This is a blog I discovered over the summer. It has great tips and advice for how to organize your life and be more productive.
The title of this recent post is 11 Ways to Make This Your Best Semester Yet. Unfortunately, the author left out a very important way to help make this your best semester yet:
Visit the library
Ok, ok, I hear you. You’re thinking of course, you would say that. You’re a librarian. You love the library.
You’re right. I do. I love the library, but more importantly, I love seeing our students and faculty and staff in the library.
Here’s some things that you might want to do in the library to make it your best semester yet:
1. Ask a question at the reference desk. Librarians love to help people, so don’t hesitate to let us know how we can help you!
2. Sit in one of the green chairs and read something for fun. Browse the new book shelf or find a classic work of fiction. Look at our magazine collection. Read something from a journal you wouldn’t normally look at.
3. Get familiar with the library’s website. There’s lots of good info there that can save you time and effort when you need to do research.
4. Suggest a new book or video. We’d love to hear ideas from you about resources you need for a class.
Julie Roberson
8/31/07
P.S. Thanks to Dustin Wax, the author of the article linked above for pointing out his other post on 10 Steps to Better Research. Make that 12 things you can do to make this semester better.
Thanks for the comment. I would certainly advocate hitting the library, again and again, for students, but since I just gave the library heps of loving in my post on doing better research (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/advice-for-students-10-steps-toward-better-research.html) I didn’t want to repeat myself.
I admit that I do love the library, and I do love to read. That’s my favorite of the 11 items on the list. I always have at least one book going that is not “required” reading. I call it my horizontal reading program–reading I do in a horizontal position. No notetaking allowed. No underlining allowed.
Right now I’m reading a diary of a Confederate girl, who was living in Baton Rouge during 1862 and 1863. I picked this book up at an arcane bookshop called Bookworm and Silverfish. This 16-year old girl records what her life was like…how her brothers were all off fighting, how her mother was too hysterical most of the time to be any help to anyone, how she and her sister kept bags packed every day that they could grab at a moment’s notice and tie under their hoop skirts if the Federals should start the cannonade that was always an imminent threat.
The book before that one was a mystery by Robert Parker. Before that, America Alone by Mark Steyn.
My horizontal reading program. It keeps me sane in a crazy world.
I’m glad we have a library blog. Go Julie!
I love Katie’s term “horizontal reading program” and the no note taking or underlining. How freeing! Currently, I am indulging in two horizontal readings: Under the Tuscan Sun, which I can appreciate more since having the chance to go to Italy, and a book called The Melungeons, the Resurrection of a Proud People.