Physical Search Box by Josh Ellingson, via Flickr user WillowGarage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/willowgarage/4788324036/

While I considered myself fairly adept at online searching in general and using Google in particular, there were things lurking behind the Advanced Search options that made me balk.  Date ranges and searching within websites, but filetype?  Those colour options in the Image Search?  Some features had been added since I’d focused on mastering online searching skills (aka grad school), and while I was picking up tips and tools through Google-a-Day, I discovered that far too often, I found the answer and then moved on, without looking at the tricks recommended by Google.

So when I saw announcements last year for a free online course titled “Power Searching with Google“, it sounded like a great opportunity.  Taught by Senior Research Scientist Daniel M. Russell, the course uses online videos, exercises, and assignments to help users learn more about how to effectively and efficiently search and retrieve valuable results using Google. There were Google+ hangouts, and Google+ was used as a forum on which participants could share strategies, experiences, and insight.

Although I generally keep up with courses more easily when there are in-person classes, which require regular completion of homework, the structure and management of this online course proved much more conducive to learning than I had expected.  With segments and assignments posted online, I could study from wherever I had Internet access — the office during lunch or at home after work.  Though videos and activities were posted on a regular schedule and there were deadlines for the assignments, I could pursue the course on a fairly flexible schedule — any day of the week, any time of day.  I found this particularly useful as I could cover six lessons at once on my days off and not feel like I had to sacrifice sleep to keep up with the course. Although I missed out on the live sessions and conversations (due to the time differences or previously scheduled work or social meetings), I could see how such interchanges could add a great deal to the value of the course for participants and instructors alike.

Now, Google has followed up on this training module with a new one, “Advanced Power Searching with Google“. The two-week long course began 23 January 2013 and offers opportunities for those who completed the previous course to further hone their skills and Google-fu. The same format is being used — videos, online activities, hangouts and forums — and I’m enjoying the course so far.

If you missed the chance to take the first course or to join this second course, never fear!  Course materials for the first course are available online and more details on future availability of the second course should become available from the Power Searching with Google page in the near future.

But now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some online training videos to catch up on and two assignments to complete!  Get out there and happy searching!

Album Cover for Talking Heads’ “Fear of Music”

Originally, I was going to use this title for a pithy list of challenges and opportunities related to the dissertation process for the Spring semester (which is, indeed, no disco).  Upon reading feedback from my students for the Fall semester, I decided to take this title in a different direction, and that is expectations of work and readings in college.  College is serious business, and while there are so many opportunities to enjoy in college, there is still a deeper meaning for why you have dedicated four years and many economic resources to undertaking this education.  The title is not meant to be dismissive, but rather a unifying lyric for the amount of work it takes to get through it all.  What you will find below is some honest and helpful advice to manage expectations for students entering the world of higher education for the first time.  Sometimes it seems daunting, and even overwhelming, when faced with the syllabus and reading list for the first time.  There are also some protocol lessons that you just do not realize as a newbie.  Here are my best “lessons learned” to share with you:

