the pod bay door

.: I’ve been busy on two fronts: work, where I am preparing lectures on various aspects of research and information gathering skills for four different classes, three in mechanical engineering, and one in chemical engineering. As well, I am now a column editor for the journal, Internet Reference Services Quarterly, and need to compose my first submission before leaving for NYC on October 7th. Best working title for the column so far is Digital Musings.

At home, I’ve been working on the main floor bathroom renovations: painting as much of the walls as I can before having the toilet removed to finish the job (so to speak), and installing vinyl tile on the floor. I hope to have this finished by the end of the month, but will need help from friends to complete the work.

.: Another new term begins this week at universities and colleges around the world. Tomorrow, I teach my first research skills class to ~175 second-year students in chemical and materials engineering. I have more classes later this month, for which I need to prepare new presentations or revise older ones. I look forward to it all with a mix of excitement and trepidation, with the campus about to increase in population by about 35,000, as the students descend upon us once again.

This is the time of year when summer seems to recede each day with a little more urgency. The leaves on some of the trees in my cul-de-sac have turned yellow or red, and are beginning to fall, and you can feel the cool evening air each night. It was a relaxed Labour Day weekend for the most part, mixed in with my usual anxieties. I didn’t get a bike ride in this weekend, despite encouragement from Tony, who has had better luck with MT 3.2 than did I. I saw The Constant Gardener on Sunday, one of the two best movies I’ve seen this year, the other being Crash. I also had dinner on Saturday night and tonight, at the homes of good friends.

I’m exhausted, all the time. There is always too much to do, with not enough time to do it. The only constant is the number of hours in the day. In the past two weeks, I wasted spent too much time wrestling with Movable Type 3.2. One reason I switched to WordPress (for now, anyway), is that our internal blogs at work have migrated to WP as well. It is open source, which my colleagues support in a big way, and so far, it’s working fine.

Sleep now, I think.

:: Happy Birthday to me.

:: Haven’t posted much lately, been too busy with work and other activities. I am flying to Winnipeg on July 1 for a 9-day visit. My house remains a disaster area, with boxes and assorted materials, curios, doodads, books, CDs, papers and other junk laying about, the aftermath of the continuing, no-end-in-sight home renovation project.

I am hoping to switch over to WordPress sometime soon.

:: I renewed my membership in the GeekBoy Club this evening by purchasing two advance tickets to the May 19th, 1830 hrs showing of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. The early reviews are mostly positive, with the Critics Tomatometer reading 86% positive as of this evening. A number of reviewers are calling it the best SW installment since The Empire Strikes Back, which was directed by Irvin Kirshner.

:: Everything continues to move at a fast pace. Tonight I blew away Norton Internet Security 2005, despite having paid for a full year’s subscription. I’d grown tired of its increasing sluggishness, error messages, and for the past couple days, preventing me from connecting to my ISP. I replaced it with avast!, at the suggestion of Geoff. I’ve been running Microsoft AntiSpyware, which seems to function quite well as a firewall for now. The only thing I don’t like about avast! so far is that it unleashes a siren sound, followed by a woman’s voice saying, “Warning, there is a virus on your computer”; however, I could turn the sound off, but for now, I’m still learning how to use it.

:: I am pleased to report the publication of an article¹ co-authored by your humble correspondent and the amazing Geoff Harder, my friend and colleague (on the other side of the wall in my office). The article, “Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries“, briefly covers the history of blogs and considers how they can be put to good use in the science and technology library setting:

Weblogs, or blogs, emerged in the late 1990s on the Web, quickly becoming a new way to communicate ideas, opinions, resources and news. Since that time, the community of blogs has grown to encompass specific subject areas of study and research. This article briefly discusses the history and background of blogs, including blogging software. Literature searches suggest very little has been published on subject-specific blogs in scientific and technical publications. Applications in science and technology librarianship are discussed, including team and project management, reference work, current awareness, and the librarian as blog mentor for students.

Please note that my work e-mail address listed in the article and on the Haworth web site is incorrect, and should read randy.reichardt@ualberta.ca.

I’ve written or co-written a small number of articles in my professional life, but this is the first peer-reviewed article I’ve had published, which is a nice accomplishment, if I may be so bold.

1. Reichardt, Randy and Geoffrey Harder. 2005. “Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries.” Science & Technology Libraries, 25(3), p105-116.

Update: The pdf version of the article is here.