Weekend Update

Once again, my Monday was a little crazy. And so, a day late, I give you the weekend update.

This weekend I

• Ate dinner at Whole Foods. (We parked on the roof! Urban living is fun!)


• Drove up to Santa Barbara with my best friend for a lovely wedding and realized that the drive isn't half as bad as I expected.


• Got a hotel room on my own for the first time.


• Watched football (of course).

It was quite fun to get out of town and take a little road trip with my best friend. We were roommates our sophomore year of college, but no longer see each other very often, despite living in the same city!

This week will be spent mostly getting ready for grad school orientation next week up in Seattle. I'll do a post on that later. I'm very excited!

San Diego Blackout

(via)

As you may have heard (or maybe not... I heard it didn't really get national coverage) the power was out in ALL of San Diego County last night, as well as in some parts of Orange County, LA, and all the way out to Arizona and down to Mexico. I heard at least 2 mililon people were without power!

It was pretty chaotic, you can imagine.

Everything shut down on campus a bit before 4pm, and through text messages, Facebook, and Twitter we found out that it was county-wide. We kept the library open for a few hours since it was still light out, and the library is as good a place as any to congregate in an emergency. Handed out otter pops from the freezer and passed along information as much as we could. Opened up the doors to get some air circulating. A hummingbird came in and went upstairs.

We closed at about 6:30, and I'm really glad I stayed until then. Traffic was absolutely nuts earlier because everyone was trying to get home at the same time and there were no traffic lights! My drive home was a breeze, though, because I guess by then everyone had gotten where they needed to go.

I got home and realized how woefully unprepared I am for emergencies. I didn't have a flashlight or candles or cash, and since my apartment is in an urban area with such a concentrated population of people, my cell phone service was out too. So I literally sat by myself in the dark for an hour doing nothing until my boyfriend came over, concerned that I wasn't answering his phone calls.

We ended up going back to his place and hanging outside with neighbors we'd never met, barbecuing and looking at stars (which you can never see in the city), and it was generally quite enjoyable.

The power came back on for me at about 11pm, and that was it.

Classes are canceled today (power didn't come back on campus until about 4 this morning), but the library is open and I'm at work. We found the poor hummingbird and nursed it back to health, and it's back out in the world.

Overall, it was quite an experience. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love electricity and technology, and it was a little tough being without cell service for so long, but it was cool to see everyone outside in the evening, chatting, and hanging out--actually communicating instead of just watching TV, holed up in their houses with their air conditioning. The bars were hopping, and it was actually fun for those of us who weren't panicking and thinking it was a terrorist attack or the end of the world. It was pretty eerie being without lights, but it was cool how people came together to make a potentially scary or dangerous situation not-so-bad.

Have any good stories from the blackout? Or have you experienced one similar? Do share!

Weekend Update

Yesterday was crazy busy; I didn't have a chance to post.

But this Labor Day weekend, I

• Went to bed early


• Had dinner with girlfriends


• Picked my very first homegrown tomato!


• Visited my boyfriend at work (i.e. rode the shuttle with freshmen)


• Slept in late


• Listened to rain at 4am


• Made eggless cinnamon pancakes

It was a nice, relaxing, generally uneventful weekend. I like those every once in a while.

Looking Like a Student

Most days, when I get up and get dressed, I have one question in mind: How do I not look like a student?

I know this post might seem kind of funny directly following that last post about how sad I am that I'm not a student, but oh well.

It's true, I am only 22 years old, and I did just graduate 8 months ago, so it shouldn't bother me that I look like a student. But I do supervise students (most of whom I consider my peers and with whom I worked when I was a student), and I interact often with faculty, so I have this need (however self-imposed) to exert my authority by the way I dress. I want people to take me seriously as a professional!

Usually heels are a good place to start. When you wear heels, people automatically assume that you are up to something fancy. Or you're an adult. It helps if you can actually walk in them, so you don't look like a stumbling baby giraffe.

Also, anything but jeans. This has been a difficult transition for me, since that is what I wear most often and what I am most comfortable in. But if you are wearing a pencil skirt or slacks, you are immediately upgraded from denim-clad student-hood. If I do wear jeans, I try to pair them with a button-up or a frilly blouse so people know I didn't just wake up in a dorm room bunk in a T-shirt and walk across campus.

My library is pretty casual, and there's no real dress code involved, so technically there's nothing wrong with wearing jeans and a T-shirt (many of the librarians go this route daily), but for me, dressing up a little makes me feel more like a grown-up, and like I belong in this office with an ocean view.

Here's what I wore on the first day of classes:

Frilly blouse, slacks, and heels. Went all-out for the first day. Mostly wanted to look like I knew something for the benefit of new students.

Despite all this, sometimes it's nice being mistaken for a student. Today I got a free lunch because the cafeteria worker swiped my ID card as a student and didn't charge me as staff. Oops.

New Semester

Classes started at my institution yesterday, and it was so busy.

Between dealing with reserves, training new student employees, and pointing people to the bathrooms and the computer labs all day, I didn't even have a second of down time.

I've always loved the beginning of a new semester, but it's kind of strange this year since I'm not going to class or doing homework or living in the dorms. I'm a working professional now. I mean, I will be a student, but doing an online program is going to be totally different. I really have no idea what it's going to be like, but I'm certain it won't really feel like being in a class. I probably won't feel like a student. And that's kind of sad to me today. School has always been what I'm good at. It's part of my identity. If I'm not a student, I don't really know what I am. It's very strange.

I didn't go through this strange sadness last semester for some reason. Maybe because I graduated in December, and spring was all learning my job and getting used to working full time.

I'm sure I'll get used to it. My life will take on new rhythms, and soon I won't even remember what it was like to go to class all day every day. But for now, I'm still kind of missing it.

Weekend Update

Over the weekend, I

• Bought Christmas lights at an estate sale.


• Worked the Library booth at New Student Orientation and talked to a TON of new students. So fun!


• Had my car broken into overnight. Luckily the thieves didn't steal anything important.


• Got added to the UW MLIS listservs. Already getting emails from fellow students. Getting excited for my trip to Seattle and for starting classes.


• Played Nintendo 64.


• Saw Breakfast at Tiffany's at the outdoor movie theater.

It was a great last weekend before school starts.

Classes actually start tomorrow, but the library is crawling with students today getting everything squared away for the new semester. Yay!

Copyright Fun

At my library, we've been learning about copyright all summer. Would you believe we didn't have a university copyright policy, or hardly any information available regarding copyright? So we're making a push to educate faculty so there's no more slightly-illegal reader-copying going on that could get us in trouble!

The more I looked into it (and watched that video), the more I realized how strange and nuanced (and kind of silly) the laws really are. For example, one of the things I'm in charge of is e-Reserves, which means I scan material into a PDF, and add it to our catalog for students to access online. This is OK and considered fair use, as long as it only remains available for one semester. However, if a professor were to do essentially the same thing--scan it and make it available on eClass--that would be the equivalent of making copies and handing them out to the class, which is NOT OK. Even though it seems the same, one is considered fair use, and the other is not.

It's been rather challenging to learn all the details, and even more challenging trying to explain them to professors who don't understand why they can't just make a copy of an article. But it's definitely an important thing to get a hold on. Maybe even more so because of how many are unaware of how the law works. You're liable whether you know it or not!

I'm really glad our library is taking the reigns and educating people about this. It'd be the worst to have a huge lawsuit slapped on you when you didn't know you were doing anything wrong! Check out the LibGuide one of our librarians made. It has a lot of useful information.

Is your library heading up a copyright crusade? What techniques have you used to make your campus copyright-friendly?