I’m taking a badly needed sabbatical from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010. The problem is, I have many good project ideas, but I haven’t had any success actually nailing down a concrete project yet. It’s getting a bit frustrating because I’ve been thinking about this a lot for more than a year now. I’ve even been in contact with some people who might offer interesting project opportunities, but nothing has materialized yet, partially because I haven’t been able to articulate a well-defined project idea. I know there are lots of interesting metadata and digital repository/library projects out there that could benefit from my labor, but I’m at a loss as to how to approach getting hooked up with such a project. How do I convince people that matter that I have the knowledge, experience, and movtivation to contribute something meaningful to their projects in exchange for nothing more than some useful experience for myself? Everybody just seems inclined to write me off as another useless, obsolete cataloger. Maybe that’s all I really am. Maybe the sabbatical is just a waste of time and I should just get out of the field entirely. That’s an awfully tempting thought.