Start of School

I know, it has been way too long since I've posted anything here.

My last post about what I was doing was close to four weeks ago (or maybe right at it).

The week of training MG went well.

The farewell party for SS on Friday afternoon was a success. Then they left for Alabama (via a few stops at friends' homes).

The week after that was orientation week.

On Monday, MG and I spent the day with the faculty at a retreat center about 20-30 minutes south of Leesburg. It was an enjoyable day of getting to know the faculty members and sitting in on the discussion of ideas. (Maybe even contributing a few ideas.)

Tuesday, I got learn a bit about the new student information system that PHC is moving to. We were supposed to be live the first week of August, but there were data conversion issues and we are now looking at September or later for the change over.

Wednesday, the faculty spent an hour in the library while I tried to give them all sorts of information about what the library has to offer them. A few of them commented afterwards that they found the time beneficial and that they had indeed learned about some new resources or services of the library. Wednesday evening, I made my final hiring decisions for the library and sent the needed e-mails the next morning. JM was able to join me at PHC for the new student cookout for dinner.

After dinner, we headed over to My Father's House to have a shared Bible study and fellowship between them and WLCC.

Thursday afternoon, all the new students visited the library for a 25 minute orientation. Try repeating yourself 3 times in 2.5 hours! For public speaking, I was trained not to have a script, just a page of points--as long as you make it through all the points in a logical fashion. Normally, by the time the third group arrives for orientation, they've had enough of this sit-and-listen stuff and are tuning out completely and I can just go through my points in the order they are written, so I know I don't miss anything. This year, all three groups were very responsive to the presented time and opportunity and were asking questions. That was great! But I started jumping around in my points to answer the questions. Half-way through, I couldn't remember if I'd covered some of my points with them 10 minutes earlier, or if I was remembering covering the point with the last group 25 minutes earlier. They helped me figure it out and it went well.

Friday was a day to catch our breathe, prepare for our student worker training the next day, try to make sure the closed stack system was ready to go for Monday, check that reserves were all available, and plan for the open house the following Wednesday.

Saturday afternoon, JM and SC hung out around the college while I did training with the library staff. It took longer than I expected--more than 2.5 hours, but I don't think we spent a lot of time on anything we didn't need to. The new students came at 1:00 and we got them set-up with library software access, a general orientation to job expectations, library software, and library procedures. At 2:00, we took a break and the returning students arrived. After some snacks and introductions, we finalized (almost) the work schedule for during the week and students signed up for Saturday work. Then we went into how the closed stacks are set up and how they work--software policies and procedures for students to place retrieve requests for materials, policies and procedures for library staff to print and retrieve the requests, etc. That really was about all that we covered.

After the training, we all went over to the freshman talent show. SC was wanting to meet up with one of the freshmen he knew from Kansas through GenJ. The talent show was followed by a Mexican dinner.

It was a full, but enjoyable week!

The next week was still busy, but in a very different way. Rather than being scheduled, it was largely catch-up of projects that needed done at the beginning of school or that I hadn't had time for the previous week or earlier. We did have the open house on Wednesday evening. We decided it was a success, with about 25 people coming through in about 2.5 hours. Most/all of them took the time to go out and look around the sheds. Some of them commented that it wasn't quite what they expected--more books and shelves. I think most of them really didn't know what to expect.

Over the weekend, we clogged on both Saturday and Sunday (see JM's post).

This week, I'm visiting the Research & Writing classes and presenting about the library resources. There are five sections of the class. Two were on Monday (back-to-back), two were on Tuesday (including one at 8:30AM) and the last one is on Thursday (again at 8:30 AM).

Somewhere in the last week or so, I agreed to be a co-director for the Sparks at Awana for the coming year. So I attended the leader training on Saturday and have been going through the files figuring out how to best be prepared and organized for the year.

This weekend, I have a quick break before a whole string of scheduled weekends. Coming up:

Sat, Sept 1 - JM to the baseball game with the church guys
Sun-Mon, Sept 2-3 - Jer spends Labor day with us. (Maybe a birthday party.) No work on Monday.

Tues, Sept 4 - Short (15 min) presentation in Rhetoric

Fri, Sept 7 - Jer's Birtday!
Fri-Sun, Sept 7-9 - Yankee Peddler with JM's parents
[Sun, Sept 9 - Miss first night of AWANA.]

[Sat, Sept 15 - Jen & Stephen's wedding in TX]
Sat, Sept 15 - JM to Hershey Park with the Youth group for a day of Christian bands. I'll stay in the area and perform with BRTC and work at the library.

Tues, Sept 18 - PHC Faith & Reason Lecture (Classes are canceled all day for a speaker in the morning, followed by discussion groups and a panel discussion in the afternoon.)

Fri-Sun, Sept 21-23 - Jer visits.
Fri, Sept 21 - BRTC Board Meeting
Sat, Sept 22 - Fall Festival prep with Beth.

Fri-Sun, Sept 28-30 - Weekend to Remember.
[Sat, Sept 29 - Miss BRTC performance at Oktoberfest.]

Sat, Sept 29-Sat, Oct 6 - Banned Books Week. We are trying to decide what library activities we might want to plan for that week.
Fri-Sun, Oct 5-7 - PHC Homecoming
Fri-Mon, Oct 5-8 - Jer visits, including an extra day for Columbus Day.
Sat, Oct 6 - Fall Festival

Thur, Oct 11 - JM's Birthday!
Fri-Sun, Oct 12-13 - Renaissance Festival and camping with friends

I don't have anything big planned yet for a couple of weekends after that. Hopefully we really will have a weekend to relax and do nothing. (Of course, there will be stuf to do--dishes to wash, clothes to wash, maybe the lawn to mow or leaves to rake.)