Category Archives: leep

Changes

Posted on by
2

There have been quite a few changes around here in the last few weeks. The major one for this blog is that I’ve upgraded it to WordPress 3.0 — a very smooth and easy process, by the way — and changed the theme to one of the ones that come with WordPress 3.0 because I liked it so much. The typography is easier to read and the theme is clean and uncluttered.

Another change is that I’m leaving my current job to go back to the library at the company where I work. I’m leaving information architecture to focus on managing the library’s web presence along with a few other people, starting July 12. I’m happy to be going back to a place with which I am familiar, to a setting where I think I belong.

I’ve also begun what I think is the fifth year of teaching an online course at UIUC GSLIS. This year is the first time I have used GSLIS’s new online classroom platform, called Elluminate, which is much more interactive and functional than the previous method of conducting classes over the Internet. One of the things I am most looking forward to in the class is the last online class session, when Tim Spalding of LibraryThing will join us to share his views on librarians, the future of books, library data, or anything else he deems important to discuss.

The class is drawing to a close

Posted on by
48

Tonight marks the second-to-last live session I will have with my students in the graduate library course I’m currently teaching. Time has flown by. As always, I learn things during the course that I can hopefully use in future teaching. One lesson I learned long ago is that an online curriculum is only as good as the technical infrastructure and support that is offered to it by the school. LEEP at the University of Illinois has a fantastic, dedicated, service-oriented support team and I am thankful for their help and responsiveness. There have been a few glitches here and there but they have been quickly addressed.

I’ll miss interacting with this group of students but at the same time — and I think they would agree — there’s something nice about hitting the home stretch. An awful lot of stuff has been compacted into a very short timeframe (eight weeks) during summer session.

I’m also looking forward to a faculty retreat to be hosted by the school at Allerton Park, a fabulous estate owned by the University of Illinois that is located near Monticello. It’s worth a visit just to see the gardens and the grounds, especially the sculpture scattered throughout. The retreat will be held over the course of two days in August and I have been asked to facilitate one of the sessions, a technology “show and tell.” I’m really looking forward to that.