Rachel tagged me with a new meme and challenged me to come up with eight random things about myself. I feel like I’ve disclosed a lot on this blog, so I had a hard time coming up with anything anyone would find remotely interesting. Here goes nothing!

• My favorite author right now (and for the past 5 years) is Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road was one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read.
• In fourth grade, I played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz at school. I think it was probably because I was the only person in my class who could sing or remember lines.
• There are three places I have always fantasized about visiting and probably none of them are at the top of your “places I absolutely must visit” lists: Greenland, Mongolia and the Maldives. Given how remote all of them are, if I even get to one of them in my lifetime, I’ll consider myself lucky.
• In high school, I was a major Trekkie (mostly TNG). I had the uniform and even went to conventions. I actually have a photo of me sitting on the late James Doohan’s (Scotty’s) lap. Don’t ask!
• I hate eggs. I don’t mind them in cakes, pancakes, etc., but anything egg-y (even French toast or quiche) sickens me.
• I have always been a writer, though non-fiction was not always my genre of choice. From first grade on, I wrote plays that my brother, our friends and I would perform in front of my dad’s video camera. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I have yet to find any of the videos we made. I also wrote songs, and still remember the lyrics to a few of them, but you couldn’t pay me enough to disclose any of them.
• I love watching dog shows. At this point, Adam and I know every breed and their characteristics!
• I am addicted to black licorice, salt water taffy and toffee (which is why we never keep stuff like that at home). It’s amazing to me that I haven’t gotten any cavities.

Since I had some trouble coming up with 8 things, I don’t think I’m going to tag anyone in particular with this one. If you’re interested in sharing, consider yourself tagged.

I’m back from my whirlwind vacation. I returned Monday night, but I’ve been so exhausted since then that I haven’t had the energy to post (and yesterday was my birthday, so I had to devote lots of time to eating pie). It was a physically and mentally exhausting trip. Lots of hiking, lots of driving and flying, lots of speaking. Scattering my grandfather’s ashes was really a lot harder than I thought it would be. I hadn’t been back to the Catskills in years and seeing their old house, the pond where I used to feed the ducks, the creek I used to fish in… it just brought back a flood of memories. I still miss him like crazy.

Most of the trip was very fun. Adam and I had a great time. New Mexico is an absolutely amazing place to visit and the AISTI Conference I attended was really unique. I was the only speaker that day from a library. The others were involved in motivational speaking, business consulting and workplace technology design and they offered some really neat insights into innovation from their perspectives. Not really practical talks, but I definitely had the sensation that my horizons were being expanded. I also had the pleasure of meeting Five Weeks to a Social Library participant, Dell Bayer and Carolyn Dunford, co-author of this month’s brilliant D-Lib article, “Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections”. How smart to use the Wikipedia to provide links (and draw traffic) to library collections instead of worrying about it taking interest away from your collections! I would definitely like to visit New Mexico again and it’s now on my list of “places I could live in the future.”

At the ENY-ACRL Conference, I gave the keynote talk, Driving the Technology Bus with Social Software. I think I finally understand what the difference is between a keynote and a regular talk. It’s amazing to me how much easier it gets to speak each time I do it. I even enjoy it! At this conference I got to meet another of our excellent participants, Josalyn Gervasio. I get warm fuzzy feelings every time I get to meet someone from Five Weeks to a Social Library; they’re all doing such cool techie things at their libraries now! Almost makes me forget how discouraged I felt reading some of the responses to this post at ACRLog. Sigh… maybe one day organizations will see where the demand/need is (I get e-mails constantly asking me to reprise Five Weeks) and will realize that member benefits that people actually want will attract new members.

I really do love all the work I do. I love speaking, I love writing, I love creating wikis and online courses. But I’m wiped out. I just feel so busy ALL THE TIME. And I’m not happy. Stress at work really hasn’t helped things, but most of the sense of business has come from my extra-curricular activities. Karen Coombs’ post about picking your battles really touched a chord with me:

It seems to me that it is often the same people who pick up the torch and fight these battles for change in librarianship. It is the same people who get asked to do more, and to take leadership roles over and over again… In my mind, this pattern has extremely dire consequences. Burn out of active and enthusiastic librarians for one. But burn out is the tip of the iceberg, because burn out can result in ineffectual leadership within our libraries and library associations to the point that we fail to be effective and as a result, alienate users and association members.

