how she was looking up OER for math. It reminded her that she used to understand these all of that stuff but no longer. That got us talking about differential equations. I remembered that I did a ton of them but had no recall of what they were.
  

One weird thing about working from home is that you can see what the others in your life get up to while they are also home. This week, my husband took two days off. (Use those vacation days everyone!) As I worked, I noticed him tackle a rather long list of those annoying "life maintenance" things we all have in our heads. I'm fairly certain he walked 10,000 steps just doing things around the house. 

Here's where my attention is going at the moment.

WORK

• I'm "attending" the virtual Computers and Libraries Connect Conference this week. It's a lot of Zoom. A lot. But it's good Zoom.
• I am also presenting at the above conference tomorrow. Earlier this week, I finalized my slides and posted them to the conference platform. I'm still deciding if my use of hot pink was "fun and attention grabbing" or "annoying and unprofessional." We shall... but I like it. Also, my session is after lunch on the last day. We might all need some visual caffeine.
• On top of the conference, I'm still running our Faculty Webinar Series. This week, I ran a session on Social Explorer. It's a pretty spectacular resource and had a bunch of faculty in attendance.

PERSONAL

• One thing I am not focusing on is my March Madness bracket. That thing went bust on day one. 
• I decided to turn my Sunday blog post series into a newsletter. Cause, why not? The first post goes out this week. (Sign up here.) I spent a lot of time this week working on settings, format, graphics, and generally organizing content and ideas for the future. I don't see this thing taking off like a lot of other newsletters, but I want to be proud of what I send out. (Also, it's a lot of fun seeing people sign up.)
• This week, I started following a training app to run a 5K. I hate running. Hate it. But, I also hate sitting around. So, my one fitness goal for the year is to run a 5K distance without stopping. So far the workouts are manageable. We'll see how I feel in a few weeks.

I like style. I like minimizing. I like workbooks. Adding this title to my TBR was an easy decision.

Just this comic in my head every day.

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Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13
Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

This is my main read at the moment and I grabbed it because I can never NOT watch the movie Apollo 13. The first night I read this, I figured it would be a little dense and I'd fall asleep quickly. Nope. I managed to read 50 pages that first night and I would have kept going if I let myself. So far the book is an incredible, well-paced narrative. I know what happens and how it ends but the dangerous situations still feel tense and scary.

I discovered this week that I never turned off my Google activity tracking. That's awesome for remembering what to put in this post but really bad for data privacy overall. Time to consider my options. If you want to learn more about your Google activity tracking, head over to your personal page.

My goal for this series of posts is to share all of the interesting things we research in everyday life. The caveat is that I get to decided what's on the list. I do not share what I research on behalf of our students and faculty, I do not share searches that overlap with the privacy others in my life, I also do not share things that I do not wish to share. Again, I get to make that decision. Google, on the other hand, just tracks everything. They then use that for marketing. If you want to see what Google tracks and how to stop it, visit this article on c|net.

• Generations - I was very curious about the naming around recent generations. As an early Millennial (sometimes known as a member of the Oregon Trail generation), I don't often have the same experiences as younger members in my generation. I was also prompted to look at my kid's generation. Obviously, she's too young to declare trends and types, but now I know that she is considered Generation Alpha.
• Books from Birth List - Our kid is in this program and I was curious about the titles we'd be receiving the rest of the year.
• Star Trek Beyond - We watched the movie last weekend and I was looking up various actors to see where I recognized them from. I have a great ability to say, "I know I know you from somewhere..." but I can't always identify the actual where.

Two of my fellow colleagues and I were recently published in College & Research Libraries News. We provided an article for the regular "Perspectives on the Framework" column. 

Abstract
During summer 2019, the four reference librarians at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), an HBCU in the nation’s capital, met weekly to review and discuss each part of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. With our student population in mind, we had two goals: establishing a team-wide shared analysis of each frame and developing a collection of student-centered active learning activities, rooted in the Framework’s concepts, that could be mixed and matched during one-shot and embedded library instruction. Prior to this project, the librarians were using a limited group of library instruction activities that were not necessarily related to the Framework. During the project, the librarians found the Framework to be highly theoretical, making it challenging to identify concrete learning activities. However, by deeply engaging with the Framework, it was possible to create student-centered instructional activities that were rooted in the theory, and we were able to expand our repertoire of activities used in library instruction. We were also able to provide faculty with firm examples of how library instruction engages their students in information literacy and lifelong learning.

​You can read the full piece here.