Taking academic leaves

Today I was able to give back a little. There was a workshop for library faculty to learn about taking academic leaves. As a freshly returned candidate, I provided some input for colleagues on the process, from developing ideas to reporting them. Fortunately my advice corroborated with that of the Provost's office.... For information see http://engrlib.uc.edu/PubServ/AcadLeaveWorkshop.ppt .

Poster session

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) held its annual conference this past week in Portland OR. I belong to the Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) of ASEE; this year we had 110 attendees within our division alone. I prepared a poster session. Several librarians were interested in the variety of archive and repository software platforms I experienced, as they are attempting to select platforms at their home institutions. I was at least able to give them a little advice. See presentation at http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/conf/05/ELDPoster05.ppt . (UC Davis hosts the ELD web site.)

Back at work

Well, it finally happened! My sabbatical came to an end last Friday. Today I was back at work in the Engineering Library at University of Cincinnati. It's a strange sensation to yank the brain into different arenas - meetings, reports, acquisitions, donors, web sites, orientations, queries - all swirling over the last 8 months of learning. Will it all be forgotten?

I'll be participating on OhioLINK's DRC (Digital Resource Commons) Development Team, albeit via conference calls and perhaps occasional face-to-face meetings in Columbus. I'll keep working to build a college institutional repository, and the Strauss web site will be developed as more material becomes available.