Art, artifacts, + snacks
Do you know when you don’t look at your paper citations for a while, then you do, and think ‘wow I had no idea I had reached this huge milestone at some point this year?’
I hadn’t checked my Google Scholar profile for a few months, and during that time my citations shot up to over 100 (as of this writing, I’m cited in 104 places).
I’m cracking open a bottle of champagne (ok, sparkling wine) this evening to celebrate.
I’m beyond excited to announce that I’ll be serving as the new Editor for the Fine Press Book Association’s journal, Parenthesis. The journal combines theory and practice in a way I really enjoy, and I have some big shoes to fill from the previous editors, who have cultivated a journal known for its strong reviews and compelling writing. Is there something new you want to see in the journal? Something we’re doing already that you love? Let me know in the comments!
Hello readers!
Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve published the e-book from the Modernizing Markham project in the Kindle Store. It has all the recipes, plus lots of suggested readings, information on book and culinary history, and some insights about what I learned from blogging and tweeting about historic materials.
The book will also be available as a print on demand book, in the iBookstore, and in the Nook bookstore in the coming weeks and months as things get finalized through Lulu.
Also, my other food blog is now available as a Kindle subscription.
Happy reading!
Here are the funding resources I have found this week–in addition to the usual travel grants and such, I have found some funding resources for those in the life sciences that I’ve included.
Support for Faculty/Postdocs
UC San Diego Academic Senate Research Support: For members and those working with members.
CV Starr Center Fellowships: For those writing book-length manuscripts on the Revolutionary war and founding ideals.
McNickle Fellowship: At the Newberry Library; for American Indian Studies.
Postdoctoral Fellowships in Japanese Studies: For recent PhDs to turn their dissertations into publishable manuscripts.
CLIR Fellowships: Postdoctoral fellowships in academic libraries.
Travel Grants for On-Site Research and Conference Attendance
3M/NMRT Travel Grant: For those attending the American Library Association Annual Conference.
Anne S. Brown Military Collection: Travel grants for researchers, artists, and writers to use the collection.
Cushwa Center for Study of American Catholicism: Grants for use of the center’s collections.
Visiting Fellowships: At the Houghton Library (rare books and manuscripts library at Harvard).
Norberg Travel Fund: For those studying the history of information technology to visit the Babbage Institute.
Humanities, Technology, and Social Sciences
Program on US-Japan Relations: Associates (scholars, businesspeople, journalists, etc.) from Japan and the U.S. Also have research fellowships available for faculty.
Methodology, Management, and Statistics: Grants for the development of analytical and statistical methods.
Smithsonian Fellowships: Predoctoral/Graduate and Postdoctoral.
Harry S. Truman Library: Grants for researchers and for those writing dissertations on Truman.
Allen Fellowship: To support the work of women of Native American heritage.
Advanced Simulation and Training Fellowships: For dissertation research; students must be in school in the U.S. or Canada but there seem to be no citizenship restrictions.
Visiting Fellowships: Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Fellowships: Institute for French-American Studies.
Rediscovering Afghanistan: Funding for projects focusing on Afghanistan’s history and culture.
Arts
Individual Artist Fellowships: For artists in New Hampshire.
Art Apprenticeship Program: For Idaho residents to learn as apprentices to other artists.
Scholarships/Fellowships
United Negro College Fund: Scholarships for students at participating universities.
Dolores Liebman Fund: For graduate studies at select schools.
Folklore Fellowships: For newly-admitted graduate students at Utah State. The website says 2009, but the e-mail I got says they are offering it again. I’d be happy to forward it to anyone who is interested.
Life and Natural Sciences
Mote Marine Lab Internships: For college students (undergrad or grad) and recent graduates.
High Altitude Observatory Scientific Visitors: For collaborative projects at HAO in Boulder, CO (my home town!)
Summer Undergraduate Internships: At the High Altitude Observatory.
Awards in Tropical Botany: For PhD students.
Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise: Postdoc opportunities at UCAR.
Student Membership Awards: The American Ornithologists’ Union.
Research Awards: From the Marine Biological Institute.
International Opportunities and Opportunities for non-US residents:
Japan-Language Education Overseas: Covers costs for educators teaching the Japanese language outside of Japan to travel to the country for training. There are a number of opportunities for training through the Japan Foundation.
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science: Postdoctoral and dissertation fellowships.
International Development Research Centre: Visiting Fellowships available for faculty. Other pages on the site have information about funding for graduate students and other scholars from Canada and developing countries.
Japan Outreach Initiative Coordinators: For Japanese nationals to work in the U.S.
Terra Summer Residency: For the study of art and visual culture in America. Residencies take place in Giverny, France.
Goldmann Fellowship Program: For those studying Jewish culture.
Terra travel grants: For those outside the US to come to the country to study American art.
Short-Term Travel Grants: For those studying Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Balkans.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything besides funding updates (grad school will do that to you!) but I have been wanting to post something on listservs for a while. I’m of the opinion that listservs are a stellar way to stay informed about the field, learn about funding and conferences, and more. In fact, several of the publications I’ve been involved in were ones I learned about through listservs. This is especially great for students and new professionals, who are still feeling out their place in the field and want to learn from others. They are also great for anyone who wants to keep up to date on funding opportunities and calls for papers (two of my big focuses right now!)
Below is my “list of lists”–websites that you can go to and sign up for listservs that interest you. Since my focus is in LIS, Social Sciences, and the Humanities, that’s where I have focused my attention–if you know of a similar site I haven’t included, feel free to add it!
