one month down

So you all (Ellen) have been wondering how the first month of sabbatical has gone. To tell you the truth it went by in a flash and I am still adjusting to this new schedule. I spent time outside trying to catch up on weeding the garden. Still have half of it to go. And keeping an eye on the pumpkins. Ended up with 9 of them. Had the opportunity to go to NY for the holidays which was nice.

Okay that was the fun part now what did I do that was actually related to sabbatical? Unpacked 25 bins of materials. (See photo in the first post) and still have more to go before the entire collection has been moved to the Life Sciences Library. Made sure my home computer was set up properly so I can get to Zotero (thanks Helen.) Also kept up with 3 ongoing committee commitments. Speaking of which it is time for a conference call.

One week to go

Count down to sabbatical is now under a week. Still waiting for the materials to be transferred from the annex to Life Sciences. Of course just as I think I can start concentrating on the project 3 or 4 other things pop up. So here is the list of things that I will be working on concurrently with the sabbatical project:
Reviewing an article for the Journal of Agriculture and Food Information
Reviewing a report for the Ceres project/ Center for Research Libraries
Updating my dossier
Working on the STS Oberly Award task force report
Completing the mandatory Reporting Child Abuse Training
Updating Collection Development policy statements
USAIN Preservation and Digital Libraries Committee conference presentation
Reviewing AgNIC Governance and By-laws document, Guidelines document, serve on the nominations committee and serve as the convener of the Service awards committee
This should be fun ...

one month to go

It is now August which means I have one month until the sabbatical officially begins. Here is some more background information on the project. The 2000+ items did not come with an inventory but someone (thanks Helen) was able to find the original bibliography. The problem is that it was done with some really old technology which makes it very difficult to use. So I will be spending time recreating the bibliography using Zotero. This way the records can be tagged and links can be added if full text is available.
If you want to see what this looks like so far go to:
http://icik.psu.edu/psul/icik/cikard.html

I realize this blog is visually boring and I will try and add some pictures later on.

CIKARD collection

I have been getting questions, mostly from family, asking what I was doing for my sabbatical. 
The (official) reason for this leave is to enhance access to the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Rural Development (CIKARD) collection which is comprised of over 2000 reports, thesis, articles, and books pertaining to indigenous knowledge for agricultural and rural development.

This is a photograph of the first time I saw the Iowa State CIKARD collection. It was August 2010 and the location was the Penn State University Library annex. Two pallets of cartons had just been delivered and we were unpacking the materials.

Okay so what exactly is the purpose of a sabbatical. According to Penn State HR17
"To provide a leave of absence with pay for purposes of intensive study or research which has as its outcome increasing the quality of the individual's future contribution to the University. A sabbatical is a privilege which may be granted to an individual who has demonstrated by publication, teaching, exhibition or performance an above average ability in scholarship, research, or other creative accomplishment."

There you have it. Sounds simple enough but that is actually just the tip of the ice berg. I am sure other side projects will show up. Maybe something to do with the new UNESCO chair in Rural Community Leadership, and Youth Development or maybe an internship with the Smithsonian Institute.

Stay tuned