lauren's library blog

A Monday Library Day in the Life: Re-entry!

As promised, I’m blogging the re-entry process this week. I’m just working half days, so there’s a lot less going on than typically would be the case.

You can see, to the left, the piles of mail that awaited me when I returned. Some of those piles came back to work with me. I had taken home my dossier stuff in case I could work on it while away, but as mentioned Leif’s not a big napper, so nothing happened on that front. It’s back at work now until I can find a better time to work on it.

This morning was largely spent catching up with people. I found out about what’s happened since I’ve been out, the status of a few projects I was working on before that I’ll start working on again, and about a new thing or two on the horizon. I work with really fun people. It’s good to be back.

I also had a new laptop to replace my old one, so I spent time installing dropbox, evernote, and xmarks to make this computer as much like my old one and personal one was possible. I moved around a few things on it and familiarized myself with the OS. (It’s my first time using Windows 7, and I like it!)

I did get a little email triaging done, but by noon I hadn’t really made a dent. So, if today was about getting physically back to work and caught up on what’s happening in the building, tomorrow will be about getting digitally back into work and caught up on email. Or at least starting that process. My dropbox, evernote, and remember the milk systems are pretty organized, but it’s going to take a little bit to get refamiliarized with them and caught up on the changes I made during the last few weeks in April.

Now, off to see the little one!

¶ Posted 26 July 2010 † lauren pressley § actions § my job ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: librarydayinthelife

I’m back!

Hi gang! It’s been 11 weeks of being home, and tomorrow I’m going back to work for the first time since April. I suspect I won’t really be back online the way I was before, but I’ll be around spaces like this a little more often, and with a little more library/education/tech related posts.

I figured, though, it might be useful to blog the re-entry process for those who will be in this position at some point or coming back from some other extended time away. So, I’m doing a post here on the general planning and how we used our maternity leave, and I’ll be participating in Library Day in the Life this week.

I planned to use the entire 12 weeks available to me. Half of that includes using up all but a few hours of my vacation/sick time for the year. Hopefully we’ll make it to December with minimal incidents! John had been saving up PTO for this and took off four weeks with me, then he’s worked three day weeks until tomorrow, when he goes back full time. We decided to take off as much overlapping time as possible so that the three of us could spend a lot of time together. However, that does mean that Leif only got three months at home before starting daycare.

The plan was that we’d have a lot of time to hang out since we’d have two adults to split the duties. But with my complicated delivery and recovery, that meant I spent the first four or five weeks just recovering and feeding Leif, while John did pretty much everything else. It worked well for us… John is as much of an expert on Leif as I am… though it meant the first few weeks didn’t play out as expected. That was just the first case of having to be flexible about the things we planned. (Well, second, after the delivery.) It’s a good thing we knew we’d need to be flexible!

I had thought that I’d have lots of baby nap time to use to think about things, do a little extracurricular work (maybe write something or plan a presentation I have scheduled for October). However, Leif’s not a big napper. His tend to be fairly short and frequent which meant that I barely could sit down at the computer, bring something up, and it was time to take care of the baby again. Though I might have felt like I was just spinning wheels the entire time as far as professional stuff goes, I certainly was working and getting a lot of good interaction time in with Leif.

At 11 weeks we started Leif in daycare for half-days. We did this to give Leif (and us!) two weeks of half days to get used to daycare. I thought we were being generous in that planning, but now I’m realizing that it would never be enough. I know I won’t feel ready for Leif to be there full time in August when he starts. As it is, I don’t even like that he’s there as little as he is.

So, last week Leif started half days and I used the time to do things that I didn’t have time to do while watching him full time (you know, like writing thank you notes, addressing birth announcements, running any errands, checking email). Next week I’m working half days while Leif is in daycare for half days. I’m actually going back a few days early so that I’ll be able to spread the hours I’m supposed to work next week out over five days instead of three. The following week we’ll both be full time, but I’ll be going in at lunch to feed him.

And daycare is hard. I knew it would be. (That’s why we have this elaborate plan.) But it’s still harder than I even imagined, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This coming from someone who was without work for 6 months after college, who worked full time/went to grad school/planned a wedding and honeymoon at the same time, and has written two books back to back. This also coming from someone who loves their profession so much that they wrote a book about it, works at an incredible library and university, and feels great about the daycare we’re using. And John and I truly believe that for our situation, and with our child, daycare will be really good for him in the long run. We’re looking forward to the additional caring adults in his life, the peers, seeing that his parents enjoy their professions and that work can be fun, and all kinds of other benefits that will come from it in the long run. It’s just hard to think about those big-picture benefits when dropping off an 11 week old for a morning.

