First – if you support the NIH plan to make tax-funded research publicly available, take a minute to call your senators. Right now. There are some amendments to be voted on today that could gut the NIH proposal. Tell them to vote no on Senator James Inhofe’s amendments #3416 and #3417 to the 2008 Labor-HHS-Education [...]

One of the simplest and most rewarding things I’ve done recently to improve my teaching, presentation, and even reference work has been to improve my eye contact. Yeah, eye contact. It’s that simple. If you don’t come by this skill naturally, or if you’ve been spending a lot of time with your eyes glued to [...]

When I accepted my first professional library position in late July, I was ecstatic. Less than two months had expired since I walked across the stage at Louisiana State University and was officially granted an MLIS. Like the other first-year bloggers, I was thrilled to land a job in the library setting of my choice [...]

Why not both? Kathleen Fitzpatrick, professor of English and Media Studies at Pomona College, discusses the social future of books in an article that has just appeared in the Journal of Electronic Publishing (which is published by the University of Michigan library’s Scholarly Publishing Office). Fitzpatrick examines CommentPress, an open source blog-like extension of digital [...]

The first installment from Kim Leeder, in her first year as Reference and Instruction Librarian at Boise State University. Ridiculously enthusiastic. That’s how I’ve been describing myself to anyone who has asked me how I’m doing in my new job. Ridiculously happy, ridiculously relieved, ridiculously lucky. The extremity of the emotion is directly related to [...]