Lisa A. Raney

Things have been a little busy since arriving back in town from ALA's Midwinter Meeting in January: almost as soon as I set foot back in town, most of my free time was devoted to an interview process with an out-of-state library in addition to extra hours I had picked up in my library's Outreach Department and later, my own department, as well as providing weekly tutoring at Chase Elementary. This spring and summer has been largely devoted to volunteering within my community and learning about entrepreneurship and starting a small business. I am preparing to offer freelance information services when I return from the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in July.

To expand a little on the above...

The interview process that I referred to above culminated with me being flown to the university for an on-site interview. It was very exciting, and a great experience during which I met some very friendly people. However, it was not meant to be, and so I remain in Cincinnati working in my part-time position in the Genealogy and Local History Department.

I primarily put together deposit collections in the Outreach Department -- some of the larger ones were 300 and 190 book deposit collections for correctional facilities, and there were also some smaller teacher collections and collections for convents.

In my own department, we spent the spring adding more points-of-interest to our Panorama, and currently have a very fun exhibit in our Rare Books and Special Collections room of prints displaying new "American Style" from the turn of the century, especially many produced by Currier and Ives. I proofed many of the new Points of Interest and the labels for the exhibit, spent a great deal of time helping to fine-tune our Veteran's History Project by fact-checking and verifying information for close to 400 vets, putting together countless binds and tracking down missing periodical issues, and have been busy checking in the hundreds of books we've received to the department in the past few weeks!

More to come about my adventures in community work later!