Personal Information Management

Claire Stewart, Associate University Librarian for Research & Learning at the University Libraries, talks about the technology and tools that she uses in her daily life. Her favorite: Wunderlist. And she is on the verge of dumping her laptop entirely for a desktop in the office and an iPad 6th generation when she's mobile.

Susan Warfield directs the Student Parent Help Center program for U of M students who are pregnant or parenting children through their academic degrees. Her favorite tool to use is her digital camera to document events.

Working on behalf of all of the library staff, Kate Peterson and and Katherine Gerwig coordinate the Libraries' presence at many events during Orientation and Welcome Week. They work closely with Orientation and Transition Experiences and other campus offices such as the University Bookstores and the Institute on the Environment to connect events with library spaces and relevant initiatives and services.

Rebecca Moss, a librarian who works for Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services that supports the College of Liberal Arts and beyond, shares her favorite tools — including the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and the app, Notability.

Geoffrey Ghose, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Radiology, runs a lab studying the physiological basis of cognitive factors such attention and learning at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. He's an advocate for LyX, which bills itself as a cross-platform, WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) LaTeX frontend, for around 20 years. "For me the biggest appeal was that it wasn’t Word, the program which everyone loves to hate." He also uses Overleaf and Mendely.

Jenny Porter, Associate Director for Welcome Week and First-Year Programs, uses Wunderlist, Google Docs, and Excel to keep on task when planning out Welcome Week activities at the University of Minnesota.

Barn manager Sue Penney shares tips and tools to care for a "teaching herd" of horses owned by the College of Veterinary Medicine. These horses are model patients for veterinary students in their clinical rotations.

Exercise, to-do lists, Google Docs, large blue bags from Ikea, and Petzl headlamps are some of Bryan Karban's favorite tools for making his life more efficient. Karban is the Climbing and Trips Coordinator for the University of Minnesota Outdoor Program.

Northrop Stage Manager/Audio Supervisor Brad Kern spent 15 years touring the United States, running sound for such bands as Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic, and N*E*R*D before his audio career in the corporate world. He's been at Northrop since 2014, working a mix of concerts, dance, lectures, and University events.

Courtney Tchida uses hardware tools — real hardware, like a broadfork and power harrow — and smartphone software apps to help her stay on task in her role as Student Program Coordinator for the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Minnesota.

I love R, Rstudio, and Rmarkdown. I particularly love the R packages ggplot2, dplyr, stringr, tidyr, haven, and diagrammeR. All of these packages make my research happen in one place in order to maximize flow and reproducibility.

Program R with RStudio, GitHub, and UofM Remote Server are what keeps postdoc research associate Althea ArchMiller busy — and productive — each day, from her commute to work in the morning to her commute home at night.

Katherine Chan, a teaching assistant and D.M.A. (Doctor of Musical Arts) student in the School of Music, uses a variety of technology and old-school tools to stay on top of her work. Recently, she re-arranged her office, which allowed her to focus more on her work and avoid distractions.

Amanda Costello, lead content strategist for the College of Education and Human Development, talks about self-care in this installment of "How I Work" from the University of Minnesota Libraries Personal Information Management Collaborative. Costello discusses meditation apps, the Apple Watch, exercise and movement at work, and more.

By day, Jessica Chung is a leadership educator, curriculum writer, and instruction trainer for the Undergraduate Leadership Minor. Outside of work, she is a calligrapher/bullet journalist/blogger and face behind Pretty Prints & Paper. On her blog, she combines her passions for teaching and planning to inspire others to cultivate the life they have always imagined through tutorials, ideas, and lessons about lettering and bullet journaling. You might find her in different states and countries, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, art classes of all kinds, a cappella concerts, or at the nearest Americano. Connect with her: Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook

This interview features our *amazing* co-editor Carolyn Bishoff, who has temporarily stepped away from her editing duties while on maternity leave but was kind enough to be interviewed by us for a change!