I’m not complaining, but sometimes you get to feeling like the more you do, the more you’re asked to do. And I hate saying no, but lately I’ve had to do it more and more. I love this work. I love helping other librarians. It’s one of the things that really makes me feel like I’m doing “right” with my life. And yet, it’s also the thing that’s making me insanely stressed. And it’s no one’s fault but my own. I make these choices.

My wonderful friend partner-in-crime, Michelle, is traveling the same road of reflection right now. And I think we’re both on our way to a better balance and a better way of living our lives. Today when I read her post and saw “I define my own success, it does not look like yours, and I am ok with that” I had a moment of clarity. I think I’ve taken on so much because I want to achieve some impossible measure of success; and I keep raising the bar higher and higher every day. Two years ago, I would have never thought I’d write a book, and now it doesn’t feel like enough. It’s like I’m looking for some sort of magical approval that never comes and I don’t exactly know why, but I have to get over it, because I’m beginning to suspect that there will never be an “enough.”

Thank you Michelle, for giving me some very excellent mantras (other than the slobbering dog part!) to keep telling myself next time I wonder if I can take on one more speaking engagement in an already packed month. We’re on the right track!

We all have a story of our life in our heads that informs who we think we are and what we think we are capable of. This story is based on experiences in our lives — successes, failures, traumas, and other people’s expectations. Often we will construct our story based only on certain experiences in our lives — those that provide confirmation of what we believe ourselves to be. There may be other experiences that contradict this view of ourselves, but we choose to focus on the ones that confirm our view. Someone who doesn’t have a high opinion of themselves may ignore all of the achievements they have attained and positive experiences they have had. Instead, a man may focus on when he was bullied in middle school or the emotional abuse he suffered from a parent or the fact that he got fired from a job.

We all have a picture in our head of who we are and what we are capable of. What if that picture is wrong? What if your story of yourself is missing key facts and evidence? What if you looked for times when you did things (or things happened or people said things to you) that run contrary to your story? What about that person with low self-esteem? What about when he got first place in the science fair in fifth grade or when his high school English teacher told him that she expected great things from him? What about all of the good grades he got in college or the fact that his wife loves him and thinks the world of him? Our true life stories are usually much less black and white and show us as people who do good and bad and are capable of much. But more times than not, people do not allow their stories to reflect the rich, complicated, and sometimes contradictory reality.

From the time I was 13, I lived a certain story. Meredith wasn’t a very good person. She often made her parents miserable. She was argumentative and always dissatisfied with her life. Meredith wasn’t particularly good at anything. She did well in school, but it was because she worked hard, not because she was smart. She could write pretty well, but not well enough to really do anything with it. Since she didn’t think much of her own thoughts and ideas, Meredith never trusted herself. She was afraid to speak up in class (even when she knew the answer to a question) and, in college, she actively avoided small seminar classes where she knew she would have to talk. When she had to defend her thesis in college, she nearly had a panic attack in front of her professors and instead of talking about her thesis, she had to prepare a script to read. She never believed that any of her ideas or insights were worth much. Meredith never felt like she fit anywhere. She had friends, but, because she didn’t think she had much to offer, she was uncomfortable among crowds and was scared of meeting new people. As a result, she avoided parties and didn’t join any groups in college.

And this was the story I told of my life for a long time. When something happened that contradicted the story, I would just think it was a fluke or that I had an easy professor or that the person who thought I was great was totally screwed up. The story poisoned every aspect of my life. I spent a great deal of college (and a few years afterwards) clinically depressed and self-destructive. I missed out on so many great experiences and classes in college because of fear. It was so stupid.

I had loved writing when I was younger, but by high school, I had pretty much given up any hope of becoming a professional writer. Throughout college, I wrote for myself, but was terrified to submit anything for the newspapers or literary magazines on-campus. When I was very young, I’d loved performing. I was in every play in elementary school — sometimes in the starring role. I don’t know what happened, but by middle school, I was pathologically afraid not only of performing, but of even talking in class. When I’d have to give a presentation in college, I would sweat, shake and turn red. I would obsess over it for weeks prior to the class and would then beat myself up about it for weeks afterwards. Even when I had to do presentations for my job search last year, I’d read scripts rather than give “real talks.” If I didn’t have a script in front of me, I thought I would become so panic striken that I’d forget everything I was going to say.

