I have been lucky to work with first-year students for three years now, building on each year’s successes (and failures) to improve each time as I set out to work with the WRTR classes, a required course for research and writing. It has also helped that I’ve worked with one Read more…
One of the professors from the Women and Gender Studies department reached out to me a month ago and asked if I’d be interested in doing a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon under the aegis of Art+Feminism. I’d never edited anything on Wikipedia, and had certainly never taught others how to do so, Read more…
As our social sciences librarian is retiring at the end of the year, I have been asked to serve as the temporary social sciences librarian through the end of the spring term while SMU Libraries conducts a search for a full-time replacement. I’ll be able to continue my work on Read more…
It’s strange to see that the Fall 2021 semester has been billed as back to normal while, well, not everything is. As with so many others on and off campus, we are doing our best to help students adapt to life on campus, whether they are first-time students or returning Read more…
Today is my last first day of a session for graduate school. Given all of the road bumps that have been in my path over the last two years, it’s hard to believe that the end is in sight. I have been lucky to have peers to work with outside Read more…
As another challenging school year comes to a close at Southern Methodist University, we continue to discuss ways to help students not just survive but thrive as their final projects are turned in and they prepare for another finals week where many are not on campus. Finals week events used Read more…
Last year, I was preparing to teach my first class in twenty years. I prepped my slides and discussed the in-person presentation with my boss. I was anxious, but didn’t realize a pandemic would completely shift how I had to teach my one-shot session – I had to teach via Read more…
Libraries and publishers have been in the news again as arbiters of cancel culture and censorship after the foundation that publishes the books of Dr. Seuss decided not to continue to publish six of his books. The foundation had determined that images of some minorities in these books are “hurtful Read more…
As with so many campuses, we approach another finals week trying to determine how to help students when they will most likely not be on campus during said finals week. Students will be away from campus for 9 weeks – that’s a long time to have to continue to study Read more…
When people consider the library as the center of the community, they often think of the public library. But through my classes this semester, we are exploring ways that the academic library is a central part of a college or university community as well. For example, SMU Libraries has been Read more…