One weird thing about being in a new office is trying to get used to all the noises. This is a big open area filled with huge cubicles that tends to eat sound... but not always. My cubicle is on the side of a building that faces a major avenue. I sit below an air vent. All of this means that the acoustics of the office are rather distracting. In time, I'll get use to it. Right now I'm very much in "squirrel!" mode.

Here's what else has my attention.

WORK

• I started converting some "deeper" pages of our website to the new look. That necessitated a slight tweak on the main pages and some more coding. It's working, but one page took me over an hour to figure out. Hopefully the rest of the process is a bit faster. I made a checklist to help me remember everything I need to do on these pages.
• We are about to hit the main interview stage of our research project on how faculty create their students' research assignments. I'm reading a book about interview best practices. I also sent out the initial response for interviewees. Happily, a few folks are already on board. 
• Our spring webinar series is off to a great start. We held our first session and I'm managing the logistics and marketing for the upcoming sessions. 
• Still trying to let students know that we moved. It's not easy. At some point, I might just turn into a twirly sign person.
• I had my first session on the Reference Desk in our new space. It's going to take a few weeks to learn the new set-up, the quirks of questions that come with the space (mostly directional questions at the moment), and how to best function for our students in this temporary area that also includes classrooms and faculty offices.

PERSONAL

• We ordered new appliances for our kitchen. Our new fridge is going to necessitate that we move our pantry cabinet. We're debating exactly where and how to Tetris everything in a logical manner that also allows for easy access. Eventually, we are going to gut the kitchen, but we want to like the look and operation of things until we hit that point.
• We had a large amount of bananas in our freezer. I made two loaves of banana bread. We still have more frozen bananas. Might need to make some muffins too.
• I got behind on my email newsletter and blog reading. I'm trying to put as much of a dent in those thing as I can without going overboard and neglecting other stuff. Might need to use this time to do a digital purge...
• We took our Christmas decorations down. The tree is leaving soon. I am going to be finding pine needles for months.

My office opened back up this week.

It's, um, not great.

We moved buildings to allow our space to be completely remodeled. For the time being, we are split between two floors. Services and user "pods" on one floor, offices and staff on another. I also went from a private office to a cubicle. It's a big cubicle with high walls but still a cubicle. I'm not sad about the space or the privacy. I'm sad that I lost my ability to take my mask off. Sure, we're all spaced out, but it's an open area. That means I'm wearing a KN95 all day. I'll get used to it, but I don't have to like it.

Here's what has my attention right now.

WORK

• Set up my cubicle with the stuff from my old office. I also have a list of things I want to buy to make this place feel less sterile. Plus, I attended my first Zoom meeting yesterday and realized the background behind me is a disaster. Need to clean up how boring it is.
• Marketing our relocation every way I can. Classes don't come back in person until next week, but we've already had students go to our old location and wonder where we were. 
• Our research project focusing on how faculty design their students' research projects is entering the interview phase. I sent out an interview request email to our targeted professor group. We already have a few responses.
• Wrote up lots of blog posts for the new semester. They all focus on the changes to the library and how it operates.
• Drafted my first newsletter to go out to our new subscription list. Will send that out tomorrow.

PERSONAL

• Can I say keeping an eye on COVID community transmission rates and pediatric vaccine trials? Cause, I am. I am reading a lot of articles and studies hoping that the spread goes down and trials are effective. 
• I created a yearly content calendar for this year's Green Committee newsletters. Now I just need to make the January edition.
• Thinking about taking our Christmas decorations down...

I am currently in survival mode.

One of our kiddo's daycare classmates tested positive for COVID. While we have all tested negative (multiple times now) we are in quarantine until next Monday. That means we're trying to work and provide childcare at the same time. It's a lot. So, I'm basically focusing on mission critical things only.

WORK

• Did a lot of post-vacation email triage.
• Created a project list with various deadlines for the start of the new semester. A lot of these projects center around our temporary relocation while our current space is remodeled.
• Finalized our spring webinar series. Now I'm working on the marketing and outreach towards our faculty. This series is going to cover the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. We librarians are quite familiar with it, but we think it would be helpful for teaching faculty to both learn about each Frame and see methods to use the competencies in their teaching.
• The library website I redesigned goes live tomorrow. I've been checking in with our electronic resources librarian to make sure everything is on track when we hit GO tomorrow. I also created the new carousel graphics we need for that section of the homepage and squeezed in a few final edits.
• One project left for the website is to convert all our LibGuides to the new template. I create a checklist and plan of action to get started on that once I'm out of quarantine. 

PERSONAL

• Had our kiddo color some thank you cards so we can send them out to people who gave her Christmas gifts. She was very methodical about not using the same color twice.
• Finished setting up my 2022 bullet journal. I have the yearly cover page yet to design, but all the important/working pages are done.
• Does cooking count here? We're doing a lot of cooking every day since all three of us are home right now. 

