Cedar Point Biological Station

Monday 7/25/11

Get up to take 7:15 am bus to center city area.

7:45 am get off bus at 11th and N.

Start 2 mile walk to Transportation Services (which is not located near any campus or city bus routes) to pick up a university car for our 5.5 hour trip to service the Cedar Point Research Station’s library.

I decided to pick up some books from Dr. Griep Vice, Chair of Chemistry since it and the library were on my way.  When I arrived I assure Dr. Griep’s secretary that I was not really there, just passing through, and then dropped off the books at the library.

Lake McConaughy

During the remaining 1.3 miles of the walk I discovered that the walking path takes you along a sewer route.*

I finally arrive at Transportation Services around 8:30 am drenched in sweat (did I mention it was super hot!) and receive my keys and a gas card

after signing my life away.  I walked out and discover they’ve put me in a huge Chevy Malibu O_o.**  After a moment to freak out about the monster car I’ve been assigned I got in the car, readjust mirrors, figure out how the darn thing works.  I couldn’t find the release for the parking break at all, and it wasn’t set, so I didn’t use it.  After successfully starting the car I drove to my apartment to pick up my luggage and a borrowed work computer before heading out to pick up my coworker who was accompanying me on the adventure and head out toward Cedar Point which is located next to Lake McConaughy.

Around 12:30pm we stop in a random town for lunch and find a great inexpensive Chinese Buffet, hurray!  An hour later we are back on the road.

My day started by coming in a little early in an attempt to clear my inbox for the week.  I discovered that interim SVCAA Weissinger has been selected as a candidate for the permanent position, she gets my vote! (SVCAA stands for Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs.) Some of you may be wondering why a librarian would care about the SVCAA position, but the library no matter how valuable cannot be effective and efficient without good leadership both in the library and within the university community.  Leadership in higher-ed can make or break an institution and any programs which they are associated with, so I am glad to see someone I consider smart, capable, and a good communicator being consider for the SVCAA position.

After somewhat clearing my inbox I decided to work on Collection Development.  Our Dean of Libraries has asked that we try and spend out 90% of our funds by the end of February so it’s time to find some good titles that I think might get used.  These funds can only be used for books and other items that we can purchase for one-time as a monograph, if I could use the funds on journal titles there wouldn’t be any left to worry about spending.  I don’t want to spend $$$ just to spend so I try and buy reference works, study-aids, a very small amount of popular science books with really good science and accessible writing, science communication, and books to help with the research and publication process.  I decided to ask the cloud for suggestions in the areas of forensics (a new program at UNL) and biology before starting my reference desk shift.

At the reference desk it was a nice day with just enough students to keep my and my desk partner busy, but not so many that we were overwhelmed.  Most of the questions had to do with the new Pharos software.  Pharos is a program that lets you assign different logons to different types of patrons allowing you to set different time limits for different patron types.  The main confusion for our users was that previously they had a different login based on their active directory accounts, with the new Pharos software everyone needs to login with their UNL ID number or library card ID number if people are not UNL students/faculty/staff.  In connection with this I sent in a report about a computer that kept shutting itself down, boo!

I decided to clear out some of my old working files from my computer and came across a list of links, dumped them with a brief explanation and a picture on my website to create Tips From the Experts: Interviewees & New Workers. This post was later picked up by @ALA_Joblist, much to my surprise.  It just goes to show you never know what will resonate with people

I am asked if I can find and purchase some books on gender/sex and the brain that are science based, i.e. that are related to biological sciences, specifically neurology.  This is a very cutting edge field and I know there are several people who do neurological research at UNL, and it also fits nicely with the gender studies people so I’m happy to take a look at what’s there.  Again I decide to crowd source recommendation and ask the people from #scio11 and some biology and neurology friends for their recommendations.  I also promise to compile the list of recommendations for people the next week (I will post on this next).

I run out of time for lunch and go to my twice monthly meeting with my supervisor at 2pm, oops? (Sorry for being a bad work/life role model!  Sometimes the focus which people value can hinder things like eating because you loose track of time…)  Our meeting went well, there are changes coming to the library (no surprise there), but I think things are changing in a positive direction and it’s nice to know she’s looking out for my workload!  I’m fortunate in that I am just enough like my supervisor that we get along, but different enough that we don’t usually clash.  She is also one of those rare people that really means it when they say, “ask me anything” so when I’m not sure if a question might offend someone I can go to her and say “I don’t want to offend anyone, but I am not sure/confused, etc.” and get a real answer and some guidance on how to handle things.  Sometimes when I bring up these issues I find out they aren’t my problem and she handles the issue or passes them discretely on to the person best capable of dealing with a situation. It’s good to have discretion and ask for advice so that you can handle things appropriately. I don’t really have as many people skills as others assume I do, but when I realize I don’t know the appropriate or discreet way to handle something I find someone who I know is discreet and ask them who to approach/how to say/handle the situation.  I still put my foot in my mouth just like everyone else, but this helps cut down on that alot.

