Caveat Lector

David has come down with a nasty bug of some kind; it looked like flu at first, but fortunately isn’t turning out to be quite that mean. Even so, I’m hiding in the office churning out library-renovation verbiage and hoping desperately not to catch anything before ACRL.

The clunk of the mailbox was my signal to leave my mini-hermitage, as David certainly shouldn’t be going outside in his condition. Envelope from SLIS, addressed to me, initial para as follows:

We are pleased to inform you that the faculty of the School of Library and Information Studies, at the request of the Beta Beta Epsilon (what, no Greek letters?) Chapter of Beta Phi Mu (hey, gimme some Greek here!) (the International Library Science Honor Society), has selected you as one of the Outstanding Student Scholar Finalists for 2004–2005.

The rest of the letter identifies the actual Outstanding Student Scholar (who isn’t me and probably doesn’t want me shouting her name all over creation, or I would, because I know her and respect her highly) and gives details of the initiation reception.

Scholar, heh, my first reaction to reading the reception date was, “Crud. Isn’t that the same day my RFP for networking class is due?” (Yes, in fact, it is. But I’ll manage.)

So. Summary. The ΒΒΕ chapter of ΒΦΜ seems to be inviting me in. Not half bad, for a scruffy grad-school dropout. But hang-dang it, I have to edit my résumé now.

Today I did a little bit of legwork for our library-redesign project: talked to someone in the university IT hierarchy about possible partnership.

Oh, sure, he said right away. We’d love to do that; we don’t have a lab in that part of campus. We buy, install, and maintain the machines; the library supplies the staffing.

Audible clunk as my jaw hit the floor. Paying for the equipment was the biggest budget hurdle we had, and maintaining it the biggest staffing hurdle—and both had just evaporated right in front of me.

I’ll have to rewrite two pages’ worth of budget and partnering recommendations tomorrow, but boy, I can’t complain about the reason I’m doing it!

It pays to ask people for help. Really does. Even getting shot down most of the time, it still pays, because of the occasional jackpot like this. Wow. I still haven’t quite gathered up my jaw.

This is obviously not my day to do an annotated bibliography.

I desperately want an article from volume 29 number 3 of a journal called Program. It is exactly on point, and better yet, it’s a summary article that could lead to more bibliography.

First of all, may I say that Program is a horrible, horrible journal name, impossible to find in a catalogue because of all the damned conference proceedings that use it as a title? I may say that? Oh, good. I say that. Because I had to wade through a metric ton of junk before I found the OPAC listing for the journal, and I almost missed it.

The SLIS library has bound volumes of the journal for quite a few years, but it is missing 29:3. Okay, okay, so we’ll try for online full-text. Wilson doesn’t have it. Emerald doesn’t have it. Nobody has it. Well, that’s just peachy, that is.

I’ll have to haul my rear over to Memorial to find it. And I will, because unfortunately it is exactly what I need. But as much as I love libraries, sometimes I just hate ’em.

ETA: Whew, that’s done. I did find the Program article, but I gave up on one almost as good because it’s in a journal that changed its name three times and is shelved in three different places, and who needs the tsuris, really? I expect I’m going to get gigged on currency because I don’t have much stuff newer than 2000, but so be it. I did find good stuff.

Heading down to campus tomorrow to work on this annotated-bibliography thing. I’ll be happiest if it’s done at the end of the day, but I’ll settle for whacking a sufficiently large hole in it. Did my initial DIALOG searches tonight; tomorrow is for chasing stuff down, reading it, annotating the good ones, and noting cites to do “who cited this?” checks on if I don’t find enough good articles from the first searches. (Social SciSearch. It’s the stuff, you bet.)

I note with no small amusement that I’m going to use the paper journals rather than full-text online whenever possible—yes, me, Ms. Electronic Text. I know where all the journals are in the SLIS library; they’re in a very small physical space. I can haul the Silver Surfer to campus, dig up and flip through dozen print articles off my DIALOG list, and annotate the good ones in much less time than it typically takes to navigate umpteen bloody database screens to get to full-text.

What this says about database interface design will be left as an exercise for the librarians and vendors among us. (Somebody please kick H.W. Wilson in tender spots until they streamline that horrible web interface they’ve got. Hint one: Frames are bad. Hint two: I like to do a lot of searches at once and then save the articles I find in separate Firefox tabs, because it’s more time-efficient than than the search-read-search-read grind. Javascript links make this all but impossible. Don’t use them. Thanks.)

Should probably also start costing out materials for the LAN design project, because that’s the big hurdle to writing it up and getting it out of my life. It should also let me ballpark an estimate for the budget discussion I have to put the finishing touches on.

The Minnesota talk is looming large, too. I think that’ll be Thursday’s project. I know the kinds of things I want to say—I just need to back it up. (And everyone should be happy to know that there will be no PowerPoint. There will probably be a handout or quickie Web page with bibliography, however.)

I note with a slight tinge of hope, however, that I’ve got my assignments done through the end of next week (except for minor amounts of budget verbiage that are no big deal). If I finish the bibliography, that gets me safely through ACRL, and if I finish the LAN design project, that plus one more search problem-set gets me through the Montreal meeting.

I may survive this semester after all.

