Tuesday, December 01, 2020

library life





It's been more than a hot minute since I've talked library things, and mostly, it's becuase things seem to be happening at a slower, lower pitch.  So much time is spent seeing to day to day functions that much of the more fun, creative work gets set aside, and truthfully, operating at about my own 50 percent enthusiasm capacity makes it rougher and less shiny than usual,  ILL books still need to be processed and packed (and we're still working on that hire), and our reserve collection, though a bit less used with folks mostly off-campus, still needs upkeep.  So much of my day outside the house is spent worrying about covid and the world it's amazing anything happens at all I had a lot of momentum happening over the summer that thankfully carried into fall, including our ARTIVISM 2020 programming (exhibits, lib guides, social media content) and setting up exhibits for our Artist-in-Residence.  I also designed the page for a CC faculty art exhibit that took a chunk of time in early October.  We did some fun random socially distanced things--Frankentoys, horror trivia via Zoom, but it's hard to feel engaged myself, let alone to get students engaged. and I feel for their instructors doing all this weekly. Mostly it seems we're head down and holding our breath and waiting for all this to pass. 

So, mostly trying to get through these last few weeks alive and illness free and that's about it.  I'm off campus half the week and on the other. We are beginning to talk about plans for next semester, though we suspect it will be a lot like this semester until the vaccines are widely available.  Our loose idea is to devote that spring focus to urban legends, which if I were more enthusiastic than I actually am, is really cool.  Today, I get to spend some time talking to a class about zines, which normally would also have me very excited, but this time, I am "meh" (see my earlier post about pretending to be human.)

We did get to do a virtual poster session at the ILA conference this year, and  I did get a little library related interviewage in the Libras newsletter, so check that out.