Summer project work

7/15/2016

My first summer working in higher education is both flying by and dragging. I've been working on a lot of proposals for things like conference presentations, book chapters, and projects. I've also been finishing off some ongoing projects. At the same time, deadlines are coming due for registration for fall conferences. Those caught me by surprise!

Over the past month, I finished leading internal training sessions about Gmail and Google Calendar for the library faculty and staff; helped write a large grant proposal for a digital forensics program in the library; submitted a presentation proposal to the Charleston Library Conference; had a group of 20 high school students in the library for presentations from Special Collections and our 3D Printing Lab for the 4-H Great Summer Showcase; and submitted (and had accepted) a book chapter proposal. Those are just some of the things I finished! There's a lot more ongoing.

This was my second month with the Data Services team. I've been doing a lot of process definition. I'm documenting workflows and writing procedures. Those are coming along but aren't terribly exciting. I have had a chance to help with preliminary reviews on two datasets for curation. Looking through the current state of the data and determining what needs to be done to ensure persistent access to the data is really interesting. I'm hoping to do some more of that over the next two months. I've also started looking at job postings in this area to get a better idea of the type of skills people are looking for and what type of work people are hiring for. I want to see if this is where I want my career to go.

This month, I also took my first vacation since I started about a year ago. I took a week off and drove up to Maine. It was gorgeous! 59 degrees in July, lobster, and blueberries. The trip wasn't long enough and I'm definitely planning to go back!

Earlier this week, I had a chance to visit the Government Publishing Office and the Library of Congress. This was arranged by West Virginia University. Their residents Ashleigh & Chanelle, their coordinator Lori, and Quetzalli the resident from American University went as well. We had a great day learning about the GPO and the Federal Depository Library Program and then seeing highlights of the Library of Congress collections and services.