All of this began changing for me when I started my blog. Well, maybe it was when I met my husband and he convinced me that I wasn’t as horrible as I thought I was. He wasn’t tied to me by blood or obligation and yet he stayed with me. Why? It was his unconditional love and encouragement that gave me the courage to start my blog. Blogging seemed safe since the worst that could happen was that no one would read it. As my audience grew, I started to wonder why people bothered to read me. And when Rachel Singer Gordon contacted me and asked me if I’d like to write a book for Information Today, I started to think that maybe I was a good writer afterall. But the whole speaking thing scared me for a long time. Really, it scared me until yesterday. Even when I gave that 15 minute CyberTour at Computers in Libraries, I was shaky and sweaty and terrified. And the night before I gave my talk at the Vermont Library Association Conference, I couldn’t sleep and kept obsessing over the talk. But when it came time to give the talk yesterday, I didn’t choke. I didn’t even feel nervous. It was kind of surreal how the words and ideas just flowed out of me like they never had before. And when I couldn’t think of a word, I laughed about it and the audience laughed with me. It was such a terrific experience. People came up to me afterwards with ideas for using social software in their library; ideas that came from my talk. I finally realized that I can do this. And I’m not afraid anymore. I’m not going to let fear run my life and keep me from good things. It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off me.

This coming Tuesday I turn 29. Gosh, five years ago, that would have freaked me out. One year until you’re 30! Look at all you haven’t accomplished! Maybe it’s just a girl thing, but I wanted to be at a certain place in my life by the time I was 30. I even made a list when I was a kid of things I wanted to have done by the time I’d turned 30 (and yes, publishing a book was one of them!). I think back to my life just five years ago and how at loose ends I felt. I assumed that, because I wasn’t happy with my boyfriend or my job, I was the sort of person who was always going to be dissatisfied with her life. It never even occurred to me that I might feel the way I did because I had a bad boyfriend and a bad job. And now I have a great job, a great husband and am in a profession that I feel so passionately about. I’m writing, which I love, and speaking, which I’m completely shocked that I enjoy. It’s a bizarre feeling to be happy with my life and comfortable in my own skin, but it’s definitely something I can get used to. 29? 30? 40? Bring it on!

I know a lot of people who are crippled by fear and self-doubt like I was. And this is why I am writing such a personal post. I want to tell those people to consider that the stories that constrain their lives may just not be true. They may be capable of so much more than they let themselves believe. They may have talents that they never share with the world because they think they’re not talented. They may have good ideas or insights that they never share because they don’t have any confidence in themselves. People allow themselves to stay in jobs they hate or in relationships that suck beacuse they don’t think they deserve better or because they don’t think there’s anything better out there. Or maybe it’s because the unfamiliar is scary. I quit social work and went to library school without every having worked in a library, but with a gut feeling that this was the right thing for me. And that was terrifying. If I was a permanently dissatisfied person, like I thought I was, I wouldn’t like librarianship anymore than I liked social work. But I took that risk and it paid off. What are you afraid of?

Consider that the negative stories you tell about yourself are wrong. Maybe you can do the things you don’t think you can do. Maybe you have talents and abilities beyond your imagination. Just consider it and consider how often the benefits of taking a risk and trying something new and scary outweigh any negative consequences. Just a year ago, the idea of public speaking made me physically ill; now I’ve got at least five talks scheduled for next Fall and I’m actually looking forward to them. Insane!

So just for a minute, consider the idea that you can do all those things you’re afraid of doing. Consider that you may not be the person you think you are.

By the way, you can see my presentation slides from VLA here.

For those who don’t know, I am currently writing a book on libraries and technology. At this point, I can’t even imagine what life would be like if I didn’t spend every weekend doing research and writing. I mean, I do something book-related almost every day, so it’s completely sewn into the fabric of my life. I might even feel a little sad when I’m done with it, though I am really looking forward to pleasure reading, and getting out of the house, and just laying around and doing NOTHING. Ahhhhh….

I still have A LOT of work left on the book, but the writing is going really well. I’m right on schedule with it, which makes me feel much less stressed about the whole thing (which is good because I’m a major stress case). I thought I should share some of the things I’ve learned so far about writing a book, which might be useful to people who have considered doing it. I haven’t really talked much with other writers, so these may just be reflections on the way I work best and not the way others do. So feel free to ignore everything I write here; it’s not the gospel.

