Extra, Extra: .Gov Harvest!

Yep, UNT has joined the efforts to harvest the Bush Administration's "webstuffs." Not only can you read about it on the Washington Post (also on NextGov), but you can read a fun quote from my boss Suzanne:

"When Bush took over, the second that he was sworn in, the White House Web site went from being this massive collection of important links to a picture of Bush and his biography and a picture of [Vice President] Cheney and his biography," Sears said. "We don't want to see that happen again. . . . It's just very important for history's sake that this material is archived the way that the printed material has always been archived."

In other news, Murphy's Law states that any time the Washington Post calls about your Digital Collections, you will be out sick and your boss will be interviewed instead. Ah, well--such is life, eh?

My Boss, Depository Library Council Member

Now that it's official and the press release is out, let me finally burst out with the news I've been waiting to say: my boss, the incomparable Suzanne Sears, is on DLC this year! Yay!!

Of course, this means I'll be a bit busier for the next three years as well, helping to take on more departmental responsibilities when she's away. But it's exciting and huge news and I'll be interested to be so close to a council member.

(And yes, this would fall under the "docs nerd" category of posts to this blog.)

Snaps for UNT's CRS Reports Archive

I just had to mention that UNT is listed as the top website for CRS reports, according to this OhMyGov post by Andrew Einhorn.

Yay--and thanks, Andrew!!

LE@D Video Shoot (aka Goofy Librarian Skilz)

I used to work for the Center for Distributed Learning at UNT, back before I thought it was a grand idea to both attend school full-time and work full-time. In any case, they were a grand crew of people who had the amusing pleasure of finding out lots of my previously-hidden geeky secrets. Thus, I soon gave up my pretense of being a dignified young professional and acted more like my goofy self in their company.

Thus, when their LE@D (Lifelong Education at Desktop) program needed to shoot a video starring a goofy librarian... I was the first person they thought of.



So yesterday, I spent the morning over-acting my goofy heart out, while being followed around the third floor of the library by a mass of professional-looking camera equipment. The video's scenario is that I'm a librarian trying to take an online LE@D course, but I can't find the time to take it--I'm being interrupted at the reference desk, circulation, public computers, the breakroom, and finally make my escape to a stall in the women's restroom to finish. (I'll post a link here when the video's done on April 1st--both because you all deserve a good laugh and because I'm making a habit of humiliating myself online as much as possible.)

I'll say one thing--I now understand why, in addition to needing a script and camera, it's so important to have a director. You can read, "Starr looks up at patron and seems mildly frustrated by the interruption," and it seems simple, but when it comes to actual expression, body language, etc.... it's surprisingly complex.

So, er, I won't be running off to La-La Land anytime soon to pursue an acting career. But it was certainly an enjoyable experience, and Dr. Arlita Harris, the visionary behind the whole project, not only made it fun but graciously sent me flowers afterward. A big thanks to the CDL folks for thinking of me!

Countdown to Launch

Well, it should be all ready--cross your fingers. I had to give up playing Guitar Hero in the Digital Projects Lab yesterday in order to finish (dang), but we've finally got the manual and training completed for the move to our new internal communication system. I.E., instead of emailing out a Word or PDF attachment each week for the library's internal newsletter, we now have a CMS instance (we're using Plone, which is also the CMS for our library website) devoted to the newsletter, which also uses a controlled keyword vocabulary, organizes by department, and is searchable.

I don't know what took more effort, really, figuring out what CMS to use and the keywords and how it would all operate, or writing the whole training manual explaining everything. Although to be fair, I wasn't the programmer on the CMS end, so that was probably the worst of it.

I'm doing a little finish-up work communication remotely right now, and in the afternoon will be taking off for my nice long two-week holiday, which will be split between San Antonio, Las Vegas, and our home in McKinney.

May you all enjoy a great holiday season--rest up, eat well, and make merry!!!

'Tis the Season

Yes, to be jolly, but also to heighten that usual sense of the word "busy." Ah, how well I know it after having spent over two decades enrolled in some form of school.

And I've got a bit of good news to post: I've been accepted into UNT's PhD program in Higher Education! Yes, I'm back for more--but as my husband supportively points out, this degree has that helpful distinction of "terminal," meaning that I could, conceivably, one day be done with school. (No, really.)

