Ugh.

I'm feeling a serious time crunch.  My son has chosen to stop napping, and his naps were my prime time for getting things done for school.  I have no idea what I'm going to do about this, so for now I'll just ignore the problem and focus on the task at hand.

Last night I was thinking about the preliminary research I'd done, what I'd found, and narrowing my topic.  Pete posted this in our group discussion board as a possible way to divide our topic:

"Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy": http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/sections/is/projpubs/researchagendalibrary.cfm

I. LEARNERS
A. Audiences
B. Skills
C. Learning Styles

II. TEACHING
A. Pedagogy
B. Design and Implementation
C. Methods of Instruction
D. Library Teaching and Continuing Education

III. ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
A. Relationship within the Library Organizational Structure
B. Relationship to the Larger Institutional Environment
C. Relationship with Faculty

IV. ASSESSMENT
A. Evaluation of Instructors and Programs
B. Assessment of Learning Outcomes
C. Transferability

I was thinking I'd focus on elementary and then further narrow it by these topics, but really, I think I may just need to focus on finding articles specific to elementary information literacy instruction.  Still, these focus areas are good to keep in mind as I'm looking and formulating a bigger research question.

In other news, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed is threatening to close all branch libraries in SJ (along with other cuts) because of the huge budget deficit.  I don't think it will actually happen, but I do think he will further reduce branch hours.  Closing all the branches would be disastrous to me as a student because I would have to go to the downtown main library regularly, which involves finding and paying for parking and driving there, eating up at least an hour of my time round-trip, and I'd have even less time to look for items in the library or actually get work done.  It's hard enough to get things done with the current reduced branch hours.  So more cuts mean it's harder to finish my degree and less likely I'll find a job when I finish.  SIGH.