1. Readings: there will be many.  A consistent question that I got throughout the semester was “Why are there so many readings?  Are we supposed to read this much?” In my experience, professors are very intentional with the readings they assign to their students.  It’s not a trick, nor busy work.  The purpose of the readings are to supplement the discussions you are having in class as well as transmitting valuable information to students.  It’ll be a lot.  Develop strategies and read what you can meaningfully so you do not get burnt out.  Dartmouth has put together a great collection of resources for managing your reading load that can help with this.
2. It’s not about checkboxes.  It is about quality and depth.  You are here to learn, to experience, and to grow.  While high school often feels like a sprint to the finish as you try to fit in as many extracurriculars, languages, experiences, and AP courses to add to your resume, College is now an opportunity to deepen experiences.  Try new things, but also use the resources and colleagues you have surrounding you to become a specialist or to dive into a topic about which you always wanted to learn more.  Whether it is maximizing library resources or participating in a co-op, college affords you access to experiences and resources that are unique and sometimes once in a lifetime.
3. Grades are earned, not given. While seemingly obvious, students often utter the phrase “Professor X gave me a B in this class.”  Think about the effort you put into the class and pay heed to the breakdown of weighting that will be listed out on the syllabus.  If you do a rewrite of a paper, make sure that the professor can see a meaningful difference rather than tacking on a few resources at the end of an unchanged paper.  We do care, and we do pay attention.  Finally, not everything will be graded, but that does not mean it is not important.
4. You are here to learn.  The purpose of higher education is both to prepare you for life beyond the campus and also to, well, educate.  Good professors are planning their syllabi thoughtfully and assigning the readings and assignments they think will add to your knowledge base.  If you do not discuss the reading in class, you still (hopefully) got the knowledge out of the readings that you endeavored to finish.  You are building your intrinsic motivation and wealth of resources regardless of how many times you check in to show others that you are reading.
5. Participate.  Class participation, graded or not, is a way to make your mark in college.  Plan on asking for a letter of recommendation?  Make yourself memorable by sharing insights and perspectives in meaningful ways that show you are following and comprehending.  Classroom participation is a shared responsibility, and if you are given the freedom to talk openly and in a critical dialogue, do so.  And do not be afraid of asking when you do not understand.  There is a high probability that you are not the only one.

College life is a adventure that can be both terrifying and amazingly gratifying.  But, ultimately, this experience is what you make of it.  Push past the mentality that you are there because you have to be.  You are either paying or using resources to undertake that education, and should be there by choice and with enthusiasm.  If you give it your best, prioritize, and quell the fear of trying new things, you will be transformed from that finish-line sprinter to a lifelong learner.

As we count down to 2013, I think this is sage advice for all of us who feel a little stuck or in a place of transition. As I try to get through the dissertation process and decide what the path forward looks like, I have had many a sleepless night wondering “What if?” and “What’s next?”. No one knows that answer. But the best we can do is to jump enthusiastically and purposefully forward with the hope that if we follow our internal compass, the net will be there to guide us safely to the ground.

Photo Courtesy of the Walt Disney Company

This post is a little late, but I feel like it’s still important to share…

After the comps extravaganza, I became a candidate.  I felt flustered and happy.  I felt a little bit like this.  However, knowing the dangerous chasm that lies between accomplishment and satisfaction (or, rather, resting on one’s laurels), my advisor and I had a meeting almost immediately to start planning next steps.  Don’t get me wrong, there was a little happy dance of celebration.  But, “student” to “candidacy” means that I have hit the stage where dissertation will be the sole focus.  It is a milestone, not an endpoint to the journey.

In that meeting, we discussed many things: timeline, logistics, and the next steps in firming up a dissertation committee.  We also discussed the need for self-motivation and the huge swing in self-efficacy that must take place in order to keep yourself on deadline when no one external is assigning due dates. To sum up the sometimes intangible nature of the dissertation, my advisor compared the process to Winnie the Pooh chasing the Heffalump: a process filled with mystery, some hysterics, misperceptions, and ambiguity.  You have to have faith that the Heffalump exists, and moreover, be persistent in your pursuit.

So, since then, I have been treading that line between achievement in one realm and continuing to work towards the dissertation every day.  I look back at the year and can feel confident, but I am thankful that my advisor had the insight to keep me on task before I let that happy warmth of accomplishment set in too deep.  That pressure is the necessary catalyst to keep motivated and finish.  So, how do I negotiate the line between feeling good about myself and slacking off?  As I quest to keep myself on track, here are a few of the motivators that have helped me to remember why I am here, what I need to accomplish, and why I should not get discouraged.