ALA Mailing List Service: All the listservs run through the American Library Association. I am an ALA member, but it looks like non-members can sign up too. Just follow the instructions when you hit ‘subscribe.’ After you complete the steps the first time, your e-mail address will be subscribed to other lists with one click.
H-Net Discussion Networks: H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences online) is an awesome resource. They have calls for participation, conference alerts, and a heaping helping of listservs spanning just about every interest. By adding yourself to the lists you are most interested in, you’ll get updates from H-Net (which is very extensive and daunting to browse through) that are relevant to your chosen topics.
Conference Alerts: Most people I know haven’t heard of this one, which makes me feel like I am sharing some great secret with them. This site is incredible–it lists conferences from all over the world and across disciplines. You can search by country or topic. You can also sign up for e-mail alerts that you can customize to include whatever topics you want and whatever countries you want (I have mine set to tell me about conferences in all countries.) Then you’ll get occasional e-mails with a list of upcoming conferences that meet your criteria. I like to browse the list not only to find what conferences I might attend, but also to see if any of my current projects might fit into a call for papers.
WikiCFP: A resource for calls for papers in science and technology. You can sign up for an account, and create your own list of topics you want CFPs for. They also alert followers to new CFPs on Twitter (@WikiCFP.)
Last week, I wrote a guest post for ACRLog on my changing search habits as a graduate student. I’ve been pretty quiet on my own blog lately as I try to settle into my groove of reading and writing at the doctoral level. It’s been much more intense than my Masters work, but very rewarding and fun too! I’ll be writing about the first month soon, in the meantime, head over to my guest post to see what I’ve been up to!
Maria Accardi, Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier. Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods, 2009, Library Juice Press: Duluth, MN.
Visit the publisher’s website here: http://libraryjuicepress.com/
I got a review copy of this book a while back (thank you, Rory Litwin!) and have been reading this book in spurts for the last month. It doesn’t normally take me that long to read a book, but I found myself spending so much time highlighting and making notes in the book that it took me several hours to read each chapter (also, graduation and such has made life busy.) I requested a copy hoping to review it from the perspective of someone who is about to begin instructing students, and during the time I read the book I was impressed by how much I could translate the findings from the book into the classroom, and how much positive feedback I heard about the book when I mentioned that I was reviewing it.
Continue reading “Book Review: Critical Library Instruction”
Today B Sides Journal hosted a lunchtime presentation by Dr. Jim Elmborg about publishing for LIS students. Jim is incredibly insightful and deeply passionate about the success of his students, which meant that we walked away with some great perspective on publication in our field. I wanted to share my notes from the talk so other students and professionals can benefit from his ideas! The talk was incredible, and I am going to focus on a few of the big take-aways that will help me as I continue to publish and encourage LIS students to do the same.
1. Examine your motives: *Why* is it that you want to publish? Are you just doing it because you’re required to or want a line on your resume, or are you doing it because you love to investigate problems and share ideas? It’s important to check your motives to make sure that it’s something you genuinely want to do (as Jim said, you don’t want to be in a place where you’re required to publish but don’t have a desire to.) Once you’ve decided you want to write this research, start looking at ways to build up your writing habits. Jim draws from fiction writing tools that I plan to draw on as I continue writing. First, never quit writing for the day without knowing what your next paragraph will be. When you start writing next, it will be much easier because you already have a clear direction and know what you need to do next. Also, look at the iceberg metaphor (what you’re writing is only a part of the knowledge that you have that’s informing your perspective.) The more you write, the more you’ll feel frustrated (or at least I do) by not having a chance to put in every piece of information you know. For most things you write, no one will want to read a 5-10 page lit review, a detailed description of every theory that you’re drawing from, or an agonizingly long and tedious breakdown of your library’s usage statistics. These things have their place (enter, footnotes) but you are going to have a lot more going on than will fit nicely in the paper. If you find that your paper represents your exhaustive knowledge of the topic, it’s time to go back and look at it further.
Continue reading “Publishing in LIS: Marrying Theory and Practice”
A lot of discussion has been circulating about the future of librarianship in response to comments made by Jeffrey Trzeciak (of McMaster University) indicating that he wouldn’t hire any more librarians, preferring instead to give certain positions to people in IT or with PhDs. I agree that in many instances you might want to consider candidates from a variety of backgrounds, but to discount librarians (especially coming from the University Librarian himself!) is an indication of how deeply our field is misunderstood. I first read about it through Jenica Rogers’ post, which I think provides a great intro to the subject and some awesome perspective on why we need advocacy as professionals (not just as a profession or as institutions.) My fellow Hack Library School editors, along with Courtney Walters and a few others, began discussing the topic via Twitter (I was at work, so didn’t get to jump in until after the fact!) If you’re interested in seeing the discussion, look for #savelibrarians. In addition, some blog posts have started going up to discuss our future as professionals–a great post in particular is Courtney Walter’s discussion of our identity crisis as librarians/info pros.
Continue reading “LIS education, Advocacy, and the Future of Librarianship”
>Tomorrow everyone on this side of the pond will be tucking in to large plates of food in celebration of Thanksgiving. That holiday came a day early for me when I (finally!) finished writing my paper on World War I-era Iowa libraries. The project evolved a lot from when I started about a year ago, and I ended up with a paper that is about 190 pages long (including tables, bibliography, etc.) I learned a lot about my writing style and about how I work best, and I think a few of those things might be good to jot down here for my fellow students (in LIS programs or otherwise) who are undertaking large writing projects:
Continue reading “>My World War I Research is Finished!”
Julia C. Skinner 