With just two days until I leave for my sabbatical in Warsaw, I am filled with excitement but also anxious to finish all of my preparations for leaving home. I have been generously given a Fulbright Core Award to teach this coming year at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Information and Book Studies. I had such a wonderful time on my previous sabbatical in Prague, Czech Republic, also teaching library science courses there, that I am comforted by the thought that my experience will be similar in Warsaw — although I strongly suspect that it will be incredibly different. How could it possibly be the same? The similarity will likely be in the realm of a few months’ adjustment to living overseas and the difficulties that presents, especially to someone like myself who only speaks English. The differences — or really the unknowns — are many: the number of students, their facility with English (the language of instruction for my classes), and the students’ willingness to accept my teaching methods (discussion, class exercises and homework — familiar to U.S. students, but possibly unfamiliar to Polish students) are just a few that come to mind.
This first term I will be teaching a course in subject analysis and a seminar on e-books in libraries. The first is a course similar to the one I taught in 2005, but updated to include sessions on FRSAD and FAST. The second one will be partly based on my own experiences with e-books at OSU as well as presentations by the students drawn from the published literature. I’m looking forward to both of these courses as I love talking about subject analysis in detail while e-books have been a major part of my work these past two years.
But right now, I have to shop for a new sport jacket, prune back the bushes around the house, teach my son how to clean the cockatiel cage solo, and prepare our dog to stay with a friend for the coming year. The number of items on our to-do list is ever growing, even as we work to reduce the list to zero before we leave. Each one takes on a life of its own, generating follow-up items faster than rabbits or tribbles. It is almost as though the harder my wife and I work on doing the tasks, the faster they multiply. This morning, though, I announced that if we didn’t finish the list, we would still live. We have our tickets, our visas, and a colleague in Warsaw who will help us find a place to live. I plan to take a deep breath once we get on the plane and leave the prep phase behind us.
I plan to write on this blog at least once a week, so be sure to come back for more!
