nothing’s coming to mind

maura @ 10:11 pm

In the past 2 days I have ridden 4 subway lines (in order: G,* 7,** Q and 5) and traveled to 3 CUNY campuses for 2 great librariany programs (and 2 meetings). Yesterday was a program on information literacy assessment at LaGuardia Community College, and today was a program on critical pedagogy and library instruction at Brooklyn College. (And in between I had 2 meetings at the Graduate Center, where the wifi is not locked down + the cafeteria always has something tasty for lunch.)

* The G used to be Gus’s favorite train when he was wee, for obvious reasons. The logo is a pleasing spring green, so I like it too.

** Gus used to <3 the 7, too, when his favorite color was purple. I love it because it goes elevated in Queens and passes by an incredibly beautifully graffitied building.

It’s so strange the way my brain reacts to new knowledge sometimes. These programs were both incredibly engaging and thought-provoking, and usually afterward I’d be working things out in my head or scribbling (really typing) down some half-baked notes + ideas sparked by all of the good stuff I heard + thought about. But I think that the close proximity of two highly interesting + relevant (both work-relevant and research-interest-relevant) talks has overloaded my brain somewhat. The wheels are spinning a bit, but nothing coherent and no urge to write it down.

I think my brain is temporarily full. Maybe stuff will percolate out tomorrow or later. In the meantime, Sherlock Holmes will help empty it out a bit, right?

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after all that whining

maura @ 5:49 pm

last weekend about time to write, I forgot to even mention that I posted on one of my other blogs. I actually ended up getting a fair amount of writing done last weekend, which was nice.

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hey, have you been somewhere you’ve never ever been before

maura @ 7:01 pm

The semester started last Thursday, and our library’s course started too! I’ve had a busy month prepping for the course and worrying whether it would run, so it was great to finally get to the first class. All the nervousness that I thought I’d have suddenly vanished the morning of, too, which was a bit of a surprise to me. Ultimately I’m really looking forward to having an entire semester to work on big meaty information literacy* topics with the students, so I think that excitement drove the butterflies right out of my stomach.

* Shhh, we’re not calling it IL to the students, though — too jargony. The official course name is Research & Documentation for the Information Age.

I know what you’re thinking: what about the work? Isn’t it an enormous amount of work to teach a 3-credit course? Well, yes and no. It’s true that course prep expands to fill the time available, and when I was finalizing the syllabus this month I probably let it take more time than it should. But now that the semester’s begun I’m going to have to find ways to be more efficient with course prep, and I think that the syllabus and course outline is detailed enough that I should be able to prepare without deep-ending.** I’ll be responsible for fewer other instruction sessions and reference shifts than last semester, too.

** Overpreparation is an issue for me in lots of workstuff, so I should really use the course to help me practice figuring out when to stop.

It’s also true that I had a few moments this month when I desperately wished for one big giant textbook for the course. I’m using one text (Research Strategies, by William Badke) — it’s got a good overview of the research skills I want to cover, is written in an approachable style, and is under $20. But I also want to talk about things like privacy and access and evaluation and preservation and ethics and copyright and fair use and open access and documentation and non-text media and practical applications of all of this, which is bigger than this book, nice as it is. I’m still as anti-textbook and pro-open access as ever, but I do appreciate how much more time it takes to plan a class without one.

All in all, I’m totally stoked*** to teach this class.

*** A couple of weeks ago a CUNY colleague asked if I was from the West Coast, and referred to me as “mellow but organized.” Which cracked me right up.

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the triumphant end

maura @ 8:05 pm

Today’s the last day of NaBloPoMo, and all I can think of is the stupid song that Dora the Explorer sings when she finishes her quest: “we did it, we did it, we did it, yeah!” Gus hasn’t watched that show in forever, but my nephews are still little so I’m sure that earworm took hold sometime over the long weekend while we were visiting.

So yeah, I probably should have written a few more substantive posts this month. But I think I did a decent job overall. Definitely more library-ish this year than in years past, which I guess is understandable given how much headspace I devote to my job.

And speaking of which, apparently there’s a conversation going on over at Friend Feed re: my post about the plagiarism article that I wrote last night, so I should head over and join in. Bye!

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in which i write 515 words about plagiarism

maura @ 10:16 pm

Right, day 29 here and I am suffering a bit more than usual from the Sunday night gloomies. Maybe it’s a sugar crash (Jonathan made chocolate chip cookies today), or maybe a delayed tryptophan reaction. Most probably it’s the classic post-family event letdown that always hits when the chaos subsides. Silly to have gloomies tonight, anyway, since I have RT tomorrow and thus don’t even need to leave the house for 33-ish more hours.