Why hello there. I took an unexpected break from blogging over the holidays. The last of our family left town today, so now I'm back at it. 

Here's where my attention has been lately:

WORK​

• Nothing! The upside of academia is getting a long break over the holidays. I don't go back until January 3. Aside from keeping an eye on my email, all of my projects are on the back burner until the new year.

PERSONAL

• Finding room for all the things we got for Christmas. And by we, I mean the kiddo. She got to play with two of her new toys immediately. The rest, we have hidden away in a closet and will slowly role out in the next few months.
• I conducted my annual weeding of all the things. I now have a MASSIVE pile of donations to go out during our building's next pick up. So long diaper changing pad!
• Right after I weeded everything, I took pictures of everything we own for our home inventory. I try to do this once a year. Next, I will go through the pictures and update the database I made to keep track of everything.
• This morning, I gave our home a deep clean. This is a dust the baseboards, wash the stove grates, scrub of the fridge out kind of deep clean.
• On top of the deep clean, I did about a dozen loads of laundry. If it could be machine washed, it was machine washed. Nothing like heading in to the new year with a clean slate.
• I set my goals for 2022 and will start setting up my bullet journal tomorrow.

I need to do a better job of capturing writing ideas when they come to me. I had a great idea for what to write here today... and then it just fluttered away into the ether - disappearing forever.

Oh well.

Here's what I'm working on.

WORK

• We're moving! Temporarily... to allow for a remodel. I packed up my office and claimed my cubicle for the new space. The cubicles are souless, but at least mine is near a big window. I started making a list of things to improve my space once we're over there permanently.
• Over the past weeks, colleagues and I conducted a series of test interviews to see how the protocol and methods of our research project are working out. So far, so good! Today, I transcribed one interview to start testing out that part of the project. It takes triple the time to transcribe an interview as it does to conduct one. Luckily, we used the built in captioning system of Zoom to help jump start transcription. It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than doing it from scratch. 
• Wrapped up the last of the finals week social media posts. Now I get to tease all the fun things we have coming in the new year - new location! new website! new newsletter!
• Put together a plan to create a faculty research index. It's something we need; and it's a natural fit for the Faculty Senate committee I am on and the library.
• Powering through the last of the recorded Internet Librarian sessions.

PERSONAL

• Still doing strategic planning for end of year/new year things. I have a lot of lists. 
• Planned out our Christmas menu/events for when our families are in town. It helps to get an idea of how much energy I'm going to need each day. Plus, it helps me wrangle shopping lists and what food needs to get prepped when.

Time has become wibbly wobbly during the pandemic. I went to the dentist today for the first time since the outbreak started. When I did the math on that (over two years), I cringed. Happily, my teeth are fine, but it goes to show how fast things have gone lately. That said, I don't want this much time to elapse again, so I'm adding reminders in to my calendar to schedule dental appointments at the appropriate 6-month intervals.

Here's what else has my attention.

WORK

• Our University's finals started yesterday. I like to provide motivational support on the library's social media. I drafted and scheduled a ton of posts. I also made graphics and took some pictures to add to the text.
• Some colleagues and I are gearing up to do interviews for a research project we're working on. We've got test interviews scheduled and I'm reading a book about the best way to conduct the sessions and analyze the results.
• I'm prepping for my spring semester outreach - drafting emails, making templates, and writing out plans so that I can hit the ground running in the new year.
• The recorded sessions from the Internet Librarian conference go offline at the end of the month. I'm watching them as fast as a I can. (Good thing you can increase the playback speed.)
• We're relocating the library (temporarily) for a remodel. I packed up my office and discovered I had only one box of personal/desk items but many boxes of material for book displays. You know you're an outreach librarian when...

PERSONAL

• Still potty training. It's going well. More woohoos than accidents.
• Wrote up, addressed, and mailed all of our holiday cards.
• Kiddo will be getting a bunch of new toys for Christmas. We're weeding her current collection of the items she no longer plays with. 
• Watching all the Hallmark Channel movies...

Now that I've finished the hard work of coding our new webpage, I almost feel lost. (That project was with me for MONTHS.) Our semester is winding down and we're getting ready to move buildings so a remodel of our current space can happen. That means I don't want to take on any major projects this month. So, I think I am declaring December "Admin and Mini Projects" month. Still productive, but nothing too stressful or time consuming.

WORK

• This afternoon, I am serving as a moderator for an online event about OER. It's a short session, but I'm more than happy to help promote free and low-cost material adoption to the faculty in our consortium.
• I like to do an uplifting binge of social media posts during finals week. I'm drafting content and creating graphics to make my life easier when exams roll around.
• We are going to try sending a monthly e-mail newsletter starting next semester. I created a subscription page and drafted a template. Fingers crossed we start to get subscribers because we have a lot of great and fun ideas we want to share.
• I started to watch the recorded sessions of the 2021 Internet Librarian conference that I was unable to attend live.

