"The Man who Moves a Mountain..."

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

Confucius

Book Club: Pandemic In a totally crazy, random happenstance, one of the books that staff picked to be read as part of Book Club this year was Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah. We discussed the book this month. I admit, I didn’t read it. The only book I’ve read on time for Book Club this year was A Man Called Ove. However, I did borrow the book from San Antonio Public Library and after hearing all the good (and harrowing) things about it, I’m more interested than ever to read it. It’s definitely been added to my Goodreads To Be Read list. 

LibGuides Webinar - Google Fonts I attended this quick 15 minute webinar on how to incorporate Google Fonts into your LibGuides. It was helpful but disappointing in that you can only add the font to all your LibGuides, not just individual pages. 

Rare Book Virtual Exhibit This week I spent the majority of my time working on the website for the virtual exhibit. I think I went through five iterations of what I wanted the website to look like. I started with one mathematician, created a page, used it as a template for the next one and then added or changed components. Wash, rinse, repeat. I had to mentally tell myself that this is just the first exhibit and that it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect or groundbreaking. As I learn more web development, I’ll be able to incorporate those things into other exhibits. For now, I have the content I need, what I must focus on is getting it onto a pretty website that will be functional, engaging, and interactive. 

CORAL Fall Meeting I’ve noticed in life I don’t get invited to much (even before the pandemic). However, when I do, it’s usually for 12 things all on the same day...because, of course. Well, this Friday was that day for me at work. There were three meetings I wanted/had to go to and all of them occurred on the same day. 

CORAL (Council of Research and Academic Libraries) had their fall meeting held jointly with TLA District 10. They had a full schedule of sessions and panel discussions. I watched the keynote with kYmberly Keeton but unfortunately had to jet over to another Zoom call. 

LISSA All School’s Day LISSA (Library and Information Science Student Association) was holding their All School’s Day event on Friday as well. Since I’m an officer of the group, I joined in watching the Dean talk about the importance of research, and saw parts of the three presenters. At 1P there was supposed to be a poster presentation by ASIS&T that I was really interested in seeing. I never got the opportunity to present a poster in undergrad and now feel that it is something I missed out on. I was curious to see what kind of poster presentations LIS students had, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend because Friday was also the first day of TLA Launch. 

TLA Launch TLA Launch is a leadership program geared towards those in the library field who have been in the industry for less than five years. Though I’m not interested in being a manager, the fact that I was one means you can’t ever say never. While I was a manager, I learned that there are many skills I lacked when it came to managing, leading, and influencing. Even if I never manage people in the future, I think that this program will help in my overall professional development. There will be some skill sets I’ll know to work on and on the flip side I’ll have a better understanding of what bosses have to go through when it comes to supervising others. 

The first week was dedicated to Emotional Intelligence and Influence. I guess it’s good to get the hard things out of the way first, right? Though I think I’m good at recognizing my own emotions, I’m not comfortable expressing them at work. Even less so to others, with others, about others, because of others, or in any way relating to others. I like to think I have a good handle on my emotions and the way they get expressed at work (which honestly has been easy because of COVID) but part of emotional intelligence (and its relation to leadership) is that you have to be attuned to others as well. Well...I’ll just add that to the list of things I need to work on.