It’s been quite a six-year run. From lucking into a temporary job with great people, to being hired on the tenure-track with the same bunch, to building some great resources, to convincing my senior colleagues to tenure and promote me. What a lot of fun, on the whole, I’ve had!
Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that mushy stuff…
I will surely miss my faculty, staff, and student worker colleagues - I already do & I’m not quite gone, yet. I suspect I will miss my in-depth, almost-instinctual knowledge of how the library’s systems, at least those I built, are configured. I also suspect I will not have complete admin rights on my new network - so that will be an eye-opener, too.
It has been fun to usually wake up in the morning and head off to work with a spring in my step - because I knew I wasn’t going to “work” so much as go have fun and play — what I did with you at APSU rarely felt like work, it was enjoyment.
TTFN, since I really dislike saying ‘goodbye’ and remember, I’m like a bad veggie - I always turnip (Oi, don’t hit me with your shoe!) :)
I’m not sure what this says about me when one of the more insightful - or self-reflection causing - statements I’ve read in the past few days is “…we fail our students when we make things too easy for them for fear that their possible failures may do them irreparable harm.” I found this from StevenB on ACRL Blog
I find that I agree on the surface, but there is turmoil below my normally placid waters. Do I agree with it because I have an attitude of ‘well, I paid my dues so they should have to pay the same dues plus interest and inflation’ or do I agree with it beacuse I have an attitude of ‘oh these youngsters, they’re less than half my age and couldn’t cross a street without being told when to go’ or do I not disagree with it because I feel that higher education (and education in general) should not be a cake-walk with everyone automatically passing “GO” and collecting 4.0s and 3.5s and maybe a valadictorian or salutatorian slot?
Introspection on a Monday — just one week before moving 800+ miles — probably isn’t the most reality-based blogging location. Hey, but there it is.
ALA President Leslie Burger’s, presidential initiative: the Emerging Leaders Institute has its first institute workshop scheduled for MidWinter 2007 in Seattle.
Nominees:
100 diverse Emerging Leaders with demonstrated leadership potential with fewer than 5 years of post-MLS experience
Selection Process:
1. ALA Divisions, Round Tables, and Chapters can nominate plus a general call for nominations from ALA membership at large
2. Nominees and applicants must complete application form
3. Application forms reviewed by Emerging Leaders Planning Task Force
4. Competitive application process, but each Division, Chapter, and Round Table that chooses to support applicants will have at least one of their applicants accepted (can be rank ordered if ALA sub-group wishes)
Financial Support:
All participants must commit to attending MidWinter 2007, commit to participating in virtual activities in the first half of 2007, and commit to attending Annual 2007. Stipends from supporting groups are encouraged ($500 per participant per ALA Meeting/Conference) and emplyers are also encouraged to support these participants with travekl funding or paid time off (comp time, etc).
Organizational Suport
“I will encourage the ALA President-elect, as appointing officer, to consider the Emerging Leaders graduates when making appointments to ALA Committees and I will work with ALA leadership to identify opportunities for Emerging Leaders to serve on task forces, working groups and project teams. I encourage divisions, Chapters and round tables that support Emerging Leaders participants to make an effort to provide similar opportunities.”
Timeline:
Sep 30 Application Deadline
October 16-20 Selection Committee selects 100 finalists and alternates
November 1 Notify nominees
So get Crackin’ and Good Luck!
The ALA OITP Copyright Education Program has officially launched the Copyright Advisory Network. The Copyright Advisory Network is an online discussion forum where librarians can discuss copyright issues. In addition to the layman-librarian, there is also a team of copyright-trained librarians who will add to the discussion.
The Copyright Advisory Network can be seen as a reliable information-sharing service helping librarians - school, academic, and public - become more knowledgeable about copyright.
Some highlighted features:
<~48 hour turnaround time, continuously revised and updated FAQs, latest scoops from Capitol Hill, annotated bibliography of copyright resources
Questions? See www.librarycopyright.net
At the ALA Washington Office Update there were several handouts. One I found interesting was for a DVD of a National Teleconference through the Special Libraries Association. The Conference was “Are We Safer in the Dark?:A Sunshine Week National Dialogue on Open Governement & Secrecy.” Looks interesting, I will look to borrow the DVD via ILL. Sponsors of the teleconference were AALL, ALA, ARL, and more.
The ALA Office of Information Technology Policy (OITP) and the OITP Copyright Advisory Subcommittee awarded the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award: In Support of Users’ Rights to Prudence S. Adler, Associate Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries, “for her passionate, untiring, and effective advocacy for user’s rights and balance in copyright law.”
Prue helped start of the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), to influence federal copyright legislation. Since its inception in 2005, the LCA has taken the lead role in blocking more than a dozen bills that would have gone against the public interest. Some of these include database legislation and the broadcast flag.
Thank you, Prue, for doing the work that I would do if I could 
Yay me, I finally wrapped up several things that needed doing at work (and in Real Life(tm)).
I’ve hunted down and skimmed my sparse notes from ALA Annual 2006 and will be posting (again) shortly. My question, to Karen of FRL, is: Where, exactly, is the cone of confusion - and when can I expect to escape it? (that’s bemused amusement, not scathing sarcasm, if it isn’t coming through the text clearly)
Just got an email from my friend, Josh, who’s been working for the past year or so with Bruce Schneier and others at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to analyze electronic voting system security.
Bruce has a lot of important stuff to say on his blog about this topic. I encourage all to go read it, now. Here’s the full-text if you have the time, or at least give the Executive Summary a look-see.
Discussion highlights, for me, include:
- Preston Bannister in the comments of Bruce’s Blog: “With current voting systems, a single person in the wrong place could change votes and swing an election. We cannot be certain that past elections have not been corrupted. We can do better.”
- Brett in the comments of Bruce’s Blog: “I guess until we have an election demonstrably stolen by these devices, we are stuck with them…” and
- Longwalker in the comments of Bruce’s Blog: “There is already very clear evidence of massive fraud in electronic vote counting. Exit poll results in both 2000 and 2004 are significantly different than official election results. The difference is highly pronounced in key states such as Flordia and Ohio. This is as close to a smoking gun as one can get with non-auditable DREs. See http://center.grad.upenn.edu/center/get.cgi?item=exitpollp“
At the second meeting we covered:
- Interns Subcommittee
- Dues Structure for types and categories
- Organizational Membership
- Corporate Membership
- Public Awareness / Campaign for America’s Libraries
- Membership Promotion Task Force Open Floor
(more…)