What am I up to?

Chealsye Bowley

I’ve been slacking on regularly updating this blog, but that doesn’t mean I’m not out and about on the internet contributing in other ways. I’m blogging for Hack Library School, volunteering with Penny4NASA, postings news at OANow, and contributing to the SLA “What I’m Learning in Graduate School” series.

Hack Library School
I’m sure you’re a regular reader of Hack Library School. If not, you should be. HLS is a blog by, for and about library school students. I’ve written the following posts:

The Library Will Be Crowdfunded
Dewey-It-Yourself
A FASTR Open Access
How to Survive and Prevent a Bad Internship

HLS played a role in me deciding to attend library school, and I was obsessively reading it between my application time last January until I started classes. Confession: I really, really wanted to become a contributing writer for HLS while I was in grad school. When I see something I like, my first though is, Yes. This is magical. I want in. I began this blog in June to get some practice, and patiently waited until they posted a call for new writers. If you’re a library school student and are interested in writing for HLS, you should pitch a guest post.

Penny4NASA
Next confession: I still daydream of becoming an astronaut. If the moon is ever colonized, they’ll need a librarian… right? Or maybe I’ll use my love for space to work at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum one day.

Penny4NASA’s mission is to increase NASA’s federal budget allocation from 0.48% to 1%. If you agree, you can tell Congress to double NASA’s funding. I’ve been a fan of Penny4NASA for awhile now, so I applied almost immediately when I saw their call for new social media volunteers. As a social media volunteer, I write two social media posts a week that appear on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and G+. I also write blog posts once a month and recently did a Curiosity mission update. These posts are mostly great quotes about the need for space exploration or about the benefits NASA technology has on our everyday life, such as baby formula or athletic shoes. So far, my favorite post has been this one (tumblr if you don’t have FB). The Facebook page “I fucking love science” shared it and it was liked by over 9,600 of page users. That was a great day.

OANow
OANow is a curated news source about open access and scholarly publishing. It is a publication of the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) and PressForward. My supervisor at FSU, Micah Vandegrift, loved the work of Digital Humanities Now and worked with them to have OANow modeled after it. I’m part of the Tuesday posting crew with Micah and Jen Waller, a librarian at Miami University. It is a great opporunity to get to work on this, since it keeps me up to day on OA and scholarly publishing news and I get to be involved in something alongside great people. Since Micah is out on parental leave, Jen and I have been holding down the OANow Tuesday post fort. I usually write an Editor’s Choice post every two weeks now, but sometimes the schedule gets adjusted. You can also follow @OpenAccessNow to keep updated.

Selected Posts:
SLA Social Science “What I’m Learning in Graduate School”
This is a monthly blog series by library students for the Special Libraries Association Social Science Division. Brianna Marshall, awesome HLS managing editor, coordinates the series. Check it out.

What’s next:
In two weeks, I will be in Indianpolis for ACRL 2013! I am very thankful to be going and was awarded a student scholarship to attend. I’m most looking forward to meeting some HLS folk, seeing Henry Rollins speak for the third time (I drove him to the airport once!), and attending THATCamp ACRL. There will definitely be blog worthy things to write about when I get back.

Also, graduation is 128 days away! Soon: Chealsye Bowley, MLIS.
I’ll be finishing up my coursework at the end of July and am hoping to start a job in August or September. I’ve begun applying for jobs, particularly in the scholarly communications and digital side of librarianship. Crossing all my fingers and toes!

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