Teaching!

I haven't posted in a while due to a rather hectic life schedule which included doing 108 sun salutations for the fall equinox, a trip to New York City, a friend visiting for two weeks, and lots of dessert making. However, the other week I taught a few classes for the first time in over a year.

I miss teaching a lot. In fact, in addition to being a librarian I would like to be a yoga teacher in a few years (perhaps when I can get into headstand away from the wall). I had a lot of opportunities to teach when I was in grad school and I took them up as often as possible, but since becoming an actual librarian I haven't gotten a chance to teach. Thankfully, my coworker is used to co-teaching and asked me to help her out on three classes this semester. I was more than happy to help, especially considering I am looking to move into public services.

The students in the first class I taught were, interestingly enough, working on topics related to veganism and video gaming/learning. They should be so lucky that I got assigned to them! I was able to talk about web resources and the difference between looking at random pages they got from Google and the UN IPCC report on Climate Change. I also got to point out some tricks about subject searching our catalog, which very few non-catalogers realize. The other classes got my database tips and tricks, but didn't get to have someone with so much first hand knowledge of the subjects which made the first class so great.

Battlestar Party

Our BSG party was quite a success! I made a cake decorated like the Eye of Jupiter that Kara had drawn on her wall. Yes, we are *those* kind of librarians. We also had spinach dip, green challah, a pile of pretty untouched seaweed (which wasn't what I had in mind when I suggested we get seaweed to put in the veggie burgers), and our version of Ambrosia (an alcoholic green drink from the show) that we made with limoncello and green food coloring. The food was green-themed because all their sustenance on BSG comes from algae.

We even had a couple of guests dress up as cylons and do a robotic dance to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Yes, we were Rickrolled... but the two people doing the dance weren't even familiar with the concept so I'm not sure it counts.

The episode itself was pretty great. I'm not going to write spoilers here, but it was as dark and dystopian a mid-season finale as I could have hoped for. Where they are is exactly where I wanted them to end up. There were some weak episodes this season (i.e. anything that centered around Lee), but the last two episodes totally made up for it.

Now that I've fully shown the nerd content on this blog, perhaps I'll talk about librarianship soon. The likely first topic will be about the various tools libraries and librarians have at our disposal and the ways in which we use these for better or for worse. It's amazing that information professionals don't always know what tool is appropriate to use whether it be a blog, wiki, email group, or an old fashioned meeting. Us librarians sure seem to love meetings. So say we all.

Intro post!

Hello! I am Heather, the proprietress of this blog. I am a 30 year old academic librarian working as a cataloger in Special Collections. I love the range of materials one gets to work on in Special Collections, not to mention having a tight knit group of coworkers for our small division within our huge academic library system. I also work the reference desk in our department. In my next job I would love to do more reference and instruction. Cataloging is a really great thing that all librarians should really know a bit about (it seriously helps on the reference desk and in researching library catalogs), but I realized I need more public interaction. I miss doing all the instruction I did as a graduate student! That's how it goes!

This blog will cover my ideas in librarianship, but mostly it'll be about a lot of gaming, science fiction, and nerd stuff in general. I'm also an excellent vegan cook and bake a lot, so food porn will also go in here. The name of this blog comes from a play on the whole "Next Gen Librarian" thing. While I totally fit the stereotype of the Next Gen Librarian, I am a big nerd who can't help but put in talk about gaming (not just in libraries!) and science fiction in with talks of librarianship.

Actually tomorrow will accumulate all of these things together in one day! Two co-workers and I watch Battlestar Galactica together: tomorrow being the last episode until 2009! *cry* So in celebration we are making an algae-themed (or at least green) dinner to go along with our BSG viewing. I'm also making a green tea cake that will, hopefully, have the Battlestar insignia on the top. Pictures and episode write up tomorrow!