Why, you ask, particularly as I've argued in the past that most librarians don't need PhDs, and that often it doesn't seem to be worth the time or money invested in the degree? Well, because much as I currently love my job, I know my ambitions and my dreams, and I'd like to be able to move not only into library administration, but potentially into university-wide administration. And it seems pretty par for the course to have a PhD attached to your name in those positions.

Why in Higher Ed, instead of an Information Sciences doctorate? Well, I'm attracted to that program, it looks quite interesting--but at the end it seems to me that a Library/Info Science PhD is best if 1) you want to teach at a library school (I don't), or 2) you are interested in a highly-focused area of library science research that you'd like to pursue (I'm not). I want to administrate, and I'm going into Higher Ed because that's a good, practical preparation for university administration--lots of helpful courses on academic finances and of course the ever-present statistical information (which, being a documents librarian, I'm actually looking forward to). And I'm interested in researching library support for distance education--support both in terms of library services and library materials--and thus, I've already got a potential dissertation topic.

I embark upon that adventure in January 2008. In the meantime, our emerging technologies group at UNT is more deeply discussing options for standards in technology competencies for library employees... we're trying to see if that's a good road for us to take in the Libraries.

And of course there's a desk full of stacked papers requiring my attention--Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday and it's great to rest, but I'm mighty tired of moving some of my "to-do" items from week to week in my calendar. I'm pondering a work-fest week in the second week of December, to try to wrap up a lot of this end-of-the-year deadline stuff (and then hope to write an article or two in that "spare time" over the Christmas break).

Next week, though, it will be hard to keep up with the normal swing of work--Monday and Tuesday I'll be in Austin for the Texas Library Association's Transforming Texas Libraries Summit, which has a lot of potential to be interesting, and then Thursday I'll be in Houston for a fantastic workshop on the visual presentation of data (no, it's really not boring!!) by Edward Tufte. My father, an optics engineer, attended this presentation a few years back and said it's about the best one-day seminar he's ever been to, and promptly bought me one of Tufte's books that Christmas. I've been fascinated with him ever since, and since my current position deals a lot with both graphics and statistics, this seemed like a good training opportunity.

Also, I'm on the Conference Program Committee for the TLA 2009 conference--we're beginning to brainstorm sessions and speakers. If you know of anyone who would be a good speaker on graphic design and/or library marketing, please let me know. I'm particularly interested in organizing a session on that general topic, as it's something that's quite relevant to work I've been doing for UNT, and I'm sure it's a problem for other libraries as well. Or if you have other session ideas, things you'd like to be educated on, people you'd like to hear speak--please just let me know!

"Students Commend Librarians"

It only slightly shocks me that in an op-ed piece in our university newspaper praising librarians, the writers mention Dewey... when we use LC.

Ah, well. The sentiment sure is nice!!!

Banned Books Photos

Just thought you might like to see some images from the past week, since I didn't have time to upload them earlier.

The Glow of Promotion

Today, UNT's Women's Studies Program held a ceremony to honor all female faculty promoted at UNT this year. I took photos, because, well, I'm a big camera dork, five of our librarians were promoted, and also because I was one of them: promoted to Librarian II (a year early--woohoo!!). Our president, Dr. Gretchen Bataille, and our new Provost, Dr. Wendy Wilkins, also came and spoke at the ceremony--it was quite nice.

UNT's Rare Books Room Celebrates 25 Years

The UNT Libraries' Rare Books Room recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. To celebrate, they displayed a large exhibit of their "best of" from the past twenty-five years. Last Friday, I came up with my Nikon and took an hour to shoot the whole exhibit before they took it down. I haven't yet edited or weeded any of these photos, but they're on flickr for your enjoyment!

On the Meaning of "Fall"

...With the crazy pace of work at the moment, my thoughts are that "Fall" doesn't designate the autumnal season when leaves fall off of trees, as much as it describes a quick, dangerous plunge. Ah, another school year begun.

It really is enjoyable to have students on the campus again, and to get more real action at our reference desk. But my mounting "to do" and "should have been done five months ago" lists are becoming precariously long. I could use a couple of 60-hour work weeks to catch up... only 1) I've got a husband I'd like to see more than occasionally, 2) I've also got my classwork to contend with, and 3) I, um, just don't want to. Ah, well.

On the bright side, although October will be filled with travel and presentations... it will be filled with travel and presentations! So it means more of being busy (and less time to catch up on it), but it will be fun and rewarding. I'm particularly excited to get to present in my hometown of San Antonio--it's nice to have such a great reason to go back. Plus, I get to talk about Library 2.0--and what's not to like about that? Spreading the word about blogs, wikis, and the greatness in general of the social internet... now that's more like it.

