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Out of da woods, into IL2008!

I’m sitting at the Atlanta airport, slowly working my way back to civilization. After four days in “da woods,” it can be hard to slip back into librarian/speaker mode. Going for four days without checking a watch, refreshing my email, and without any “have to” or “must” events really puts me in perspective. I’m trying not to “speed up” too quick (which is hard to do in an airport).

Here’s a taste of what I enjoyed…I look forward to our next gathering, but am excited to get revved up about librarianship again!

Campfire

Posted by Cliff on October 20th, 2008

Uber-trip: Day 1

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I have now officially packed for 12 days on the road. From now until Monday I’ll be camping in the back woods of Alabama with my Pagan friends. Then I’m off to Internet Librarian 2008 in Monterey, CA, where I’ll be presenting twice. Then off to my sister’s in San Diego (this time sans forest fire) for a little R&R. So three very different trips are all packed into three small bags (one of which will stay in Alabama). I will have more detailed stories soon, I’m sure!

I’ve been doing lots of cool stuff at work, and I hope to be all rested up from my blogging sabbatical to tell you all about it! Here we go!

Posted by Cliff on October 16th, 2008

Accountability is productivity

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As I settle in to do my Weekly Review today, I’m planning my projects for the year–and you are going to help me.

Of all the productivity tricks I’ve learned, one of my favorites is to tell folks about what I’m doing — being accountable to family, friends and coworkers keeps me going. This works great for my job, since our Chancellor is big on accountability and assessment. Here are my work projects for FY2009, which will be completed by June 30, 2009 (and yes, I like capitalizing things to Make Them Look Official):

Implement a Library Instruction Assessment tool. Now that the tool is designed, I’m working on tweaking it to make it more automated.
Repeat the Library Website Usability Study from FY2008. We got some great data this last year, which informed our redesign. Now I want to see if the redesign worked — can the users find stuff more easily?
Create a Desk Statistics Database. We have done pretty well with keeping pen-and-paper statistics up to now, but a database would allow for much easier number-crunching than doing hand calculations and spreadsheet inputs.
Design and implement a Reference Interaction User Satisfaction Survey. Are we nice and friendly? Did the users find what they were looking for? Did we follow up to make sure that they got all that they needed? How can we rawk a little bit harder?

My big project in my personal life is that I’ve taken the 100 Thing Challenge: by the end of the year, I will have reduced my personal belongings down to 100 things. I’ve tweaked the rules a little to match my own goals, but I’ve already begun. Most of my books, CDs and DVDs have been donated to the library, and I’m working on getting rid of clothes and excess furniture. As my house gets more and more spacious, I’m feeling better.

The kicker is that I have not told the General Public because 1) I did not want to “fail” by not being successful by my goal date and 2) I did not want to be negatively judged for getting rid of stuff. But I always tell people to be willing to fail big to win big, so here we go! And even though my inner packrat/archiver is occasionally screaming at me for getting rid of “something that might be useful some day,” I feel better with each load of stuff that leaves my house.

So there you go folks: four work goals and one (big) personal one. I’ll keep you updated!

Posted by Cliff on September 4th, 2008

ACURIL2008 lessons learned

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Rather than boring everyone to death with a play-by-play of the conference, here are the things that I learned from my trip. Videos are here, photos are here. Check out the ACURIL website, the conference page and the conference blog. I really enjoyed ACURIL; if you get the chance, go!

Things I learned about librarianship:

Librarians are the same everywhere. We all face the same problems, and all have our own quirks. And we generally like meeting other librarians.
US libraries/librarians and ALA are pretty much like a clique on a very large playground. They ignore (and are pretty much ignored) by the rest of the kids on the playground, who are all hanging out with each other. The only ones losing out are the US; no one is looking to us for inspiration. It is I who have been inspired.
A master’s degree isn’t necessary to be a librarian. Librarianship is a skill that is learned through practice, regardless of the degree in your hands.

Things I learned about Jamaica/the Carribbean:

Everything starts about 15-20 minutes late…”Jamaica time.” I felt right at home.
Walk on the left. Since people drive on the left, they walk on the left. If you walk on the right, you stop traffic. I finally got this down by the end of the week.
Lots of camera, few laptops. I realized very quickly that I was among librarians when there were more people recording the cultural events with their cameras than there were folks just watching; after all, we’re in the business of preserving history & culture! Hey folks who took pictures, share them on the ACURIL2008 Flickr group!
People are cold and unfriendly at first, but they’re quick to warm up once they realize you’re not a self-inflated tourist or American jerk.
It’s “yeah, man” not “yeah, mon”
It’s “persons” not “people”
Don’t believe everything you read. The poverty, crime, etc. won’t eclipse the amazing people you’ll meet. Positive news stories don’t sell papers.

Things I learned about traveling:

It’ll take some time to adjust to the accent. Be prepared to ask people to repeat themselves.
You don’t *really* need all that stuff that you pack.
Doing travel laundry is ok for manmade fabrics, but it’ll make cotton stiff.
Time your meals and showers–there’s always a rush on both at certain times.
Check the iron before you iron your clothes. Rust can be quite a surprise on a new white shirt.

Things I learned about myself:

A vacation alone isn’t really a vacation. Experiences are meant to be shared.
My idea of a great holiday is sitting around watching cartoons and napping (i.e. letting my brain rest). Not sitting in the sun. There’s no need to feel guilty for not wanting to hang out on the beach.
I value the people in my life, and really do miss those I love, no matter how independent I believe myself to be.

Posted by Cliff on June 10th, 2008