Storming the Gates (New Job, New Place)

As some of you may know I had a rather whirlwind summer which led to me starting a new job August 2nd as an Assistant Professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.

For those of you who read my previous post, Sunday June 27th at ALA Annual was the day I attended my committee meeting for the Residency Interest Group, this was great fun and I think the group is starting to move in a very positive and useful direction.

Sunday was also the day I decided to accept the offer of employment I received from Dean Joan Giesecke of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. This great piece of news really capped the whole ALA Annual experience for me and since August 2nd I have had the great pleasure (and occasional moments of terror) at being an Assistant Professor with the Research and Instructional Section as a Subject Librarian for the areas of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, and the Cedar Point Biological Research Station.

I highly recommend that anyone else considering a cross-country move try and take more time than I did as it was the definition of chaos to find a place to live, pack, and move in about 3 weeks from the paperwork getting on file with administration. I have to give a lot of credit to the staff in the Dean of Libraries office, and to Bekins/Thornton Moving & Storage for moving both my furniture and my car way faster than the originally estimated. I received everything within 5 days of pickup instead of the 7-15 days I was told to expect. I have to give credit to the university for contracting with such a great moving company (if you try them and have a problem please don’t blame me.)

So now I’ve been here just over a month and this is my first post, why is that? Well there are really two reasons. 1) Unpacking an entire 2 person household mainly by yourself takes forever and the boxes stare at you mockingly, thankfully my husband arrived a couple weeks ago and things are shaping up well, we even bought furniture this weekend at the famous Nebraska Furniture Mart (Yay, I’ll have something to sit on other than a folding chair at home!). 2) The University of Nebraska Lincoln, and its library resources, are huge. Even though I’ve had multiple orientation activities a week (plus 8 thirty minute subject specific one-shots) I expect I won’t complete all of them until November or December which sounds and occasionally feels a bit overwhelming, but overall it’s really great to work somewhere that people want to teach you how they do things so that you can succeed. Between work and home I’ve been running around like a whirling dervish but that is mostly out of my system and I can start moving again with more deliberation as I find my place in the faculty of UNL, as a Librarian, and in Nebraska.

So now that you know basically what I’ve been up to how are you?