Librarian in a Nutshell

I've been kinda busy lately as evidenced by lack of posting. Tomorrow my 2nd year dossier is due in it's near-final draft form. Creating a dossier for the tenure review process is an endeavor that elicits any number of adjectives (and expletives) at any given time. Some are positive - reflective, rewarding, creative. Others are, well, not as much - time-consuming, grueling, the rock on my shoulders...you get the idea.

The process of putting together into one document all of my endeavors and accomplishments that I've done in support of my job has been a great act of mental aerobics and weightlifting - combined with some yoga I think. I've used the process to (I hope) reflect on the projects I've taken on, and those that I hope to, in terms of the way that they both support my job assignment and contribute to the greater good that is Librarianship.

Yesterday some colleagues introduced me to a fun little tool called Wordle. I copied and pasted my entire dossier in to see what the tag cloud would look like, and it went a little something like this:

So there you have it - my professional life in a nutshell.

Proud to be a Penn Stater

I was absolutely amazed when I watched this Green Tube cast about the Penn State recycling program. I knew we did a great job of it, but seeing this took my appreciation and awe to a whole new level. Go PSU!

Full Up

It's always dangerous to launch into a blog post when you're not sure where it's going to end up, but it's been far too long, so here goes...

This past summer in my work life was one of the busiest I've ever had - I keep mentally swearing never to repeat such ridiculousness in the future, so remind me of this about the time April rolls around, ok? On the other hand, the home front was was busy too - but in a different way!

Last April, I talked about emergence from the liminal spaces life throws us into every now and again. I predicted that our garden would provide us with the kind of hope and inspiration needed to pull us out into the light again. Well, I'm not sure if it pulled us out, but it certainly kept us so busy that we forgot to worry so much and were definitely able to move forward into new phases of life.

Now it's October. The garden has been done producing for a good month, and we dug it out last week. But I am happy to say that, literally, the cupboard is not bare.



Not only did we enjoy fresh produce all summer, we canned peppers and tomato sauce, chili sauce, and relish, mushrooms, squash, and apples - sauce and butter.

Needless to say, we will definitely be doing this again next summer! And rumor has it the garden will be ever bigger!