Category Archives: Updates

Taking a break from social media

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At the end of the day Friday I started a 3-week vacation that will take me through to the start of the new year. Given that my primary goal during this time is to rest and recuperate from the past year, I thought I would be a good idea to take a break from social media during this time as well.

To do this, I’ve decided to deactivate both my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I felt such a drastic measure was necessary (“why not just log off from both sites”) mostly because my habit of checking these sites is so strong that I needed to have a formal wall in place for those times that I slip and “accidentally” check in. I have deleted the apps from my devices and bookmarks from my browsers, so that will help as well.

In any case, I just wanted to post a note here in case anyone connected to me in either of those places noted my absence and was wondering what had happened. Nothing to worry about, no drama, just a decision to take a break! I’ll be back first week of January. See you all in the new year!

New responsibilities

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In addition to my current portfolio (user experience and support), I am now also responsible for coordinating what we refer to as IT production support for the entire Library. This involves coordinating the work of several teams to ensure that the IT infrastructure (everything from public and staff workstations to e-classroom technology to printers to software licenses to…) is running smoothly and effectively supports the staff and users of the Library.

More specifically, this will involve:

  • Coordinating the purchasing of hardware and software for all Library units
  • Reviewing inventory and supporting the budgeting for future IT needs
  • Acting as a liaison with branches and other library units to ensure their issues are being resolved and their IT needs are being met
  • Acting as a liaison with McGill IT to review support issues and act as a point person for any initiatives or projects involving the Library

Although it was only formally announced internally today, I’ve been working in this role in November. My first priority has been to dive into the backlog of issues and request and do whatever I can to move things forward. I’ve also been learning a lot about who does what and how things are done, and I’ve been using that understanding to start planning some new ways of working.

There is a lot of work to be done here, and I expect it will take a significant amount of my time until I can get new policies and workflows in place. Once that happens, not only will there be less friction involved in getting things done, but I’ll also have things organized to the point there I can hand part of the work off to other people on my team.

Although this work is far removed from my role as a academic librarian, the reality is that this is an area that has been neglected for quite some time and has a direct impact on both the productivity of our staff and, I guess you could say, the user experience of people using our facilities. It is also an area that I have some experience in and where I know that my efforts will provide real value to the Library. It isn’t going to be easy, and I’m going to have to prioritize and delegate some of my other work in order to make this work, but I believe that in the end it will be worth it.