o no I am become the dad in the LEGO movie
📚 Finding my throughline: Library enthusiast 💻
I recently listened to Katie Rose Guest Pryal on Camille Pagán’s podcast, You Should Write a Book, talking about how she found the throughline in her work and life. (Just listen to her articulate it on the podcast. I am afraid if I try to sum it up, I’ll get it wrong.)
At the time I listened to it, I was like, “I don’t know what mine is. Maybe I’ll never find it. Waaaah!”
But as I sat and let the idea marinate for a while, and I think I’ve figured it out.
I recently bought the above sticker and several other library-themed stickers, as well as a Read Free or Die t-shirt, from its creator.
One of the possibilities I was considering for after my postdoc was going back to being a school librarian. I don’t think that one’s going to pan out, but it did sort of launch me in the direction of identifying my throughline.
In May, several folks working on different grants funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, including myself, met and talked about what we’d learned from our work and what our capacity was for working on connected learning in libraries moving forward. All of the other academics indicated that they had to move on to other work, which might incorporate connected learning, but would not focus on it.
I found myself heartbroken.
This is what I want to work on. And nobody else, nobody with an institutional affiliation, was going to be able to work on it anymore?
Well.
Over the course of many weeks, I decided that I would still work on it. That I would find institutional partners who were willing to do a little bit of the work, so that I don’t have to have an institutional affiliation myself to get the work funded, but that I would be happy to do the bulk of the work so long as I could get a consultant’s fee for doing it. Enough to pay my student loans, mostly.
I’m in the process of refining this vision.
But the throughline, I’ve got that now.
Fine, it needs refinement, too, but here’s the basic idea:
My work builds libraries’ capacity to facilitate learning and connect with their communities. The two modes I use to do this are research and professional development.
This describes so much of what I’ve done for the past 8 years. And more than that, it describes what I want to do going forward. It’s expansive enough for me to take on a variety of projects, and narrow enough that I can continue to establish my areas of expertise and grow my network.
What’s your throughline?
So I’m on Bluesky. (If you’re seeing this on Bluesky, it’s thanks to Micro.blog cross-posting!) If they ever actually federate, I’ll follow folks on micro.blog. For now, I’ll just be checking in there whenever I remember to, which will probably be infrequently.
🔖📚 Read IN A WAVE OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY RETELLINGS, WHERE ARE THE GREEK WRITERS? by Lyndsie Manusos (Book Riot).
Lots of exciting recommendations in here.
🔖🍿 Read Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a Fascinating, Spectacular Philosophical Experiment by Olivia Rutigliano (Literary Hub).
Well, I was already interested in seeing Barbie, but now that I know it’s about existential crises, I really want to see Barbie.
I love how the Web works. I post that I want to read Jillian Hess’s book, How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information. Anna Havron reads it and blogs about personal information management. Tracy Durnell reads that post and writes about the value of taking notes. And then I read that and find a choice quote like this:
Like leisure need not be earned, neither must learning be driven by purpose or need.
I should really stick with my watch-mostly-Star-Trek plan. 🖖🏻
Was too busy actually celebrating my 14th wedding anniversary yesterday to blog about it. A thoroughly Durham date: browsing & picking up orders at The Regulator and Hometown Apparel, breakfast anytime at Elmo’s, and dessert at Locopops.
💬📚 “Sometimes silence was the loudest thing of all.” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea
💬📚 “Why is it that I must always worry about tomorrows?” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea