According to my favorite (now online) reference tome…OED…it is time for reading and walking. Closing. moving, and consolidating libraries will have to wait.

Vacation n.
Freedom, release, or rest from some occupation, business, or activity.
c1386 Chaucer Wife of Bath’s Prol. 684 Whan he hadde leyser and vacacioun From oother worldly occupacioun.

As we wrap up this academic year, I am evaluating this academic year by ideas, not by closing a library. My choice! It’s been a tough year…but the ideas survive and nourish a tired brain.

One of the biggest trends this year has been “big data.” If you haven’t had time to think about this yet – what it is, what this means for science librarians or why libraries should pay attention – this is a good beginning article.

Data Science, Machine Learning, and Statistics: what is in a name?

The University of Virginia has an interesting site all about data and researchers and their university. A model for universities? Maybe. If nothing else, use this a good model for citing data practices.

University of Virginia data management consulting group – citing data

Data visualization is another big topic in libraries and research. Good visualization is not new. Twice in two days I ran across reference to my favorite visualization – Charles Joseph Minard’s famous graph showing the decreasing size of Napoleon’s Grande Armée as it marches to Moscow; a classic in data visualization.

Charles Joseph Minard (Image: Wikipedia Commons)

Good visualization tells a story, clearly, forever!

Stephen Hawking’s advice for twenty-first century grads: Embrace complexity

Service Design (Slideshare) – Slide 119

I have been trend-doing all this academic year. Read more about it in this informal report.

How does your academic year measure up?

Where did I ever come up with the idea that there might just be a day at my job where I was comfortable? It is never going to happen.

Almost four years ago, we moved to the DC area. A new environment, a new commute, a new job will add stress. But, I assumed the stress  would lessen as time went on. Not so!

I made mistakes. I hope I learned from them. I continue to make mistakes – new ones I hope. I was reminded of this reading a Maria Shine Stewart blog post  If You’re Perfect, Don’t Read This.

“I suspect that if one is not making a few mistakes on campus or off, a learning curve may not be steep enough or one is staying within a comfort zone, avoiding risk.”

Universities and Libraries are also in NO COMFORT zones these days. Changes in library collections, services, and the increasingly accelerating rate-of-change … of data, of technology, and of information make for most uncomfortable working situations.

“It is only by ongoing practice, with all the trial and error that entails, that a wider field of vision on campus might be attained.”

I couldn’t find my comfort zone these days if it reached out and bopped me on the head!

I cope by reading!

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/rss-coasters/

This very busy Fall semester, I barely keep up reading my daily email alerts from ASEE First Bell, Inside Higher Ed, Wired Campus  and Scholarly Kitchen.  I become increasingly anxious every day as I scan the headlines – the death of higher ed; eBooks are the end of the book; MOOCs;  keeping up with gadgets; teaching digital millennials – and then skim the articles that I think have some resonance in my daily life as a multi-branch science librarian. My brain is truly a giant cloud of tags and nebulous half-formed ideas.

Luckily, I was rescued this morning by my RSS feeds. I had concentrated time to read and am a better person for reading from the important (to me) RSS feeds:

John Dupuis blogging at  Confesssions of a Science Librarian

• Science Blogging: The future of science communication and why you should be part of it
• Getting Your Science Online: Presentation at Brock University Physics Department
• Current/Future State of Higher Education: Week 2 reading list!

From more than 10 years of reading Library blogs, I always check in with two school librarians that transcend their day jobs and continue to speak to information trends and educational management issues:

• Doug Johnson at the Blue Skunk blog and yes, I do bring my own devices to work, it makes me more efficient as I travel between building to have my own technology – laptop and tablet – with me. (No, work did not pay for these, it took me three years to get efficient!) BYOD – to work
• Joyce Valenza from the School Library Journal and NeverEnding Search blog reminded me to get back to this great online conference that I paid for and just haven’t had time to watch all the session – yet! Library 2.012 archive posted

YES! Someone has written about my nebulous ideas that have been niggling at me just beneath the surface of my consciousness:

• By Melonie Fullick Failure, crisis, disruption: The (perpetual) end of higher ed
• From the blog Agnostic, Maybe: the neverending reference interview of life by Andy Woolworth: Save the [Insert Noun Here]

For a little inspiration: Quoteflections…what is truth?…The search for truth is more precious than its possession.  ~ Albert Einstein

And, how about J.R.R. Tolkien on George R.R. Martin:

Friday Fun: J.R.R. Tolkien on George R.R. Martin, Posted by John Dupuis on August 24, 2012

A friend dies unexpectedly, and so this road trip is undertaken; harder than expected in many ways, but doable – necessary, messy and complicated – like life. I love my husband and my sons and through them I am deeply in love with some Boy Scout Troops. Life is complicated.

I have seen up close the lives changed by caring BSA leaders. Boys grown to men demonstrating personal growth and responsibility; and life-long friendships this organization fosters. Living with three men in my household, I also appreciate those life-long friendships.

The BSA troop we traveled to support this weekend – after the untimely death of our friend, an assistant scoutmaster who died at Scout Camp – is one such troop. Scout leaders are not perfect. It is in their humanness – quirks, humor, love of camping – that they model the Scout oath for their young men they mentor.

 On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

 “I will do my best.”  On his last day of life, our friend looked across camp at another troop and saw a young man not having a good scout camp experience. So, he invited the young man to come fishing with his own troop. Our friend taught the young man how to fish, and congratulated him on his catch.  Our friend heard taps and scout vespers on the last night of his life.

