I'm a real librarian!

Well, it's been a while, again.  I needed to take all the time I could to finish up coursework, fill out job applications, and spend time with friends before they left town.  Now I'm still in A2, still working at Taubman Health Sciences Library, but now, I'm a real librarian!

That's right, folks, I graduated.  I now have my MSI (Master of Science in Information) with a specialization in Library and Information Services.  I got to wear a super cool hood for graduation.  Also, President Obama came and spoke at the giant commencement in the Big House.  Pretty darn cool!!  The best part of the day, however, was this:

A friend of Steve's was clever and dubbed this picture "Chewbama."  What randomness to spot Chewbacca on the street on our way home from the stadium!

Job applications are going well.  I really feel that my time at Taubman really prepared me to work in most any academic library.  I think that I have been truly blessed here.  Most students don't get the kind of opportunities we get here at Taubman.   A few of us former/current students are even working on writing a journal article.  Cool, huh?

Well, I should get to work!  Hope all of you are staying warm and dry in this cold and rainy May!

Busy Bee!

Ok, so I'm still crazy busy.  Working on my grant proposal, management case studies, and evaluation for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum has kept me on my toes.  On top of that, we're starting our pilot of Social Media for Public Health in a couple of weeks (and I have a lot of work to do!).

So, this all seems like it should be manageable, but there have been some special circumstances the last few weeks.  First off, I've been applying for jobs.  I really wish that you didn't have to type in all of the information from your resume into the applications.  It makes a single application take so much time.  Second, I've been taking more hours on the desk at Taubman, mostly subbing for people who have been sick or on vacation.  I've also been working on a project identifying top players in the schools the Health Sciences Libraries serves.  That's been an interesting but tedious project.  Third, I've been doing a lot of outreach with Kate.  Last week Friday I went to the Great Lakes Chapter of the Society of Public Health Education in East Lansing.  I manned the table and also helped Kate and Gillian teach public health professionals how to use Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter.  It was nice to see how the project I'm working on involving social media will fulfill a need within the public health community.  I'm also going to be at the Partners in Research event at Ann Arbor District Library this week.  It's about the diagnosis and treatment of OCD, so it should be quite interesting and very related to the work I did at the FRIENDS Depression Education Resource Center (FDERC) this past summer.  While I really like academic libraries, I do think I could be ok in patient education.

I've also been trying to keep up with the news and current library information.  It doesn't hurt that I'm constantly checking my Google Reader account for new job postings.  It really gets me there reading the blogs and news that will help keep me up to date.  I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by it all, though.  Sometimes I come back to my computer and have almost 200 unread items!  Some items, though, are not so good.  I'm still trying to figure out what blogs I like.  Librarians out there (and non-librarians, alike!), what are some good blogs that you follow?

And finally, I have succumbed full-force to the addiction of knitting.  I keep finding such cool patterns on Ravelry and I want to try them all!  My most recent creations have included the Grrrrr! washcloth from Knitty and the Springtime Bandit shawl/kerchief from Kelbourne Woolens (where I got the pattern for my Give a Hoot mittens).  Pictures soon (as soon as I block the shawl and put the face on the washcloth).

Alas, it is almost time for my second class of the day.  As I always say, I really am going to try to be better about posting!

My confession.

I am decidedly bad at blogging.  I try to frequently update, but I forget.  Maybe I'm just decidedly absent-minded...

So, Hollander's class number three, Advanced Book Repair, was fun.  We did a lot of spine repairs and I got to practice some of the repairs I learned in the Basic Book Repair class.  I actually feel like I made one of the books I worked on look almost as good as new!  I'll try to post pictures soon.  I really should have taken before and after pictures.  Oh well.

School has picked up and I'm knee deep in homework.  Luckily I only have one paper to work on next week while I'm in sunny California!  I have a few meetings with libraries out there, so here's to hoping I'll at least have the hopes of a job when we move.

On a more fun note, I've been knitting a lot more lately.  It all started when I was trying to think of ideas for my grant proposal and was searching for pictures of owls.  That landed me on the Kelbourne Woolens site and a pattern for these super cute owl mittens.

While at the store, I found some other patterns that I wanted to work on, and then I got on Ravelry, and now I have 45 projects in my queue.  There goes my free time!  I'll be either bookbinding, boxmaking, or knitting/crocheting!

I've written about half of my grant proposal for my grantwriting class.  I completely made up the program and it's something that might actually get off the ground somewhere in the future if I decide it's something I want to do.  It's for an after-school arts program and coffee shop that would function as a gallery and a continual funding source for the program.

I've also been trying to get into the professional literature more, but it's so hard with the amount of work I have to do for classes.  I have a few feeds on my Google Reader, but they don't necessarily always capture my interest.  Any suggestions out there for good blogs/feeds to read?

the Twitter version of books

As if we weren't already attention span deprived enough, FT Press is coming out with butchered versions of already published books, what the New York Times is calling "snack size," for e-readers.  My husband, Steve, calls them the Twitter version.

