Classic Blunder #2 – Assuming resistance is a bad thing
I remember when I was in library school, a lot of people talked about librarians who were resistant to change and would try to derail your exciting and innovative projects.…
Classic blunder #1 – Let’s just try it and see what happens!
There are a lot of popular assumptions people make in this profession that lead us to make classic blunders. These can be assumptions about the change process, assumptions about our…
Posted inabout me career librarianship tenure track Work
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…
Posted inabout me research tenure track writing
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…
Posted ininstruction 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…
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…
Posted ininstruction 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…
The changing professional conversation
I have had some great discussions on Twitter. Professional discussions, discussions about parenting, conversations with friends. I've been pleasantly surprised that you can have a quality professional discussion with multiple…
Posted inlibrarianship 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…
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…
Posted inlibrarydayinthelife
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…
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…
Posted inlibraries 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…
Posted inlibrarianship libraries management Work
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…
Posted inlibraries 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…
Posted inabout me librarianship libraries Work
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…
Posted inabout me assessment instruction management Work
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…
Posted inabout me librarianship Work
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…
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…
Posted inebooks 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…