I am never quite sure which type of accumulated mail is worse, snail mail, email, or voice mail; but today I had a large dose of each waiting patiently for my undivided attention. They were all doomed ... today was the first day of the last week of summer break (aka Monday) and no single form of communication receives undivided attention. The first wave of students have arrived, all of the sports teams, many football players in the library today, and the resident assistants, creating bulletin boards and laminating in between meetings, are now on campus. Continuing the countdown, freshmen arrive Saturday and everyone else moves into the dorms Sunday.
Today I scheduled library and resource center tours for children's literature classes, found eight more books to use with the Mock Caldecott session that will most likely scheduled sometime after Labor Day, and began a fun project geared toward beautification. Really. I have a hideous wall outside the resource center that was previously used for projecting transparencies. It is an unsightly combination of pencil marks, fingerprints, and residual tape pulls. Requests have been made to paint it (sigh), but after two years I have come to the belated and obvious conclusion it will not be happening any time soon. I have decided to create a picture book cover wall collage.
As new picture books arrive and are processed, often we take off the book cover. I use these on bulletin boards to highlight new books and ultimately discard them. My plan is to laminate selected covers, protecting them from aforementioned pencil marks and graffiti, and affixing them to the wall updating my unsightly space. Discussing the concept with an artistic member of the serials staff, she mentioned I should consider incorporating foam board (putting covers on it as well) to create some visual depth and interest to the project. A very cool idea I am hoping to incorporate. I envision the collage as a fluid art project; once the wall is full I will be able to change out covers making it continuously new. With a growing list of things needing my immediate attention this week, the last thing I should have been doing today was starting this project. But after gaining permission, I was excited to proceed and am thrilled with the progess thus far.
Alas was unable to spend the entire day luxuriating in my artistic side. I interviewed a graduate assistant candidate for my course, solved a potentially horrific problem with a paniced phone call (my course disappeared), and made a few last minute changes to the course adding a section on educational video evaluation, using YouTube, Teacher Tube, and Google Video, to an internet assignment. All I have to do tomorrow is create the grade book, verify students have been loaded, check my course rosters, and create email welcomes for each student enrolled in the course. Oh, and hopefully hire one of the graduate assistant candidates.
On the list for tomorrow I have to schedule GA's and Student workers; place help wanted signs in the resource center for next week; finish the Mock Caldecott book selection; work on the Mock Caldecott web page; create, print, laminate and affix informational book marks or "business cards" to the new resource center pens for tours; nag the boss and reference team for the fall library hours schedule; and attend various meetings. I might even get a chance to order supplies, select picture books for the juvenile collection, and peruse reviews for the education collection.
Other than that, tomorrow is smooth sailing. Piece of cake.
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