I just spent an hour outside hoping to talk to students during a "roving reference" session. I timed this session to overlap with our weekly sprit event on the campus plaza. There are lots of students who show up. Unfortunately, as it turns out, today there was no spirit event. Bummer for talking to students. At least I got a chance to enjoy the gorgeous weather.

Here's what I'm working on.

1. Email Dig Out: Between a few days out of the office and a conference, I am two weeks behind on my email. My inboxes are a disaster. After triaging earlier in the week, I'm now slogging my way through everything else. Mostly, it's just scanning and deleting, but I have uncovered a few action items and things that I need to file away for later. Fingers crossed I finish this project today. I'm very ready to be done with it.
2. ACRL Conference Follow-Up: The conference was great! During it, I made the genius idea to just have my "brain dump" note open. Any time I thought of something to try or review, I made a note. Now that list is super long. I'm clearing out the list and project planning as I go. I'm also working on post-conference logistics like following up on conversations, looking into vendors that intrigued me, and submitting all the expenses paperwork. Also, for funsies, I hung our conference presentation poster in our office. It looks great! 
3. ​Life Management: With all of the chaos in our schedules, our home and life has gotten a bit messy. Each night, I'm trying to clean things up a little, work on projects, make appointments, and all the other life admin. If it weren't for the fact that I've already been out of the office a lot recently, I would take a day off and just knock this all out in a day.

Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA! I'm in town for the ACRL Conference and had quite the delightful road trip up here. A colleague and I shared a car and proceeded to chat the entire way. It was a mix of work, personal life, and general discussion. I love working with great people.

Here's where I'm at:

1. ACRL Conference: The conference started with a wonderful keynote today and runs until Saturday. The offerings are many. Almost too many. I've tried to wrap my head around what I want to attend, but the online program is not great. Luckily, they handed us a conference-at-a-glace fold out at registration. I'm going to eat a Primanti Bros. sandwich and tackle that this evening. (Follow me on Twitter if you want a look at what I'm learning.) We present our poster on Friday and I'm already very excited to talk to lots of people.
2. Work Email Newsletter: I have our new platform up and running, moved our mailing list, created a new landing page, relinked said page everywhere, made a new subscription newsletter template, and will be sending our first newsletter on Thursday. I've still got lots to learn but I am so excited by all the functionality in this new platform. Just gotta keep building that opt-in subscription email list.
   
3. March Madness: I generally don't do basketball, but I do love brackets. I've put mine together with my usual technique of picking at random. I also helped kiddo pick hers. I find all the mascots and she gets to pick between the two to decide who wins. She's got Howard going far because she loved the bison, is a big fan of Fruman's purple knight, and has Montana State winning it all because she liked the "kitty!"

I'm doing a little dance in my cubicle and item number one will tell you why.

Keeping this intro short today because my brain is 100% zapped.

Here's what I've been working on.

1. Faculty Tenure Portfolio: Once a year, we have to submit a portfolio with a long narrative and evidence of all the work we've done the past year. Everyone hates it. It's long and tedious and overly complicated. I've found ways to make it easier, but drafting the narrative takes hours and gathering all the files of my evidence takes even longer. Then one has to wrestle Tk20 which is not a nice system. The file size limits are so small that I can't really do anything. So, I dump everything into our institutional OneDrive and say, "Go there!" I'm glad to be done with this for the year.
2. Research Assignment Design: We're presenting a poster at the ACRL Conference next week. Today, we wrapped up our final edits of the design and are working on getting it printed. We also found out our proposal to talk about this at TILC was accepted. We're going to deal with that after ACRL.
3. "Ski" Trip Planning: After a three year, COVID-induced hiatus, our friend "ski" trip is back this year! (Most of us don't really "ski" but do apres-ski things in the house we rent together.) The friend who organizes all of this puts us into pods and I've got my usual breakfast pod. I found recipes, made shopping lists, and will be hitting the stores tomorrow. My parents are coming Friday to take care of kiddo whilst I enjoy the weekend. (Sadly, the husband likely can't join because he got COVID. Booo.) I'm prepping everything they need to know and getting kiddo ready for her first weekend without her parents around. While I am gutted that the hubby can't join, I am looking forward to 3 nights away after 10+ days of solo parenting.
   

Each month, I submit a monthly report to our library director. When the alert to get to work on February's went off, I refused to believe it. How in the heck is it the third month of the year already? It feels like time is flying by extra fast this semester.

I'm positing that it's because none of my big projects have hard  deadlines. They are all just long term projects I'm working on and no one is telling me it has to be done by X date. That just makes the weeks slip by more quickly.

