Utterly Thrilling

It's always fun to receive packages in the mail, but I don't usually expect them at work. Yesterday, my little mail slot was jammed full of a thick package from Haworth Press.

After dislodging it from my box, I turned it over several times, giving it a quizzical look, trying to figure out what Haworth would send me that weighed about five pounds (it was a large, padded envelope). Then it dawned on me...Haworth publishes Behavioral and Social Science Librarian, which is the journal publishing the article on Carol Gilligan that I wrote in grad school.

It's finally published, was my next thought, and I quickly found a pair of scissors and started de-stapling and ripping open the envelope.

And there it was. My name. In print. In a peer-reviewed, scholarly, reputable journal in my discipline.
Wow.

They sent me two copies of this Fall's edition of the journal, along with 10 reprints, which are like mini-journals with the cover and only my article in them.

I want to write something else to be published so I can feel this euphoria again.

How to even explain...?

Browsing through the Student Library Journal's archives, I came across an article on Internet filtering in public libraries.

Last year I wrote and published an article on filtering the Web in public libraries in this very journal, so I was interested to read this editorial by Louise Cooke from the UK.

In the first paragraph, I found a reference to my article and another on the same topic that came out in the same issue in which mine was published (Sept 2006). I stopped short, staring at my name in print, slowly realizing that I was witnessing my first citation. Granted, it's not a professional journal, but it is a peer-reviewed library student publication. Meaning, it has some clout.

My first citation. I'm an official professional who has contributed to our discipline's literature.