State of the Kiyomi, Sabbatical, DEI, and More

Happy Fall! It seems like each year my annual update gets a little later in the year. I’ve finally unburied my email a little and have time to take a little break and provide an update. The lovely graphic on this post is for our newest SciPop Talk and was created by our fabulous graphic designer Erin Colonna.

For the first 6 months of 2019, I was on sabbatical, I highly recommend it!  I spent my time working on finishing up old manuscripts and working with Mark Puente, Director of Diversity and Leadership, Association of Research Libraries. I was named Visiting Program Officer for Diversity and Leadership and continue to work with Mark now that I am back at UNL.

Puente, M.A., Deards, K.D. (2019). Moving from talk to action: What does successful institutional change related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) look like? IDEAL’19: Advancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Libraries & Archives. [Presenter]. [Refereed].
Click here for a PDF of our slides

You can read about some of the work that I do as I science librarian and outreach/event planner in the following works:

Lai, R., Deards, K. Harry Potter x Science: Pop Culture as a Strategy for Science Engagement. CAISE (Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education) Newsletter. September. [Edited.]
https://www.informalscience.org/news-views/harry-potter-x-science-pop-culture-strategy-science-engagement

Harrington, E.G. (2019). Academic Libraries and Public Engagement with Science and Technology, Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing [Interview].

You can also read my most recent collaboration with Leo Lo for free:

Deards, K. D., Lo, L. S. (2019). Establishing Your Professional Identity. In Hodge, M. (Ed.), The Future Academic Librarian’s Toolkit: Finding Success on the Job Hunt and in Your First Job, Chicago, IL: ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries). [Refereed].
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/377/

In 2020 you will find me at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Philidelphia:

[Forthcomming]. Deards, K. (2020). Communicating science with little (or no) budget: Design rules and tricks for the non-artist. American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition, Division of Chemical Information, Scientific Visualizations & Creative Presentations. [Presenter]. Date: TBD

Currently, I am productive and covering Chemistry, Biochemistry, Forensic Science, Physics and Astronomy and Water. I continue to coordinate outreach for our SciPop talks and interactive events, and for the Nebraska Local Section of the American Chemical Society. In addition, I was elected the 2019-2020 Secretary of the Libraries Faculty, and serve on several other committees related to work, STEM, and mentoring. I have one formal and one informal draft in review by peers before last looks and journal submission/passing the document off to a committee. I have one incomplete manuscript that I hope to complete before the end of the year, I managed to recode several hundred responses while on sabbatical and have kept my lit review up to date so we shall see what December brings.

Crowd Sourcing Design

Earlier this week I asked about iconic images in Chemistry on Twitter. Below if the storify of the results:

While many of these images come to mind for me I wanted to ask others what they thought. I’m working with a graphic designer to create some promotional materials for graduate students and wanted to gather more than just my personal opinion on what stood out as iconic. So often we skip the ask others stage in design, which is fine if we’re making something for ourselves. Even if you don’t have time to do a huge study you can usually find some people on one or more social media sites who are happy to weigh in and help you crowd source ideas.