2011 – Information Wants To Be Free

The elusive dream of work-life balance

I have been wanting to write a post on work-life balance for a while, especially after spending a week at ACRL Assessment Immersion with a bunch of people who are…

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Lifting the veil on my “system”

I am a huge fan of research log and research process reflection assignments. Because research is a means to an end (the paper) and because people are often doing it…

instruction reference

“I need three peer reviewed articles” or the Freshman research paper

For the past six and a half years, I have been teaching Freshman about peer-review and how to find peer-reviewed articles through the library (or Google Scholar). I've developed all…

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Invisible goalposts, support and having a plan

This summer, I was engaged with quite a few projects (several of which I was in charge of), but was able to make time to focus on scholarship just about…

instruction librarianship management

Becoming Zen in the face of criticism

It's been extremely challenging to post here regularly (though I'm getting better about it!), not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of down-time. Summer came…

librarianship libraries

Be the change you want to see

Tell me if you've heard this one before. A librarian comes into a new job full of enthusiasm. He volunteers for lots of projects and is a generally good citizen…

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Faculty inertia and change in scholarly publishing

I loved Barbara Fister’s recent post, "Breaking News: Academic Journals are Really Expensive!", about faculty who seem surprised that journals cost the library a lot. Kind of amazing to think…

librarydayinthelife

Library Day in the Life – Monday

I figured that since I've changed jobs from the last time I did Library Day in the Life, I'd participate this time around to give people a sense of what…

blogging Work

Tips for being a great blogger (and good person)

Since having my son, I have not been the best blogger in the world, but that doesn't meant that I'm not thinking about blogging. I probably have a year's worth…

libraries our digital future tech trends

Interview on mobile technologies at ALA TechSource Blog

In anticipation of my upcoming two-part workshop on mobile technologies for libraries, Dan Freeman of ALA TechSource interviewed me, asking me about my thoughts on the present and future challenges…

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Having a voice

At my previous place of work, we had weekly "council meetings" which was basically all of the professional librarians meeting to discuss issues, make big decisions about the library and…

libraries our digital future tech trends

New Webinar: Delivering Innovative Mobile Services through Your Library

When I wrote my book Social Software in Libraries five years ago, I decided to include a chapter on mobile technologies. As I started researching the topic, I was disappointed…

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The crisis optimist

I've never felt like a particularly optimistic person. When we were getting ready to move to Portland, I fully expected that we'd lose furniture on the way or that much…

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Portlandia

Greetings from Portland, Oregon! I've been wanting to post about so many things in the past two months (especially just about everything Barbara Fister has been writing over at Library…

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Making “you” work for you

Roy Tennant wrote a terrific post recently about his work habits and personality the other day that got me thinking (see "Living the Just in Time Life"). My first thought…

ebooks free the information! our digital future

My thoughts on the Harper Collins/Overdrive controversy

The library world is abuzz about Harper Collins changing the terms by which libraries can license their books on Overdrive. If you haven't read about it already, here's some background…

ebooks our digital future

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

I hope to write up some of my thoughts on the Harper Collins/Overdrive controversy this week, but for now, I'm posting an eBook User's Bill of Rights sent to me…

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My new job (or why all of my Oregon Trail gaming as a child might finally come in handy)

I'm one of those people who has a hard time waiting for people's birthday to give them presents. Whenever I try to surprise my husband with something, I always end…

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Ebooks and Libraries: A Stream of Concerns

I really like eBooks, which is something that surprised me when I won my Kindle last Spring in a raffle. In fact, just about every book I’ve read since then…