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Gratuitous Pictures of My Cats

Posted May 9, 2013 By Abigail Goben

I’ve been trying to write all week in response to all the various crazy things floating about: Big Deals, Cold Calling Publishers, MLS-degree-worth-it-wars.  Unfortunately, I’ve also been battling off some very interesting virus or some such that’s made thinking in a straight line incredibly difficult. What little thinking I have managed has been work targeted–leaving me a wrung out washcloth by 5 p.m. and so in the evenings I’ve been doing an excellent impression of a couch pillow.

While I continue to get back to more thoughts, here are Gypsy and Pye to tide you over.

005

 

Gypsy examines a dot on the floor.

007

 

Pyewacket likes to ‘help’ with knitting, where help = lick.

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Open Access Tenure: Shedding Some Light at Harvard

Posted April 16, 2013 By Abigail Goben

Last week The Harvard Crimson had a detailed article talking about the tenure process at Harvard. I see some overall differences between my university and Harvard; I’ll note a couple that jumped out at me:

  • Junior faculty take leave.  That surprised me, as far as I know we can’t take sabbatical until we’re tenured. 
  • Striving to hire in the best rather than growing good people–this is a different emphasis than is at my library. I can’t speak for all of the colleges at my university.
  • Associate is not tenured; I don’t become an Associate Professor until I get tenure. Going for Full Professor is something different at my place of work.
  • 7-8 years; Ours is shorter–I go up in my 6th year assuming I pass 3 and 5 year internal review.
  • Secret committee evaluation: I’m not sure who all sits on our campus P&T committee but I know who is on it from the library and I’m sure I could find out who the other people are.
  • President’s decision? I think here it would be the Provost; I’m not clear whether he can override the campus P&T committee–I know the University Board of Directors, who have final say, certainly could.
  • Separation of teaching faculty vs. research faculty. This is growing more pronounced, I think, at many universities, with teaching falling more to adjuncts.  It sounds like they have a FT tenure-external plan which I don’t think my university has for most of the colleges.

It’s an insightful read and gives a very different view of recruiting and retention than what I’m facing here.  The attitude of a university towards who gets tenure and how they build their faculty is certainly informative if you’re looking at a position at a certain university.

 

 

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Open Access Tenure: Professional Service

Posted April 9, 2013 By Abigail Goben

I have a couple new lines on the service section of my CV that I thought might interesting to share with you as well as an update on what’s currently underway.  Service is a third of how I will be reviewed for tenure, though under our current norms it will not be part of the packet that is sent to the external reviewers as anything other than lines on said CV.

Service can include both internal university committees and external regional or national level committees.

If you see me in other places online, you know I’m in the middle of several search committees (Yay! We’re hiring!).  Two are winding down; two are midstream and these are taking a fair amount of time.  For each position there are resumes to read and evaluate,  phone interviews, in person interviews, conversations with colleagues, and search committee meetings.  Add the usual thought disruption of meetings that aren’t part of my ‘regular’ work and the amount of time dedicated to finding a new colleague can  be significant.

I’ve also just signed onto a campus level committee to be thinking about and discussing research data management on that level. This committee is chaired by my Assistant University Librarian for Information Technology.  I’m not entirely sure what all our charge will entail but I’m looking forward to broadening the conversation.

I have also just been elected to the University Library FDAC Committee for work: the Faculty Development Allocation Committee. Each faculty member is allocated a certain amount of money that can be used towards research, continuing education, technology, etc at the beginning of the fiscal year. When I want to use some of that money, I send a request with an amount, relevant details, and a short (1-2 sentence) justification to the committee. They verify that it sounds reasonable and email me back with a “okay, go ahead” which I include in my request to the business office.  I haven’t had anything turned down so I’m not sure about the process for that. I’m interested to see how other people are spending their money, I’m always looking for new continuing education  ideas.

Externally to the University I have a new LITA Committee and one other entirely new venture.

For LITA, I’ve accepted a year long appointment on the Nominating Committee.  Our work, nominating candidates to run for the LITA Board and President (if I understand everything correctly) starts immediately and runs through elections opening next spring. Having the opportunity to be so closely connected to the next round of leadership for my division is very exciting! I heard from our chair a while back but I am not sure who all is on the committee. I hope to learn a lot from them very quickly. If you have any process questions that I can answer, please let me know and I will try to shed as much light as I can.

Newest and shiniest though is that I have accepted appointment as a Reviews Editor for the Journal of Collaborative Librarianship. I, with Barb Losoff, now have the responsibility to find items for review, recruit authors, edit the reviews and get them submitted in a timely fashion further up the editorial chain.

I’m thrilled to be working with JCL. It’s a Gold OA peer reviewed journal, no author fees if you’re curious.  I sat in on my first editorial meeting recently and the enthusiasm in the room and excitement about working with authors and getting things published was palpable-something that can be difficult to sustain five years into a project, as they are.

I hope this will prove an opportunity for my readers here as well. I need suggestions, ideas and I wouldn’t mind a few more people in my pocket to call on for reviews. We have the freedom to review whatever seems relevant: white papers, journal articles, books, videos, databases etc, all under the umbrella of how it provides collaboration opportunities. I know we’d like to see more from those not the usual suspects: small academic libs, public librarians*, school librarians.  I have initially suggested a couple of books that I would like to see reviewed and I’ll admit some selfishness in wanting to know how good the books are (I expect great) before I commit several hours to reading.