PERSONAL

• We picked up our Christmas tree and decorated our home. So far, our kiddo has been great about not touching things that we want to be off-limits. Fingers crossed this holds for the rest of the holiday season. 
• I'm making plans for what needs to happen before the year is out. Relying heavily on my bullet journal and Google Keep lists to keep me organized. Have to remember to focus on feasibility.
• Set up my bullet journal for December. It looks like I will have just two pages left over for next year planning at the back. I have never come this close to running out of space before.

When we went to drop the kiddo off at daycare this morning, the roads were empty. I'm talking, felt like the beginning of a disaster movie empty. It was eerie. It was also nice not to have to battle traffic. Today is the end of the work week and, while it was a short week, I felt incredibly productive. 

Here's what I've been working on.

WORK

• About an hour ago, I sent off an email to my fellow library faculty. The subject: THE NEW WEBSITE IS DONE! By done, I mean that I finished the HTML and CSS coding. I also added and edited the content. We are ready for testing and I could not be more proud of myself. (I'll link the product when we are finally live.)
• I put together the draft plan for our spring webinar series. This one is going to target our faculty and will focus on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.
• At the end of last week, I submitted four proposals for funding to our University. Turns out there is more money up for grabs than I expected so (fingers crossed) we get at least one funded ask.
• I polished off the recordings from the Library Marketing and Communications Conference sessions I was not able to attend live.

PERSONAL

• We got our family photos back from the photographer. While there are some cute shots, I love that they also capture our kiddo's "I wanna do anything but sit still and pose" energy of the day. I shared the pictures with our family. The husband put together our holiday card and I gave it a thumbs up. Can't wait for those to arrive so I can send out some happy mail.
• Still potty training...
• Made plans for our holiday present purchases for everyone. I also went ahead and grabbed as many of the gifts as I could. 
• Decided to schedule a bunch of appointments including my COVID booster and the dentist.

I'm doing a little dance right now because the coding issues I've been running into seem to have been fixed. Something in my code is breaking the back end editing functionality BUT it's fixed on the admin side so it's probably not my code. (*shrugs*) That means I can now focus on website content. Huzzah!

Here's where my attention is at.

WORK

• Just today, I managed to finish off the last bits of HTML coding for our new webpage. I still need to edit content and do some CSS tweaking, but I am SOOOOO happy to be done withthat part of the coding. Fingers crossed our plan to go live in January holds true.
• I'm waiting on the last details I need before we submit some funding proposals for a few projects. Everything is written, I just need to plug in some cost quotes. Then I get to cut and paste everything into the submission forms.
• Only one more session to go in our webinar series! Now I need to start drafting our faculty-focused webinar series for the spring semester.
• We've got two open positions at our library. I'm on the hiring committee for one. We reviewed the job description, tweaked the interview questions, and are working on finalizing all the stuff we need to submit to HR before they list the role.
• I submitted a proposal to speak at the 2022 CALM conference. My proposal is titled "Stop That!: Management Techniques that Need to Die." Title about says it all.

PERSONAL

• We are potty training our toddler. I think we're over the first hard days, but it's difficult to tell. It's going about as well as expected. Some days are harder than others, but we are seeing progress.
• Condo board elections and budgeting time. Yeah!

Tomorrow, we start potty training our toddler. *deep breathing* This is the only task I will be focusing on the next four days and, let's be honest, the next few weeks.

Here's what else I managed to get through since last week.

WORK

• I wrote up several proposals for internal funding from our University. We want to make several space/tech improvements and add some new things to our resources. Fingers crossed at least a few of ours get the go ahead.
• I installed a book display related to an author talk the University is hosting. I had to use materials I already had on hand, but I think it turned out well. Since we're getting ready to move for our remodel, I'm just going to leave this up until we need to start packing everything up.
• Had to debug some code for the new website, but it turned out to be an easier fix than planned. Now I'm working on adding proactive chat. Nearing the end of what I need/can do for this before we hit internal testing time.
• Working on developing a outreach and marketing interest group for our library's consortia. Got a few colleagues for other universities on board which is a plus.

PERSONAL

• We had the professional photo shoot for our family. Kiddo was not in to posing during the session and we were nervous we wouldn't get any good pictures. Happy to say we got a sneak peek today and there are some great ones in there. 
• The couch we ordered for our kiddo's room arrived. So, we had to rearrange a lot of things to make it all work. Still futzing, but we're mostly good with how things are right now.
• I drafted up and sent out this month's Green Committee newsletter for my condo. I focused on how to have a more eco-friendly Thanksgiving.