LlyfrgellyddIt’s Welsh for librarian.

Inspired by Catherine Pellegrino’s recent post about what she is working on this summer, I thought I’d do a post about my own summer projects.

Although I’m officially transitioning to my new position on July 1, I’m already working on some web projects. They include…

• We’re updating our database list – the design, not the actual database subscriptions. I’ve been working with our Electronic Resources Manager and my boss to come up with a better design, and the university’s Institutional Marketing team is actually doing the hard work of the coding.
• I’m taking some early steps toward starting a usability program. Right now, I’m investigating usability testing software – namely, Morae.
• My coworker Patrick & I are planning to switch our chat reference software over to Google Talk, using their Chatback widget. He’s doing the hard work, and I’ll probably do the training.
• My coworker Mary & I are working on redesigning the LibGuides home page. Again, Mary’s doing the hard work. I’m just contributing design suggestions (based on the feedback we received in the survey).
• Mary & I are working with another coworker, also named Mary, to add some structure to the library’s wiki/intranet. People have generally been putting up information in a non-systematic manner, so it can be difficult to find things.
• I want to put together some documentation for the liaison librarians on how to use the LibGuides API to create content boxes for Blackboard.
• I set up a Facebook fan page for the library, and now I need to populate it with information.
• Later this summer, I will be learning Camtasia and setting up some guidelines for the liaison librarians who want to create tutorials.

I’m also trying to get some government documents projects completed before July:

• Weeding the non-topographic, non-depository maps and correcting the accompanying inventory information on the website.
• Updating the government documents website. Before I knew about the new job, I wanted to overhaul the site completely; instead, I’m just fixing broken links and out-of-date information.
• Weeding. Although we will be hiring a new government documents librarian, I anticipate that s/he will not start work here too much before the start of the new semester. Therefore, I’m trying to get the weeding done for June, July, and August prior to July 1. August is the real bear – according to our state plan, we can dispose of Department of Interior and Department of Justice documents that month, and we have quite a few CDs from the Interior, and over 500 Justice documents that I need to look through.
• Item selection. There’s a pretty narrow window for selecting new documents to “subscribe” to, so I’m doing that, also on the assumption that the new librarian won’t be here in time to do that.

I don’t think that’s everything, but these are the projects occupying my headspace right now!