The Year Past and the Year to Come

This is always a reflective time for me. Perhaps because I am the only person at the library this week, perhaps because I slow down enough to pause and think. But I've been thinking about 2008 and feeling very fortunate to have had such a tremendous year, both professionally and personally. A few things are particularly noteworthy:

1. Andy Burkhardt. Andy joined the Champlain College Library staff in July and all I can say is AMEN! He is tremendous. I love working with him. I love sharing ideas with him. I love what he has brought to the library and what he brings out in me. It is pretty special to find a colleague that you respect, learn from, and enjoy. Good good stuff.
2. Immersion: after a semester of implementation, I am amazed at how much I gained from Immersion and what a difference it has made in my approach to teaching, program design, collaboration, and thinking about information literacy. I will be joining a panel of Immersion alums to talk more about it at ALA Annual this summer. But in my planning and design time over the break, I find myself constantly referring back to notes, blog posts, thoughts, and questions I developed at Immersion.
3. Google Reader: How did I do it before RSS? My reader is not only incredibly useful to me professionally, especially as I read posts from other librarians, but also personally. I keep up with interests (the environment, gardening, books, friends in the world) and share an awful lot of material with friends and family. It has changed my way of managing information and while it can sometime overwhelm me, I love it.
4. TED: I never knew about Ted Talks until this year but I sure know about them now. I have had so many aha moments watching TED videos and I realize how much I have to learn, not just about things but about THINKING about things. The way in which many of the TED speakers think is inspirational and new to me.
5. Friends and colleagues: So many of you have helped me in the past year in more ways than could ever be noted here. Some of you have done it in your blog posts or your comments, some of you do it in emails, some of you do it by the work you are doing in your own libraries or classrooms, some of you I get to share in it face to face. Thank you.

And in the year to come....what will 2009 bring?
For me, an awful lot of travel. I have a lot of gigs coming up, which is pretty exciting. ACRL in Seattle on the power of gaming to teach information literacy, LILAC in Wales about the importance of the inquiry method in information literacy instruction, ALA in July for thoughts and growth from Immersion, and IFLA in Bologna about the power of 2.0 to bring together multigenerational workforces. I get jittery just thinking about it. If you will be attending any of these conferences, let me know. I'd love to catch up.

But for the time I am here, I hope the coming year brings as many interesting ideas and questions to the forefront as 2008 did. I hope that I continue to have productive and fun relationships with my colleagues at Champlain and our students. I hope that I make time to be away from my computer and enjoy the things that make me happy like my garden, running at the Homestead, yoga, writing letters (yes, by hand, on stationary, for the post), and spending time with Rigi, Jon, and my friends and family.

I hope the same for all of you. Happy New Year.

Ariana Huffington on Blogging

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Arianna Huffington

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

CLS Award Announcement

The College Libraries Section of ACRL is very pleased to announce its inaugural award for innovation in college librarianship.

An award in the amount of $3,000 will be given to the applicant(s) who have demonstrated a capacity for innovation in working with or serving undergraduates or instructors in the areas of programs, services, and operations; or creating innovations for library colleagues that facilitate their ability to better serve the library’s community. Any member of ALA is eligible for this award.


Nomination submission deadline is December 5. Deadline extended to January 9th. Full details about the award and how to apply can be found here.

Change (in Technology) We Can Believe In

A few things have been popping out at me lately in regard to Barack. It's a busy day for me but I can't help but point out the following:

1. Have you checked out Change.gov's blog lately? Do. Obviously they are using YouTube to above grade capacity. But, their use of Wordle in this post is pretty impressive. I loved Wordle right off the bat and our library has used it to add some panache. But this is not a library. This is the president-elect's website. That is change I like to see.
2. It's pretty exciting to see Change.gov's adoption of a Creative Commons license. It's even more exciting for them to give the kind of explanation they do in terms of transparency, accessibility, and collaboration. Michael Sauers post about the distinction between copyright and Creative Commons is excellent and I appreciate his pointing out both that distinction and the distinction between a site like change.gov and whitehouse.gov. We will continue to see which way the wind will blow.
3. As you might remember, I don't own a TV set. During Thanksgiving, while I was in Philly with the fam, I was excited to see the Barbara Walters special with the Obamas. What I was really excited about was the question Barbara (yes, we are on a first name basis) asked about Barack having to get rid of his Blackberry. Perhaps you saw this article a few weeks ago about Obama's connection to his "crack"berry. But that's not the good part. The good part is they WHY: "I'm negotiating to figure out how can I get information from outside of the 10 or 12 people who surround my office in the White House. " Talk about change. This is about Information Independence! This article in Slate talks about it in terms of government (aka Barack) being illustrating its ability to be "accessible, capable, and efficient".

Keep it coming. These are all excellent indications of what is to come. And I like it. A lot.

Nearest Book meme

"West,' said one young engineer, 'is a prince of darkness."
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.