So anyway, I have been mopey all weekend about writing my next post* for the academic library blog, which is silly, too, because it wasn’t really all that taxing. You know, finding the space + time without children playing video games at high volume, etc., etc. But tonight I finally finished it. Jonathan read it and proclaimed: “it’s dry, and you talk about nuances of academic writing,” which is pretty much spot on for my goal for that piece, so go, me!

* I don’t want the pingback, so if you want to read it click “acrlog” in the sidebar over there on the right.

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nothing to see here

maura @ 9:23 pm

Decided to write something about open access for my other blog today. Really it was finishing something I started a few weeks ago when Gus was at karate on a Saturday morning. I usually bring the netbook and can often get a bunch written, which seems impossible sitting near 30 kids yelling “yes sensei!” every few minutes. But it’s a surprisingly productive time for me. For a bunch of different reasons Gus hasn’t gone to karate on Saturday morning in a while, and I kind of miss it. I think he misses it, too. Despite being sick he’s still pretty high energy. Begone, evil fever!

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because it’s the weekend…

maura @ 12:45 pm

I finally had time to finish an ACRLog post that I’ve been chewing on for more than a week and drafting for a few days. It’s 724 words, so that counts for today, right?

(Warning: not interesting unless you’re a librarian, and probably only if you’re an instruction librarian.)

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i’m a robot man

maura @ 11:03 pm

It’s finally summer here and even though it’s not too hot yet my brain has been kind of slow lately. We went on our fabulous midwest vacation last week and though I’m back in the groove at work I’m having trouble shoving myself into a writing frame of mind. Also since it finally decided to stop raining this week I started riding my scooter to work again, which means that I’m more tired than usual at night.

So hi, internets, how’ve you been? I feel like I should have something more interesting to say than that, but sadly I do not.

We had a great time last week. Gus was treated to all manner of grandparental spoilage including go-kart construction, pottery making, junk food eating and late night TV watching. I slept for eight hours EVERY night and spent enough time lying around reading that I think I actually gained a few pounds. We all got to pet adorable baby goats at the zoo.

Jonathan and I also went to Chicago for 2 nights which was a blast. It was fun to see old friends and spend time walking around the city without having to give someone small a piggyback ride. We went to the newly-expanded Art Institute, and though I was a teeny bit disappointed that the Chagall stained glass windows aren’t back up after the renovations it really was lovely. There’s so much space now that lots more of the collection is displayed than before. The Cornell Boxes were among my favorites – so interesting + creepy. We rode my favorite El line and took advantage of our friend’s knowledge of architecture to learn about all of the new buildings. And I stood under the bean and took a picture of us:

(Please note: unless your name is Anne or Tex you are probably not at all interested in this paragraph. Feel free to move along.) On the way into the city we stopped in Hyde Park to eat garbage pizza and drink (strong!) coffee at the Med and wander around campus. The new dorms by the Reg are intensely orange (and not really in a good way) BUT they have the old house names from the now-demolished Woodward, which is kind of cool. And the new GSB building is handsome but kind of pushes Ida Noyes even more to the periphery than it was before.

Mostly I really wanted to ogle the new library construction. Instead of offsite storage they’re building this crazy oval-shaped dome-covered subterranean library next to the Reg. It’ll be closed stacks with automatic book retrieval (read: robots!). I’m calling it the underground robolibrary in my head – you should, too.

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shameless self-promotion

maura @ 10:25 pm

It’s National Library Week, and I’ve got a post on the Oxford Univ Press blog. Yay for libraries!

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three things about today

maura @ 7:50 pm

1. Today is St. Patrick’s Day and I accidentally wore green. Usually I don’t — green is my favorite color so I wear it lots of other days, and also since I am 15/16ths of Irish descent I figure is it really necessary? Except that today I forgot about the date and picked a green blouse primarily because it’s short-sleeved and it’s been 100 million degrees at work recently and I had a class which meant I’d be pacing and waving my arms around for 75 minutes. And then I got to work and remembered and thought: doh.

2. When we got the kittens last Memorial Day they were about 2 1/2 months old, so we arbitrarily decided that March 17th is their birthday. Happy Birthday cats! They are still mostly bundles of fun, except when they chew electrical cords and eat Gus’s lima bean plant and scratch my record jackets (which I noticed this morning and which MUST STOP).

A couple of weekends ago we went to a giant pet store to get them some new toys. The best is a long feather on a stick that is very serpentine when wiggled. There’s also a small blue mousey thing with catnip that has already inspired growling and dirty looks. Rock on.

One of the toys came on this helpfully labeled card:

Duh.

3. Today is also the birthday of my job. Happy Birthday, job! The past year has gone by almost in an instant. And I still love it. Definitely worth the investment in tuition to library school. Go, nerds!

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