Tag: summer

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three women working inside the fuselage of an aircraft

Folks often ask if it’s slower at the library during the summer. Yes, there are fewer students and faculty around. Many classes are online and the building is quiet for the first time in months. For the outreach team, however, we keep moving forward! From now through August, my team leans heavily into planning mode: outlining new project workflows, coordinating people and resources, preparing annual reports, and most importantly taking the time to update and fix what we couldn’t to pay attention to during the academic year. 

We have nine summer projects we’re hoping to complete before students return in August:

  1. Universal design for learning and events: Using principles from UDL, my team is looking for ways to improve our programs and events, making them more accessible for a wider range of attendees.
  2. Comms coordinating meeting: Our current way of coordinating external comms usually involves asynchronous messaging on Teams. We are looking at creating a more formal structure and timeline for both ideation and creation of materials.
  3. New event assessment tools: We just wrapped up a year-long pilot test of a new survey tool for library programs. Now, we need to take what we learned to create custom survey instruments for each event.
  4. New library merch: We’ve emptied out our library merch pile! It’s time to design and order new library branded merch for fall. 
  5. Update exhibitions guidelines: There are a number of recurring pain points in our hosted exhibitions program. I’m hoping updated guidelines with clearer expectations for our exhibitors will help.
  6. Improving partnerships protocols: We work with more than 40 partners throughout the year to host events and reach students. I’d like us to “up our game” by examining what makes a good partner, determining best practices, and updating our protocols.
  7. Banned books exhibit: Our banned books exhibit needs a refresher. We’re planning to update how we contextualize and talk about banned books beyond simply highlighting commonly challenged titles and listing annual stats.
  8. Student job descriptions: We’ve used the same job description for our department’s student workers for the past 5+ years, but the nature of the job has changed significantly since 2020. It’s time to rewrite the job description and possibly restructure the program.
  9. Finding the lights: A simple one, but one long overdue. For some of our larger events that happen in the evenings, we oftentimes need to adjust the lighting. Unfortunately, in our large, mostly open area building, it’s not always clear which switches control which lights. So break out the label maker! We’re going to finally figure this out.

There you have it. If you need me this summer, I’ll likely be plugging away at one of these projects above. For my academic librarian friends: what group projects are you and your teams working on this summer?

image credit: The Library of Congress on Flickr

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list of todos

“So it must be slow for you at the library in the summer.”

Everyone.

Let’s be clear. It is not slow for me during the summer. It has never been slow for me during the summer. As a department head and as an outreach librarian, the summer is the inflection point between the end of one academic year and the beginning of the next. It is the crest of two waves approaching each other from other sides of the time axis: from the past year moving forward in time is the wave of assessment, reports, and reflection. From the upcoming year moving backwards in time is all the necessary planning, strategizing, and worrying. And here I am in the middle, just letting the waves crash over me. 

What I do to wrap up the year

  • Write my annual review, detailing my accomplishments in the areas of performance, research, and service
  • Pull together a list of all our programs, their costs, and attendance numbers
  • Pull and analyze a year’s worth of social media data. Create prez for leadership team.
  • Write the reports for any committees I chair (there are always at least two)
  • Submit data demonstrating progress my team made on the library’s strategic objectives
  • Begin the process of producing and publishing the library’s annual report to stakeholders/donors (finished in November)
  • Read and provide feedback on all my direct reports’ annual reviews
  • Archive all the things! (old working documents, photos, emails, etc.)

What I do to jump start the year

  • Set up all the Box folders and planning documents for next year’s events
  • Create a calendar that lists all the event production and communications milestones for all of next year’s events
  • Start the graphic design work for our 4 major tent-pole events/projects
  • Schedule and run planning meetings for fall’s earliest events
  • Estimate the total costs of next year’s events/outreach based on last year’s data
  • Try to map out (on my calendar) all my high-priority and/or new projects (so I don’t overcommit myself at any given time)

All of this work takes most of May through June to complete. All the while, there are still ongoing requests for support on other people’s projects, occasional events and tours to manage, and my own research. Summer is, in fact, the busiest time of the year. Granted, there are fewer interruptions, what with folks taking vacations and most of our faculty and students being away; tasks get done faster, making room for… more tasks. I could take it easier— rest on my laurels, slow down, and recuperate— but I would prefer to be busy now so that, come fall, I can switch to autopilot and ride the wave of the semester straight into winter break.

What I’m reading

Success Requires Saying No, Here’s How The Experts Do It by Robert Glazer

“Turning down additional work and obligations allows you to remain focused on your top priorities and the commitments you have already made. If you don’t do this, it’s easy to find yourself wrapped up in other people’s priorities […]”

What Counts as Enough? by Nic Antoinette

“I’m not trying to pretend this is a novel idea. It clearly isn’t. But it’s a little like ordering a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich on a roadtrip every five years just to remember it makes me feel like shit.”

The Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu 

“Customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Everyone, or nearly everyone, is on Facebook: It is the most convenient way to keep track of your friends and family, who in theory should represent what is unique about you and your life. Yet Facebook seems to make us all the same. Its format and conventions strip us of all but the most superficial expressions of individuality.”

News from the garden

red gladiolus blooms

When we bought our house more than a decade ago, we didn’t realize there was a gladiolus bulb sleeping in our front flower bed. Each year, it has dutifully popped up in late Spring. This year however, a second one shot up just as the original one was beginning to fade. 

Links to the past

  • 10 years ago: On breaking up with libraries. “I’m not willing to be a martyr for my profession if it means compromising what I want out of life […]”
  • 10 years ago: Bits and pieces. A snapshot of what library folks were talking about in 2013: the higher ed bubble, building repositories, and the information literacy standards.
  • 10 years ago: Shokunin and the power of habit. “While I don’t know that I could ever attain a level of perfection equivalent to the idea of shokunin, through force of habit I can in the least put these same practices to work.”

Overheard online

@LPerenic: How on earth do you know that?

@bookstax: I am a librarian. If I don’t know it, I know where to look. (on Twitter)