1. It’s really important to manage the project well. Write down all of the tasks that need to be done by your deadline and give yourself deadlines for each task. I’ve never been the procrastinating type, so this part of writing the book comes easy to me. I don’t handle stress well, so I structure anything I do in such a way to give me plenty of time at the end for unforseen problems. Mentally, I just can’t handle doing things at the last minute, which has forced me to be very good at planning and following through with my plans. While I’d rather cope with stress better than I do, it’s good that I don’t procrastinate too much.

2. Structure things the way that works best for you. There is no right way to write a book. I got advice early on that I should do research for a few months and then spend the rest of the time writing. But because each of my chapters is on a different subject, I find it better to spend a week researching a chapter and a week writing the chapter (sometimes less and sometimes more depending on the topic). This is what works best for me for this particular project. Figure out what works best for you and do it that way.

3. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I went through a period in December, after my dog died and when I was about halfway done with the writing part of the book, when I really didn’t want to write. I just felt worn out and unmotivated. So I restructured my deadlines in light of how I was feeling. It’s important that you put some padding into your project plan for such malaises. You can’t force yourself to write or your writing may end up being awful. Since then, I’ve written three chapters, so it was good that I gave myself that time to just chill and enjoy being with my husband.

4. A book is a lot more more than research and writing. There are so many other things, like figures, graphics, Web links, screenshots (and getting permission for said screenshots), citations, sidebars, interviews, etc. that you have to think about. I decided to save most of this stuff until the end, because I don’t want to lose focus on my writing. At first, I was trying to create correct citations while I was writing and it was taking up a lot of my time and mental energy. I decided to just write and put all of the citation information down in whatever form I happened to put it in for now. I’ll fix them when I edit the chapters. But maybe most people find citing sources more effortless than I do. I never seem to get them right! I’m always embarassed when students ask me about how to cite stuff, because inside I’m thinking boy are you asking the wrong person! Bad librarian!

5. It’s a good idea not to edit anything until you’ve written everything. Maybe it’s just me, but I will totally lose focus if I start editing any of my writing before I’ve finished writing. I am very hard on myself when I edit my work, and when I started reading my first chapter, I felt very discouraged about the book in general. That kind of a feeling can paralyze me. Also, it’s better to edit when you know what the whole book looks like and you know better what needs to be restructured. You need to be able to see the forest before taking a whack at the trees.

6. You will need to lay-out the chapters in your book for your proposal, but don’t be surprised if it all changes when you start writing. I’d intended to have one chapter on blogs, but as I was writing, this chapter grew to ginormous proportions. I realized that it worked a lot better as three chapters. Some other chapters ended up needing to be restructured that way too, and others I ended up combining since social software doesn’t necessarily fit into neat discrete categories. I’ve been writing more than I’d projected for nearly every chapter, but I made a conscious decision not to worry about it until I edit the book so that I don’t lose focus on writing. I’m sure there are plenty of things I can cut later on, but I don’t want to obsess over it while I’m writing. The more I think about things other than writing, the more difficult I find it to write.

7. If you’re having trouble, talk to your editor. My editor has given me a lot of good advice and has calmed a lot of my (often irrational) fears. She was the one who helped me to focus on the writing and not think about all the other stuff until I’m done writing. And that was the best advice anyone could have given me. You can really get paralyzed by all the other stuff. I’m lucky to have an editor who is also the best librarian-writer I know, so she really KNOWS about writing. But any editor, I’m sure, it a good support since they deal with crazy writers all the time.

8. My husband has also been a big help in keeping me sane and in picking up a lot of the slack with the housework. It’s important to have someone (significant other, parent, friend, etc.) that you can talk to about all of your irrational fears about the book and who will tell you that you are being ridiculous. I don’t know if I could have done this without Adam’s support. When I freak out about stuff, he’s always there to encourage me and to help me come up with a concrete plan to get things done. I don’t know how he puts up with my shenanigans, but I’m glad he does. I’m a very lucky girl.

