One of my work projects this week was putting together the logistics for our summer webinars. This is the first summer I've opted to do webinars and I'm oddly excited. Since our on-campus students and faculty numbers are lower, I'm focusing on broader topics to see if I can attract outside interest. 

One of the sessions, personal archiving, grew out of a class workshop I provided at the end of this semester. The professor was teaching a course on global archives and she wanted her students to understand the role of archival work in their personal lives. As a former preservation librarian with inherited knowledge of archival practices (thanks, dad!) who happens to have just worked on her own personal archive, I was eager to provide this session. The class went great and the students asked wonderful questions. I'm going to use that input to improve the presentation. (People need to know about transcribing handwriting!)

I'm thrilled to provide this as a broader webinar because I don't think people consider their photographs, diaries, cookbooks, memorabilia, and online presence as an archive. But it is! We are the archivists of our own personal and family history. Before "stuff" can make it in to an institutional museum or archive, it has to be collected and saved by someone. Even if a person never "makes it big," these personal collections are important.

I'm using this session to share what it means to curate a personal archive. I'm including best practices - physical and digital - as well as ideas of what to save and how to save it. Plus, I'm digging into extra information like what to do with your archive once you have it. To provide an example of what this work looks like, I'm sharing photos and insights from my own personal archival journey.

I have never been so enthusiastic about a webinar before. I think, given our student and community population, I may turn this into a standing thing I offer a few times each year. 

Do you have a personal archive?

It's been raining all day. This weather is one reason why the husband returned home from business trip at 2:30 a.m. instead of midnight via Dulles instead of DCA. As annoying as a delayed return is, I'm just glad he's home. Kiddo has been asking "Where's dad?" all week and is eager to give him a hug.

Here's what made me happy this week:

• Posted our summer webinars 
• Getting to be creative with my content for Finals Week
• Having a Yuengling for the first time in ages
• Kiddo was happy during my week of solo parenting
• Breakfast sausage links
• Got around to a project I've been meaning to do for about a year
• Dust Dragons
• My new fancy facial product
• Learning I was nominated for a faculty award
• Cheesy regency romance movies
• Nabbed a spot in our parking lot
• Kiddo told me to apologize to a door when I accidentally bumped into it

Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds
Greg Milner

I picked this one up because nothing else looked good at home. (I really should make library requests faster.) I'm only a handful of pages in, but the story of GPS is already interesting. I had no idea that it was a completely free, U.S. government-run system. While I'm not really in the mood to read non-fiction right now, this is an okay stop gap until the book I requested from the library comes in.

Earlier this week, I finished reading The Adventure Zone: The Eleventh Hour. It's the most recent graphic novel from the McElroys. As with the others, it was entertaining with great art.

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My folder of webinar recordings is out of control. Normally, I try to save them for Friday afternoons but, this week, I've taken to popping them on when I'm working on less "thinky" projects. Gotta make a dent somehow.

Here's what else I'm working on:

1. Research Assignment Design: Still coding and reviewing coded excerpts. Usually, it feels like this stuff is unnecessary extra work... until we find a code we missed or an excerpt that we coded incorrectly. Then it feels like victory.
2. End of Semester/Summer Planning: Finals are next week. In order to catch faculty and students before they leave, I'm doing a blast of "Hey! Before you go!" marketing. To do that successfully, I've also done a bit of summer planning. I wrangled the logistics of our summer webinars (which is a new thing for us) and got those posted. I am VERY excited about the personal archiving one I'm adapting from the workshop I gave last week.
3. Finals Week Social Media: Every finals week, I do a binge of posts that are, essentially, cheerleading and study breaks. I outlined my content and made a list of graphics and photos I need to take. I'll tackle that creative stuff tomorrow. Then it's scheduling and community engagement once everything posts. As a fun thing for reading day on Monday, I'm using a #GameOfFrogs I yoinked and taking it on a trip to the library. 

Just a brief intro this week. 

I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning on a brief spa getaway to Bedford Springs with my bestie. The kiddo's daycare was closed for spring break this week and my parents were in town to help. I took advantage of this to leave for a few days. (The husband left for his own solo vacation.)

I thought I would feel guilt about this trip - both from a financial and a parenting perspective. Instead, zero guilt. I feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever about spending time and money on myself. It was a glorious few days where I was reunited with the cold dip pool which is my mental happy place.

The bestie and I made plans to make this a thing we do every two years. 

It's a good decision - one I feel no guilt about.

At this very moment, I am sitting in a beautiful hotel room in an historical spa resort with my best friend. We just went for a hike and will both eat a small lunch before heading to the spa. This is  day two of our spa getaway and it is glorious. The last time we did this was five years ago. We are now plotting if it would be possible to get away every two years. 

