The Sabbatical Project has officially started! It's nice to work on a more leisurely pace and be able to focus on one thing rather than juggling a gazillion responsibilities (seemingly).
The biggest challenge is just figuring out a schedule. I'm doing this sabbatical project with two babies at home with me, currently 7 months old. Today was tough, we got a little off their schedule so they were each sleeping and eating at different times from each other. Not good! On the positive side, that rarely happens, so I have hope that we'll be back on track tomorrow.
I have discovered that I can hold a baby in one arm, hold a bottle in that same hand, and have the other hand free to check email, type, and search other institution's OPACs (ooooh, a new term for my Definitions page!). That worked for one baby, not so much with the second baby.
One thing I did today was search for recital cataloging at other institutions. This helped give me a better idea of what I really need to do with the data we have. Biggest discovery: the data we have totally sucks.
The second thing today was looking at the data in our spreadsheet (used to be in a database format that is no longer supported, thus the spreadsheet). Literally "looking." I had a baby in my arms that was fascinated by the laptop keyboard. I was a bit concerned looking at the first several lines of the spreadsheet. I had to email the manager of our Fine Arts Media Center to see if programs were available for a couple mid-80s recitals or concerts so I could make sense of what I was looking at. He provided the program for one and described the two cassette tapes for the others that helped answer my questions.
(Should I add "Cassette tape" to my list of definitions? It was recently brought to my attention that there is now a generation of people who don't know what a cassette tape is. Wow, I'm getting old!)
Lastly, just a note about the spreadsheet I'm working on. Each performed piece of music is listed on a separate row of the spreadsheet. Each entry contains the recital date, the student's name, and then the composer and title of the piece and any notes (all in one cell, by the way). That's it.
So imagine a student who gives a senior recital and performs 5 pieces. Then they stay to get a master's degree and they give another recital performing another 5 pieces. That's ten lines on the spreadsheet that will contain their name. The date is the ONLY way I am able to tell which recital pieces go together; it is THE most important piece of information I have.
And then you have lines with the same date but different performers. Oy! Two different recitals on the same day? One recital with different performers?
I may be taking more trips into the office than I originally thought I would. It'll be good for the babies to get out.
Tomorrow's goal: Set up a second tab on the spreadsheet for editing purposes. I'm also considering moving all the info for each recital or concert into one row, rather than multiple rows. And then maybe also separate out large ensemble concerts from the student recitals (more tabs). I feel like this week mainly about realistic organizing (as opposed to the previous planning I did); I'm getting a feel for how this is really going to work and what really needs to be done. It's already looking a little different than I had thought it would.
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