9. Books are really hard to write when you have a full-time job — but totally worth it. I hadn’t actually planned on writing a book. This all happened because of my blog (which is just crazy!!!). I was approached by my editor who asked me if I’d ever considered writing a book. And while I honestly hadn’t thought of it since high school (when I came to the conclusion that I was not a good enough writer to ever write a book) I certainly was interested. But I did consider saying no. There were a lot of things about the project that made me nervous. Would I have the time to do it with a full-time job and a new house? Did I really want to give up all of my free time for almost a year? Could I actually write that much? What if my writing sucks? What if the book ends up being a total embarassment? But in the end, I said yes because it would have been much more insane not to do it. I mean, how many people spend their whole life trying to get a book published and never do? This is an amazing opportunity and I probably would have regretted it forever if I’d said no. I’m still kind of surprised anyone would want me to write a book, but my entire life has been rather surreal ever since I started writing this blog. I’d never have guessed a year ago that someone would ever call me an expert in anything (other than maybe in Bruce Springsteen or chocolate or something) or that people would listen to anything I have to say. Crazy crazy world.

Which leads me to my last point…

10. Don’t underestimate yourself! You may think that you couldn’t ever write a book. You may love to write, but think that you’re not good enough. You may not think you have anything interesting or worthwhile to say. Consider for a moment that maybe you are wrong. Maybe you are underestimating yourself and are looking at yourself through a funhouse mirror. I have spent most of my life thinking that I’m not good enough for things and have let plenty of opportunities pass me by. I hadn’t even planned on writing a thesis as an undergrad — a professor of mine pressured me into it — and that ended up being the best experience I had in college. So whether someone e-mails you and asks you to write a book or not, if you want to do it, go for it! You may just be the next Rachel Singer Gordon or something!

writing, book, advice

I know Michael Stephens and Jessamyn are good at teaching people about technology, but I really think they could learn a thing or two from StrongBad of the hilarious Internet cartoon Homestar Runner. Check out this scene where StrongBad offers an introduction to technology for middle school students. My favorite quote: “Robots are technology shaped like square people.” Brilliant!

Can you “speak technology” like StrongBad?

[via Scott at BiblioTech Web]

Michelle and I were talking today about how easy it can be to get penned into talking about limited subject matters in one’s blog. I know I feel funny when I think about writing about things that have nothing to do with libraries or technology, but I find Michelle’s blog’s lack of a single focus a good and refreshing thing. She’s definitely not a “one trick pony.” So in light of our conversation, I decided to write about something that has made me ridiculously nauseated for the past two days.

A Bat Mitzvah is an exciting time in a girl’s life. It’s when she gets up in front of her family and friends, recites sacred words from the Torah, and becomes a woman. Well… no… it’s really about the party. I thought my Bat Mitzvah was pretty fun. We danced, we had a candy cart, people gave me savings bonds. It was standard Bat Mitzvah fare, and I had a great time. But not nearly as great a time as Elizabeth Brooks had at her Bat Mitzvah last weekend. Her father spent somewhere between $10 and $20 million dollars on this party. I would guess my parents spent a bit less than that. Mine took place at the clubhouse where my mom played tennis. Hers took place on two floors of the Rainbow Room. Our goody bag consisted of candy. Hers consisted of $1,000 in gifts including a video iPod. I remember eating chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks, though I did get to drink as many shirley temples as I wanted (still love ‘em). I would guess that dear Elizabeth had slightly more refined fare at her shindig. I had a DJ who played hava nagila, the electric slide, and the chicken dance. She had 50 Cent, Steven Tyler, Joe Walsh, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Ciara, DJ-AM, and Kenny G. Yeah, yeah, I know that Bar Mitzvahs are largely about parents showing off their wealth, but come on!

This story would be disgusting enough if it weren’t for the real kicker: Elizabeth’s daddy is none other than David Brooks. Brooks owns Point Blank Body Armor which has had a pretty sweet deal outfitting the U.S. Military with body armor. In fact, their profits increased by nearly 500% between 2000 and 2004. Brooks was so pleased with himself that he paid himself $70 million last year. Then he had the lucky break of dumping his shares of Point Blank Body Armor stock (worth $180 million) just before the stock started to decline. But he’s manufacturing something that is going to help the troops to stay safe, right?

Ummm…. no. There was one little problem: the body armor was defective. According to the New Times, back in 2002 their own employees gave sworn statements that the company had cut corners and made defective vests. Yet a year ago the military awarded them a $190 million contract. They were even sued by the Southern States Police Benevolent Association. Finally, three months ago, a federal agency reported that the majority of the Point Blank Body Armor vests they tested did not meet safety standards. The military recalled 18,000 vests a few weeks ago. And yet, just one day before, they got another $30 million contract from the government.