• The Dissertation Calculator tool provided by the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities is one huge help that I have found.  It is amazing not only because it breaks down the process with achievable, measurable milestones for your study, but also gives more in depth information on each one of those stages to help guide you through the process.
• ProfHacker published a great article exploring proposal anxiety and the THATCamp format for pitching ideas.  The focus of the article is creative ways to break out of that moment when you feel that twinge of self-consciousness before you let your idea out there into the world.
• “Banishing Imposter Syndrome” is a much needed reminder from Andrea Zellner over at GradHacker (celebrating one year this week!). We’ve all experienced that feeling of uncertainty and inadequacy we’ve all felt as we work through the graduate school process.  Sometimes it is that stress that we put upon ourselves that paralyzes us from moving forward.  This article takes a look at ways to move past that anxiety and reminds us that we’re good enough, we’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like us.

Becoming a PhD is a tricky business, much like the Heffalump hunt.  But, with persistence and reassurance, we’ll get there.

“Swap Meet” image cc license from Flickr user LukeJNovak: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2715/4030129420_ece87539ce_b.jpg

I remember when I used to look forward to summer — warmer weather, longer days, no homework, family vacations and time with friends. Even when I started working during the summer breaks, there seemed to still remain ample time to read and relax after work was done in those long months between school terms. Even when I had summer school, it would last only a fraction of the whole holiday period, leaving weeks to relax and recharge.

Now, I look forward to summer for some of the same reasons — the warmer weather and longer days — and some new ones — travel takes a bit less time without the traffic of parents driving children to school and fewer colleagues in the office means a slightly lighter load of internal requests.

Although I miss the family vacations, the biggest loss in the transition from school to work was the chance to decompress and relax that those summer months offered.  That time was fairly sacred and it was unlikely it would be scheduled over or co-opted by classes or meetings; one would dread catching a summer cold that seemed to suck up those valuable days of summer holidays, but never thought about a time in the future when unexpected work events or deadlines would force retraction of vacation days and a premature return to work.

As I cannot take off the several months I dream of to rest and relax during the summer, I’ve been trying to take advantage of the “Five Ways to Recharge During the Summer” recommended by Jamie Corcoran in her June post at Gradhacker.  As someone feeling jealous of those enjoying summer vacations, I might have skipped the post were it not for a very good point she makes during the first paragraph: these five things are ones that help yourself recharge, no matter how much or how little time you have at your disposal; as someone who won’t be able to take any vacation beyond a day here and there until October, I appreciated these ideas of how to make the most of these spare moments and few days at my disposal.

One important piece of advice I would add to Corcoran’s is the following: in order to make any of these ways to recharge worthwhile, you must avoid  feeling guilty for relaxing and taking breaks. The good accomplished by setting aside a few hours to read and relax is easily undone if one spends the following hours agonizing about what other uses could have been made of that time. Schedule in this relaxation time if you must, to ensure that other tasks can still be completed and that responsibilities aren’t neglected. During those moments, minutes, and hours you can set aside for recharging, dedicate yourself to these efforts at relaxation just as you would to your work or studies. For those periods of time, recharging is your primary job.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go follow piece of advice number 1 (“Move”) and go for a walk outside before it starts raining again.

Image cc license from Flickr user Thomas Hawk: http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4011/4440874971_5fce369d98_b.jpg

Time is running out. Time keeps flowing like a river. It’s just a question of time.  A query of iTunes reports that I have 42 songs with the word “time” in the title.  I have it on good authority that it would be possible to write a few lines of code to figure out how many times the word “time” appears in lyrics from the 18.6 days of music and audiobooks in my iTunes,  given the appropriate skill set, files of all the song lyrics, and enough time.

However, time being limited and deadlines looming, this experiment remains hypothetical because I simply don’t have the time to spend on it. Earlier this year, I bookmarked and clipped articles on time from Grad Hacker (February’s “Setting time boundaries”) and Hack Library School (“It’s OK to not have time,” also from February), thinking I would read them as soon as I had time. Fast-forward four months and here I am, finally reading posts on time, trying to find some solution to my situation of feeling over-extended, overwhelmed with work, and wondering how much more I could get done or how much better I’d be faring if I only had more time.