Here's what I've been focusing on:

1. Email Newsletter: I settled on a new newsletter platform. Best of all, the director said yes to funding it. This platform is actually an add-on to our main library CMS which means its way more powerful than I anticipated. Right now, I'm just working on basic logistics like getting emails uploaded, creating lists, and futzing with landing pages and templates. Today, I sent out our monthly internal staff newsletter as a test. The email looks great but this small run helped us uncover a few issues. Thankfully, the electronic resources librarian is helping me out with this one.
2. Research Assignment Design: We went through and coded for "the purpose of this class is" and "definition of research." We are reviewing these codes because we think they are applicable for the poster we're presenting at ACRL in a few weeks. Speaking of that poster, I drafted some content. Next up, making it all fit.
3. ​Personal Digital Clean Up: Still deleting and weeding files. This week, I actually dove into some of my old documents folders. I also decided to make a database to track my work. This way, I don't work on things more than once. I think this will be particularly useful when I get around to weeding and renaming all of my pictures.

I had several meetings and webinars I needed to attend today. They were scattered all over my calendar. The gray weather also meant that my brain just didn't want to work. That made it hard to concentrate on anything in particular. By 9:15AM, I declared today to be a "clear out tasks" day. Those days are when I focus on the tiny little things I've been putting off. They don't take long by themselves but, together, they fill a work day without requiring me to use too much deep brain power.

Here's what I've been focusing on when my brain is working:

1. Research Assignment Design: While we are conducting our second round of coding, we're also focusing on putting together our poster for the ACRL 2023 conference next month. Today, we laid out our overall vision and assigned initial first steps at drafting the information. We're building off of our previous poster by adding more analysis to our work. There are so many things we could talk about! It's difficult to narrow it down to what can fit on a poster.
2. Library Instruction: I've got a bunch of classes coming up. I've been working with each faculty member to settle on a final agenda of content. Then it's a lot of slide making and presenting. One of the classes is a college pathways course. The students are all in high school and are stopping by to learn what it's like to have/use a college library. I'm excited by this one because it's a new audience for me. 
3. Personal Digital Clean Up: Still working on this as it relates to my online files. I've done a great job of clearing out things. (I've deleted more items than I can count.) Now, I want to focus on what I can streamline. Plus, I want to make a management list for my next big project - retroactively going back and reviewing all my files/pictures/whatever on my personal laptop. I can't decide if I also want to tackle renaming everything during this round or waiting for another pass. Might be easier to just hit delete first and reorganize/rename later.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Our kiddo came home from school with a small bag of delights from her her classmates. It was a mix of homemade cards, commercial valentines, and little toys. I remember the days of those little cardstock cards in school and I wish I had the forethought to give some to my colleagues. I think it would be fun to drop off a cheesy, mass-produced card for everyone. Maybe next year.

Here's what else has my attention:

1. Research Assignment Design: We are doing two things on this right now. First, we're conducting our second pass of coding. This time, we're focusing on single groups of codes. It's a lot easier to fly through transcripts when you only need to think about one general idea. Next, we're reviewing the assignments to try to get some quantitative data. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that everyone is doing an annotated bibliography assignment. It really is an essential step in learning the research process.
2. Email Outreach Changes: I use MailChimp to out send out our internal and subscription newsletters. I also use it to send out occasional emails to all faculty. Sadly, MailChimp is changing it's free plan and now I am on the hunt for a new vendor. I want something fairly easy to use. I also want something that can grow with us without being crazy expensive. I've got a short list of options, but I'm really hoping we can just go with the new newsletter platform built in to our website management system. That would be so easy and would provide a lot of added on things we can use. Relatedly, I finally got the library added to our student advising system. Now, faculty can refer students directly to the library in that system. Additionally - and more awesomely - I can create email campaigns to contact students directly. I sent out my first blast to anyone enrolled in a independent study, research, writing, or upper-level symposium course. It was kind of a pain to build the email list, but once I figured that out, the rest was set it and forget. I'm very excited to see that our open rate was over 60% and several students have already sent me thank you emails. This may be my new favorite tool.
3. Personal Digital Clean Up: I'm still unfollowing/unsubscribing to a lot of things. It's amazing how much time this has already freed up. I'm also rejiggering how many online platforms I use. This bit is harder. Between the Google Suite, Trello, OneDrive/OneNote, and Evernote (plus a few small others), I've got lots of things in a lot of places. I'm trying to streamline how I use it all. The problem is, I use each platform differently. I can't really stop using any of them because no one platform works perfectly. Instead, I'm trying to make each platform work a little bit better. I'm also seeing where I can consolidate so that one place becomes the primary platform.

About once a week, I try to get out to do "roving reference." We're in a temporary location while the main library is being  renovated and this is my way of putting the library where the students are. Today, I posted up in the student lounge. While I did answer a few questions, I mostly enjoyed seeing the students hang out with each other. Campus feels alive when there are students around. I greatly missed that when everything was online.

