After working at university libraries in Michigan for the last four years, I’ve come to think of “summer” as May through August. Although classes started on Monday, I’m taking the next several days off for a much-needed vacation. This seems a good mental stopping point – a good time for me to think about what I accomplished this summer, what I didn’t, and what I learned.
This summer, I….
- facilitated the transition of our libraries’ research guides to LibGuides. (It’s weird to wrap up all that work into one little sentence!)
- helped facilitate planning for this year’s new faculty orientation, which seems to have been a success.
- weeded: lots of government documents, but also computer science books. They desperately needed weeding, and we needed shelf room.
- revised several pieces of our research skills tutorial. This is basically an introduction to library research – how to find a book, how to find an article, citing sources, etc.
- evaluated a few databases (mostly free ones) for inclusion on our database list.
- did collection development. This may not seem like a huge deal, but I was so glad to be able to spend some time on it this summer. Last summer was my first summer here, and I was assigned almost all new liaison areas – so I had to start from scratch.
- attended a very educational, week-long seminar on government information.
I’m trying not to let these accomplishments be overshadowed by my non-accomplishments. That said, this summer, I didn’t:
- write my review article on the Computers in Libraries conference. This is the thing I’m most disappointed I didn’t do, and I expect this will be a priority in the coming weeks.
- do an inventory of our maps or CD-ROMs. I seriously need to weed the CD-ROMs.
- weed Michigan documents. We lost our state depository status last year, before I took over as government documents librarian. I’m pretty sure it was largely an issue of funding – I think we had about 50 prior to last year, and now I think we have fewer than 15. Luckily, our education librarian weeded a bunch of them (the ones related to education!) for me.
- create a website for work. I’ve been coveting those of Iris and Jenica.
- clean out my files.
- put together a website summarizing available e-mail and RSS alerts. We’re trying to do this in LibGuides, and I’m really struggling with how to organize this information.
Some observations and reflections…
- Summer actually ends two weeks before classes start. Between convocations, orientations, and what-have-you, that time gets eaten up quickly.
- I have grown more patient with the often slow process of projects in academia. This is, in part, because I have a number of things I want to do, and no time now to pursue them. I find I’m already thinking about things I want to work on next summer and fall.
- I think I can be overly polite. Since I’m up for contract review in a few months, this is not necessarily a bad thing! I certainly don’t plan to start being rude. What I think, though, is that sometimes I need to be a little more forthright. For example, do you remember that professor I wrote about a few months ago? Well, I did eventually find her contact information, and wrote her a very nice e-mail. I thought, in this e-mail, that I’d tried to engage her more with the library, and encouraged her to invite me to her future classes. I just looked at my sent mail, however – all I did was tell her where I looked, suggested they check with facilities for the documents they needed, and ask her if there was anywhere else I might look. I see that I didn’t even come close to expressing what I wanted to – and that’s just one example. I think I need to stop critiquing my communication with the question, “Does this sound polite and professional enough?” and start asking, “Does this clearly express the point(s) that I’m trying to get across?” [As an aside, there is a happy ending: another professor in the department spoke very highly of the library to this professor, and so I will be visiting with one of the original professor's classes this semester.]
In conclusion, I leave you with one last observation: Vacation time is good. Use it.