As previously discussed on this blog, I keep statistics for our library, in an effort to quantify what we accomplish and what we produce. X number of publications catalogued, y number of reference queries of z duration. However, I could not use this same tool to effectively estimate how much time I spent on a given subject or activity. Following a recommendation, I created an account with Toggl.com and started using the Toggl app for iPhone to try to answer a very important question: where does the time go?

Toggl allows me to track how much time I spend on types of activities; using the app’s Project field, I can group together similar activities — for example, the project “Periodicals” encompasses such activities as subscriptions renewals, check-in of periodicals, follow-up on missing issues, etc. The tagging feature also allows me to indicate if an instance of an activity relates to a particular client.  This is useful, for instance, when tracking how much time I spend on finding an article for a single client; checking our resources and the Internet, then making a request through inter-library loan encompasses two different activity areas for the same request.

A month and a half into this experiment, I am fairly pleased with the Toggl system. I like the reporting feature, which gives details on how many hours, minutes and seconds were spent on different projects. Particularly, I love the  pie charts and bar graphs, which help me visualize the allocation of my time.

I still need to work out how to quickly shift from task to task in the app. A webpage or a PDF is loading and I will take this chance to check my e-mail, but I lose time from one task or the other as I try to stop the current timer, then open and label a new timer. Also, it remains a bit awkward to try to change tasks on the fly — if I’m cataloguing when someone comes in and suddenly I must shift gears to reference services to help locate a book or resource, I’d rather not interrupt this by fiddling on my iPhone to change and resume tasks in short order.

While I may not be substantially closer to figuring out how to master my time and maximize on what little I have, I feel less overwhelmed with this additional time management tool at my fingertips.

*CLICK FOR LIVE WEBCAST*
4th SUNY COIL Conference

PhD Comic: “Outside Interests”

I have had a few conversations with colleagues and friends lately that have me thinking about the sometimes irrational, obsessive  hobbying that crops up amongst graduate students.  Even if you do not have your own, you certainly know a colleague or friend that has has taken their “outside interests” to the extreme.  From the friend who was going to dress up for opening night of the Hunger Games (I’m looking at you @LizzyErwin) or the colleague racking up marathon mileage on their bicycle, I know more people who are not just taking up a hobby, but taking it to the next level.  Hobbies and interests are constant through society, but there is something about graduate students who like to kick up the intensity.

The common thread through so many of the stories I have heard recently (and have felt myself) is that people are undertaking challenges that have finite ends and grand challenges.  My theory is this: there are not a lot of things that you feel in control of while you are in graduate school.  Deadlines, bureaucracy, research subjects, funding: none of these are within our control.  But embarking on marathon running or getting certified to teach yoga, you are setting a goal that is yours and yours alone.  And, true to the nature of graduate students, there must be a significant challenge posed to make it fulfilling.

Taking stock of my three years, I made a small list of my favorite endeavors

1. I grew my hair really long so I could donate to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program.
2. I joined a CSA and challenged myself to waste nothing of our share.  This, naturally, involved learning how to can and buying the More-with-less Mennonite cookbook to maximize efficiency.
3. I tried to take up running. I did a 5k, which I am considering a success.
4. My roommate and I have had an unfailing, every-evening date to watch the day’s Young and the Restless.  Comparing everyday life to what goes on in Genoa City’s will make you feel like you have got your act together.  (Oh, Sharon, look at your life.  Look at your choices.)
5. I have taken two cross-country train trips (most recently making our way from Boston to Chicago to Portland, OR).
6. I am currently participating in the #LUBlogTribe challenge to post once-a-day for 90 days.

We want to pretend we have some control over the universe, which is an illusion whether you are in school or out.  But, when we undertake these large hobby endeavors, we remind ourselves of our capacity to do great things.  That capacity is what we must draw on to accomplish the academic task at hand, and it is by these outside interests that we reinforce our confidence, feel empowered, and keep moving forward.

I hope that there are more of these adventures and oddities on the horizon for me.  However, I draw the line at a Battlestar Galactica marathon.