I imagine that I’ll be minimally online for the next few weeks as I adjust to the new schedule, and I’m going to be working hard to see how I can streamline my work to do more of it at work and use the evenings for my family. But once I get more in the swing of things I’ll be around. Looking forward to joining back in the conversation!

Oh, and if there have been any interesting library/ed/tech related things that you’ve seen this summer, please post in the comments or email or something… I’d love to know what you guys have thought was important!

I’ve done some challenging things: I went six months after college with no job prospects whatsoever, I went to grad school/worked full time/and got married all at the same time. I wrote two books pretty much back to back. And my labor wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. However, sending Leif to daycare was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. and I love my job, I love my career so much that I wrote a book about it it.I don’t know how I would do it if I didn’t.

I feel really good about this daycare, and I know that in the long run it will be really good for Leif. I know day care isn’t for everyone, but some of the things I’m excited about: playing wtih kids, other loving adults, teaching Leif that you can love your work, easier to make sure we have high quality time when we are together, etc. But wow, that’s hard.

That being said, I feel our transition plan is making it as easy as it could be.

week one

week two

full time/nurse at lunch

Leif doesn’t love the bottle and isn’t eating nearly as much the hours in daycare as he is at home. Hopefully when he goes full time he’ll get better. Otherwise, I’m in for evenings of almost nothing but nursing.

Started meeting some of the other parents, which is fun. Nice to know others in similar life phase.

¶ Posted 25 July 2010 † lauren pressley § actions § announcements ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: maternity leave, returning to work

Welcoming Leif!

Those of you who I know through real life or online know about the arrival of Leif on May 1st at 6:00 pm. He weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and was 21 inches long. His name is Scandanavian, can mean “heir” or “beloved,” and is pronounced “layf.” He is amazing.

His entrance to the world was a dramatic one. We worked a regular day on Friday, April 30, and that evening I had a few signs that we might be headed in this direction, so John talked me into going to the hospital. We loaded up the car and said bye to the cats thinking that in all likelihood we’d be home in a few hours.

Long story short: found out I had extremely high blood pressure. Doctor said I was likely near pre-eclampsia. Talked us into inducing (which I wasn’t a fan of), labor was going well, but in the end needed a bit of Pitocin (which I was hoping to avoid). We tried to get him here for 2 hours. Things progressed really well for the first 15 minutes, then not really at all for the next hour and 45 minutes. We ended up going for a c-section (which I absolutely did not want to do), and Leif joined us at 6:00pm (yay!!). My blood pressure was still high, so for the first day they put me on Magnesium Sulfate. That stuff is crazy. It made me insanely hot, gave me blurry vision, and made me feel generally weird. They put us in a more traditional hospital room for hourly monitoring. We were finally alone with Leif in our room after something like 40 hours of being awake. The next evening they took me off the medicine and moved us down to the mother/baby floor. Life got a lot better there, with monitoring only every 4 hours, no IV, and the ability to walk around. We stayed through Tuesday morning, and have only been out to the doctor’s offices since.

John has been incredible throughout the whole thing. In the hospital, he was an incredible advocate and took great care of me. Now that we’re home he’s pretty much doing everything so that I can heal and feed the baby.

This first week with Leif has flown by, and we’re completely enamored with the little guy. John’s going to be home for a lot of my maternity leave, so the three of us will be spending most of our time together. I suspect I’ll be online a lot less for the next little bit, mostly updating with pictures and occasional status updates. Thanks to all for the good wishes!

¶ Posted 08 May 2010 † lauren pressley § actions § announcements ‡ Comments (10) °

The Last Weeks (Days?)

I’m due any day now. (Yay!!) And I’m working up until the end. I assumed I’d be in a panic, finishing things up at the very last minutes, hoping that the pregnancy would run late. But as it turns out, I was able to pull together the big projects by the beginning of the possible window, leaving me with a four week period of time in which I can’t really commit to all that much.

And it’s kindof awesome.

I’m actually reminded of my first library job, as the microtext assistant at Wake Forest. That position included a lot of work, but it was all task oriented. I might have one big project going at a time. So, as I streamlined the job and freed up a few hours at a time, I went looking for interesting projects… which led to some of the bigger impacts I’ve had on my organization. And it was a lot like how I’m looking for projects now.

