More excuses to use cascatelli? Yes, please! You can see my complete TBR list on Pinterest.
*Items featured here are Bookshop.org affiliate links.
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I've had a note to clean our HVAC unit sleeves on my to-do list for 4 months. The note to change the batteries in our smoke detectors just hit 5 weeks. I've been meaning to replace the screen protector on my phone since I cracked it over Thanksgiving. All of these items are neatly listed in my bullet journal. I just keep transferring them to new task lists each month. None of the items is immediately pressing. There's no real problem if I don't get to them - but they do need to get done. If I were to put them in an Eisenhower matrix they would be listed as important but not urgent. That's why I keep procrastinating them. These are strictly needle list items that are going to nag at me until I get tackle them. If I didn't already have annual leave scheduled for a friends getaway this month, I would put a vacation day on my calendar just to handle some life maintenance. Maybe in March... What items are on your needle list?
A surprising number of people registered and showed up for our library's webinar today. Huzzah! I started promoting them through Instagram stories and I think that additional bit of outreach is starting to work. Here's what else was good this week:
I need to pick a new book to start tonight. Not sure what yet, but I have a stack of holds from the library sitting around to choose from. I did manage to read these two items this week.
The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich Deya Muniz This was a delightful, sapphic romance full of cheese puns. Great art, great story. Highly recommend. home body rupi kaur I've enjoyed reading rupi kaur's entire book catalog. Her poems hit me right in the heart. Almost all of them speak to me on a personal level. *Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org This post is going up late because... woo!, it was a day. I had several meetings, hosted a webinar, and needed to finish all the newsletters going out tomorrow. At least Thursday and Friday look to be a bit kinder to me, schedule-wise. Here's what's been going on:
I don't always get along with my University's Office of Information Technology (OIT). What they do is incredibly important but they are understaffed in "doers" and overstaffed in management. (There is literally one manager for every tech. There are only three techs. It's bonkers.) That means a lot of things go wrong and fixes aren't happening. Like many organizations, our University deals with a lot of spam email and phishing attempts. OIT has tried various ways to help mitigate this issue. The first attempt was sending an email for every externally sent message that said "The next email is from an external source. Proceed with caution." Not only did it double the amount of email we got, but it didn't catch any of the phishing that came from compromised internal emails. That "fix" lasted all of the day. Next, they started marking all externally sent emails with [EXTERNAL]. This is annoying and makes it hard to read subject lines, but I can ignore it. Then, since many spam/phishs were still getting through, they instituted a quarantine system. This means that any email a Microsoft AI deems as suspicious gets shunted to a folder off our email system that we have to review later. I've found speaking proposal acceptances and other REALLY important material gets caught. (I can guarantee you our University is losing grant opportunities because of this.) We get one notification a day if there is material for us to review. It's a pain and not intuitive at all about how to mark something as safe. AND we're still getting all the internal spam and phishing attempts so it's not actually fixing anything. As the outreach librarian, this means everything I send out through our email vendor is ending up in quarantine. (Not to mention our automatic account notifications AND our University's advising system emails are getting caught.) My open rate has plummeted to less than 3%. I asked for our vendor to be added to the safe list but was told that the "fix" would be for individual people to add us to their safe senders list... BUT THEY DON'T KNOW THESE EMAILS ARE COMING IN THE FIRST PLACE. I asked several times for these materials to be added to the safe senders list. Then, this week, I was sending out emails to every individual faculty member. This is the biggest ROI outreach I do. It's a lot of work, but I get a noticeable increase faculty communication and requests for library services out of it. I do this each semester. I use a form message but the attachments and number of recipients varies with each email. In past semesters, I've completed this without issue. This week, my email address was marked as spam. About halfway through I started getting bounce-backs saying my account was locked. That meant I could not send out ANY email at all. ARRRRGH! I put in a ticket with OIT and our director escalated the issue. Luckily, I was back to work in a few hours. AND since I explained (yet again) what I do for my job they finally added my work email AND our vendor platform as safe senders for bulk messages. Fingers crossed this fight with OIT is finally over. What's aggravated you at work lately?
The kiddo's daycare is closed for professional development today, but we got her into a most-of-the-day art camp. She's done these with the organization before and always has a great time. (The art she brings home is pretty awesome too.) I'm excited that I get any form of childcare on a work day. Here's what else was good this week:
I read a lot of books with my kiddo. Kid Reads is a biweekly look at what we've enjoyed recently.
*Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org
It's that time of the year again where I go through more hand lotion than my wallet cares to think about. Our office is incredibly dry. Using my space heater (absolutely necessary), makes it drier. Throw in projects where I'm working with paper (common), and even more moisture leaves my skin. My knuckles look like they've been in a bar fight. I can feel my hands sigh with relief every time I apply more lotion. Here's what I've been working on:
I will be presenting at Computers in Libraries 2024 on why academic libraries should teach more than just the databases.
Wednesday, March 13 at 3:30PM Academic librarians are often called to provide library orientation, aka, “teach the databases.” While important, these sessions are far from the only thing we can provide. In this session, I'll showcase why academic libraries need to broaden their reach. This can include providing webinars and workshops on transferable skills covering subjects such as navigating information, career development, and personal archiving. I'll highlight how getting out of our traditional lanes can enhance student skills, promote lifelong learning, and strengthen the role of the library within the community. Register with my speaker code (24SPKR) for $100 off early-bird rates. |