Today was UNT's Fall Convocation, which is a ceremony for faculty and staff at which our president gives a sort of "state of the university" address. It's not required, but it's quite informative (and features free breakfast), and I was pleased even more than last year with President Bataille's address. She mentioned the UNT Libraries' NEH/LC grant for digitizing newspapers, for one, but also she's an incredibly interesting and sincere speaker. Even when she's citing statistics, she makes them relevant and relatable, not sleep-inducing.

And--this was the really fantastic part--I got to speak to her in person. I stayed afterward awhile talking to a colleague, and when I turned to leave the Union, I saw Dr. Bataille standing with just one other person. When they finished talking, I walked over to introduce myself and tell her how honored and glad we were that she came to the Libraries' annual New Faculty Reception last week. It was nice to speak with her, even if briefly!

Then I was invited by Melody Kelly, our Associate Dean, to sit in on a library Strategic Planning meeting. It was a kind of follow-up activity to the interview I did with her yesterday, which is for the SLIS course I'm taking, Advanced Management of Information Agencies. It was interesting sitting in on a real meeting after having discussed the history of the plan--now that I'm actually full-time, I get more out of courses like these by seeing the theories implemented in my daily work.

Which reminds me... I've got lots more e-mail to get to. Ciao!

Gettin' the Word Out

Another plug for the UNT Digital Collections in ALA's e-newsletter, American Libraries Direct: this time, it's the Portal to Texas History! See the yellow-ish column on the right: the Portal is the Digital Library of the Week.



...And now, back to my regularly-scheduled Hectic Week from Hades. The comfort, as always this time of year, is that eventually it will be September, students will be settled in their classes, and my life will be my own again. Ah, the joy of academic libraries and life on the academic calendar. At some point in my life, I may begin to think of years as starting in January instead of late August--but I doubt it.

Happy St. Lawrence Day!

Today, our Head of Archives hosted a St. Lawrence feast-day BBQ celebration at the library. (St. Lawrence is the patron saint of librarians and archivists.) To celebrate his feast day, we ate grilled meat (well, barbeque works when you're in Texas) in honor of St. Lawrence's martyrdom by being grilled.

When I was still working on my Art History MA, he was one of my favorite saints, primarily because of the great quote attributed to him while he was being grilled, "Turn me over, I'm done on this side." Ah, those crazy, crazy saints. Take a course on hagiography (the study of saints) and suddenly you think jokes about cephalophores are amusing. (Then again, we're talking about historians here... huge, huge nerds to begin with.)

In honor of St. Larry, here are some pertinent links:

• St. Lawrence e-cards
• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Wikipedia article

Among my other favorite saints:

• St. Anthony of Padua: patron saint of finding lost things (and also finding husbands)
• St. Veronica: owned a miraculous cloth portrait of Christ, so is fittingly the patron saint of photographers, as well as the subject of my MA thesis (vernicle images)

Photos @ Your Library

I took a few more photos of our library this morning for the 365 Library Days project, which you can check out at my Flickr account.

While in the Bay Area, I checked out San Jose's spectacular central public library branch (which, incidentally, is also the San Jose State University library), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library. I'll be posting those images shortly.

Update:
Also, I just got my PBwiki shirt (part of their Presenter's Pack)! Thanks, PBwiki!!! I love the spiffy star-covered box it came in.

I also posted some photos of my office on Flickr... why? Well, because I'm a little silly that way. And because I have to eke the last drop of goodness out of this Canon EOS 20D before I return it to the Digital Lab this evening.

UNT-L Awarded $397,552 by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress

Isn't this incredibly exciting? We were in a GovDocs department meeting when Cathy Hartman broke in to tell us the news, and Dreanna dropped by my office later to bounce up and down with (completely appropriate) joy.

"The University of North Texas Libraries has been selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress for the National Digital Newspaper Program, "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers." The Award of $397,552 will fund digitization of Texas Historical Newspapers, and for the grant UNT serves as lead institution with partners at the Center for American History at the University of Texas, and Texas Tech University. Only one lead institution will be selected in each U.S. state, and the University of North Texas Libraries has been selected to head the project in Texas. The award of $397,552 will fund the first two years of this twenty year initiative."