I know it’s hard to make ends meet when you’re a rich musician. I really do feel for Steven Tyler and the rest of the people who have to take money from a war profiteer and play at a Bat Mitzvah so that they can keep themselves, their various exes and children and their stylists and their entourages in the style to which they all are accustomed. I know I’ve thought about doing the same thing many times. But I decided that I’d rather have my pride than a $6,000 Birkin bag. I mean really?!?!? When do these people have enough money? I have been a very loyal fan of Tom Petty, Don Henley, and Stevie Nicks, and I can promise you that I will NEVER listen to their music again knowing that they are willing to take money from anyone, no matter how evil.

It’s hard to know what to be most nauseated about: the greed of musicians, the war profiteer who put soldiers in danger for his own profit, the excess of this girl’s Bat Mitzvah, or the fact that the government continues to give our tax dollars to a company that produces a defective product. It’s really just too much bad for me to wrap my mind around. I guess the best part is that our tax dollars essentially went to pay for this party. Where’s my video iPod?!?!?

But Brooks and his company are under investigation by the SEC, so I can only hope this will be his last party.

I know this may be shocking to some, but I just started reading those Harry Potter books for the first time, and you know what? They’re a pretty good read! Since I’d seen the first three movies, I decided to read The Goblet of Fire and immediately after finishing it (which I did very quickly since I couldn’t seem to put it down), I ran to B&N to purchase The Order of the Phoenix. Why didn’t anyone tell me these books were so good?

Update I finished The Order of the Phoenix yesterday, which I didn’t love as much as its predecessor, but I still couldn’t put it down. I was going to wait until we moved to Vermont to read the newest Harry Potter book, but I ended up buying it today because I had to know how Harry did on his O.W.L.’s. This is truly a sickness!

Library Success wasn’t the only wiki to come out last week.

We also saw the birth of the LISWiki, which has been criticized by various people in the biblioblogosphere (love that term! Thanks Karen!). I do agree with some of the critics that the LIS Wiki needs more of a defined focus and purpose, and that’s what I told its creator, John Hubbard, when he emailed me about it. And I think he’s coming to see that is the case as well. But just because it isn’t focused now, doesn’t mean it won’t be later. John is just trying a different approach to wikis than my more structured approach (which is really me just imposing my own organizational scheme on it from the start). Perhaps as he gets more articles, the organization and purpose of the wiki will become more clear. John seems to want the LISWiki to be far more egalitarian (anarchic even?), where no one person exerts control over the wiki. Will it work? I don’t know. Either way, he will learn from his experiences/mistakes with his wiki and we will learn by extension. So while I have a different philosophy about how a wiki should be created, I see the value in learning from different approaches.

And the main thing is: at least he tried. He thought a library science wiki would be great and instead of writing about it in his blog (which I don’t think he has) or discussing the idea at a conference or suggesting it to some other organization, he made it happen. So I feel a little bad for the criticisms of John’s wiki, however correct they might be, since I know how difficult it can be to get up the nerve to start something like that. I remember when I started the ALA Wiki, I worried that my idea would be criticized by the library blogosphere. Or worse, I thought that I’d end up with silence and that no one would contribute. Every new thing we do is a risk and sometimes things don’t work and we learn from them. But sometimes they do work. This is why I think it’s worth taking these risks and trying to find new and clever uses of technology.

This doesn’t mean that I embrace “technolust” or using technology for technology’s sake rather than to fulfill a purpose, but I do see a purpose to people getting practice with a wiki, which I think is a big part of why John started the LISWiki. I never changed a thing in Wikipedia before I created my own wiki. Frankly, I was intimidated. And I bet there are plenty of other people who are intimidated by the idea of changing other people’s Wikipedia entries too. It’s a new paradigm for web-based collaboration, and it can make people uncomfortable initially. I think something like the LISWiki or Library Success is less intimidating because it’s a community of librarians. I strongly encourage librarians who’ve been wanting to get involved in wikis to get involved in the Library Success Wiki Community. If you want more information on how to edit the wiki, visit Wikipedia’s Editing Help Page, the MediaWiki’s User Guide or the Library Success Wiki’s own tips page. If you mess something up and don’t know how to fix it let me know. There are no changes that can’t be rolled back and no mistakes that can’t be fixed. It’s great to talk about and read about the potential uses for wikis, but there is no substitute for what you will learn from actually using a wiki yourself.