Finally I  go and find something to eat and take my lunch hour to run some quick errands around town near the university. Bless the parking garage, it’s totally worth the $5 per month extra to never have to fight for a space or park outside in the inclement weather.  I was going to work on devising questions for the Architecture Library Assessment but get burried under e-mail, catching up on science and library posts to keep current, and doing a little tidying up before the 7:30pm talk by Dr. Lise Eliot titled “Brain Sex: Truth, Tall Tales and Time for a Developmental Perspective”, held two buildings over at UNL’s Gaughan Center. Please see the link for the press release: http://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/todayatunl/162/1417

Dr. Eliot’s excellent presentation can be summed up in a few points:

1. We need to be clear about what are real differences and percieved differences between boys and girls.
2. There is a lot of misinformation being portrayed as fact in the news, schools, and even in science.
3. Show me the data!
4. “What you do with your brain effects your brain.”

To expand a little on point 3:
We need to engage our brains and not blindly accept any study which passes peer-review (or is not even submitted to it) as gospel.  We need to look at the sample sizes and ask to see the data.  When generalizing about differences between males and females you really should have a large sample size, results with 50-100 participants are not conclusive at all, although they may be useful aggregated together with similar studies to create a large and useful data sets. There are billions of people in this world, someone with a chart handy, look up how many participants you would need for an acceptable error range?  I don’t know off the top of my head but it’s a lot bigger than 100 people!  Watch out for studies where the researcher is an object acting on a group of participants, or where the researcher knows things they aren’t supposed to according to their protocols.

After a quick word with some of the gender studies faculty and Dr. Eliot I made my way home at 9:15pm.  And that is my #libday6.

8:15 AM  Log-on to computer.  Check Twitter feed for any relevant library news or job postings, read those.

8:32 AM  Move on the school E-mail, decide RSS feeds can wait till later.  Most of my e-mail was ACRL: Residency Interest Group related, offered to hook up applicant with current resident to help review their material before submission.

8:48 AM Login to Blackboard and catch up on message board posts for 3 classes and Graduate Student community.  Only light posting, not unexpected for the beginning of the week, decide to see if I can’t finish listening to and reading my Social Science Resources Lecture for the week (Drexel Weeks run Monday – Sunday).

9:15 AM  Not quite done with lecture, but will have to save the rest for later, time to go be a volunteer intern at RSABG.

9:45 AM Arrive at RSABG’s research library.  Sign-in and catch-up, it’s my first day back after a 3 week break due to the start of classes coinciding with ALA MidWinter.  Start researching the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a possible grant proposal and open access repository models.

10:30 AM  Get handed a Japanese serial publication for original cataloging, plus 3 other Chinese titles.  Look up Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC and start looking up characters by radicals.  Realize how long it’s been since I’ve studied kanji. Eventually get all the publication data in Japanese input correctly in Connexion.

1:30 PM  Take a lunch break.  Finish Social Sciences Resources Readings and posting for the day.

2:30 PM  Back to cataloging the Japanese serial publication.  Now that I have the correct characters it’s time to start putting the information in the correct fields.  As I start inputing the item description I realize that the book contains articles which are given in both Japanese and English,  with some Latin descriptions, look up Latin language code, it’s LAT.  Start checking fields for all necessary foreign language additions, measure size of book.

4:00 PM  Decide to call it a day since it takes a while to work my way through the CONSER website to check my serials cataloging.  Get gas and groceries on the way home.

5:30 PM  Log-on to computer, check school e-mail and discussion boards while eating dinner.

6:05 PM  Decide to start writing my 3-4 page Learning Context Paper for Information Literacy Instruction Class.  It feels overwhelming, but I’ll just start and follow the directions and then it’ll stop being so intimidating.

6:45  PM  Finished a little over a page of my paper.  Must stop for now, time to go be Assistant Director for the play Self Help.

10:52  PM  Back from rehearsal, time to check the Drexel message boards and then work on that paper again.

11:39 PM  A little over 2 pages are written, with a little light editing.  Fading fast, time to call it a day after a quick look at my RSS Feed, mainly library related.