~ Dreanna Belden, Librarian for Project Development, UNT

Okay, All You Documents Geeks...

You know who you are.
And you know you want to subscribe to UNT's RSS Feed of most recently-added CRS Reports!

http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/rss/

(Thanks, Mark!)

Portal to Texas History -- on YouTube!

Dreanna Belden's been up to some creative, interesting things lately; take a look at this promotional video she created! Aren't my colleagues in our Digital Projects Lab talented?

It's a Great Sign...

...when you come back from a meeting and your face hurts from all the laughing. Yay for a fun group of librarians interested in podcasting!

We're discussing our initial test for when the ordered equipment comes in, and we're pondering a library tour (just in time for new students in the fall!). Since I'll probably be the designated "expert" talking on the podcast for the GovDocs area, I'm pondering what items to highlight in the brief time alloted during the tour. Here are my initial thoughts:

• maps (specifically, geology students)
• data
• lots of historic data, sources
• much of the information is public-domain
• online resources
• covers all subject areas

I don't want to overwhelm new students with information, but specifically want to point out how relevant and interesting Docs are. Any other great ideas?

Unrelated Banter:
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette says:

Graphic novels, Embracing

Every library has at least one librarian who is a graphic novel enthusiast. This person will argue vehemently for a new graphic novel collection for your library. Give him a paltry budget to spend each year just to shut him up. It will be money well spent.

Hee, hee. So there are others out there.

The Library Mall and Other News

I promised a few pals that I'd take photographs of the newly-renovated Library Mall, so here they are. The improved space and addition of many benches has encouraged greater numbers of students to use the space--I see them eating lunch, reading, and talking in the area all the time now. The main changes were the addition of two long fountains and the front fountain with the waterfall, the replacement of much of the old concrete with brick walkways, the addition of the tan stone, and the addition and more trees and benches. (See more photos.)

I had to record our great environmental display tie-in (for the Denton Reads program in April) in the GovDocs department. One of our staff members and several of our students gathered documents and colored printouts of animal masks (from some Texas documents) and really spruced up our area (see more photos)!

A new albino squirrel has arrived!! K.T. Shiue, who took all the photographs of "Baby" the albino squirrel for the calendar we've mounted in the Albino Squirrel Memorial area of our Cyber Cafe, recently caught sight of a new baby albino squirrel at Maple Hall, very close to the library (see more of his albino squirrel photos).


Today was the wrap-up lunch for Denton Reads, graciously hosted and catered by the TWU Library (see more photos). We're quite pleased with our success, and will get together in a couple of weeks to begin organizing the 2008 program (which will be held in October of 2008). With 18 months to plan, compared to the 6 months we had this year (and how well it came off despite that), we think 2008 can be spectacular!

When It Rains.... (You Know the Rest)

aka: "A Sluggish Network Isn't My Biggest Problem..."

(This may be a tad bit of a personal post, but it concerns the library.)

Our library network has been sluggish since Saturday. On Saturday, when I attempted to copy thirty of the Denton Reads photos onto my hard-drive, I was informed that it would take 30 minutes... and then it crashed. On Sunday, I was able to copy two photos at time within 3 minutes. Today, I got all fifty or so transferred in about 15 minutes... until the network slogged again, and now I can barely open a folder. Or a text file.

About half an hour ago, the power went out. It was only 30 seconds, but as I fumbled for the flashlight we keep at the desk, it felt like a lifetime. And indeed, it took about a lifetime to reboot the computer once the power came back on--that only angered the network.

Curious about the weather, a staff member and I went to look out one of the windows on our floor--and were flabbergasted at the sight you see in this post. The sunken fountain area in front of our library, several steps deep, is completely filled with water. It's over people's knees. One of the library stairwells has been closed, because apparently the area behind the library is rapidly filling with water, as well. Oh, and what's one of the rooms on the ground floor that's flooding? The server room.

This will teach me not to laugh at those flash flood warnings!

We've had weather alerts off and on since around noon today--severe thunderstorms, hail, tornados--but by the time we were alerted, it was already too bad for me to drive home. I'm scheduled until 9pm tonight, and at this point it seems like a good thing, because maybe it will have blown over by then.

That is, of course, assuming that the library parking lot isn't already flooded.

What a great day to wear my new leather sneakers.

Update: A staff member who just got home called me to let me know that they are closing down streets all across Denton. Hope I can get home...