Time flies ... Time stands still.

Wow! Almost a month since my last post! Where did the time go … and simultaneously how am I only two months into my residency‽

Over the past month, I managed to get pictures on my walls and put up some lovely cabinets for my “library” at home. I think the yellow really makes the room inviting. The number of spiders in the apartment has, thankfully, gone down and I’ve learned to use the glass range to successfully heat up food! I also got a year older. Who knew I could age an entire year in a month? :-P

Collections and Technical Services
At work, I’m continuing with divided days. In Collections and Technical Services, we finalized an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for Albatross (the database we’re building) and a test version is currently being built. My immediate daily work on Albatross has died down a little, so I’m expanding my exploration of the department:

• I’ve been walked through the contracts process and will continue observing one contract as that progresses.
• I’m working with the Serials Unit to see what they’ve been up to. The big project right now is making sure that what Serials Solutions shows we have matches what OCLC WorldShare shows we have. It sounds easy but I’m glad I get to spend a little time hands-on so I know just how complicated it really can be. So far, I’ve only looked at about 1/10 of one package and there are a lot of items that have discrepancies in what dates we should have available. Sadly, this is an extremely manual process and the package I’m reviewing is one of many, many more that the Serials Unit gets to continue on when I’m done.
• I’m going to meet with the Acquisitions Unit Head and the ILL Unit Head soon to see what they are working on and get my feet wet in those areas, too.
• Coming up later, I will be working with Collections Processing and Metadata Services to take on some digitization and metadata work.

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Special Collections
In Special Collections, we’ve reached exhibit week. Sharing Our Voices: A Celebration of the Virginia Tech LGBTQ Oral History Project is this weekend. Some of the things included are: A display with seating allowing access to the online oral histories, selected books from the library collections, and a case with some archival items from Special Collections.

This Saturday and next Monday, we also have an expanded exhibit (and Saturday there’s a reception). The expanded exhibit includes access to the website of the Virginia Tech LGBTQ Oral History Project — including oral history interviews, a timeline of events, and supporting materials; a 1986 AIDS conference video; It’s Reigning Queens in Appalachia [Vimeo], by Carol Burch-Brown; Luther Brice’s Chemical Magic Show; a student project from the '70's by Mark Weber on transvestites; Images from student groups; A video by Megan Myklegard reflecting her work for the ACC Creativity and Innovation Grant; Images from the timeline and images of participants in the oral history project; screens with headphones attached to accommodate listening to the oral history interviews; and a table for student, faculty, and community group literature.

For this project, I’ve had my hand in indexing the oral history interviews and in setting up the physical displays. I’m glad I got to do so much with a project that was already underway when I got here! The team working on this project has put together something great and I’m excited to see everyone come and experience the exhibit this weekend. A great write-up about the exhibit is on the Special Collections Blog. 

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