Air mail

I received official notice today, via air mail no less, that both my article and conference report will be published in April!

Please pause here for a moment of exuberance followed closely by Cheshire cat grinning - a bit of jumping up and down, and finished with a newsy email to my boss.

... to continue ...
I had email confirmation from the editor and assistant editor before the holidays that the works had been accepted, but it is very nice bonus to have a congratulatory letter, printed on official journal stationary, capable of being scanned and used in my portfolio (both electric and paper).

Time to move the articles from "publication pending" to "published - peer reviewed" on my online vitae/personal page.

Closed, not locked

It seems that though the door was symbolically closed, I neglected to verify my capability to lock it and walk away with a skip in my step. Twice in the last two days I received email (tagged priority) from the eternally patient and kind academic journal editor regarding necessary changes to my references, both in text and the 'bibliography.' I must admit to being embarrassed that my misuse of this citation style was causing such trouble for the editor.

For heavens sake, I'm a librarian! I was forced to use MLA, APA, and Chicago style for papers in a grad class (he was making us aware of the differences, uh-huh). A change in citation format should not cause issue and angst.

But, I digress. After an hour yesterday and a simple reference question today, I may .... she says hesitantly and with a vestige of hope ... be finished.

This morning I spent time looking for a book on using Harvard Style. I can not be the only person on campus utilizing this for articles. Faculty members here, sans librarians, are tenured and the academic cry of publish or perish is alive and well. I have been able to find two interesting titles in World Cat that looked promising; A guide to writing bibliographies : based on the Harvard style and Sweat-free referencing Harvard Style: source acknowledgement, paraphrasing and quoting, a student's guide. Interestingly enough, the first is in a library in New Zealand and the second in South Africa. Not surprisingly, neither titles are available in Amazon or Barnes and Noble, nor are they in Baker & Tayloror Gobi.

Well, fine. It's time for lunch anyway.

Closing the door

After spending several hours, so much for the changes not taking long, on the article revisions yesterday, this morning I emailed my article submission, author information, abstract with keywords, and publication permission to the journal editor and assistant editor. I've already received a reply from the assistant editor thanking me for the submission. It appears the second of two invited articles has passed the peer review process and will be published. What a whirlwind adventure that was. I checked the journal database this morning and the final edition for 2007 was published (yes, an obvious statement when we are less than three weeks from the end of the year). It follows that both of the article submission will be published in 2008. Works for me; I have two more things to add to next year's end of year report and this years evaluation. Good thing goals for this academic year included publishing and presentations. Closing that door and moving on, at least until I wax poetical about how fabulous these articles look in print during a future blog post, I need to think of something to submit for a poster session this summer.

Grades will be submitted later this week; after evaluating this morning there remain only two outstanding projects to be completed and a rousing 91% completion rate for the course. The I.T. department created, or rather recreated, my course materials into WebCT. After meeting with the GA tomorrow I will make a few minute adjustments to the course in preparation for spring 2008. Things ran smoothly, especially considering the loss of GA six weeks into the fall term. The remaining GA and my student workers helped make the term run smoothly by picking up extra hours and making an effort to work closely with the students. I even got my paycheck for teaching the course last Friday! By the end of this week I should have the spring course ready, know if I have a second GA for the term, and will have effectively closed the door on fall 2007.

Now I only need to survive the library web site meeting(s), a strategy meeting with my boss and the actual meeting with the web page committee. This almost two month lull in the process has effectively stopped progress that had been made. A new site ready for summer is looming on the horizon. It is always possible, but as of now I feel it improbable. We - actually I - have to know if using the university template is the final decision so we can close the door on that portion of the design discussion and move on to content. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Accepted with editing

Blogger is cooperating this evening so I have time for one more quick post. I received notice this afternoon that my second article has also been accepted for publication; accepted pending revisions. I am really excited about the prospect, especially because the journal is peer reviewed and international. I now have ten days to make the required revisions and re-submit to the journal editor. The assistant editor will follow-up with the required forms before publication actually happens.

