Librarian by Day

 The last couple of months have been a time of change for me personally and professionally. Thank you to everyone who has emailed, DM’d text or called to check on me lately, I appreciate your kindness and support and friendship more than I can say.. Thank you to everyone who offered support, suggestions, recommendations, and advice, it was invaluable and deeply appreciated.

I’m sure many of you remember the unexpected death in the family in May, unfortunately that was the beginning of some tough times for my family that aren’t over. I can say I, myself, am healthy and whole, but unfortunately I can’t say the same for some family members. Without going into details I know you will understand when I say I have shifted much of my energy towards family affairs.

Professionally there are some changes too. I am going back to school. I am enrolled full time in a Masters in Public Policy and Administration program. I’ll be focusing on public policy and, of course, the library and nonprofit aspect of that. In some ways this isn’t much of a change, I already spent a lot of time reading reports and academic work and thinking and writing about them, but in other ways it is – someone will actually be grading my writing and presentations for the next two years.

How will this change my work as Librarian by Day? In some ways very little. There are many people doing amazing work that do not have the online presence I have maintained the last couple of years so I know I will still be able to do great work even if I’m not blogging several times a week. I will continue to follow my interests in transliteracy (and within that digital literacy), the digital divide and ebooks. For those of you who follow me here and on Twitter or Facebook, I suspect it will change how much time I am online and what I share when I am. I do plan to continue blogging and sharing on Twitter but I know between making the adjustment to full-time student and focusing on my personal life it may take some time to get back in the groove (or at least find a new groove).

I will still be involved with ALA as Councilor-At-Large and with the OITP advisory committee and Digital Literacy Taskforce. I will be attending ALA Annual and Mdiwinter and I’ll be presenting at Internet Librarian in October (come see me speak!). I will still be contributing to the Libraries and Transliteracy Project, Library Renewal and the Transliteracy Research Group as time allows.

I have several speaking engagement scheduled over the next 6 months or so and I plan to continue to accept invitations. I’m also in the process of developing some new workshops.

Thank you to everyone for your support and understanding.