working and practicing

Along with lots of library students and underpaid librarians around the country, I found out yesterday that I didn't win an ACRL 14th National Conference scholarship... but I did take advantage of the extended early registration rate.

Congrats to all the worthy recipients and I'm looking forward to meeting you all in Seattle!

I'm back from FACRL Fall Program and gearing up for a regular Sunday of homework and internship. The student panel was well-received, we even had a few questions and comments, which makes me think we might have spouted something interesting. The best part of presenting, besides being chosen in the first place, was speaking to a crowd of nodding heads - a few even made the "hmm, I didn't realize that" face while we spoke, and some laughed, which is awesome. It was also great to meet Thomas Parker and Michelle Demeter, the other FSU students on the panel, in person. I'm familiar with the personalities in my online classes, know their writing styles, study habits, and kids' shenanigans, but wouldn't be able to pick out a single one on the street. So this was a sort of connection between the online FSU and my real, human classmates. Cool, right?

Lots of brainy folks in the library field, and I think it's an interesting time to be getting to know them. Dr. Michael Reiner, though he reminded us many times that he's not a librarian, had an interesting perspective on the changing place of libraries in community colleges, and Rachel Owens and Dee Bozeman gave a good overview of embedding librarians in online classes - seems like a great idea to me.

A highlight was meeting Jonathan Miller, of The Director's Blog and Rollins College, who graciously shared cell-phone photos of the gigantic alligator he encountered just outside of the conference room on the UNF campus. Definitely six feet or better, Jonathan.

Ian's lolcat didn't get the enraptured chuckles I expected, but a raucous dinner with our friend Matthew Moyer made up for it. I'm ordering the sushi loveboat for 2, what are you guys having?

The essay I submitted to the FACRL (that's the Florida Association of College and Research Libraries, to you and me) Fall Program student scholarship competition was accepted - how exciting! Since my presentation is about making the academic library an inviting, human place by sharing librarians' life experience through blogs and interesting student programs (not necessarily academic, you see), I figured I would put my money where my mouth is and dive into the professional blog pool.

And wouldn't it be professional of me to include the presentation URL here, in this first post? Oh, you bet. But I'm not that smooth. Look for another post sometime before Friday, November 7, when it will be here, for corn-shucking sure.