In other news, I had a surreal moment today: I was at a branch near my house today and got talking to a clerk. When I mentioned my new position with RPL, she said she recognized my name when the announcement of my new position went out to all staff at RPL last week. Turns out she used to work at the branch on the other end of the city that I frequented during undergrad…over ten years ago. Apparently “frequented” doesn't begin to cover it!
(My immediate thought was “oh no – I'm *that* guy.” At Southeast, there were a few patrons who were such heavy users of the library system that everyone on staff knew them by name, professional staff would order books specifically for them, and we all speculated how these people could read the dozens of books they ordered each month. I don't think I was that prolific when I went to that branch a decade ago – perhaps she just remembered me because I was in the category of “regular” rather than “super mega-user”! At least I think that must be it! )
Today is my last day at work and it's hard to believe how fast the last year and a half has gone!
When we were debating which job I should take back in the spring of 2007, this job in Weyburn seemed to make the most sense in so many ways. But one question lingered – where should we live? Should we commute from Regina? Rent an apartment in Weyburn? Stay with Shea's parents during part of the week? The whole week?
We'd always had a great relationship with her parents (none of those in-law horror stories you so often hear) but it's a different situation to live with someone five days a week for over a year compared to visiting for a day here and there or going on weekend camping trips or whatever.
But ultimately, for our finances, we opted to live with them full-time during the week once I decided to come to work for Southeast Regional Library. (For our sanity – and theirs – we did decide to go back to our house in Regina every weekend! )
And in the end, the year couldn't have gone much better. Joan and
Dennis have been beyond generous and helpful to us. They've loved having their first grandchild right here for them and Pace has thrived with having his extended family in such close proximity. They camp at Nickle Lake, a regional park just outside Weyburn, all summer so that's been great for Pace as well.
It's going to be tough to say 'good-bye' later today but I have a feeling we'll see Grandpa and Grandma in Regina more than we ever did before. And the trips to Weyburn won't stop either – we know already they have a comfortable bed for us!
Here's a little video I put together as a thank-you to them for all they've done for us…
The announcement went out to the staff at Regina Public Library today so I can now officially talk about my new job. I have accepted a position as RPL's Organization Development Specialist!
“As a what??? I never took a class on that in library school,” I hear you saying and I have to admit, I had a similar reaction when I first read the job posting. But the more I looked into what the job would be about and what it would involve, the more excited I became.
Regina Public Library, like so many public libraries, is going through major changes and this position will have a key role in helping facilitate those changes within the organization. (Stop me when you hear too many buzzwords!)
A big part of these changes are shifting technology and I'm especially excited to have a role in helping to develop RPL's already impressive use of technology by developing training plans for staff in how to best utilize these tools.
How excited am I? I stayed up until midnight last night reading about what other libraries are doing to change themselves and brainstorming ideas I might be able to bring to RPL.
I finish my contract with Southeast Regional Library this week, I'll have a week in Regina to get settled and try to compress two houses back into one then I start on September 8.
I always look for the circles closing and here's another one – I've been a huge fan of RPL since I was very young to the point that, whenever I was in Regina with my parents, I'd ask them to stop at the Central Library so I could borrow books, magazines, records (!), cassettes and CD's. (I was living in Regina by the time they got their DVD collection!)
Here's a shot of me, judging by the poofy hair, probably around 15 years old, coming out of Central Library. Now, in a time warp, I'll be doing the same thing every single day. I cannot wait!
Well, having managed to convince myself that I would likely be sitting on EI for a month or two this fall waiting for some pending jobs to be posted, there was a small flurry of Regina-based library jobs posted in the last month.
I went for three interviews early last week, had two offers by Friday and today, made the tough decision to accept one of them.
In a rarity for me, I went more with my head than my heart in making my decision but I think it will be the right choice in the long term (much like how choosing a year and a half contract in rural Saskatchewan turned out to be the right choice over a full-time, permanent government librarian position for more money and every second Friday off that I was also offered when I was first looking a year and a half ago.)
I'm not going to say anything else right now because I think the employer wants to announce it internally first and I know very well how small and inter-connected Saskatchewan's library community is and that many people in that community read this blog, either directly or via RSS and Facebook.
I will say that I'm pretty excited and think it will be a position that's a good fit for my interests and abilities. (Now, where'd I put my 506 notes?)
Last night, various Reddit users posted links to stories from ABC and other news outlets reporting that the Secret Service had been dispatched to the home of Senator Joe Biden.
That wasn't a 100% slam dunk but a pretty good indication of the pending announcement, which Obama's campaign had otherwise managed to keep in great secrecy up until that point.
Still, there's a lesson in there about “Internet time” and the fact that nothing's a secret for very long anymore in this day and age.
In undergrad, I went to a speed reading seminar put on by the Psych Students Association. Basically, the instructor said that if you just kept training yourself to read more and more “parts” at a time – words then phrases then sentences then paragraphs then pages, you'd be able to speed read books and other materials in no time flat because you'd learn to grab keywords from each “part” and get just as much meaning as if you'd done a careful, thorough reading. The instructor did caution that it required ongoing practice and I think I lasted about a week before I was on to some other flight of fancy to distract myself. Still, that memory came back when I heard about Spreeder.com which bills itself as an online speed-reading application.
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