shinylib

Summer is a weird time for a 9 or 10 month academic librarian. I am only working Wednesday afternoons this summer as everyone advised me to take some time off after year one. I’m glad for the time to spend on various pleasures involving geekery and bike riding, but there are frustrations as well.
As you [...]

It’s interesting that recently I was reading some David Lee King archives about 2.0 sounding job titles. Although my job title hasn’t really changed (I still don’t know what it officially is, I just go with Faculty Librarian) it has opened to incorporate some other ideas. I am now some kind of Web Reference Librarian, [...]

I am feeling peevish today, sorry shiny readers. One of my biggest pet peeves with students is that they don’t bother to learn the names of things. Who is your instructor? I dunno, she’s got brown hair and works on Mondays. What book are you looking for? That business one with the spiral edge. WHICH [...]

I just taught a really awesome WR 121 class. There were no sleeping students; the obviously mentally elsewhere managed to keep the IMing to a minimum; and students were engaged and asked really great questions. That generally is enough praise for me—I managed to keep your attention. So when a student came to me at [...]

Cans of worms a’poppin open all over. There’s a discussion on one of the campus listservs pertaining to hate crimes. A banner for Semana de la Raza was stolen recently after it had already been defaced with KKK and other such crap.
The discussion on the faculty list has been variously wounded, combative, and most of [...]

Well I have obviously been quite remiss in my blogging lately. There’s just been such a whirlwind of activity, none of which has left me any time for reflecting!
I changed campuses for Spring and am now at a campus I refer to as “The Farm”. The farm is replete with all the signs of springs—baby [...]

I try to keep shinylib pretty attuned to the professional, much the same as I try to keep my work environment, but sometimes your life spills over into…well, your life.
It’s times like these that allow you to take stock of your colleagues (and yourself). There’s a rough patch in the shiny world right now, nothing [...]

This morning I was interviewed by approximately 15 students from Journalism 200. I was blown away by the quality of questions they asked–and really lucky that they had the foresight to send them to me in advance. There were some really tough questions for me to answer, not just because I am fairly new, but [...]

After weeks of strained silence, I finally get to announce that I have a permanent full time job. The official notification went out to my colleagues yesterday. I hadn’t been able to talk about things largely because there was nothing to talk about. My boss had been investigating the possibility of doing a direct hire/appointment [...]

I think there’s some intense irony in referring to me as a subject specialist– particularly given the subjects in which I supposedly specialize.It’s no secret that the sciences and maths have never particularly interested me, but what is surprising is that I prefer my tech subjects to my touchyfeely subjects. Theater Arts and Dance, while [...]