First, the projects were really obviously job related: writing up reports that would be due once I was gone, planning for the first week of the Fellow I’ll be supervising in the fall, putting a little extra time into some of my campus committees. Then I found I was able to more fully participate in professional development opportunities, rather than attending physically (and working mentally on other projects in the background). This type of participation gives rise to new ideas and approaches, and now I have some new things I’d like to work on. I’ve even been able to work on a pilot or two.

For example, I’d been interested in implementing a QR Code pilot for the past little bit, as a bridge to augmented reality. Some others in the building became interested in the concept, too, so we decided to move on it. And since I had wrapped up big deadlines, I had a little time to see that it happened.

I’m making it sound like all of a sudden I have loads of free time… it’s not really quite that. Every day I still get 20-50 emails to deal with and new meetings are scheduled that come with new tasks… it’s just that the big things are squared away leaving a little time to breath.

And it’s giving rise to good things for the organization. Pilots, additional attention, and new ideas are good things. And having this space to think and breath means coming up with more of them. For example, I was talking with one of my conspirators at work and we came up with an idea to have a page online of testimonials (in video, text, or whatever format) about why our library is an amazing place to work. Then, when there were job ads, we could send that link out, too. I’m not sure that project will happen, but I think it’s a really good idea (because ZSR is amazing), and definitely not one that would come up in the course of day-to-day business.

This all reminds me a little of summer vacations as a child and teenager. The school year was g0-go-go, then the summer would be there for daydreaming, recentering, and thinking about big picture things. The following year would be influenced by that. We lose that in the “real world,” which means we lose the benefits that came with it.

So, from all of this I’m thinking more about how to give myself arbitrary deadlines to wrap things up periodically. Even if just one time a year it felt like everything was closing out, then there’d be space to think about what makes sense to do next. And I wonder how to create that feeling for others in the organization, too. Because it’s all fine and good for one person to have some space for this type of thinking, but that’s just one person. Imagine all the things a library could be doing if everyone (who wanted to) came to a place where they could really think about new services and projects and try things out!

¶ Posted 28 April 2010 † lauren pressley § actions § ideas § projects ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: brainstorming, piloting, qr codes

The Future of Course Materials

Yesterday I attended a Symposium on the Future of Course Materials held at my University. It’s the sort of thing I’d be really interested in regardless (I have been for over a year), but I was able to attend as a member of the Strategic Planning Committee on Innovation in Technology and Information.

And I had a very good time. The information wasn’t new to me, but I was really glad to see that we–as an institution–are beginning to think this way. The slate of speakers were Mark Nelson on Digital Platforms, Astley Gayle on Hand Held Devices, Andrew Pate on On-Demand Books, and Nicole Allen on Open Textbooks. I had heard Mark Nelson and Nicole Allen before, and it was a pleasure to hear their perspectives again.

Among the highlights:

They showed the “Future of Publishing” video that’s been floating around the web lately:

And we saw sample books and this video of the Espresso Book Machine:

There were discussions of devices, though I think that many people in the room probably agreed that further out it’s going to be more about content than container, and that the content will become more dynamic, interactive, and customizable.

And all of this has fit into what I’ve been thinking about lately in my Instructional Design Librarian role. I’ve been thinking a lot about Open Education, OpenCourseWare, and open repositories of learning objects. As you might know, I am a fan of modular, reusable content (and it shows up in my work), and all of this is part of the same big picture. I’ve been thinking of working up an open information literacy “textbook,” however, every time I think about it, it becomes more of a collection of modules (some text, some video, some interactive, some quizzing with feedback loops, etc) that an instructor could pull together based on their aims for the course. Hopefully, one day, I’ll make time for a project like that!

Others are thinking about this even more seriously. Steven Bell has been writing about Curricular Resource Strategy, which is in the same school of thought. If you’re interested in the topic, you really should go ahead and click through to read his “Not Textbooks” (pt 1), and (pt 2). My understanding of it is similar to what I was thinking about when I was thinking about an information literacy “textbook,” though it’d be across the curriculum and it wouldn’t necessarily provide a narrative structure for the course materials… though it might and I might not have read deeply enough on the topic yet.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that academic libraries lead the way on this.

Libraries are the place on campus to archive work, to make it findable, and to help people find the best possible source for the issue they’re working on. This could go for this type of course materials as well as it does for current uses and research materials.
Libraries have people on staff who know about copyright, intellectual property issues, and open access, and helping people understand the mash-up world of these types of resources.
Likewise, many libraries have at least some staff who have some level of expertise in instructional design, who can help with the design of a course-specific resource once the resources are pulled together.

Is anyone actually doing anything in this area? Anyone thinking about it? I wonder if I can get going on a collection of resources in the next year or so…