Another person who has impressed me with their “Just do it” attitude is Luke Rosenberger from the lbr weblog. He had the idea to have people add conference reports to the ALA Wiki and he ran with it, spending god-knows-how-much-time putting up a page for every meeting at the conference. And then when the conference was over, he added links to reports from other blogs (I did a few, but Luke was a machine). Now he figured out how to tag each entry with categories so that the conference reports can easily be found on an alphabetical list (an idea I am now borrowing for the Library Success Wiki. Brilliant!

Andrea Mercado — of Library Techtonics and the PLA Blog was a big inspiration to me while I was still in library school. She showed me that I didn’t necessarily need a library job to contribute to the profession. Andrea is fearless. As a brand-spanking-new librarian, she went to conferences and networked her heart out, and one year later she seems to know everyone and is involved in so many different things. She has even gotten herself a plum gig as co-manager of the PLA Blog with Steven Cohen. How? She took the initiative. The girl’s got moxie.

I used to be too intimidated to actually try to create anything myself. I’d just let my ideas build up in my imagination with no practical outlet. I thought my ideas were dumb and that if they were good, wouldn’t someone have already tried to do the same thing? I thought about the ALA Wiki idea for a good long while before I got up the courage to do it. I kept asking myself, “why hasn’t anyone done this before? Is it a bad idea? What am I missing?” I didn’t have faith in my own ideas. But the success of the ALA Wiki has given me the courage to take on other projects. I realize that the worst thing that can happen is that my idea fails, and in the case of a wiki, the only investment is time and the cost of a domain name registration. Not all of my ideas may be great, but I’d rather try and fail than do nothing and learn nothing.

How many of you have ideas marinating in your head that could easily be put into practice? What are you waiting for?

Whew! We’re finally back in Chicago after being out of town for almost the entire month of June. Can’t say I missed the traffic (Vermont is really nice that way). I’m totally worn out, but happy, and am so excited about the ALA Conference. There are so many amazing people I am dying to meet, most of whom are hopefully going to be at the Bloggers party on Sunday.

So here is my developing schedule. There are very few things that are set in stone and that I wouldn’t be willing to give up for a great conversation with a colleague (so if you’re up for that, let me know).

Friday, June 24th

5:00 pm – 7:00 pm LITA Happy Hour Big Bar of the Hyatt Regency, 151 East Wacker Drive, east of Michigan Avenue along the south bank of the Chicago River.

Saturday, June 25th

8:30 am – 10:00 am Do you Trust Your IT Staff? Do They Trust You? McCormick Place room: S404

Morning and afternoon: Hang out at the exhibits with my hubby. I am DYING to meet Kent Haruf — one of my favorite authors.

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Back to School: Teaching Information Literacy to Adults in Public Libraries, Academic Libraries, and Adult Distance Learning Centers McCormick Place room: S502

8:00 pm – 11:00 pm ALA/ProQuest Scholarship Bash at the Museum of Science and Industry

Sunday, June 26th

10:30 am – 12:00 pm E-Reference Services: What Are Our Users Telling Us? Hotel Intercontinental room: Grand BR

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm LITA Top Technology Trends Hotel Intercontinental room: Grand BR

5:30 p.m. – OCLC Bloggers Party – OCLC Blue Suite

Afterwards, I plan to hit the NMRT/3m Social (7:30 – 11:00) — Ballrooms D/E of the Chicago Marriott Downtown 540 North Michigan Avenue — since it’s right near my apartment

Monday, June 27th

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm Google and Libraries: What’s Next for Google Print and Google Scholar. Hotel Intercontinental, Grand Ballroom

5:00 PM- 6:30 PM PLA President’s Program and Awards Presentation with David Sedaris, part of the ALA Auditorium Speaker Series McCormick Place room: Grand BR B/C

Tuesday, June 28th

Get all the free stuff I can carry!!!

I know this is a totally weird way to get in touch with someone, but I got a really exciting email two weeks ago from a woman who wanted to work with me on creating a wiki, but she must have given me the incorrect email address since my emails keep bouncing back. So Nancy Bradford of Napa (formerly of Chicago), yes, I think your idea is fabulous, yes, I’d love to work with you, and yes, I’d love to meet with you at ALA. PLEASE send me your contact information (or if someone knows her and her contact info, please contact me). Sorry to interrupt your blog reading.