Moving slowly

In my post on what things would be like if I were in charge, I mentioned a three-year plan that would be my ideal progression. A reader commented What kind of supports do you think you would need in order to actually make this three year plan a reality? Well, the first -- and most…

Roadblocks

There was a great comment on my post If I were in charge, in which the question "what roadblocks prevent you from trying this out?" How long do you have? Seriously, this is one of the realities of independent school librarianship (and probably public school librarians will also agree): faculty do not always feel the…

What we did in AY22: an infographic

Of course that only scrapes the surface of what we did - from creating displays and printing crosswords for students to working with classes on recreational reading and research skills. Not to mention starting the year with literally bare walls and having to unpack and set up our office and workroom while also getting ready…

From the archives: Taking that PTO

There has been a lot of change and movement in the world thanks to COVID and the Great Resignation, and people have been thinking and rethinking the idea of "time off". Anne Peterson has a good column about why the "feel free to take time off" directive doesn't work as well as it could, mostly…

From the archives: Moving up a stage

This isn't quite "leveling up" and it could possibly be thought of as moving down a stage, but it is movement. What am I talking about? In this post, Shelagh discusses these professional stages: Theorist Donald Super offers these 5 stages of self-concept & career development:  Like Shelagh, I'm in the maintenance phase, but moving…

Inspirational grace

For a variety of reasons, it has taken a few days to post about a loss to our community: a colleague had a recurrence of cancer and decided to stop treatment and enter hospice. A short time later, he died. His last message to everyone read in part: That message resonated with so many of…

What happened to Spring Break?

I’m sure I’m not alone i’m wanting another week off. Living in Boston and seeing snow Monday morning?? It was, as a colleague said, adding insult to injury. On the other hand, I did create a presentation for the MSLA Conference: The best part was the opportunity to really look at the guides we’ve created…

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…

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…