Archive for January, 2009

25 Random Things You Probably Didn’t Want to Know About Me

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

It’s easy to ignore a meme that you get tagged for once. When you find yourself having been tagged a half dozen times though, it becomes more difficult to ignore. So I finally decided to jump on the 25 Random Things… bandwagon, though I promise that I won’t tag anyone else. 1. My grandfather taught [...]

Customer service problems with Pottery Barn Kids – Part Deux

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Be sure to see the update to this post at the bottom of the post. Close to a month ago, I wrote about the awful experience I had with Pottery Barn’s customer service. Since a bunch of things have happened since then (and I’ve had people ask if anything has changed), I thought I ought [...]

Libraries in tough times – what about librarians?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Yesterday I received the ALDirect (from American Libraries) Special Issue on the Tough Economy in my Inbox. It contained great information about library advocacy during tough times. What I found glaringly missing from this email was any discussion about or tips for librarians who’ve been laid off or about-to-graduate LIS students. Obviously, if we advocate [...]

Want to come work for me?

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

We are sadly losing our beloved Distance Learning Librarian to her family (but good for her!), so we are again in the position of looking for a new Distance Learning Librarian. The position reports to me and I’ve had a wonderful time mentoring our current DLL and growing in my role as a manager. I [...]

Separate but not equal?

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

When I read David King’s post about Ask-a-Librarian services last week, I didn’t have a strong emotional response to it. That was, until he wrote a follow up which brought my attention to some of the responses people had made to it. With email reference, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not a synchronous medium. We [...]

Making progress on library instruction

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Last April, I started in my new position as Head of Instructional Initiatives, though for the first four months, I was also still doing the job of Distance Learning Librarian. Since taking this on at the end of July as my only job, it’s been a wild ride. I took a lot of risks, tried [...]

A lesson in bad customer service: Pottery Barn Kids

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

You can view an update to this post (and an update to my update) here. In an economy where there’s lots of competition for a smaller and smaller number of dollars, good customer service becomes an issue of survival. While product is important, customer service can make the difference between creating a life-long customer and [...]