I Know What I Did This Summer

....and what a summer it has been! No doubt you have expected me to have been in vacation mode, with my blogging taking a back seat to summer sun. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. Summer 2007 has been unusual in that I have not slowed down as I usually do to enjoy the season. I have been pushing through on a number of projects. I now finally get to report back on a few of them:

• First and foremost has been the 4th Northeast Regional Law Libraries Meeting ("NE2007") being held in Toronto October 17 - 20, 2007, which I have been co-chairing along with Steve Weiter from Rochester, NY. Our conference title and theme is Libraries Without Borders II, playing off the last conference held in 1996. Working on this has been a bit like working on a large train. It took a little while to get going since we started working on it 3 1/2 years ago, but now it is full steam ahead! I am just trying to hold on and not get crushed. hahahaha!! We have a fantastic program lined up. I strongly urge you to have a look at the website http://www.librarieswithoutborders.net . News is being posted at our blog http://librarieswithoutborders.wordpress.com and we've created a wiki for participants to post and interact at http://librarieswithoutborders.pbwiki.com . I will be blogging more about this in future posts as I cajole you into attending. ;-)
• I have been teaching a one-day social networking tools course at the Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto. The deal is I was supposed to promote it via this blog, but it filled up so fast I didn't even get a chance to tell you, dear readers, about it before it was full. Much to my surprise! We have run classes on August 9th and 23rd. The next one is slated for September 14th and I believe that one is now sold out as well. Wow! More about that later.
• To be able to teach that course, I have been immersing myself in social networking tools such as Facebook, Google Reader and del.icio.us. If you have been in those spaces you may have seen me. I hope to have some links and observations to share with you as I go along. In some ways at least two of these have started to replace my link blogging over at Connie Crosby Links. This was not part of any sort of purposeful web strategy, but a natural progression. I still have to consider the implications for this blog site.
• I have been participating in the ebb and flow of life and "microblogging" over on Twitter. If you would like to follow along my "tweets", please feel free to find me--I go by connieblogger. (Hint: if you want me to reciprocate and follow you on Twitter, you need to put something meaningful into your profile so that I recognize you or see something we have in common).
• It has been a hectic summer at work. We have been re-evaluating our projects and services at the same time as welcoming articling students into our orientation program mid-summer. Not an easy feat!

My co-workers deserve a lot of credit, working with me and putting up with my periodic comings and goings as I take time off for teaching and meetings. I've done my best to be very present this summer during our changes. If anything has suffered, I would say it has probably been my blogging. Getting home in the evenings, I have barely had the energy to fire up the macbook much less think about putting two words coherently together.

Which reminds me, I have been also neglecting my column on LLRX.com. Owner/editor Sabrina Pacifici has not only been patient and understanding with my many excuses, but also been a strong personal support to me. I have at least a column or two buzzing in my brain after this summer of working and thinking, so I hope to rectify that shortly.

So, now, back to our regularly scheduled program! Happy reading, and I hope to be a little more connected all of you going forward.

Cheers,
Connie