One of the last tasks I complete before leaving on vacation is setting my Out of Office message. In the past, I always worried about missing something.

Setting my out of office time was easy; everything else gave me anxiety. Did I give a reason why? Did I set expectations for how often I would check my email? Would I let people know what types of messages would get responses? How many places should I redirect people?

My second guessing of these questions always depended on the duration of my leave and the point of the semester we were in. I wanted to be helpful but I also wanted a real break.

Then I went on maternity leave. I had zero qualms about staying offline then. My automatic reply essentially said: I will be gone these dates on maternity leave. Contact this main email or schedule an appointment with another librarian here.

That was it. 

It's a recipe that still works. Now, I just say what dates I will be away, give an alternative email, and link to our appointment scheduler. I don't say why I'm gone. I don't say I'm going to check email. If I do check (and reply) to email, it's a bonus.

I've been using this system for three years now and it's never been an issue. People don't complain. Nothing gets missed. More importantly, I don't feel the need to justify why I am on leave or working while I'm away.


All of this is a nice introduction to say that I will be out of office next week. There will be no posts on the blog. I will resume my regular posting schedule on Monday, August 15, 2022. 

I'm on my last day of work before vacation. What's different is that I spent the whole week working from my in laws. Instead of having to race home to pack and prep things, I can just log off and declare myself done. That is very exciting.

Here's what else was good in my week:

• Clear skies and light traffic for our long drive
• The kiddo's tablet loaded with movies and apps making for almost zero issues in the car
• Playing a new card game
• Getting a little extra sleep on a work day
• Walking barefoot on really soft carpet
• Walking barefoot on really soft grass
• Citrus fizzy water
• Snacking on a delicious cocoa oatmeal bar
• Delighting in watching my in laws quaint murder mystery shows
• Perfectly timed toddler nap leading to easy evening professional family pictures

I'm working from home this week. But "home" is actually my in laws place in South Carolina. They set me up with a desk in the guest room and I have more space here than I do in my actual home. It's nice. Plus, they have super soft carpet that feels great on my bare feet. 

While I'm working, our kiddo starts her mornings with swim lessons and then gets all day grandparent daycare. I'm fairly certain she will not want to leave.

Also, another slight change to the format of the post this week. I want it to reflect more of how my job is structured.

Here's what I'm working on:
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WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I finished all my coding. (No thanks to a Dedoose breakdown that gave be a heart attack. Always back up your data!) Then I reviewed my colleagues codebooks. Tomorrow, we are meeting to collaboratively design a codebook to complete our research from. I am very excited for this process because we all did the same stuff just differently. I can honestly say that my one colleague's codebook is far superior to mine and will provide a great basis to start. Also, it is fascinating what we each read in the data.
• Presentations and Publications: Brain dumped some ideas for my photography webinar. I also chatted about it with the husband.
• Instruction: We kicked off the new request form! I am thrilled because our old one was clunky and difficult. I shared the form with a faculty member to test and updated all of the links on our website. Hopefully, this new process works better for everyone. I'm also doing some maintenance on our Library 101 tutorial course. I'm checking in with professors and updating announcements in the course management system.
• Reference: We've received several chat questions about "religion in politics." That's a broad topic and difficult to provide effective reference for. It's stuff like this which informed our desire to look at how faculty design their research assignments. Also, I threw together a Roving Reference plan. Since we are in a not great temporary space, we want to go where the students are. Assuming the Director gives the all clear, we will start this sometime in early September as an added service.
  
• Outreach: I drafted a blog post and am working on ways to increase our newsletter subscribers. I want to add at least 25 more this semester. It doesn't sound like much, but that would be over a 25% increase. Also, I drafted and shared a website usability testing plan with the team. We want to see if the new format is working and what we still need to improve. Finally, I made new one sheets that we can use as handouts. I directed one towards students about our new space and the other for student support staff and offices about what the library can do for students and faculty.
  
• Administration: Not much movement here. I'm checking things off the list I made for myself.

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: Nothing. 
• Email Newsletter: More subscribers are still rolling in and I'm bouncing. I'll be on vacation  next week, so I am going to announce that in the two issues going out this week.
• Home Projects: We left the table still flattening while we're gone for two weeks. Turns out, our in laws have a rubber mallet. If the heavy object flattening doesn't work, we'll try popping it out with the mallet when we get back.
• Hobbies: I set up my bullet journal for August. I forgot to bring my wider nibbed pen with me, so I will need to go back and bold some of my monthly pages.

Keywords are important terms, concepts, or phrases you can use to help you search for  information. If your keywords aren’t right, you’ll have trouble finding what what you need.

When developing keywords, try the following:

• Underline Your Thesis: Look at your thesis or research statement and underline the most important words, ideas, and topics. These are your starter keywords. 
• Find Synonyms: Don’t get tunnel vision and only focus on the keywords in your thesis. Look for synonyms to those words. You can use a website like Thesaurus.com or a print thesaurus to help you find related terms. The reason you should look for synonyms is that the keywords you use might not be the keywords an author/creator uses even though you're both looking at the same thing.
• Expand Your Idea: Expand your topic a bit. What are the overarching ideas or topics that cover your topic? If you want to research gentrification in a local neighborhood, it’s worth looking for articles on gentrification in a specific city or gentrification trends overall. 
• Narrow Your Idea: Find an example you can use. If you’re researching social media, pick a specific platform like Twitter.
• Specific Examples: If you are writing about a general idea, it can be useful to include specific examples of that idea as keywords. For instance, if you're looking at Black authors, you could include Octavia E. Butler as a specific example.
• Related Ideas: You can also look for keywords that are related to but not directly about your topic. If you’re looking up healthy eating techniques, you might want to find articles on other healthy habits like exercise or sleep. Information you need may be included in an article on another topic.