For my fellow academic librarians...don't you just love that first week after spring finals? It's a great time to slow down, sit back, relax...and promptly collapse under the weight of 15 "summer projects". Here at MPOW we've already got our reserve room cleanup in progress, and then tidying up some item type glitches that were created in our ILS migration--fortunately it only impacts a thousand or so AV items. Also it's inventory time, and we have about a thousand govdoc microfiches that need to be cataloged, and I'm developing a seminar for the clients of our university's business incubator, and we're going to be revamping our web tutorials, and...you get the picture. :-) I've also come to the conclusion that as I find more "nifty projects" to do at work and in my wider life, I need to reevaluate how much time I spend on my ongoing projects. For instance, I'm taking an orientation class to become a CASA--as a former welfare caseworker this is a need very close to my heart and there are never enough of them to go around. Librarians' research skills and helping personalities can make us a good fit for this--if you're looking for a service opportunity, check with your local chapter to see if they need new advocates. (okay, plug over, back to the post :-))
Anyway, as I was saying, I've been thinking a lot about how much time I can commit to some of my professional development projects, notably Scattered Librarian. After some thought, I've decided that I'm going to scale back to one scheduled post a week--knowing of course that I'll probably pop in with brief posts more often as my muse/current events bring up various topics. In a perverse sort of way I think that will have me keeping up with things better. Unfortunately, I've decided to put the RSS digest on temporary(?) hiatus, at least the LIS links. If you're not on LISnews.org's feed, their This Week in Library Blogland does a much more thorough summary of what's out there. I will, however, be posting my 5 favorite time management blog posts each week at the end of said scheduled post, and I'll certainly keep sharing all those wacky reference sites I run into from time to time. If I decide to start pursuing more speaking opportunities or anything like that, I'm sure you'll see the volume here picking up a lot--but I've got quite enough going on for now, and I think I'd be better served spending more time in the comments feeds of your blogs as well as updating mine. We'll see how it goes... :-)
