My mailbox overfloweth

Some might say I have a newsletter problem. I suggest that it's a great way to keep informed about a wide variety of topics, with curated (I'm using the term deliberately) information all in one tidy email. You may (or, more likely, may not) be interested in the same things but just in case, here's…

Language matters

I've been interested in how language changes for years, in part because when I was younger I went from having a mailman to a postal carrier, from stewardesses to flight attendants, and actresses to actors. It was also in part to my uncle being one of the founders of sociolinguistics, specifically language planning. As an…

Modeling good habits

This is one of those times I wish there was a 24-hour surveillance camera on me. Not because what I'm doing is so fantastically interesting, but because I'm trying to do what we tell our students to do when they're working on homework and large projects. What that? First, it's chunking large tasks into smaller…

Happy New Year?

What does "new year" mean to you? And when is it? Obviously, there's the Big New Year when the calendar year flips over. And then there's you're birthday, a great time to start new thinking (or having an age-related crisis). There's also the Jewish (or Chinese or Muslim) New Year, times of celebration and thinking…

And now, time to relax!

The end of June is never really the start to the summer vacation, is it? Yes, the pace is slower and students are gone, but there's usually Stuff To Do before real relaxation stats. For me, that meant a number of things. First was the AISL Summer Institute on Incubating Creativity in the Library. This…

#SpellcheckFail

At work we occasionally play "Six Degrees of Laura Pearle" because I make weird connections to people. One of those is my cousin, Ralph, who 'invented' spellcheck (fun fact: Ethan once pointed out that the family last name, Gorin, would be changed to, well... you get it, right?). Anyway, it's the end of the year…

Yes, I’m taking time off this summer…

I think I am... I think I am... Between now and the end of Break, I have a number of planned "days on", including: AISL's Summer Institute, focusing on Incubating Creativity in the Library ALA's Annual Conference (I'm part of a panel conversation) Tier One Circle Training LiLi's Conference Planning the virtual 2022 AISL Conference…

It’s yearbook time

(or, in more adult terms, Annual Report time) https://issuu.com/cox_library/docs/ay21_1_ You know you have a winner when your Development people say that "this is a stewardship professional's dream with all of the facts and figures"! If they're going to share this with donors, it means we're telling our story clearly and showing our work. #goalmet

Almost there

Thanks to the library building construction project and another surprise project, we're not quite ready for the year to end. But thanks to a massive push last week, we did get our summer reading recommendations out! These recommendations are our suggestions, with little or no input from teachers. There is required reading in many classes…

Yep. It’s Construction SNAFU Time

This is my fifth school and my fourth library construction project. Granted, the first school/project was mostly over when I started, but I did reap the aftermath of having had everything rewired (essentially ripping out the job we'd paid for and used without a hitch for a few years, turning the system into something that…