University librarians offer a wide range of services to faculty and students to support their research and scholarly writing projects. Many of these services are used widely by faculty on campuses across the country, while other services may be little known and little used. As dean of libraries at William and Mary, I make it a priority to work with library staff and faculty to identify needs, develop useful services, and then communicate their availability to faculty. Here I highlight a few of our library services and suggest how faculty at other institutions can work with their university librarians to access services and support.
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: March 8, 2019
This week’s collection of posts from around the web includes practical advice from past experiences balanced with ideas to move us forward. We start with practical advice on mistakes to avoid when doing your PhD, what nobody tells you about ‘minor corrections’, strategies to manage work and enjoy life, and reviewing literature to situate it in a research tradition. We then share some articles with new ideas for mapping a text (beyond the traditional mind map or concept map), addressing global imbalances in scholarly communication, and training PhD graduates for jobs outside of academia.
Celeste Alexander once said, “I haven’t finished writing my book, but it’s on top of my list.” This week focus on that item on top of your list. What can you do to move closer to crossing it off? Happy writing!
TAA’s 32nd Annual Conference session spotlight: Revising your manuscript at the macro & micro levels
Erin McTigue, academic writing coach and workshop presenter, will present “Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels” at TAA’s 32nd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference. The conference will be held in Old City, Philadelphia, June 14-15, 2019.
McTigue, who after achieving tenured professor at Texas A&M University moved on to start her own business focused on mentoring and coaching academics in writing and productivity, will conduct an interactive session where participants will take a messy draft of their choice and apply 3 macro-level revision strategies to hone overall logic and organization of the manuscript. Next, working at the micro-level, McTigue will walk participants through 3 revision tools for coherence and writing style. Participants will leave with both a sequential approach and individual tools for transforming their future drafts with efficiency.
Learning as I go: Running into happiness
When I was a PhD student, I found that my academic commitments were throwing off my work life balance, and I wanted to do something about it. My answer, as funny as this sounds, was to add another writing project to my workload, but this was a personal writing project. I wrote and published a book, Running into Happiness, during my busy life as a PhD student!
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: March 1, 2019
Jane Yolen reminds us to “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” This week’s collection of articles from around the web provides some examples of just how to do that.
We begin our collection with a typical say in the life of five writers, planning scholarly visits, developing an academic home page, waiting on peer review, and counting down to thesis completion. We also found some articles of interest on the future of publishing platforms, books on pedagogy, and prioritizing organizational choices. Happy writing (every day)!
Top 10 reasons to attend TAA’s June conference
There are a lot of great reasons to attend TAA’s 32nd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference. Past attendees consistently give TAA conferences high marks for content, networking, and inspiration:
“What a great conference! I came away inspired to write many more articles, book chapters and books. The conference gave the tools to accomplish that. It was a great friendly mix of authors at all stages of writing willing to share, mentor and interact.” ~ Betsy Stringam, Professor, New Mexico State University