Incoherent Thought Friday

Part I

Clearly, I’m not going to get around to reviewing my own LOTW presentation, so here’s the condensed version.  Immediately following the presentation, a good number of people came up to me and told me what a great session it was and thanked me for presenting.  I was totally floored.  My PCA presentation pretty much ended with me packing up my computer, getting a handshake from the co-ordinator and immediately leaving the conference to get a drink with my husband.  Before I could safely assume that I’m the world’s best presentor and an absolute genius, I got an envelope full of evaluations.  Here’s snips from a few:

Just didn’t offer what the session description promised

Really more of a marketing seminar

I did not feel that the subject matter focused on the “research process”; not sold that it created interest in research

Too many disclaimers in the beginning

I wished there would be more components for the research process– I thought this session would discuss how to use 2.0 technologies to improve LI

We are already using most of these tools.  I thought this would be more about using social software with research guides or instruction. . . If the conference is about interactivity and engaging students then I think these sessions should include interactivity and engaging activities

A bit unfocused but some neat ideas. . . try not to say “um” so frequently (it’s hard, I know!)

Well organized but didn’t learn anything

Audience participation!

Not much real content

You get the idea.  It’s pretty clear that all of these criticisms fall neatly into two categories:  “I thought it was going to be different”, “work on your presentation style”.  But you know what?  That’s awesome criticism because I completely agree!

Despite the evals that claimed that I was a “fabulous presenter/speaker” I absolutely am not.  I think I’m a pretty okay speaker and I’m getting better all the time, but these people are right– I say “um” all the freaking time, I was pretty much all over the place talking about Library Secrets and I got completely carried away with the disclaimers at the beginning, mostly because I thought they were funny and I had a decided I was a comedian that morning.

Finally, I totally need to apologize to everyone who came to my session thinking it was going to be something other than what it was– I feel like a perpetrator of the ol’ bait & switch tactic.  For the record, though, my primary disclaimer was an explanation of how the session changed from what I had intented (and written up for the conference program) to what it turned out to be.  But, yeah, I talked mostly about marketing because that’s basically where Library Secrets had gotten by this June.  I wish I had had all kinds of stats and results and great examples of the kinds of Secrets I was sharing, but when I got hired permanently, the impetus to push LS through in one semester kind of disappeared.

So thank you, thank you to those of you were straight with me about my session.  I more or less knew exactly what you told me, but I might have forgotten it in the flurry of praise I got from the librarians I bewitched with my sparkling wit.  How did I miss you dozen or so strong individuals?  I’ll getcha next time.  Watch out.

This isn’t turning out to be so incoherent after all!

Part II

Faculty here got a new contract recently, and one upshot of this is that librarians (who are 9 month faculty) only have to work 36 hours over the 10-week summer semester (down from the past 40 hours).  I was so entirely excited about this initially.  I had been planning to take Mondays off anyway, just because I could, but with this new fewer hour requirement, I could do this without working 10 hours on the 4 days I would be here.  Not only that, but I could have two days a week where I only worked six hours, and at the end of it all still have about 20 hours to give up here and there.  How awesome did that sound?

Well, now it’s late-June and I haven’t gotten a damn thing done.  Suddenly I actually have work to do or something and barely anytime to do it.  I come in, I read email, I spend an hour or two preparing for whatever meeting/instruction session/workshop I have that day, spend another hour or two in that meeting/instruction session/workshop and then the day’s over.  If I’m lucky I eat lunch somewhere other than my desk.  The other day I found myself thinking that I should take some vacation time so I can come in to the library and get work done.  I actually thought this in all seriousness and without a scrap of irony!

Here’s how I’m streamlining things:

• Facebook is all but out of my routine.  Sorry Facebook friends, but I’m updating my status via my Firefox Twitter add-on these days.
• I’m only reading library blogs and only on days when I’m at the reference desk for more than an hour
• I seem to be blogging more, but I argue that this helps me sort out all the miscellaneous stuff in my head
• I’m using Jott like crazy to capture all the things I need to do and when I need to do them
• I’m looking forward to the new Resident Librarian’s arrival in August so I can use her as cheap labor
  give her some authentic community librarian experiences right away