Tombrarian

The LOEX of the West conference was a big success last week. We had about 240 attendees. I was on the planning committee and was tech support for the presenters. Had a few glitches, but, overall, things went smoothly. I wish I had time to get to more sessions, but I did get to a few.

I was able to get to this Pecha Kucha session:

Using elements of performance art in library instruction(.ppt)
Emily Missner - business librarian, Drexel University Libraries

Crazy Enough to Advertise for Mad Library Skills(.ppt)
Sara K. Kearns - Instruction Coordinator, Associate Professor, Kansas State University Libraries

How to become the most Googled person in your library(.ppt)
Tara Coleman - Science Librarian, Kansas State University

When More Than 100 Librarians Teach…..(.ppt)
Lisa Hinchliffe - Head, Undergraduate Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Yes, I got to meet (and hang out with) the infamous “Mad Skills” librarian.

And I got to these full sessions:

Programs that transform and renew: Developing librarian self-identity as teacher
Merinda Hensley - Instructional Services Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lisa Hinchliffe,- Head, Undergraduate Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Students Are the Stars: Making a (Subversively Instructional) Interactive Movie (.pps)
Ramona Islam - Senior Reference Librarian and Instruction Coordinator, Fairfield University
Leslie Porter - Reference Librarian, Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center

Developing a Flash Game to Teach Information Literacy Skills (.ppt)
Bee Gallegos - Librarian, Arizona State University at the West campus

I wish I could have gotten to more, but am glad that I was able to get to a few things. Being the media guru that I am, I cannot say enough good things about the video that Ramona Islam and Leslie Porter helped create.

We’ve started posting the presentation slides and Pecha Kucha slides, if available.

Although I spent most of the conference running around, I really enjoyed it. And, as always, the best part was meeting a lot a great people.

I went to a meeting of the Atomic Age Alliance last week. They are “a 501 c3 NON PROFIT organization dedicated to celebrating historic Mid Century Modernism and Atomic Age design, signage, architecture, culture and business through ongoing community advocacy, activism and educational programs.”

When I first started at UNLV, our Architecture Librarian mentioned this group to me, and it sounded interesting. I am a minor architecture buff, but I am very much a fan of other mid-century cultural artifacts, mainly literature and film. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve totally obsessed about Cold War films.

I forgot about the AAA until I had met the organizers at a holiday party. The Alliance meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month. I was out of town in January, so last week was the first chance I had to go since the holiday party.

It was a very interesting evening to say the least. The meeting was held at the Italian American Supper Club, but there also was a tour of the former Chamber of Commerce Building, which is scheduled for demolition. Because the power is off in this building, the organizers suggested that everyone bring flashlights, which turned out to be rather fortuitous. That night, we had a rather formidable wind storm. While driving there, I saw the blinding flash of a transformer blowing and then all of Sahara Ave. went dark. I arrived at the Supper Club, which was one of the many places affected by the power outage. Luckily, we all had flashlights, so the meeting went on as planned.

I particularly enjoyed this group because I am turned off by a lot of the superficial nature of The Strip. It was a pleasure to learn more about the history of Las Vegas and to get to know more of the “real” Vegas.

Taking pictures outside was quite a challenge in the 60+ mile an hour winds, resulting in crazy looking shots like this rather spooky view of the Stratosphere:

This was the best I could get of the front of the building (with the extra challenge of shooting over the fence):

And taking pictures inside was a challenge because of there being no lights, but it was certainly easier to deal with the darkness than the wind. The cool stone wall in the front room:

I have more photos posted here.

I’m looking forward to the next meeting and learning even more about my new home!

In lieu of actual content, I have changed the look of the site. I had been contemplating moving Tombrarian to a different host so that I could fiddle with it even more, but WordPress is providing more and more widgets and other ways of customizing the templates that I’m pretty content leaving it where it is. I was able to find a template that allows for a custom header which is something I’ve been hankering for. So, the image in the header is a picture I took. Currently, it’s of Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas (More of my Red Rock photos are here). Obviously, the cool part of the customizable header is that I can change the image whenever I want. That makes me happy.

So, if you have any recollection of the old look and/or have any opinion of the new look, let me know.

Many people we have met in Las Vegas suggested that we visit Mt. Charleston, which is about an hour outside of town. We finally got there over the Labor Day weekend. It wasn’t a very long trip since we got rained on, but enjoyable nonetheless. In fact, until it started raining hard, the rain felt good since we haven’t been rained on in months. And it was only about 80 degrees up there, which also felt good since it’s been over 100 degrees all but 1 day since we arrived.

I posted more pictures here.

Posted some pictures of Lied Library at UNLV: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomspix/sets/72157600800200347/

Moving across the country is certainly a crazy endeavor, but we made it. We arrived on June 19th, lived out of a hotel for almost a week, and moved into our apartment on the 25th. Started looked at houses last night.

I started my new job as Head, Media and Computer Services at Lied Library at UNLV on July 2nd and it has been going very well. I have a lot to learn, but that’s part of way moving 2400 miles was appealing. I wouldn’t travel that far to do the same old same old. As of now, the biggest part of the learning curve is getting acclimated to the size of the place. The university I’m coming from, La Salle, had about 4500 students; UNLV has about 28,000. The library has about 35 librarians, which is the size of the total staff of Connelly Library. Connelly had 9 librarians. Lied has a total staff of 112. That’s a lot of names to learn and plenty of people to meet with, which has been the bulk of my time since getting here.

With so much to do and learn, I hope to have plenty to report. Having the time to report it is, of course, the big issue. I do want to post more often, not only to keep track of my thoughts about what I’ll be doing here, but also to keep in touch with those I left behind on the East Coast. We’ll see what happens.

One of the odd things about my wife and I moving to Las Vegas is that neither of us are particularly impressed with the glitz of the strip. Which is why I have too many pictures of Red Rock Canyon (right outside of Vegas) and none of fake Eiffel Towers or Statues of Liberty. We went out to Vegas a couple of weeks ago to check out our future home.

Red Rock Canyon had a wildfire in 2005, so the growth is even more sparse than usual, but it still is quite amazing. And they have a tortoise habitat.