As interim director, I was particularly relishing the prospect of winter break: a week and a half uninterrupted by any workplace distractions. My family took a vacation in Bend to get off the wet streets of Portland and into some real winter. Skiing, sledding, brewpubs and a hot tub all was part of the package. It was a great getaway, though I must say that introducing a 2 1/2 year old to winter sports with all the requisite gear is quite a handful. He liked the hot tub though. On my last day there, there was just enough time before check out for me and our dog Charlie to drive up to Wanoga Snopark and skate ski a couple laps with a breathtaking sunrise out over eastern Oregon as a backdrop. Since then, it's been back to reality.
That reality has involved two sizable projects both of which were due on January 13th. The first one was to come up with a report that identifies strengths, challenges, and potential future directions for our beloved Watzek for our faculty library/educational technology committee. This report was intended to inform our faculty and administration of possibilities for the library in light of the interim director situation in which we find ourselves in. Looking back over ten years was an interesting exercise and I hope to share more of it.
The second project was a digital scholarship workshop for faculty at Lewis & Clark. The library has been building a portfolio of digital projects, many faculty driven. I blogged about this phenomenon last spring. Our sponsored research officer and I put together this two hour session to bring new faculty into the fold and gauge interest in a bigger campus initiative around digital scholarship as we have seen at places like Hamilton and Occidental. We held the workshop on January 13th with something like 20 faculty (representing at least 12 academic disciplines in humanities and social sciences) and 9 academic staff on hand. Not bad for our little college.
There are other things on my mind as well, but these two initiatives have jump started my year.
Happy 2011.
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