Self care?

This year's big trend in libraryland (among many other places) is to focus on self care this year. I definitely agree. To get a little personal, I have several "hidden" physical disabilities (for example, my eye), what's now known as ME/CFS in addition to a tendency to being overstressed and depressed. Milton has created a…

Change my mind

Here we are, starting 2022 in much the same way as we started 2021. And in another month it'll have been two years since we started to worry about COVID and thinking about how it would affect our students and program. Then came "crisis teaching"... and endless Zoom meetings planning for the upcoming year. Now…

Why compete?

https://twitter.com/libraryvoice/status/1478501207127822339 My response? We should always all be the Librarian of the Year. Granted, this "competition" is less middle school than the AASL Social Media Award but still. I'm also anti the LJ Movers & Shakers because the implication is that the rest of us just aren't doing librarianship right. Particularly since 2020, with libraries…

New Year’s Resolutions

This year, this is my one and only goal: As a department chair (and manager of a building) there are times I have to "be on" during breaks and weekends, but I get paid a small stipend for that. It's always been a struggle to quash those "if I work for an hour today this…

My Year in Reading (2021 edition)

And my choices for the best books of 2021? (posting this on January 31 because I know I won't have time to finish the book I just started, so that will be my first book of 2022!)

Talk about timing

Yesterday was our last day of school for the calendar year (well, actually, last half day). Now I have just over two weeks to Get Things Done for the year-end, including some doctor visits and chores that didn't get done over Thanksgiving Break. And read. Of course, reading. For my own mental health, staying away…

Time Flies When You’re Not in Lockdown

Two people today mentioned how fast time seemed to be going: wasn't it just yesterday school was starting for the year? how could it possibly be over an hour since the school day started? That's not to say we're not all excited and exhausted and ready for Winter Break, just that the time between the…

Fourth time’s the charm!

I've been at Milton for seven years, and in that time I've overseen a real revamp of the collection. b: serious weeding of old, outdated, caterpillar infested, falling apart books. It looked a little like this: Years Two - Four: Second and Third passes through the collection, cleaning the "junk drawer" and moving books into…

100 Days and counting

In 100 days, AISL's 2021 Conference will start - all virtual, as it was last year. However, this year it will be three days, not one, and there will be a fairly robust technology platform. How do I know all this? Because I raised my hand to volunteer... became tri-chair... due to someone dropping out…

Past their best by dates

As we've been doing a (I hope) final pass on the collection, we're noticing a lot of books that are just past their "best by" dates and having to determine if they should stay on the shelf until something new comes along, keep them anyway, or remove them and try to replace. This isn't the…