Here's what else made my week:

• Spring flowers everywhere
• Drinking champagne and lounging
• A really firm massage that removed so many knots
• Teaching a fantastic class about personal archiving
• Hugging my parents
• Watching kiddo twirl in her new "tutu" dresses
• Fancy date night with the husband that included a very good local wine
• Running a leisurely errand solo
• Newly sharpened knives
• Dark brew coffee
• Dancing as a family to "the floor is lava"

Also, special shout out to the cold dip pool. It is just as amazing as I remember it being. It will continue to be my mental happy place.

 I just added "summer projects" to my to-do list. Each spring semester, I spend an hour or so plotting out what I want to accomplish at work over the summer. I'm always too ambitious. Maybe I should add a note reminding myself how many hours are in a week...

Here's what I'm working on:

1. Research Assignment Design: So much coding done, so much coding yet to do. At least we are nearing the end of our code review. We've also decided to do excerpt review to ensure that the codes we have applied are correct. In all of this work, I'm reminded that I'm working with a great team. We all get along, feel open sharing insights, and have ideas we can bounce off each other. It makes the project far more enjoyable.
2. Personal Archiving Workshop: I taught this class today and it was so much fun! It took me three hours to put together the slides and notes, but it was all worth it in the end. The students were engaged and asked some great questions. I've mentioned this workshop in a few places and it is clear that more people want this sort of content. Now I'm working on turning it into a webinar. That will be fairly easy since the slides generally be reused as is. It's mostly webinar scheduling logistics and promotion at this point.
   
3. Spa Trip!: My bestie and I are headed to a spa a few hours outside of DC tomorrow. I've got my packing list set, treatments scheduled, snacks purchased, and a list of activities we want to do. Tonight, I'll pack my stuff. I leave early tomorrow and I am so ready to jump into the cold dip pool and buy more than a few signature scent lotions.
   

It's fascinating for me to see how people integrate reading into their lives. There are five laws of library science and book habits are an integral part of them. We all find/use/share books in different ways. I thought it would be fun to share a bit about my life with books and reading.

• I don't give up on books that I don't like. I finish everything that I start. Even when the book is really, really bad.
• I read everything in the book but the index. If there are appendices or author's notes I read them. I peruse reference lists and recommended further reading. I read prefaces and context notes. I'll even glance at the publication information page.
• I read one (maybe two) books at a time for myself. I've got my "nightstand" book that is my main read. That's usually it. Occasionally, I will supplement with an "end table" read that lives in the living room and is, generally, lighter fare. 
• The only time I take notes while reading is when it's a title I'm reading for work. I don't highlight or notate the actual text. I write down my notes in an online word document.
• I always take the dust jackets off when I read hardcover titles.
• I will do everything in my power to not break the spines of paperback books.
• I track every book I read in a database - with book number for the year, date I started, date I finished, author, title, genre, pages, and a rating on a 10 scale.
• I prefer to borrow books from the library over buying. 
• When I do buy books, I have an inability to buy them singly. I must buy books in at least a pair. They need friends!
• I rarely re-read a title.
• With the exception of a few series, I don't keep books once I've finished them. I donate the books to our community or local library.
• My bookmark usage is true neutral... sometimes chaotic good.
• Team Dead Tree Books forever!

What are your reading habits?

My parents arrive in town tomorrow to spend a week with us. Well, actually, daycare is closed so they are here to spend a week with their granddaughter. My husband and I are just a side dish on this trip. I haven't seen them since Christmas and it will be really good to have them in town.

Here's what else made the week a good one:

• Had lunch with friends we haven't seen in awhile
• Climbing into bed early for extra reading time
• Windows open weather all week
• At home date night dinner by candlelight
• Helping the kiddo paint her new treasure box
• Venting with a colleague
• It's still spring flower season
• Kiddo wanted goldfish as a snack and did the entire process herself
• Grocery store bouquet still looks good after two weeks
• Visited work with the kiddo
• Loving how a work project turned out and deciding to extend its life by turning it into a webinar

I'm just pages away from finishing Midnight in Chernobyl. I should have finished last night, but I fell asleep in seconds. I've only get the notes to get through. This was a great book. I love narrative non-fiction and, while this one was heavy on the hard sciences, it was easy to follow and read like a thriller.

For work right now, I'm making my way through two different books. The first is Assessing Service Quality: Satisfying the Expectations of Library Customers by Peter Hernon and Ellen Altman. One of my work areas is customer service. This book is helping me figure out a few ways to assess how we're doing. It's probably way to long for what it is, but that happens a lot with academic texts. I'm also reading How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. This one is most for me, but also will help me with our antiracism LibGuide. It's a lot to take in, but I like the mix of lessons and memoir.

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