things i look forward to in 2009

actually becoming a business librarian. sure i like to play with emerging tech and figure out how to use it in my library, but i plan on spending 2009 developing my knowledge  of business databases. Bloomberg, Datastream and WRDS – i will master you!

The Trotsky a movie written and directed by a friend from high school.  (well, we were kinda friends then, and everytime we bump into each other we have a good laugh, but i guess mostly i’m friends with his sister.) other than the cast being terrific, the one thing i will always remember about Jacob, and definitely why we still seem to have a good laugh whenever we bump into each other, is that he is a frickin’ smart and funny guy. the movie is about high school days as seen through jacob’s eyes, with Jay Baruchel as one of the main characters. i’m fairly confident this will be hilarious.

spending more time outdoors NOT playing rugby. the mister got me a pair of very fancy snow shoes two winters ago and i have yet to use them. (i suk. i know.) i plan to rectify this situation this winter. Mont Royal has lots of great trails for snowshoeing, what am i waiting for? (and Mont Royal Park was designed by the same dude that did Central Park in NYC).
also, there are at least five outdoor skating rinks within a 10 minute walk of my house (that is when the streets and sidewalks are not, in fact, skating rinks themselves) so i’m going to pick up a pair of second hand skates. i used to love skating at midnight in the winter – everything is so peaceful.
(this being said, i can’t wait to play rugby this summer. taking last summer off was good for me – and the first summer in 17 years that i didn’t play – but i missed my team mates, and the tackling. mostly the tackling.)

open access awesomeness. i really want to learn more about open access issues as they relate to publishing and libraries. i’ve worked in publishing a looong time (this is year 14) and i used to edit and now publish an open access journal (which i think more academic libraries should get involved in – i’ll talk about this at CiL2009) but i really want to know more and get a better idea of all that is involved with it.

meeting more librarians. social networks have been essential to my development as a librarian. i have no idea where i’d be know if i hadn’t hopped on second life two years ago (and yes, i do think that on top of everything else going on in SL, that it is also a social networking tool) where i met librarians from all over the globe who were quick to support me through my degree. and twitter, well twitter is still THE BEST THING EVAH as far as my professional development. (though friendfeed is proving to be a very close second – anything that almagamates all the different networks into one screen, is a good good thing.)
i also got to “meat” a lot of librarians this year thanks to all the conferences i managed to hit up – OLA in february (toronto), CiL in april (arlington), SLA in june (seattle), IFLA in august (quebec city), Access in october (hamilton), IL in october (monterey). next year will see less travel since i now have a full-time job which won’t cover ever single conference i want to go to (though they’ve definitely been good to me this year), but i will be at CiL in late march (arlington, encore), SLA in june (in DC), and i’ll be at the CLA emerging tech preconference at the end of may (montreal) since amanda and i organized the bad boy.  “meating” librarians is always the best part of conferences and i’ve made some pretty networks – especially with my fellow recent grads who ended up in academia. and to all those of you that i met this year – i am one lucky girl to know ya.