Inspiring stuff to read, Take 2

I was thinking about writing a post reflecting on recent posts about the myth of the graying of the profession (and the coming librarian shortage) and Peter Brantley’s post about involving young’uns in discussing the future of libraries, but Colleen Harris beat me to the punch. And because she really knows how to tell-it-like-it-is, I feel no need to comment further on this topic. Take a look at her post, On Great Myth of the Librarian Grays. While I do have a tremendous dislike for these AUL or UL-only-type organizations and meetings, I have equal dislike for the idea of meetings that purposely exclude library administrators. We should be able to come together as professionals, all equally passionate about creating a great future for libraries (whether we’ll be working in that future or not). We all bring something different, unique and useful to the table. Those who should be excluded are those who think that people below or above them in rank have no place in the conversation.

Probably the post that has inspired me most recently is Olivia Nellum’s Reserves, Newsletter, Instruction where she discusses how she created a textbook reserves collection with basically no money and a heaping helping of moxie. She also discusses some of the difficulties and unintended consequences of undertaking a project like this.

If you’re a new grad, LIS student, or are just thinking about becoming a librarian, you must check out Bobbi Newman’s post So You Want to be a Librarian? She has pulled together some of the best advice around the web on the profession and job searching into one easy resource. Also worth taking a look at is Andy Burkhardt’s Library School To Do List. In it, he lists some of the important things LIS students should be doing to make themselves marketable in the profession.

Isn’t it fun when you work hard to create something in social media and then the provider makes a change that forces you to redo everything? I’d created a nice Facebook page for my liaison area using StaticFBML and Boxes and then Facebook gets rid of boxes, changes their layout, and I had to totally rebuild the page. Grrr… And of course right after that, I find this great post from TechCrunch on the 12 Best Ways to Customize Your Facebook Page. Grrrr… But hopefully you can get something out of it!

In Evernote, Cloud Computing and Reality, Iris Jastram reminds us of the dangers of having complete faith in the cloud.

I have always felt strongly that librarians cannot come up with creative solutions to problems without having time to just reflect. And sadly, in most libraries, staff are stretched so thin that there’s barely time to get the basic work of libraries done. Learn More, Do Nothing by Peter Bromberg at the Learning Roundtable reminds us of the importance of taking that time to let things sink in and reflect.

While Sarah Houghton-Jan was writing about training in this post (also from the Learning Roundtable Blog, I think all library instructors struggle with The Tension between “Learn It Fast” and “Learn It Well”. We want to cover as much as we can in a single session, but we also want to make sure that the people we’re teaching actually absorb the material. I know that I, myself, have moved from one end of that spectrum to the other in my years of teaching information literacy and I’m getting much more comfortable with the notion of teaching less in order to ensure greater impact.

For those interested in eBooks and wanting an answer to the question “why can’t all eBooks work on all eBook readers???” check out Jason Griffey’s detailed explanation at Pattern Recognition.

I’m starting to see more and more posts from librarians looking at how they iPad could be used professionally. The Great iPad Experiment from Tiffini Travis provides some useful advice for those looking to use the iPad for teaching. At Not so Distant Future, Carolyn Foote talks about Piloting iPads in Library Settings, specifically at her school library.

Selling vs. solving and supporting. I read two posts that make it clear that the focus in marketing can’t actually be on selling. David Lee King looks at how to Support Your Community and provides some valuable advice for libraries. In Solving vs. Selling, David Armano reminds us that people don’t want to be sold to and that the focus of “selling” should be on solving problems that people have.

Lots of food for thought here. Hope you find it all as interesting as I have!