If you have thoughts, please let me know.

 

 

*<Ahem> Paging Madame Storyteller. Two words: Case Study. </Ahem>

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It’s a Book Chapter!

Posted March 27, 2013 By Abigail Goben

A few of you already know this and a coworker just notified our Collection Development Coordinator so apparently I need to get on with the announcing already.

I have a new book chapter out!

“Scholarly Communication in the Dentistry Classroom” in Common Ground at the Nexus of Information Literacy and Scholarly Communication

Here’s the link to the full text, freely available for your reading right now! (Hosted by the Digital Commons at IWU)

Here’s a link if you’d like to buy a print or e copy.

It was a pleasure working with Stephanie and Merinda and I’m very excited to see what some of the other authors have written. My chapter focuses on what I’m doing over at Dentistry, how I’m integrated in the classroom. It was completed just as we started fall semester, so there’s obviously been a few things that have changed but hopefully it gives you some idea.

 

 

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Open Access Tenure: Working with other people.

Posted March 26, 2013 By Abigail Goben

While a lot of my blog post writing focuses on my internal process, the things that are specifically on my to do list tend to call for working with, relying on, and collaborating with other people.  While this is rather standard for researchers in most fields (there is a reason we see “et al” at the end of citations), adding the bonus challenge of OA to the project is an extra.

Working with research partners

Collaborating with research and writing partners has been an interesting new challenge for me. While I’ve done college journalism, blogs, articles, presentations, etc., the vast majority of it has been under my solo byline. Writing with research partners is a lot more like my LITA Committee work than me with a keyboard or pen and ink.  Here are things I’ve come across so far that may help you play research well with others:

  • Figure out who is in charge of your project. If you’re the person supposed to be in charge of the project, that means you need to come up with to do lists, and deadlines, and be project manager. Delegating and assigning is important but if you say you’ll do this and don’t, things will lapse and become frustrating for all involved.
  • Delegate and make assignments. I’m not especially good at this but I’m getting better (thank you, good friends who are suffering through the delegation process with me).
  • Know who is doing what by when. This can be as simple as a bullet point list on a document, a spreadsheet with names in one column, or you can start using project management software.
  • Ask for help. Not sure if your survey looks good? Having trouble narrowing the scope? Struggling with the latest literature search? Talk to other people in your institution or in your peer network. Someone will know and, wonderfully, many people are usually willing to help.
  • Get together. One of my research partners is one of the busiest women I know. She’s awesome and all over the place. And if we don’t have a set meeting scheduled we’re both perfectly happy to let things run off the rails. Meetings where we have to hold each other accountable help with that. These don’t have to be in person either, I collaborate with people in another state and another country; we Skype.*
  • Designate and protect time. This is so hard, particularly when you’re trying to combine research and “regular faculty stuff” with being in a profession that has service as it’s focus. I have overridden more research time scheduled on my calendar for students or my liaison faculty and there are frequent times I’ve had it overridden by people to whom it would be impolitic to say no. Block your calendar however you can, refuse meetings during those times, the world will go on.
  • Be realistic on how long something takes. When you’re planning when you’ll have things done and you know you only have a couple of protected hours between now and your due date, realize what is and isn’t going to happen. Figure out what you can whittle down, if someone else can take on part of the burden, or if there’s a part that you need to let go–for now.
  • Let go or put on hold. One of my projects was taking up too much brain power right now that I really didn’t have available. It’s time intensive and requires not only me working but others as well.  Madame Mentor suggested** that it go on hold until I pass the 3Y paperwork deadline this fall.  Setting it aside was an enourmous relief and I’m hopeful that when I come back to it that I’ll be excited rather than frustrated.

The OA part of it

As you saw from the post it notes, I’m in the middle of several research projects. I’m fortunate in that most of my research collaborators are people who feel as strongly about openly sharing our research as I do.  With them, I didn’t even have to bring the question up because  it was a given that our work would be Gold OA.  But it’s not always that simple.

Recently I was invited to potentially collaborate on a small project with another coworker.  We discussed a few of the details after a meeting and then I headed back to my cube. It wasn’t until about 15 minutes later that the Open Access question popped up in my head and I had to send off a quick email pointing out this requirement of mine. It wasn’t the easiest email to write, putting yourself out there for rejection and potentially damaging a work relationship is never fun.  I was lucky, the coworker emailed back within a few minutes, agreeing very adamantly to a Gold OA publication and suggesting a journal where we might consider first.

Whether I’ll “miss out” on projects in the future from this limitation remains to be seen. Short of that book chapter last year, I haven’t had anyone back away from me yet and certainly I have plenty on my plate right now. Speaking of which, I really should get that edited, updated, and out somewhere else, shouldn’t I? Anybody know where a copy of that manuscript is?

*That being said, I’m trying to find good reasons to show up on their doorsteps to visit and work on stuff together.

**We might also use the word ordered but that might be too strong of language :-p

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