Staff at Butler get two days off each Spring Break week. It's a nice nod to the fact we can get more done when there are no students around even as faculty and students get the whole week off. When we do take the days off, it's a restful break, even as we work out the schedules to cover. I once decided to work through the week so as to save my days for another vacation - that's when I realized just how much I needed the break! This week is particularly pleasant as the Good Friday Holiday falls within Spring Break, so we all have Friday off.
I'm catching up on email, of course. The bane and blessing of my position. Meanwhile, I ran across this post about reading journals - library journals of the profession in particular on the ACRL blog. I'm an occasional reader of the main College & Research Libraries Journal; but it gives hints on how to keep up:
Read it the week it arrives
Read it only for the one-two articles that have import to your job
Copy the article that you know you have to have later - otherwise, well, that's what database access is all about
To which I would add: copy or loan the paper journal to your reference librarian when you've got one she HAS to read!
As to electronic vs. paper: I don't read anything via electronic if I can help it. Maybe with my new glasses it will be easier - they arrive in a couple of weeks. But mostly I just have to deal with email, and consider journal reading a chance to shift to another seat and change posture.
Micaela
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Beginning the health thing
Ok, folks.
Skip this if you hate to read about diets and food and exercise and health.
I just signed up for two different groups this spring. Yeah, it's not enough I'm remodeling the upstairs bathroom, going through the bible study at church, "Jesus in the Gospels," and taking the college "Introduction to Statistics" course. Now I have to go beyond beauty, spirit, and mind, and deal with the body. So the library ladies signed me up for the "Biggest Loser" group on campus: we're the "Bookin' Babes." And the church group is signed up with the Walk Kansas program as the "Presby Pacers".
I've not lost weight since the girls both moved out and I underwent an overhaul in response to the 'empty nest' syndrome (which was quite real for me). So this is a chance to try again, except one daughter is returned home. Rachel will be my partner in the Presby Pacers, at least!
What diet to follow? None, I hope. Instead, I'll check out "In Defense of Food" and remember my lessons from the "South Beach Diet" and the "WeighT Down" (and reviews): eat good food, and eat only when you are hungry. We'll see. I may add in the idea of food journaling, but I'll spare you that here.
Wish me luck.
Skip this if you hate to read about diets and food and exercise and health.
I just signed up for two different groups this spring. Yeah, it's not enough I'm remodeling the upstairs bathroom, going through the bible study at church, "Jesus in the Gospels," and taking the college "Introduction to Statistics" course. Now I have to go beyond beauty, spirit, and mind, and deal with the body. So the library ladies signed me up for the "Biggest Loser" group on campus: we're the "Bookin' Babes." And the church group is signed up with the Walk Kansas program as the "Presby Pacers".
I've not lost weight since the girls both moved out and I underwent an overhaul in response to the 'empty nest' syndrome (which was quite real for me). So this is a chance to try again, except one daughter is returned home. Rachel will be my partner in the Presby Pacers, at least!
What diet to follow? None, I hope. Instead, I'll check out "In Defense of Food" and remember my lessons from the "South Beach Diet" and the "WeighT Down" (and reviews): eat good food, and eat only when you are hungry. We'll see. I may add in the idea of food journaling, but I'll spare you that here.
Wish me luck.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Truth to tell...
From Shelf Awareness, 3/4/08:
Notes: More Faux Memoires; Wordsmiths Squared; Quick Reads
This season's A Million Little Pieces: Margaret B. Jones, the author of Love and Consequences, a memoir of growing up half-white, half-Native American in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child and joining the gang world, is actually, the New York Times reported, "Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in well-to-do Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley of California, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in North Hollywood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed." So much for truthiness.
Publisher Riverhead is recalling all copies of the book, published last week, and has cancelled the author's tour.
Only last week, Misha Defonseca, who wrote Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, published here in 1997, confessed that rather than having been a small Jewish girl who moved around Europe living with wolves during World War II, "she is not Jewish and spent the war safely in Brussels," according to the Boson Globe."
****
My question is, why don't they just call them novels instead of memoirs and have done with it? Maybe there's some psychological/pathological reason for it. I love fiction and historical fiction, crime novels, etc. Maybe these stories they invented aren't well crafted? Maybe the authors don't like fiction? Maybe no one ever told them about the truth to be found in fiction.
How sad.
Notes: More Faux Memoires; Wordsmiths Squared; Quick Reads
This season's A Million Little Pieces: Margaret B. Jones, the author of Love and Consequences, a memoir of growing up half-white, half-Native American in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child and joining the gang world, is actually, the New York Times reported, "Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in well-to-do Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley of California, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in North Hollywood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed." So much for truthiness.
Publisher Riverhead is recalling all copies of the book, published last week, and has cancelled the author's tour.
Only last week, Misha Defonseca, who wrote Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, published here in 1997, confessed that rather than having been a small Jewish girl who moved around Europe living with wolves during World War II, "she is not Jewish and spent the war safely in Brussels," according to the Boson Globe."
****
My question is, why don't they just call them novels instead of memoirs and have done with it? Maybe there's some psychological/pathological reason for it. I love fiction and historical fiction, crime novels, etc. Maybe these stories they invented aren't well crafted? Maybe the authors don't like fiction? Maybe no one ever told them about the truth to be found in fiction.
How sad.
Monday, March 03, 2008
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