ChChChanges

 I am woefully behind on book reviews. And my reading goals for that matter. I spent a good portion of April disassociating because of upcoming job changes--I'll have two campus libraries two support next year. Reading wasn't cutting it for my usual dose of escapism, so I turned to video games. Baldur's Gate 3 is positively amazing and I can't say enough good things about how enthralling it is! I've started reading five new books, listening to one audiobook, and rereading another book. Two of those five books are for NetGalley review... I am a mess.

I also finished my BIG weeding project at my current campus. And by I, I really mean my clerk--she is brilliant and I am grateful she doesn't mind working with me. I was analyzing each individual book on it's own and making notes before deciding to weed something. 95% of the time, if it was older than 2013, I was electing to weed it. With that amount of consistency, it made more sense to follow my clerk's suggestion and just look at the physical book and weed it if it was older than 2013. We made some exceptions for Spanish nonfiction and things that are still well-loved, like Shel Silverstein. When we decided to to it, I laid in the floor and had a panic attack. When it was done and I did the math to see how long it would take me to replace those books... well, like Han Solo said, "never tell me the odds." I sat in the floor again, except I was laughing at myself. While simultaneously crying. By the way, that math: 15 years. Yep, fifteen years to rebuild the nonfiction collection with my current budget. I've already written one new grant and have a list of them to do for both campuses next year.

Suffice to say that April and May have been an absolute whirlwind. I also got tagged to be my campus VILS Lab mentor and attended a summit where we learned about the curriculum and how to use/utilize the technology that comes with the lab. I walked away with a load of new skills and am excited about the crossover between Library Land and the VILS Lab. I'm still pondering out what next year looks like--I've been unsuccessful with after school programming for my current library, so I think I'll be trying to implement lunch time and before school programming at both campuses instead of trying to make a set schedule for things like book club.

The only solid thing I know at this point is that I'm going to have to get myself together when it comes to organizing my time--I'm heavily reliant on outlook reminders. But I also forget to put things in my outlook calendar. And then everything is double booked. 

I am looking forward to the new school year. I like being busy at work and I love the work that I do. I'm choosing to look at this as an opportunity to do the big work of librarianship without getting bogged down by "other duties as assigned." I thankfully know and have worked with both principals before, and they're both supportive of the librarian and the library space. Right now, I've got eight days of work left and I can't wait to be on break.