I’m enjoying watching you step out more into the profession and become more visible. You’ve gone from being a commenter I don’t really know to a colleague whose friendship and insight I value. Keep up the fight!

I was totally psyched by the idea of “Five Weeks to a Social Library.” I’m not so hot on Second Life because I have seen how MMORPG’s can suck up someone’s life, and I’d rather see librarians in the flesh in reference rooms and at circulation desks than hunched in front of a computer…

However, I think one of the most important things you have done is to focus on communication between librarian and librarian, librarian and library, librarian and staff, librarian and library student. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your own personal project that you can forget the rest of the world…

Thank you for reminding us to reach out.

As far as the whole OCLS thing goes, I really hope we hear something from the folks at OCLS as to why they went to a for-pay format for their webcasts and why they chose such a high (in my opinion) price point? As Karen said, it better deliver at that price.

Scott, that is a great point about the impact one can have when speaking at a conference like ALA. I was kind of gripe-y about the whole not getting compensated thing, but I had so much fun, met so many great people, and hopefully inspired at least one person to try playing around with social software who never did before. It’s a different kind of benefit, I guess. That said, I still think we should be compensated or at least not have to pay to register.

I, like many of the other other people commenting, do a combination of paying forward and asking for payment. In 2005 my friend and I created a marketing and design consulting firm called Fearless Future. We work with libraries, non profits and small businesses. We also do a combination of pro bono and paid work. We love to present at conferences and also give away tips on our Market the Future blog.

Strangely enough, everyone I talked with at ALA DC was experiencing the same kind of “conference fatigue”, a term coined by the wonderful and eccentric librarian Gwendolyn Reece, that you speak of…

I wonder if it is just not sustainable to go to this many conferences a year OR if maybe with all of our new technologies it just IS NOT NECESSARY. We are all in contact in so many new ways. Your blog was referred to me by my colleague Lisa Laskaris who is also another amazing, wonderful, brilliant librarian and I always enjoy reading it.

I agree with you for the most part that librarians are sharers but I think that another comment you said rings more true

“We all have something to offer others in the profession. If you think you don’t, it’s more a reflection of your self-esteem than any reality. Have you ever had a good idea?”

This issue of self -esteem is something that my colleagues and I are trying to address. Stayed tuned to a whole set of post called : bring more joy back to librar-ness!
I wonder why a few people seem so fearless in our profession but for the most part we seem to suffer from low professional self esteem
I find the stuff happening in libraries today so exciting: open source, outreach to underrepresented populations, community involvement, exciting new building design just to name a few.
So I just want to say:

Meredith thanks for doing your part to bring JOY to librar-ness!

I’d like to get back to Meredith’s points about sharing and paying it forward. She’s quite right that librarians are unusual in the degree to which, as a profession, we are open to sharing and collaboration. I love that about us. In the academy, especially, it is not the norm (or, in places where it is, it often looks very different). I would place Student Affairs professionals and faculty development professionals in a similar category. Writing Center staff, too. Not universally, of course, but as a general rule (as bounded by my experience). That’s one of the reasons I balk at some of the comments elsewhere in the blogosphere about individuals choosing not to present at ALA owing to the admittedly absurd strictures ALA has about compensation. That policy is wrong, and it should be changed. But, even if it is not (and I’ve spoken my fair share at ALA/ACRL/AASL/SLA for free), I always remember that someone spoke for free to me when I joined this profession. Someone taught me. Someone inspired me. And, if that someone had an MLS, they did it for free.

So, thanks to all of those people, and thanks to Meredith, Michael Stephens, and others for teaching me for free now through blogs, wikis, etc. Like Roy, I try to balance my free gigs with my paid gigs, but I fashion that balance by thinking about paying it forward.

Regarding OCLS, there were only six comments on that post, so unless there were others elsewhere it could be hard to extrapolate what the comments really mean. In my case, I’m not categorically opposed to a library charging other libraries for CE, but I do believe that it bodes poorly to wrap such a talk in high jargon. For $75, they better *deliver.* Again, we weren’t there at the internal meetings. Who knows what mysteries beat in the heart of your average big library system.

Roy’s comment that institutions as well as individuals need to decide on fee versus free is quite astute. Sharing among institutions is important, but institutions have to pay bills, as well. And who knows but the webmaster sitting on his magic pile of links got burned by someone riding on the coattails of his efforts. There’s nothing quite like hearing your own ideas come out of someone else’s mouth, without attribution, to make you a little more close-hold. That’s not the way the world should work, but it happens.

I doubt $75/head is turning a huge profit for OCLS. It could well be that $75 a head is covering the software and labor, which they are using for other things. (Because I live in Florida, I’d be happy to give them a free “Death to Jargon” consult on the language if they let me sit in on a class to see what they’re up to.)

There have been a number of good posts about burnout over the last couple of years; Jenny Levine and I have both meditated at length on this topic. Juggling a successful career is a matter of balancing pace, compensation, and service contributions, as well as ensuring that your personal life always comes first.

I can imagine that if they charged $20 for these talks, they’d get more people in, would benefit more people, and might even make money faster. $75 is a really high price point and I’d be curious to hear from OCLS why they chose that price and why they started charging in the first place. It’s always hard to judge without knowing the whole story.

While I can understand the hardship of their situation, many libraries are facing this. The pure fact that libraries have collaborated and share knowledge so generously over the years is in part a huge reason of why we have prevailed. I can understand recouping costs (but to be honest, with their online presence and investment in tutorial apps, I find it hard to believe this is the case), but $75 is hefty by my book for general knowledge sharing with peers using your own tools. I truly hope that this is not a trend that we see grows and continues.

Thanks for posting both sides of the coin Meredith. As always you bring up great insights. I think it’s good to see discussions like this. Now I know when I see a long post from you that Adam is away and traveling.