 Softly falls the light of day,
As our campfire fades away.
Silently each Scout should ask,
“Have I done my daily task?
Have I kept my honor bright?
Can I guiltless sleep tonight?
Have I done and have I dared,
Everything to Be Prepared?”

 We heard taps played Saturday afternoon for our friend, as the American flag was folded by a joint USN and BSA Honor Guard. He did his best. In the experiences of his life he thought his daily tasks included service to his country, service to his BSA troop, service to children and young men.

Life is complicated. Good men who model doing their best for others – helping other people at all times – we support this.

Thank you! , Michael Edson – Director, Web and New Media Strategy with the Smithsonian Institution – for reminding me of something I read long ago and need to remember everyday. Our library users are heroes on their own epic journeys and we need to help them – like, can I be Samewise Gamgee to your Frodo Baggins? – help them!

I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Edson preach – Come, Let Us Go boldly Into the Present, My Brothers & Sisters – at CiL2012. In fact, he “saved” the conference for me. I can learn what I need, but I need to feel that what I learn and teach matters…call it big picture, call it inspiration, I know it when I experience it. And, sadly, not every keynote is worthy. But. Michael Edson lit a spark that still glows in me and for that I salute him.

As we celebrate April icons like baseball, poetry, and libraries, remember the everyday heroes we serve – let’s help them on their information quests!

Another hard year has come and gone. Let’s just let 2011 die.

I hate to feel this way. When I had a chance to read this small part of the longer In Memoriam  by Lord Alfred Tennyson I was comforted and inspired to be more hopeful.

2011…
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

If it were that easy…
Ring out the grief that saps the mind

Look up and strive to be better…
Ring in the nobler modes of life

Help me remember my blessings…
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

During this political year…
Ring in the common love of good

Everywhere…
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

In me and in you…
Ring in …the larger heart, the kindlier hand

In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells] by Lord Alfred Tennyson
CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

I have to laugh! My dad used to tell me to “roll with the punches.” Now, every morning, I am greeted by this sign as I exit my train platform to walk to my Metro platform. It’s a good sentiment until you feel like a punching bag. You know the kind I mean. The full body blowup size kind that you punch and then it rebounds and hits you in the face. Yeah! Life is a lot like that these days.

How do you measure – life, job, relationship? Do you measure by happiness, by satisfaction, by goodness? I’ve blogged about this before, maybe too often? [F2F Inspiration, N+1 or N-1, By the Numbers,  Embracing Complexity] I have a new, scary, perspective after a “magnitude” event like the earthquake last week, and the “category” hurricane last weekend. I measure myself…very lucky, but a little unsteady.

I find I am walking gingerly expecting that rumbling tremor to start again any minute. Yet, I also regularly get on the Metro here in DC and travel underground and over bridges trusting the infrastructure of this place. This makes me feel foreign and naïve in my everyday life setting. This may be what the Freshman on campus experience, now known as First-Year’s, and now having their very own FYE (First Year Experience.)

I get to talk with a group of these students tomorrow. The very best part about working at a University, for me, is working with students of all ages – faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. All of us, especially me, always learning. As Michelangelo is oft quoted “I am still learning.”  This is the joy of the work at the University.

I’m reading what our First Year students are reading in their ENG101 course.

“A story of education – seventy years of it – the practical value remains to the end in doubt, like other values about which men have disputed since the birth of Cain and Abel; but the practical value of the universe has never been stated in dollars.” From The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter 1

And in unrelated, but succinctly relevant online reading I came across Happiness, Philosophy and Science by Gary Gutting.  He points out the good sense of studying philosophy as it is “the origin of most scientific disciplines.”  We search for data and measurements to explain happiness, and when that doesn’t work we fall back to philosophical theories.

Gutting reminds us of the intrinsic value of the humanities as he implores us to “engage philosophy with the other disciplines – history, art, literature, even theology…”

“That is not to say that, as Plato thought, we can simply appeal to expert philosophical opinion [that] tells us how we ought to live. We all need to answer this question for ourselves. But, if philosophy does not have the answers, it does provide the tools we need to arrive at the answers.”

The First Year students are here to answer the question – how to live – for themselves. They will determine their own tools, whether scientific or philosophical, for measuring their lives.

I am their Librarian.

Give the man his thinking space. Late August, and people must be talking about the President’s vacation. I was lucky enough to have a vacation this summer – first one in two years – and I feel better. Rested and refreshed in body and, more importantly, in mind. So, give the President a break and get off the he-shouldn’t-be-going-on-vacation bandwagon. Let him rest and read [President Obama's reading list] and come back ready to lead.

I had a lot of thinking time this summer. Between vacation, a few 10+ hour road trips and hospital waiting room time [Mom's good - walking better than ever and standing & singing on risers again] …I did think. One of the topics on my mind all summer long was library space. I had the privilege of helping transform some library spaces in my jobs. It has been as much about furniture, as it is about hours, as it is about services like book clubs and Quidditch Matches and IM Reference. There were many articles about this, including the very thoughtful: Libraries As the Spaces Between Us: Recognizing and Valuing the Third Space Jun 20th, 2011 by RUSQ.

As we begin the Fall 2011 semester, I wish my students and faculty and staff the time and space and access to think about information. I want them to see their Librarians a partners in this adventure.