We’re a little thin on the ground at the Hedgehog Place of Work. (H-POW–it looks like an exclamation from a comic book) One coworker is off for a highly anticipated two week vacation, one had a couple vacation days, and one called out sick. All very valid reasons but that leaves just Madame Department Chair and yours truly getting to handle all of the printer kerfluffles that decided to happen.

It’s annual review time–Madame Department Chair is writing them up before her retirement on May 1. (I will need a new department head in the future but there is currently discussion of what role and capabilites that new future department head should take and have to best move us forward. I’ll let you know when it’s posted). I’ve met with Madame Department Head quarterly, so I have documents that help me pull together what I’ve been accomplishing for the past few months.  Rereading them with the perspective of all that I’ve done in a year is a bit surprising–the day to day doesn’t feel like much has been done but since last June, I’ve:

  • Taken on teaching Evidence Based Practice to the first year Dentistry students. This is expanding to our International Students and I expect to move up the years with my D1s.
  • Started embedded office hours with Dentistry.
  • Been appointed/assigned 6 new committees. (Volunteered for a 7th-it’s not a heavy time burden)
  • Organized Code4Lib-MW with the Beerophile Sysadmin. We’re hosts for Code4Lib 2013, apparently we did well.
  • Written two book chapters–one with colleagues from Shipps University and one on my own.
  • Given my first national library presentation at Computers in Libraries.
  • Survived most of the way through my first year as Chair of LITA-PPC.
  • Figured out my research topic for the next couple of years.
  • Started actively working with four different collaborators for papers and presentations that I hope will be out within the next 6-24 months.
  • Moved department statistics from entirely paper based to entirely electronic.
  • Joined the Journal of Collaborative Librarianship as a Review Editor.

It’s not everything I wanted to do in the first year, but it’s a healthy starting place. A lot of what I’ve been doing has been establishing a base, finding what it was that I wanted to do and with whom I wanted to do it. A year ago I hadn’t really planned on OA Tenure but obviously that’s come up too.

Astute readers will notice that there’s not any peer reviewed research on that list. Yes, I know.  I would plead time poverty, which is always true, but mostly it goes back to being more focused on foundational things. I’ve been flailing around trying to find a niche for myself over the past twelve months. That flailing included continuing education, pestering professional colleagues, going to a couple of sessions at conferences, and a number of long discussions with the Philosopher. Having better identified what directions I’m heading, having discussed those with my Assistant University Librarian, my tenure mentor, said previous professional colleagues, Pyewacket, and Gypsy, I’m better able to hone in on projects, figure out where to consider publishing, and actually getting research on paper.

One of the things my tenure mentor asked for was a relatively clear research statement, something on which I could build an agenda.  I struggled mightily with this but finally one morning it clicked.  My research interests  lie in examining use by librarians of early 21st century technological developments, specifically as the use relates to professional development and scholarly communication.

Does this sound of interest to you? Great, I’ll probably have a survey for you at some point. :-p  Seriously though, if this is something you’d like to explore too, shoot me an email. Let’s research something.