Sunday, March 20, 2011

It's been a busy spring break--lots of work but also some small breaks to explore the music events, rodeo, and even Cirque de Soleil with the visiting undergraduates.

Writing related activities included writing a book review of James Bartleman's novel, As Long as the River Flows, for the American Indian Libraries Newsletter, revised an article with Sha Li Zhang for the Journal of Library and Information Science, and dealt with a lot of details (including the cover art) for the forthcoming book on tribal libraries, archives, and museums to be published by Scarecrow.  I revised my chapter on an indigenous ecology of LIS for a monograph to be published by the University of Arizona Press and prepared my script and PowerPoint slides for a webinar I'm giving this week on indigenous leadership challenges for the Ontario Library System. Wrote three reference letters as well and prepared draft two of a teaching excellence document for our iSchool. This week: a big push on the special issue of The Reference Librarian on teaching reference.

Drafted by attendance at upcoming conferences--including itineraries for this weeks' ICOLC conference and the 2011 Texas Library Association annual conference, the 2011 PCAACA in San Antonio, and a first draft for the 2011 ALA Annual Conference. Arranged for travel to Montana for the 2011 Tribal College Librarians Institute and swapped airmiles for my ticket to LIANZA 2011 in Wellington. Got a hotel room for my days next week in Tromso along with a guidebook and new boots. Still worried that I lack layers for the Norwegian cold!

This week also involved attending to some service work--drafting a citation for a recipient of the ALA President's Citation for innovative international library service, provided photos for an IFLA brochure on library services to multicultural populations, attended to some communication for the Outreach Connections wiki, prepared forms for the 2011 IFLA conference, and set up the FaceBook event page for the NMRT/Merritt Fund reception in June. I also started reviewing the new American Indian Experience academic resources.

Students in the Library Instruction and Information Literacy class are making great progress on their scripts for their online tutorials of the public access technology work stations in UT-Austin's Fine Arts Library. Students in the Public Libraries class are preparing excellent panels on genre literature.

A busy week ahead!