Making the Most of It

While it has been incredibly humbling to be without steady, full-time employment, I have been taking advantage of the time and, well, making the proverbial lemonade.

I have been volunteering as a summer Book Buddy with the Campagna Center's Wright to Read program, located in the City of Alexandria, VA. I meet once a week with a young reader who needs a little extra help solidifying readings skills. This has been a fun and rewarding way to spend time on a Wednesday afternoon.

Yesterday I went for the first time to volunteer my library services at the Ladrey Senior High Rise in the City of Alexandria. They have a great space for the library--lots of light and windows looking out on a courtyard area. The challenge here is to entice the residents to use the library. Right now the library contains a hodgepodge of mostly fiction paperbacks, some periodicals, and a prehistoric desktop computer with access to the Internet, Microsoft Office applications (circa 1999), and my old friend, Mavis Beacon, who teaches typing (that's how I learned back in the day). There are four more newer computers, but they cannot be touched until they are sanctified by the City's Tech God (I'm guessing that the Senior Housing complex is not on the top of the list of priorities....).

Oh, Hello There!

Well, I am back on the grid after a little hiatus during which I spent time without electricity, running water, or communication devices of any kind. I have to say it was pure heaven--hiking, canoeing, making serious headway with Infinite Jest (Yes! I am over halfway!), and spending hours looking at the lake and mountains.

So, I've waded through the mail of various ilk, and am ready to resume my periodic playdates with 23 Things.

What Is In a Name, Anyway?

So, we live in a world that is flooded with information.

There's oodles of it out there just waiting to be wrangled and made sense of (apologies to Mr. Hauge, 6th Grade English teacher, for this grammatical construct). And yet as a profession we still fail to make the connection between what we have been trained to do, and how it translates in the real world to saving users time, money, and maybe some heartache by making that information discoverable, useful, meaningful, and manageable (see Ranganathan's Five Laws).

Over the last couple of years, the Special Libraries Association's Alignment Project has sought to address this disconnect. Recently SLA members have been in a frothy discussion about a name change for the association. For me the L-word is a mixed bag. On the one hand most people have a pretty clear idea what they think a Librarian is:




Unfortunately it's a limited and antiquated idea. On the other hand, Information Professional or Knowledge Engineer can be misleading and confusing. I think it is important that whatever we call ourselves it should convey what we do instead of being a rigidly defined position description or job title. If we want to be taken seriously at the C-level where budgets live and die, then we need to speak in a language that will be instantly recognized by those decision-makers.

I don't really know the answer, but I do know what I love doing, and it's connecting people with meaningful information. It's in the thrill of the hunt, it's in the elegance of the synthesis and presentation, it's in the satisfaction of helping others look good or make a well-informed decision.

Having been laid off from my last job (which I loved--well, not the being laid off part) as a librarian for a trade association, I have some time on my hands. In the midst of conducting a job search and some periodic consulting work, I have decided to finally complete 23 Things through the Special Libraries Association website. I've started this a few times, but my goal is to complete it by the end of the summer. I've dabbled with blogging before, but I plan to be more deliberate and delve deeper this time around.

So, I'm on Things 3 and 4, which is all things Blog.

I am a big reader of blogs and I can definitely see the benefit of this mode of sharing information. While I don't necessarily want to know the minutiae of my neighbor's daily life, her mother may feel otherwise. I do enjoy reading blogs of library and information luminaries like Stephen Abram and Jessamyn West and also the occasional guilty pleasure like Defamer.

The End is the Beginning

In a somewhat anticlimactic moment two weeks ago, my diploma was delivered courtesy of the USPS. There were no trumpets. There was no congratulatory handshake with the Dean. Just me and the letter carrier. That's what happens when you graduate in October instead of May--you miss out on the pomp and circumstance. However, as I look over at that rather impressive piece of sheepskin, I feel proud to have persevered through the late nights writing papers and debugging websites on to the endless hours spent studying for my Comprehensive Exams in July. I love this profession and I can't wait to really dig in!

So, now I am on the hunt for a job where I can put my talents to their best use and where I can continue to learn and grow as an information professional.

I finished another class last night--Yeah!

If you want to see the website that my partner and I created for our Internet Searches and Web Design class check it out here. It's pretty basic, but considering how little time we had to do it, and what novices we are, we were satisfied with the result. I look forward to creating my next website soon.

I have a final exam tomorrow night for my Marketing Libraries and Information Centers class and I should be studying, but I've been doing everything but studying today.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel--I just hope it isn't, you know, THE bright, white light....

Last July while I was visiting with my elderly Mom in Connecticut, she became quite ill and died about one week later. It has been a turbulent year with a lot of changes. No matter how old you are, when a parent dies, and especially a mother, the world feels like it's spinning on a different axis. This, in part, explains why I've been missing in action for months and months.

But, I am happy to say the fog has more or less lifted, I am nearly done with my Master's degree, and I can finally imagine joining the human race again.

Since I had the brainstorm last week to make myself available to friends and family as their own personal reference librarian, I have had several interesting questions ranging from, "What would be the proper nickname for St. Aloysius Gonzaga?" to "What is the derivation of the word God, when did we start using that name/term?"

It's been a fun week as a result. I am learning even more quickly about sources and, frankly, it's fascinating to find out what the people I know are thinking about. It's a great rush to actually be able to answer a question--everyone is so grateful. This is a nice side benefit for me.

Here's two things I've learned in the last two days since I sent a broadcast email to my friends and family offering free reference services....

1. It's a good idea to do a trial run of a new venture so you can work out the kinks--don't send an email to 50 people until you can handle 50 simultaneous requests. It's not that I didn't know this before, but I sure did get reminded when I was flooded with requests for information.
2. When you're learning how to do something or trying to improve a skill it helps to have realistic expectations of your abilities.
   

I have gotten some really juicy information requests so this is a lot of fun and it keeps me from dying of boredom while I'm toiling at the circulation desk.

Today I have decided that I need a lot more practice doing reference work so I'm offering my info sleuthing services to everyone in my network. Working for a few hours a week on the Info Desk is not giving me the exposure I need to become more familiar with available sources.

For today I've also learned how to add my photo to my profile.

Baby steps, baby steps....

This summer while I am on a miniscule hiatus from the pursuit of my Master's degree in Library and Info Science, it is my mission to play with the tools of the trade.

So, today I got some more clues about how to be productive with my cellphone and I started this blog.

Now I think I have to take a nap....