The party is over

How time flies when you are not going into the office every day. Hard to believe that the 6 months are over already. So the 6 million dollar question - what did I accomplish and was it worth it.
So here it is by the numbers:
7 - number of webinars I listened to. Was a participant in 1
10 - number of conference calls dialed into from home
15 - number of times I was on campus for meetings
1 - number of external review letters written
1 - number of articles reviewed
1 - number of conferences attended
50 inches - amount of snow shoveled this winter
245 - number of physical titles that will be added to the Penn State collection, so far
4 out of 11 - number of sections completed, so far
575 - total number of items added to Zotero database, so far

Still have a lot to do to complete the project but now that I have a routine it should go a lot faster. Also I have blocked out every Friday afternoon until the end of the year to continue to work on this.

More Progress

Thanks to work by Helen earlier this year the Rainforest section is now done. So that makes three down and eight to go. Only problem is the first three sections averaged under 70 items each and the next eight look like this:
Agroforestry 325
Ecology 355
Ethnobotany 199
Natural Resources Management 154
Soil 302
Sustainable Agriculture 367
Traditional Medicine 160
Water Management 177

Next goal is to finish Agroforestry by the end of January or earlier.

Happy New Year everyone

Progress ?

The last week has been good. Biodiversity has been completed and Aquatic Resources should be finished this afternoon. Went into the office to pick up the Rainforest items so I can work on them next week. To give you an idea of the size of the collection here is a photo of what I have at home:

And here is what I still have to work on:

And please don't ask what I have been doing for the past 3 1/2 months.

Realization

Just so the two of you actually reading this know, I am writing this more for me than you.
Sabbatical is now more than halfway over and I have come to the realization that I am not going to finish this by March. Time to change my goals. The problem is I am a perfectionist and was hoping to have perfect results. That is not going to happen. Each time I work on the bibliography I find more problems so the new goal is to get as much information as possible posted and not worry about little things like consistency in the use of tags and capitalization. Good news is that I have been finding unique items and they are being cataloged and added to the collection. There are also a number of items that are available online. Problems are items are missing and some are not matching up with the original bibliography.

I think this just shows that I will be able to handle retirement when the time comes. I like waking up at 8 and doing house stuff and then working on the project at night. Maybe I am part vampire ...
Word of advice for anyone out there thinking of applying for sabbatical - drop all other committee assignments. Basically this feels like I am working from home instead of my office. Hmm I wonder if I can keep this up once sabbatical is over?

Case in point - I have been working for the past hour on one that looks like report to the Canadian International Agency but could also have morphed into a book chapter. Time to give up and process it as a report and take their word on the author.

Lunch

Being on sabbatical means I can have what ever I want for lunch. So Ellen this one is for you. Leftover soup and baby goldfish crackers.

Progress

Progress has been made this week! I have actually been able to spend time reviewing the Biodiversity section of the collection. There are 63 titles in this section. So far I have seen book chapters, books, conference proceedings, and reports. Most interesting title today was Saga of a Star Fish. I can also see why people find it easier to work with two monitors. I need to have at least 3 programs open and running at the same time and switching from screen to screen is giving me a headache. The good news is so far the majority of the items have been available online or are book chapters from books available in the Life Sciences Library.

At least the home office is a bit larger than my library office, good thing because there are many many more folders to bring home. Yes the bit of red seen behind the chair is Pig's bed. Time to bring in the plants, heard something about possible flurries this evening.

Side bar

Spent part of the afternoon listening to an ARL webcast entitled "New Roles for New Times: Transforming Liaison Roles". I am now going to read the actual report Transforming Liaison Roles in Research Libraries. I am the first to admit I don't like change and if this is the direction we are heading in retirement might be coming sooner rather than later. Or maybe it is not change, it is what we are already doing but just not being recognized for it.

I am now conflicted because Trend 5 in the report is "collaboration is key." while earlier this afternoon I listened to a story on Radio Hour about too much collaboration being a bad thing.
So I suppose like all things - moderation is key. Maybe being on sabbatical is giving me too much time to read and listen to these "new" trends. And by the way if I hear the term ______ Commons one more time I am going to scream.

On a more positive note the last of the materials from the annex found their way over to the Life Sciences Library so now they are all in a space I can get to anytime I want. Just have to figure out what happened to the Zotero button on my computer at home ....

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