Time to update!

 Greetings one and all,

This past week I attended the SLA Conference in Charlotte, NC and had a wonderful time renewing friendships and refreshing some of my librarian muscles.

Now that I'm back home I have taken a look at my blog and realize it is very dusty!  A lot has happened since my last post in 2016!

To begin with - I retired from the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers in 2019.  I had a wonderful send off from my friends and colleagues.

I learned a lot from working with the cadre of librarians at the Corps.  They are some smart people!

Like so many good federal employees, after retirement I was recruited as a contractor.  Since early 2020 I have been working on the FOIA search team for an agency in Washington, DC.  It has been really interesting work.

The librarian at the agency had the brilliant idea to bring in librarians and make use of our excellent searching skills to help the agency clear a backlog of FOIA requests.  It has been going well.

COVID-19 was a setback for all of us.  I was working from home 100% of the time for a while, but after a few months I made a return to the office a few days each week.  I am still masked when I'm on the Metro, but otherwise it isn't a big deal.  The agency has a flexible schedule and we're not in the the office 100% of the time with full staff.  So we're not on top of each other.

The SLA Conference was good - not a huge crowd - I think between 300-400 people.  Not as many vendors as other years, but it's our first event in-person since Cleveland in 2019.

It was a good renewal for the Military Libraries Community and the Gay/Lesbian/Bi-Sexual/Trans Librarian Community as well.

And Charlotte is a nice city - the Mint Museum has a beautiful collection!