I just got back from an excellent and productive meeting with my search client that has me champing at the bit to get started on the search—but priorities, priorities. So after I write up the meeting for my final paper (best to do that quickly, so I don’t forget anything), I shall turn my attention to the networking presentation and the next search-class problem set.

If I get through all that, it’ll be time to send out some more résumés. Brief phone interview this afternoon, granted, but there’s nothing like getting shot down to inspire one to new heights of frantic paper-pushing.

I will cop to certain superstitions surrounding important competitive milestones like job interviews. One such is that I beat long odds but never short ones. So it’s no wonder I lost out on the Ruritania position, being one of only two candidates; I expect I’ve a better shot at Rohan, seeing as how they’ve got four or five.

Another is that when I do get shot down on a job I really want, the job I eventually take turns out to be a blessing (if sometimes disguised at first). I had to apply twice to get the job at Impressions that set my entire working life on a new and rosier path. I got shot down on running the Puerto Rico Census Project, so I swallowed my pride and accepted a data-entry position—one that ended up introducing me to database programming and paying for nearly all of library school.

So I’m hoping that the pattern holds this time.

By way of bias disclosure, I’ve had Dr. Kristin Eschenfelder for (um, counting up…) three classes now, and she’s one of the poor souls I’ve tapped to field job-recommendation requests. (I need to figure out what I can give these people. They’re getting hammered, I’m afraid, and they’re all being remarkably gracious about it.)

Even if that weren’t so, this Library Journal nod would still be wondrous cool.

And since it is so, I can go ahead and say that Kristin adds a gutsy, grounded teaching style to her active research agenda. I’ve been quite happy with all the courses I’ve taken from her, I actively recommend her courses to other students, and I’m only sorry I won’t be around longer to take more.

I’m thrilled to see her getting this kind of recognition, and I hope it keeps up. I don’t know whenabouts she’s coming up for tenure, but in my opinion UW-SLIS would be wildly insane not to freeze onto her for life and be glad of the chance.

No, it’s not too early. It’s really, really not.

• LAN design assignment for networking class.
• Chapter 8 handout and presentation for networking class. (Plus a little something-something for fun. Dunno what’s fun about network segmentation and networking equipment, actually, but I imagine someone, somewhere enjoys it.)
• Annotated-bibliography assignment for search class.
• Problem-set 4 for search class.
• Scholarly-communication presentation for the folks in Minneapolis (and hey, Krista, a great article just came down the pike on this).
• The budget section of the library-redesign report. Ugh.
• Get started on the term project for search class, if I can connect up with my client fast enough.

I’m guessing I’ll be staying out of trouble over Spring Break…

Last summer in management class, the project group I was in took a look at security provisions for the almost-24/7 College Library. The major sticking point was staff, of course, and the particular problem was late-night staffing.

Well, we pointed out that the problem boiled down to a really rather odd space decision: circulation was located way the heck down the left-hand side of the building, so there was no way to man both circulation and the front-door ID check with a single person—as would otherwise be perfectly reasonable.

Oh, but we can’t move circulation! they said to us. Closed print reserves are back there, and somebody has to be there to retrieve and check those out.

So we backed off on the space-shuffling recommendation, but left it in the report just for kicks. And if you walk into College Library now, you find that the space has been reorganized precisely as we recommended. (Though I’m not sure what they ended up doing with print reserves. I think they live behind the ref desk now, but I could be wrong about that.)

Guess we left our mark.

This comes to mind just now because our systems-analysis class is poised to leave another mark, to the tune of “completely redesigning two small campus libraries.” It’d be scary as all getout if it weren’t actually going so well. We’ve got buy-in from nearly everyone we’ve talked to, we’re told the money will be there, and we think the space and staff problems are eminently solvable.

I’m really starting to regret that I won’t be here to see the plans go into action.

Been a while since I carried the Silver Surfer’s backpack around, especially that full. Getting dressed for bed last night, I noticed that my shoulders had sprouted a lovely Jadzia-Dax pattern of burst capillaries owing to too-tight straps. Oopsie.

DCG work is about what I’d expected it would be: lousy ergonomics (need a laptop stand or a keyboard drawer or both), quiet surroundings, the sort of gentle and untaxing proofreading and markup work that I can just about do in my sleep now. (Though I notice I start slowing down after about three hours of it. Very possibly it’s just as well that I’m moving into managing this sort of project rather than doing it myself.)

That plus a fairly otiose class (group presentations) has got me really rather tired. I’ve checked the usual job sites (nothing interesting that I haven’t applied for), plowed through the blogs, and done next week’s networking reading. I’ve a game session scheduled for this evening—and after that, I rather think I shall make the closer acquaintance of shower and bed.

It is becoming clear to me from private emails in response to my “WTF are you thinking, SLIS?” mailing-list post that people Just Aren’t Getting It.

It’s almost cute, the babes in the woods thinking that the university’s lip-service to free speech and inquiry actually means something. Touching optimism. Which won’t protect them in the slightest when somebody (be it student or professor) does something stupid and the Wrath of Administration comes down.

Eh, well. I have said my piece. All I can do now is distance myself from the ensuing madness.

Oh, and start a betting pool for how long it’ll take before something blows up. Anybody want in?