The Now: May 15, 2024

It's mid-May and I have the space heater running full blast. That's partly because it's chilly and dreary and partly because my office's HVAC temperatures can swing wildly between seasons. When we move into our renovated space (hopefully this summer), the space heater is coming with me. I don't care that we'll have working HVAC. Offices are always too cold.

Here's what I've been working on:

1. Family-Friendly Study Space: We're a commuter campus. Most of our students are part-time and many have caregiving responsibility. While we don't want our renovated library space to become a daycare, we do want it to be more inviting to those who need to study with kiddos in tow. Today, I submitted an initial purchase request list for the room we've identified as our family-friendly study space. Once we move back in, I'll explore my options for décor and other items we might need. One thing we don't need to worry about? Books. I've been squirreling away books as my kiddo ages out of them. Gonna start doing it for toys too so we have a few of those on hand.
2. Slide Decks: While I will, sadly, miss our group presentation on embedded librarians for our consortium's annual conference next week, I did make the slide deck. My colleagues and I finalized the outline yesterday and I turned it into a pretty deck this morning. I also adapted a presentation I gave a few months ago into a lightning talk. Luckily, I will be back from west coast conference in time to give that one.
3. Travel Prep: On Friday, I fly out of the MLA 2024 conference. I'm making my shopping and packing list, as per usual. I am also making a list of things I can tackle on the plane (with or without Wi-Fi) since I've got about 12 hours of time to fill. And I scheduled an Uber to grab me at 5AM for my flight out. Yuck.

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