Can we really truly experience books in one to two thousand words?  I think not.  What we get is a sorry excuse for literature, be it fiction or non-fiction.  While the titles I've seen so far are on the business/self-help side (and goodness knows those tend to be verbose, anyway), if the current titles succeed, I can't imagine what will come next.  They might as well attempt to take over Cliffs Notes.

Read the whole article at the NYT.

As for myself, I'm very tempted to curl up with a novel and some hot cocoa on this cold, snowy day.  Maybe after a bit of homework...

Books and Boxes

So here they are!  I know you've all been waiting to see my handiwork.

Coptic binding

 

Secret Belgian Binding

 

Buttonhole Binding

Box with flanged lid

Box with hinged lid

Clamshell box with Flat Back book

Tear repair with Japanese Paper

Tear repair with only rice paste

Corner repair with Japanese Paper

Box Making, New Glasses, and Work, Work, Work!

The class last weekend at Hollander's was fantastic.  I made three boxes: clamshell, hinged, and flanged.  I'm hoping to take pictures today and post them.  I also got the instructions of how to make a flat-backed bound book to put in the clamshell box that I've been working on the past few weeks.  It's not perfect, but I'd say it's a pretty good attempt for a first try!  Next weekend I'll be at an advanced book repair class and then nothing again until February.  I would take more classes, but they are a bit pricey.  I'll just have to make a bunch of books and boxes in the mean time!


I also got new glasses.  They aren't that different in either look or prescription, but they're different enough for it to be fun!  No one noticed they were new, though, so that was a bit sad.


Other than that, nothing's really new.  I've been working, working, working.  Between classes and my two jobs, I'm fairly busy!  I got to help out with an outreach event regarding stroke in women at the Ann Arbor District Library this past week.  It was fun to do that kind of library work - I rarely get to interact with patrons anymore.  As a bonus, I picked up two books to read.  I'm usually rather picky about the books I choose, but this time I kind of randomly grabbed a couple off of the new book shelf:  Broken: A Novel by Daniel Clay and La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith.

On the class side of things, my team met with our contact at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum this past week, which was great.  If you've never been to the museum, you should go.  It's too much fun.  They have this set of stairs that plays a major scale as you walk up and down.  Like I said, too fun!

I've been working on a case study for my management class involving strategic and operational planning and I've kept chugging along on my grant.  Oh, the life of a student!

If you're not busy on Feb. 19th, you should come to East Hall Auditorium at 7pm for the SI Revue!  I'm singing, accompanied by the wonderful Richard Newman, a friend of mine from Hope College, and I'm accompanying Colleen Theisen and Elizabeth Everson.  Dr. Chuck is going to be the emcee.  Should be a fantastic night!

So busy!

Oh wow... it's been a couple weeks!  Definitely time for an update!

I've been very busy with school and work.  I'm really enjoying my jobs this semester.  I'm continuing on at the Health Sciences Libraries as a reference librarian, assistant instructor, and random project doer.  It's much nicer this semester because we're back at Taubman Medical Library with the rest of the HSL staff.

I'm also working with one of the librarians at HSL on a subcontract from the National Library of Medicine Greater Midwest Region.  It's a social network/instructional website focusing on teaching public health professionals how to use social media within the context of public health.  I'm the graphic designer, web designer (we'll be using Ning to create the network).  I'm also working on a lot of the content for the learning modules.  I'm very excited about it!  We've settled on a logo (although Ning just redesigned theirs and it's similar... sad day when I saw that...) and a color scheme already, which is great!!

As far as classes go, they're busy, too.  Today starts the fourth week of classes, but only the second time I've been to my Monday classes, so everything in those classes is starting off with a bang.  I'm working with the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum with a group evaluating their Action For Earth program.  The people that are our contacts are both SI grads, so we're a pretty lucky team -- they know what we need to get our project done.

I'm also going to be writing a grant this semester.  I decided to get out of library land and write a grant for an extracurricular arts education program.  Back to my music ed roots!  I'm just starting out on my research, but it's coming along!

Also, I got a small job from a friend here at SI doing web design.  It was just a basic e-portfolio site, but it was a snap to put together.   I was really impressed with how well I was able to fit the site to the needs and desires of the "client" and how quickly I was able to complete it.

I also took a book repair class this weekend at Hollander's.  I cannot tell you how much fun it was!  I repaired some broken hinges on bindings, broken or chewed corners of cloth-covered books, and various kinds of page tears -- even a missing corner of a page!  This coming weekend will be a second class at Hollander's - box making.  It'll be great for things that you don't want to repair, but want to store securely in an acid-free environment.

That's it for now... I'll try to update after the class this weekend!