Here's what I've been working on:

1. Research Assignment Design: We're on a break from coding transcripts and are now reviewing syllabi and assignments. Essentially, we want to see what faculty assign and when, plus any parameters. That way we can look for trends and overlap. (Every single faculty member has an annotated bibliography assignment.) I also took a look at anything we coded as "interesting." While two small trends did emerge, these passages are mostly just interesting. They don't add to our research but they are notable as asides or anecdotes.
   
2. Website Updates: I got to tackle a few of the easy priority updates on my to-do list. They were all minor changes that will, hopefully, help with navigation and information seeking. Embedding our chat service along with having a pop-up might increase our numbers there. I'm also promoting a short survey to see if I can get any more feedback in this area.
   
3. ​Personal Digital Clean Up: I'm just making my way through various folders and tools trying to pare things down and rename files. This week, I focused on my Google Drive and Evernote. There's still a lot of work to go, but I'm amazed at just how much I've been able to delete. Why I held on to college papers I will never read or use again is beyond me. (Did keep my theses though.)

This was supposed to be our first full week of childcare in the new year. Instead, our kiddo got sick at school yesterday and came home early. We decided to keep her home today as a recovery day. She's napping right now (which she definitely would not have done at school) and I feel vindicated in our decision.

Aside from extra childcare, here's what I've been working on:

1. Research Assignment Design: We finished the first pass of our joint coding (huzzah!). Now we're working on prep stuff for a second round. My colleague is revising the codebook and I'm reviewing our "interesting" code to see if any trends arise. I'm also going to review our research journal to pull out writing ideas and other to do items. It's kind of nice to have this break from reading transcripts for the umpteenth time.
2. Faculty Outreach: A few years ago, I emailed the Deans and Chairs at our University to see if a librarian could attend one of their faculty meetings. Exactly one got back to me to schedule something. I tried it again last week and several responded immediately. I set up some meetings, drafted an agenda, and divvyed up assignments. I am so excited that we get to Kool-Aid man our way into this. I've found that these meetings serve as a helpful reminder that the library a) exists and b) has we can offer.
3. Personal Photo/File Management: I've made time in the evenings to tackle the "To Review" folder on my desktop. I've been naming files and sorting everything. (And making a note to go back and do a deep weed, renaming, and clean up later.) I also managed to share out some pictures to our family's shared album for the first time in 6 months.

Yesterday, I found out that my proposal to speak at the 2023 CALM conference was accepted. I did a little jig in my cube. The conference is not until June so I have some time to prepare. I'm debating if it's worthwhile to harness some of my excitement to outline my session this week. I probably won't get to it, but I'm at least thinking about it.

Here's what I am working on.

1. Research Assignment Design: We are [thisclose] to finishing our first pass of joint transcript coding. We should wrap that up in our working session tomorrow. Then we are going to take a break from that coding to analyze and code the syllabi and assignments. Qualitative research is a long slog, but at least we have a lot to work with out of this data set.
2. Website Updates: I took a break from working on our website because my brain needed it. I'm feeling refreshed and read to tackle this. Today, I put together a survey to gather some "vibe check" data about what people like and don't like about our website. While responses roll in, I'll start working on some of the low-hanging fruit updates like changing our header and updating some links. Then I'm going to tackle updating the nav bar. Once I figure out how to do that, I should be able to roll right through it.
   
3. Annual Planning: Last week, the husband and I embarked on a mission to plan out our annual leave for the year. Between our kiddo's daycare closures, work travel, and other happenings, we wanted to get this down on the books early. We finalized our plan and I got approval for all my leave from my boss. That lead to one plane ticket purchase and price tracking on another. It feels real good to have a handle on this so early.
   

Earlier this week, the reference librarian team talked with a professor about her class which is focusing on archives. It was a winding conversation that ended with us volunteering to teach a few workshops. (Yeah! I'm doing two. One on preservation and another on personal archiving.) It also reinvigorated my love of why libraries/archives/museums are important and have to continue to speak out about things. We are not neutral! We never were. We need to acknowledge our shortcomings to make things better for the future.

Here's what I'm working on:

1. Faculty Webinar Series:  I'm hosting the first session in our webinar series on Friday. This semester, we're looking at research as it relates to funding and publication. Friday's session is all about finding funding. I put together my outline today and will create my slides tomorrow. For the series as a whole, I've done some marketing blasts and other logistics like creating a slide template and feedback form. We're using a new registration system this semester and it notifies me when people sign up. It looks like we may get some good attendance this semester. I'm excited!
2. Website Improvement: Back on this train. Right now, I'm drafting a survey to gather more information about what people like and do not like about our website. I'll collect that data while I'm working on some of the low-hanging fruit fixes our usability testing identified.
   
3. Personal Photo Management: Speaking of personal archiving... I have not completed any personal photo management in over 6 months. Right now, I've got all the pictures finally downloaded off my phone. (I had to figure out how to do that on my new laptop.) Next, I'll weed out the images before renaming and filing the keepers. Then I'll make sure everything gets backed up before I share some select pictures in our family's shared album.