I jump-start my annual self-evaluation process with a low-level text analysis of my work log, essentially composed of “done” and “to do” bullet points. I normalized the text (e.g. emailed to email and Digital Collections to digitalcollections), removed personal names, and ran the all “done” items through Wordle.
2015–16 was my fourth year in my job and the fourth time I did this. (See 2012–13, 2013–14, and 2014–15). I do this because it can be difficult to remember what I was up to many months ago. It’s also a basic visualization of where my time is spent. The more an item is mentioned, the more days I worked on it for at least an hour or so. (Which may be misleading — I think I spent more hours on teaching and prep for teaching, but because I staffed the ref desk for a short shift on more days, “refdesk” appears larger.)
What did I do at my job this year?
- teaching: I taught a library instruction session (“one-shot”) in 16 on-campus classes and 5 online classes. I taught twice as many classes as I did last year.
- embedded: For each online class, I was embedded in the Blackboard course for a full week, posting material and answering questions in the forum. (See my post about this.)
- socialmedia: I post things on Twitter and Facebook, along with several colleagues. I run the Instagram account all by me onesy.
- bssl: I published four columns in Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian. (See all.)
- murdermystery: I ran this super-fun activity in the spring semester and began preparing for a summer session.
- refdesk: I staffed the Reference Desk for 105 hours.
- chat: I staffed chat and SMS for 77 hours. (I replaced “chatted with X” with “meeting” to disambiguate.)
- drupal, digitalcollections, and onesearch: Worked on web stuff that runs the library websites.
I also emailed a lot and had a lot of meetings. What’s also interesting is how much I used the word prep. This is often related in the work log to teaching, and I did teach double the number of classes I taught last year. But I think it also reflects an improvement in my time management skills!
I am also trying really hard to carve out more time for reading. At work, I mostly read articles and blogs related to the intersection of technology and library practices, with a healthy dose of DH and privacy activism.
