Fall programing update

Beginning in early August, “Adventures of a Guybrarian” will no longer be published in the United States. This week I was offered and accepted a position as the Librarian at the Hsinchu International School in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

For those of my readers who are at this moment thinking, “Is he crazy?!” I can assure you that, yes I am. No, not really. Many of you might not know that from November 2007-2008 I lived in Taipei, Taiwan and studied Mandarin Chinese. Since that time I have sought a way to merge my two loves of Libraries and Chinese together. This job affords me that chance.

The school is an English-taught school so I wont use my Chinese during the day, but maybe I will as some of the younger students are still learning English. The staff and students are from all over the world, and this excites me.

I will be responsible for cataloging a processing a backlog of books that were ordered by the previous Librarian who was only there last year for a couple of months. I’ll also be responsible for developing the rest of the collection and helping provide the materials the teachers need for their curriculum.

The city is an hour southwest of Taipei where i lived before. A few of my friends from Taipei are now in Hsinchu so I hope to reconnect with hem. I’ll also make occasional forays into Taipei and of course explore more of Taiwan than I did before.

Hsinchu is known as the Silicon Valley of Asia so it is modern and there are a number of foreigners there. I am sure I wont have any problem settling in.

I will be returning in October to present as part of a panel at the Pennsylvania Library Association Annual Conference and am quite excited to do that.

As always you can contact me by commenting or sending me a message on twitter.