I did not have the nerve to say I had saved the paperwork from the previously accepted article last month and could easily edit them to work. I am not quite sure they remember I was invited to submit two articles. I will be working on revisions during the busiest week of the semester - and in between making fudge all weekend.

I'm having an article published in an international professional library journal.

It soooooooo works for me.

It's there, praise be

Confirmation came yesterday via email; my article submission did indeed arrive at its destination. The assistant editor, a very pleasant and helpful email correspondent, assured me she was passing it to the editor who would in turn be in touch as needed.

At this point, just knowing it arrived and will be considered is good enough for me. It will be upwards of six weeks until I hear anything. Luckily we are drawing near to Thanksgiving break and the end of this fall 2007 term, read the last day of classes, is one month from tomorrow.

I'm done ... email away!

After working late into last evening, throughout the day at work (even during lunch), I finished my article this afternoon and with a great deal of relief submitted it via email to the journal's assistant editor as requested. My final word count was 5,819; not including the bibliography, Internet resources, and literature review. I managed to stay within the 3,000 to 6,000 suggested word total. Whew!

Now, it is Monday evening and time for Dancing with the Stars- AND - Monday night football with the Steelers and the Ravens (boooo).

Feast or famine, the remote will get a work out tonight.

Writers cramp

One of the reasons behind starting this blog was to practice writing. I will not be so bold as to say I want to hone my craft in any way, but committing myself to putting something with purpose to paper (Last ALA Conference Session), per say, each day was/is to help me become more proficient with the actual writing process; therefore when professional development writing opportunities present themselves I would be less inclined to pass on said chance. In all honesty this has served me well in the last year. I have had two short articles accepted for publication in a book, was invited to submit two articles based on my poster sessions at ALA last summer, and at this point am cautiously optimistic one of the two invited articles has been accepted in a peer review journal.

Blah, blah, blah ... not so bad.

I have been struggling the last several days with actually writing the second article. Sunday afternoon I was optimistic after writing the abstract and making notes. Last evening (during Dancing with the Stars!) I transferred the session information from my web page CV to the paper and worked on more notes. Today I spent a great deal of time tidying up the peripheral, yet important, tasks (bibliography, literature review, setting up the paper) but am currently stymied by the opening paragraph.

Yes, the opening paragraph; the words that will set my tone for the entire article.

It's actually quite ridiculous. I have had issue with conclusions before, but never actually beginning. At this point I am debating myself as to what should, or should not, be included within the actual text of the article and it is making the task seem daunting. In order to move the process along, I have now decided to write any portion of the paper that will let me write it. With luck, and a bit of patience, I should be able to work from the end to the beginning.

One baby step closer

This morning I had an email from the assistant editor of the journal I submitted my ALA poster session article to for publication regarding copyright information for submitters and release form/permission form needing a necessary signature (mine!) prior to publication. Actually, this is the article they contacted me and asked me to write (VI still can't get over that). I have been reminding myself for the last six weeks that invitation to submit does not mean acceptance, especially in a peer-reviewed journal, and that the last article I had published took over six months to go from acceptance to publication. Ugh.

Not to mention the six to eight months it has been since I had two articles potentially accepted for publication in a book (so much for not mentioning, hmmm?). I last heard from the editor of this particular project was in May 07 notifying contributors that the project had been shipped and her publishers "guidelines say most books are published within 9-15 months from the time the manuscript is received." That means I have until February of 2008 before I begin obsessing about it's time table. But, once again, I digress.

As the time to submit my second article, the more in-depth offering about my blogging poster session, draws closer, I admit to curiosity regarding the status of the first article. It was a relief to be asked today to complete and sign the necessary forms, scan them, and forward them via email or fax ... especially when the email began "With regard to publishing your conference report." I am now cautiously optimistic the article has been accepted. I am also probably disproportionately excited because it is an international journal. When I finish with the second blogging article, there may be interest in the professional blogs I am currently involved with writing (both alone and in collaboration).

