Book Carts

I never really talked about Book Cart Drill Team, after ALA, did I? Truth be told, I was tired of all things Elvis and Book Cart. But we did win 3rd place, and that's something. Here's the video of our ALA performance:

The Past Few Weeks

I make no secret of my loathing for summer classes. It isn't the standard "I'd rather have a break," though I suppose that factors in. Rather, it's the inherent lack of balance. The summer semester at Pitt is 3-4 weeks (depending how you count) shorter than the other two, and like everywhere, the professors who are stuck teaching summer classes have to decide whether to try to fit an entire semester's worth of material in--or short-change students who are paying as much for these classes as they would for classes in real semesters.

This summer's professors seem to be trying to find a balance--definitely, they are packing in more than fits in 12 weeks, but I don't think it's quite as much as they'd hit in 15. That's probably the fairest approach, in this situation.

I really believe Pitt's LIS program would be better if they would not run by the rest of the school's semester system during the year--they already run more people through summer classes than the university is designed to handle, which implies, to me, that they are not unduly concerned with "how the rest of Pitt does it." Instead, they should cut a week out of fall and a week out of spring, in order to make summer two weeks longer (since most things are pretty much closed in the summer, students are used to not having the services they need). It would not remove the imbalance entirely, but it would be a good step toward eliminating it.

Other than summer classes--and at some point I'll talk about what I'm taking and what I think of it--I have been busy with conferences and interviews--not that many of the latter, but enough to be noticeable in the scheme of my semester, certainly. (I could write up SLA, but the time has passed. I will try to blog about ALA, though.) I'm composing a series of posts about interviews--dos and don'ts, mostly--but I think I'm going to wait until I have a job to really discuss any of it in depth. My desire to help others who are about to be--or who are currently--in my shoes wars, somewhat, with my desire not to damage my own prospects. I was a little surprised--and pleased, with a tiny bit of heartburn, wondering "what else did I say?"--when a recent interviewer mentioned something I'd said months ago in my blog. (Mostly, I was pleased. Sometimes I wonder whether what I say is even a little bit interesting.) So, that's one bit of advice: people do read what you put out there. I still have few enough followers that maybe Google Analytics will show spikes when search committees decide I'm worth looking into. :)

On the being-busy-and-conference-preparation front, please do come see the Book Cart Drill Team's Pittsburgh Performance, this Thursday, 4pm, Posvar Hall. We'll still be selling raffle tickets, and the final drawing will take place after the performance!



Other posts in the hopper: comparison/contrast of the MLIS program with engineering graduate school (a coworker asked for that, verbally, and it got me thinking); some thoughts on library school in general and Pitt specifically; hopefully an announcement of a Book Cart Drill Team win at ALA :); other ALA posts, including possibly some discussion of the MLIS program accreditation discussions going on there; hopefully an announcement that I got a job, followed by discussion of the moving process; and maybe some musings on the transition from engineering to library work--I should see if I can get a guest blogger in for that one, since he's gone a different path than I plan to. :) After that, here's hoping I'm changing the focus of the blog, somewhat, from library school to librarianship!

Waffling and indecision

I've changed my summer course schedule twice, now. On the bright side, all of this fiddling has left me with courses I'm excited to be taking!

• INFSCI 2955: Special Topics: Systems – “Web Engineering” (Monday nights)
• LIS 2850: Library’s Role in Teaching and Learning, aka Library Instruction (Four weekends, Friday nights and Saturdays)
• LIS 2184: Legal Issues in Information Handling: Copyright & Fair Use in the Digital Age (Wednesday afternoons)

I also have approval to count my Aviary work as an independent study, which is pretty fantastic. I'm setting aside a day a week for that--maybe more, if I can compress my work schedule enough to allow for it--as well as some time to finish my current field placement, which will extend into the summer.

I'm still in the process of scheduling the Book Kart Drill Team practices. And I'm going to the annual conferences of both ALA and SLA, which will be a great opportunity, though I know from ER&L what conference attendance does to one's schedule, during school. I'll also run for a spot on the executive board of SCALA again; that's been pretty rewarding, and I want to see the group into the fall.

I should probably leave some room in my schedule for doing homework. Hmm.

Anyway, it's a busy and exciting summer. I think I'll learn a lot.

Spring Break, Classes, Et Cetera

I had a pretty fantastic spring break. I did not, as I had hoped I would, research and complete my paper for Academic Libraries, though I did settle on a topic. I also did not catch up on Cataloging, where I feel like I'm shamefully behind the curve (on the bright side, if you can call it that, there are a bunch of other people who feel similarly). Nor did I get much of anything else school-related completed. But I think I needed the break, honestly. This short, intensive program, with internships and job applications and with so much else going on in the library world that I want to keep up with in my free time, is beginning to burn me out. ... I feel stupid saying that. Who gets burnt out in less than a year? But it isn't real burn-out; it's just an awareness that I need to put my mind firmly on something that isn't school and isn't libraries, now and then. And I think taking some time to do that, last week, was beneficial (even if my Google Reader and inbox were bursting at the seams on Monday).

I worked on some crafty stuff, including some pretty jars of bath salts to sell for Book Kart Drill Team fundraising, and a jewelry-selling (or perhaps eventually a jewelry-storing) rack that I'm really quite proud of. I read most of Alex and Me, which is probably still an interesting read if one isn't a bird-lover but is absolutely wonderful if one is. I cleaned my kitchen and did a little bit of actual cooking, for the first time in a while. No homebrewing, yet, but I hope to get to that in the next few weeks, depending how project due dates fall.

And then I spent several days in DC, visiting people, which was tremendously fun. I remembered how much I like my friends down there, even as I remembered how little I like getting around Northern Virginia. Also, I got to play with a baby. Good times. (No, you don't have to want to have a baby to enjoy playing with them. They're cute!)

Anyway, now it's back to the grind, as they say. I have five or six big assignments coming due in the next few weeks, and it's stressful. But I'll get through it.

On Thursday I'm attending a session on Dialog. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, though I feel bad missing volunteering at the Aviary for a second week in a row. Hopefully I can make it up to them in the form of 120 more hours (and some course credit for me) over the course of the end of this semester and the summer. Or, if the job fairy makes an early visit, one Saturday a month until I'm finished.

Schedule woes

It's fun to post about my schedule, because, pretty much immediately after I hit "publish post," I begin rethinking it. I've dropped Instruction to take Web Engineering (seriously, a class about applying software design principles to web development? with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Perl, and PHP? I'm in! I only wish it covered SQL as well!), but now I'm thinking maybe I should have dropped SciTech Resources and kept Instruction. It's true that four weekends won't make me one of the world's great teachers, but will a 12-week class taught by four instructors really be a more structured introduction to science and engineering resources than I've already received through my work at CMU's E&S Library? I'm not so sure.

Also, I keep playing with the idea of making my Aviary work into a Field Placement, so that I can afford to spend more time there. I've barely started on their book collection, and I would very much like to finish it all before I move out of town. (Here's hoping I do, in fact, move out of town--or find a job here--by August. I hear times are tough, out there, right now.)

In mostly-unrelated news, Book Kart Drill Team (known from here on out as "BKDT"--yes, we spell it with a "K," for no good reason) is going swimmingly. We have most of a routine, thanks to our phenomenal drill expert. It looks like there are going to be eight of us, and we're probably going with costumes in black and gold (but shiny gold, not yellow gold). I'm worried about funding, but it seems we're doing a bake sale roughly once a month, and we're all working to make crafts for sale, as well. Also, there's going to be a raffle. Maybe I should get in touch with our raffle person about that...