Category Archives: projects

A Much Happier Post

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 4, 2013 - 10:45 pm | , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment
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 →

Intro to Python – Week 0 – Musings

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 15, 2013 - 8:36 pm | , ,
3 Comments

I’m taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python through Coursera, and I’m blogging my thoughts about it, when I have them. If anyone wants to chat about the class online, I’m happy to do so! (I didn’t end up with much of a local cohort—just a couple of people, and they don’t want to meet regularly.) I watched the Week 0 lectures and did the quiz and homework, and I have to say, I had forgotten how “mathy” CS people were. (I’m differentiating “CS people” from “programmers,” because they aren’t necessarily the same thing. There’s a Venn diagram deal … Continue reading →

Learn Python with me!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 5, 2013 - 4:13 pm | , , ,
1 Comment
computer-notablet

I’m taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python through Coursera, and I’m hoping other folks in Anchorage will be interested in taking the course with me! I want to plan a weekly meetup, where people can bring their questions and any problems they’re having. The course requires no previous programming experience. (And that’s precisely why I think I can help; I don’t know Python, but I do have programming experience. And experience teaching programming, too, for that matter.) It starts April 15th and goes for 9 weeks. We’ll probably meet on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, though that isn’t set … Continue reading →

“When you stick your neck out, sometimes you get your head chopped off.”

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 25, 2013 - 10:35 pm | , , ,
8 Comments
There's Jonas and more happy crafting librarians

Or something like that. (It’s a possible mis-quote of my department head. He was trying to make me feel better with this statement, and it was surprisingly effective.) This is the story of Librarians Build Communities (LBC) in Alaska. To jog your memory: LBC is an advocacy program, where librarians do a few hours of volunteering, using library skills outside of libraries, to showcase how valuable our skillsets can be to our communities. I was on last year’s ALA Emerging Leaders group, working on the LBC project, and one of the to-do items on our project was “Host LBC in … Continue reading →

Projects – Learning stuff!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 7, 2013 - 10:46 pm | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

I just signed up for Tabatha Farney’s and Nina McHale’s day-long Midwinter pre-conference, “Developing a Web Analytics Strategy for Your Library: Using Data to Measure Success.” I’m pretty psyched, since 1) I respect both of the presenters, and 2) my use of Google Analytics thus far has been somewhat lackadaisical. I haven’t taken the time to create an website analytics strategy, beyond “see if a page is ever used before I suggest removing it,” and the Google Analytics book I have lying around just keeps getting more and more out of date, as Google adds and changes features. (I know … Continue reading →

2012 is over, time for 2013!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 1, 2013 - 9:30 pm | , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2 Comments

2012 was an incredibly hectic year. I have been especially tired, this winter, even beyond the normal sleepiness that comes from short days—enough so that I took the three workdays between Christmas and New Years off, which I never do. (It’s so quiet! You can get so much work done!) I tried really hard not to think about work, or much of anything else, during the time off, with moderate success. As a result, I feel almost (but not quite) ready to go back to work, now. But you know what? Looking back, I kind of feel justified in my … Continue reading →

Quick News Post

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | October 10, 2012 - 1:08 pm | , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

I have so many real posts queued up—some of them are even started! But I’m on what I hope is the tail end of a super hectic, um, year. I’ll share some quick news, though (bolded for quick scanning), because I want to tell folks about the things that are going on, and I don’t want to seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Probably my biggest news is that I’m running for ALA Council—the link goes to ALA’s press release with the list of nominated candidates, not to any kind of Facebook page or other campaigning … Continue reading →

Bird TLC

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | September 4, 2012 - 12:31 pm | , , ,
Leave a comment

I am starting a new project, and I am super excited about it! So excited, in fact, that I’m writing all about it in my blog before I’ve even gone anywhere with it. :) There’s an organization in Anchorage that serves as a free veterinarian for wild birds. Part of their mission is also to educate people and to advocate for these birds, as well. It’s called “Bird Treatment & Learning Center,” or “Bird TLC.” As part of Bird TLC’s education efforts, volunteers can sign up to bring live birds to places (examples I’ve seen: libraries and schools, First Friday … Continue reading →

National Poetry Month

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 1, 2012 - 4:11 pm | , ,
Leave a comment

I sometimes find myself feeling a little competitive (in a friendly way!) with another library in my state university system: their social media has tended to be quite good, they have a banana tree, their library has a giant raven statue(!!) outside and might just generally be prettier than ours, they once made librarian trading cards (link goes to a general pool of cards, not to theirs specifically), and they put up a “Poet Tree” last year, to celebrate National Poetry Month. They are a fairly small academic library staff that nevertheless find time to do some pretty fun things, … Continue reading →

Do you volunteer?

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 30, 2012 - 1:52 pm | , , , ,
3 Comments

Folks, I’m going to ask you to do a thing you might not get to do very often: write about how great you are. Or, if you prefer, how great an experience you have had, specifically while volunteering. I know, anecdotally, that librarians and library workers volunteer a lot of our time. (I’m not talking about working late at our own libraries, though that’s a thing we do; nor am I talking about what we do as part of professional organizations. I really mean volunteering, out in our communities.) I used to do stage managing (aka “planning, organizing, and herding … Continue reading →