Who says presenting at ALA is the last thing you will ever do with an accepted poster session? I never dreamed to have this chance. Now, I am wracking my brain to come up with a topic for ALA in San Diego this summer. Maybe the library web page re-design and/or the faculty learning community I am involved with will fit the bill. I am still finding it a bit difficult to find my niche as an academic librarian who is not actively involved with bibliographic instruction (reference) and/or technical services.

It's appropriate

I have been furiously working on completing my article, an invited conference report based upon one of my ALA poster sessions for a journal, before tomorrow. Several days of dragging my computer home from work (it's easier to plop in front of the television than barricade myself in my home office) and not working - as well as several evenings of dragging my computer home and accomplishing a paragraph or two have resulted in, consertively speaking, completing half of my article. What's causing issue today is learning how to use Harvard Style; the journal requires citations in this format.

I have learned that Harvard Style is also referred to as author-date style and "widely accepted in academic publications, although you may see a number of variations in the way it is used" (Monash University Library). Interestingly enough, most of the sites I found with tutorials and examples were from Australian and United Kingdom libraries.

• Harvard Style - UseIt
  Queensland, Australia
• Leeds University Library
  United Kingdom
• Curtin University of Technology
  Western Australia
• USQ Austrailia University Library
  Australia

I have been able to decipher the language differences (spelling, etc) and complete my bibliography. However, I must admit to being a bit stymied with the in publication citation method and have printed out several different handouts for assistance; praise be for libraries and their citation tutorials. With the writing deadline, my procrastination, and my obsession with having things be "just write" before submission, I chuckled this morning seeing a Blogthings quiz on grammar.

You Scored an A

It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Tags: ALA Poster Session, Academic publishing, Harvard Style, Blogthing

A Quandry: what to do, what to do?

Today my plan was to finish writing two article submissions, due on Sunday no less, that have had abstracts accepted for publication. A serious practitioner of the fine art of procrastination since high school (I was up all night finishing term papers more often than not), I had convinced myself it would not a difficult task to accomplish. I failed to take into consideration my obsessive behavior where submissions are concerned and to this point have not yet completed one of the articles. You would think having a word limit of 1300 would make things less stressful. But alas, it really means I have to write making every word count.

Normally I would email the work home and finish crafting my joyous rendition of blogs in academic libraries while watching Grey's Anatomy (a stupid clip show this evening and no great loss). Tonight writing is at the back of the proverbial line behind various dreadful, necessary tasks. What's more important than a writing deadline for professional development you might ask? My answer would sadly be balancing my checkbook and paying doing my taxes, the latter proving difficult since the forms have gone AWOL in the bowels of my apartment. On the bright side, I do have all the necessary financial paperwork, just not the forms in question.

Complicating things and presenting a wonderful means to procrastinate even further was the appearance of The River Knows, a new Amanda Quick novel, in my mailbox (a bit early to boot, don't tell). How am I to work when an evening of enjoyable reading is so much more palatable than taxes?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I have stalled a good fifteen minutes writing this diatribe after balancing my checkbook (to the penny thank-you-very-much). I will soldier on and do my civic duty to the IRS, then force my sorry self to hunt through piles of paperwork to find the missing forms.

Update: 4/13/07 - Confession & Success

Unable to find my tax forms, I elected to pay the $15.95 and submit both federal and state taxes electronically to save my sanity. The free tax program sent to me by H & R block did not have the state info included and I had to purchase and download. But, the smile of my umbrella here was using my charming dial-up connection it took almost half an hour (let me reiterate how much I really have to upgrade) and I was able to use that time to start reading. By the end of the evening I had both set of taxes submitted, paid, and a good quarter of my book done.

I have finished one of the two articles and my boss is editing it as I type. I have time to attempt the second article today and maybe finish it on Sunday before the submissio deadline. Here's hoping that'll teach me.

Tags: Still no need for tags here.