Category Archives: new librarian

A Much Happier Post

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 4, 2013 - 10:45 pm | , , , , , , , , , ,
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happysun

My last post was a serious downer, and I apologize for that. I debated skipping the medical stuff, but I really felt like I needed to justify my decision to back out of ALA—if not to everyone else, then at least to myself. (And enough people have asked “What did you do to yourself, Coral?” that it seemed worth getting it all written down somewhere I could share it, anyway.) Deciding not to do ALA was a hard call. People have been super supportive, though! I am really grateful for the amazing folks in the library world, and I’m glad … Continue reading →

Question 1 – #TT4ALACouncil

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | February 19, 2013 - 1:49 pm | , ,
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Preface, so people know what’s going on… I’m sure I’ve mentioned it once or twice in this space before, at least in passing, but I’m running for ALA Council with a really good group of people. We’ve put our “Statements of Professional Concern,” as asked for by the ALA balloting people, on the About section of our Facebook page. (You have to click “See More” to read all of them.) And that’s pretty great, but we wanted to open up the floor for questions, too. After all, part of our purpose in running together is that, if we win, we’ll … Continue reading →

ALA Midwinter 2013

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 30, 2013 - 1:44 pm | , , , , ,
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I’m combining my obligatory “lessons learned” post (past ones: here… and the others all got left in draft format) with my “how’d conference go?” post. I didn’t learn that many lessons—not enough for a full blog post—and, spoiler, I had a great conference. Quickly, my lessons: Get a prescription for sleeping pills before conference. Because, seriously, I laid in bed for hours before sleeping, each night, and it wasn’t even an uncomfortable bed. Sounds crazy, but here’s my theory: I squash down my inner introvert all day, at conference, and I act totally extrovert-like. But, as social as I enjoy … Continue reading →

Peer mentoring (comes free with rant: “why you don’t need an Old Members Roundtable”)

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | November 6, 2012 - 6:36 pm | , , , ,
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I know I said I’d write about web stuff. I’m getting to it. But I am also going through my “to blog” list and trying to write up the coolest things. This is one of those cool things. (Yes, there’s a rant tagged on to the end. That makes it cooler, right? Right?) I work at an academic library, which means I’m part of the tenure system. (Cue the booing and hissing. I don’t entirely disagree with you; rock on.) Traditionally, the library’s tenure files have been among the best in the university. I think because we’re different from faculty … Continue reading →

Writing as a new [web] librarian

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | November 4, 2012 - 4:37 pm | , , , , , ,
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For someone who doesn’t publish (at least not on work time), I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my work time—and a fair bit of non-work time—reading and writing, lately. I am trying to pull together a plan for my library’s web presence, and because I work with a bunch of librarians, it can’t just be a good plan; it also needs to point to research that backs up its main arguments. (Forgive me for sounding snarky. While it’s awfully tedious finding research to cite, to make some very basic points, e.g. “the site has to be usable by novices,” I … Continue reading →

Website facelift

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | November 3, 2012 - 12:57 am | , ,
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You know how sometimes something can be a very small deal, in the scheme of things, but can begin to wear on you over time? My old website design was one of those things. It wasn’t necessarily actively bad (actually, I really think it was), but I kept meaning to change the banner image, and I didn’t like how some of the edges looked in certain browsers… You know what I mean—or, if you don’t, I won’t be able to explain it. It was stressing me out, in a really low-level way, though. I guess I was doing too much … Continue reading →

Reflecting upon reflection – The faculty file

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | August 17, 2012 - 2:01 pm | , , ,
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A subset of my Facebook friends have been watching me descend slowly into madness over the past few weeks. Or I guess that’s what it looked like; I’m actually fine (except for the not sleeping, toward the end). I took today off, because I hit a milestone. Also because I don’t deal awesomely with 14 day weeks, even when they’re semi-self-imposed. I’ve been up to something my public and special librarian friends (and some academics) don’t have to worry about: putting together my fourth year comprehensive review file (yes, it’s only been three years; that’s how we roll), to show … Continue reading →

Evolution of a Website

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | August 1, 2012 - 11:15 am | , , , , , ,
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Because I’m working on my “fourth year”* tenure and retention** file, I’ve been reflecting, lately, on the progress I’ve made while here. And, in particular—unsurprisingly—I wanted to see what kinds of changes the website has undergone. I didn’t do a great job of grabbing screen captures, early on, so this is not a perfect reflection of every step in the site’s progress. I know there’s an intermediate step between the first two, where “More »” went away, and a Site Search popped up beside Site Index, briefly, among other things. My note-taking, back then, was good enough to confirm that … Continue reading →

Extracurriculars

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | July 30, 2012 - 5:21 pm | , , , ,
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For the last year, I’ve had an extracurricular activity that, while professionally-related, won’t ever go on my curriculum vitae, workload, or activity report: I coordinate Anchorage’s “Interlibrary Lush,” a monthly happy hour for LAM (libraries, archives, and museums) workers and friends. It’s been fun getting to know more of the Anchorage library and archives community (I don’t think any museum folks have showed up), and I’ve made some pretty great friends because of ILL. I think it has helped, at least indirectly, to convince some people to step up for open offices in our local library chapter—although I should point … Continue reading →

Comparing and Contrasting Leadership Programs

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | July 20, 2012 - 10:52 am | , , , , , , ,
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I’ve been very fortunate, in my nearly three years as a librarian, to have had the opportunity to participate in two library leadership programs: PNLA Leads and ALA Emerging Leaders. The programs have different methodologies and different goals, so, unsurprisingly, my experiences and takeaways were very different. I should acknowledge, it’s possible that trying to write up a comparison, when I am only a month “emerged” from ALA’s leadership program, but almost two years after PNLA’s, isn’t entirely fair. I’m giving it a shot, though, because Alaska is talking about whether or not to participate in ALA Emerging Leaders (via … Continue reading →