Image cc license from Flickr user fontplaydotcom: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fontplaydotcom/2574716668/

Who doesn’t like a good deal?  Some deals are better than others, some are too good to be true, but who doesn’t like to get something that is good quality for very little or no cost? With the launch of the World Bank’s Open Knowledge Repository, such a deal is now on offer.

In April 2012, the World Bank announced the adoption of a new open access policy and the launch of their Open Knowledge Repository (OKR), the first phase of this policy.  The Repository gives access to more than 2100 books and papers produced since 2009 and issues from 2007-2010 volumes of the World Bank’s two journals — World Bank Research Observer (WBRO) and World Bank Economic Review (WBER).  Starting in 2013, the repository will include links to datasets used for publications and over time, there are plans to add translations of those publications originally published in English.  Along with the launch of the Open Knowledge Repository, the World Bank has launched a revised Policy on Access to Information.  This policy governs information relating to World Bank projects, meetings, and advisory activities.

Rendering such a large variety of World Bank products open access is a boon for researchers, because of both the sheer volume of information now available for free and also the large range of topics covered, from agriculture and energy, to development and health.  Additionally, included among the monographs now available for free are the World Development Report and other flagship publications for which access was previously more limited.

The Open Knowledge Repository interface is user-friendly and the layout uncluttered.  Visitors can query the collection using a single Google-esque search box and filters to modify or restrict queries.  Records for publications include complete metadata (handy for cataloguers though perhaps of less interest for other users), abstracts, and links to publications in the same series, by the same author(s), or on similar subjects.

Libraries of all kinds are always on the lookout for new resources to help support the needs of their patrons and the discovery of free resources offers added benefits.  While some users will still prefer to consult the print versions of these publications, the availability of these monographs online for free means that the portion of our budget previously allocated to their purchase could now be liberated and reassigned.

While this resource may be of greater use to researchers at academic or special libraries, this new open access policy may have more wider-reaching effects that could benefit.  Publications are now to be covered by Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) copyright license, which allows distribution, reuse, and building upon the World Bank’s published works, even commercially, as long as credit for the original publication is given to the World Bank. One of the most flexible and permissive licenses offered by Creative Commons, this license allows wider dissemination and use of the publications and data produced by the World Bank. Perhaps more organizations, including those who already make many of their publications available online, will follow the World Bank’s lead to make even more information and even better resources available for online and for free.

Source: World Bank, Press Release No. 2012/379/EXTOP, “World Bank Announces Open Access Policy for Research and Knowledge, Launches Open Knowledge Repository.” Permanent link: http://go.worldbank.org/VOS0JQ0VK0.

Analog Follow Friday courtesy of Flickr user brookelynn23

Okay, it’s Saturday.  Nevertheless, in the midst of these busy end-of-semester days, we at Research Salad want to make sure we are continuing to provide our readers with new and interesting content.  More new posts are coming in the next days, but I wanted to take today to reflect on all of the great resources that are out there that add to the conversation about graduate studies, research, libraries, and maintaining our sanity while developing our scholarly selves.  With that, I wanted to give a short list of who I am reading at the moment and who you should add to your Twitter or Feed Reader.  Enjoy!

• 21st Century Teacher [@21stCenturyTch]: Community of educators sharing information regarding teaching in the 21st century and its challenges and opportunities.
• EDUCAUSE Professional Development [@EDUCAUSEProfDev]: Insight on professional development and careers in higher education/technology.
• GradHacker [@gradhacker]: Essential guidance for developing professionals in higher education from classroom management to mentoring and beyond.
• PhDTalk [@evalantsoght]: Always informative blog giving new ideas for focusing, organizing, refining, and more!
• ProfHacker [@profhacker]: Tips, technology, and trends in higher education c/o The Chronicle of Higher Education.
• TED-ED [@TED_ED]: Newest initiative from TED, “Lessons worth sharing”.
• Unquiet Librarian [@buffyjhamilton]: Providing insight on educational technology, pedagogy, and creativity in a K-12 setting that resonates across disciplines and ages.