Don’t worry, Walt, I won’t apologize for being away and I won’t promise that I’m going to post more often (though I have a lot of ideas for posts, something has been preventing me from getting them out of my head and onto the screen). Wayne Bivens-Tatum recently wrote a very interesting post questioning who …
I get asked a lot of things via email from librarians, but very few actually make it to this blog. This question was so interesting and probably better answered by the “hive” than just by little old me. I am also curious how others would respond. I was wondering if you had any advice or …
I know Jenica wondered if her blog post, Rambling about possessiveness, really had a point, but it was right in line with things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Jenica wrote about the fine line between taking ownership of a project/thing in terms of really being really invested in the success or failure of …
I know a number of people in the Louisville area, so I’ve heard all about the horrible weather they’ve been having this year. But the flooding of the Louisville Free Public Library was the kicker. Check out some of fellow blogger Greg Schwartz’s pictures of the damage — it’s really bad. They’re estimating at least …
Sarah Cohen wonders what motivated people to participate in Library Day in the Life and who we are writing these for. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I wanted to share my own reasons for doing it (and since this is a bit long, I thought it better to post it here than to …
8:00 am – Checked my email. Checked reference email accounts. Answered a few reference questions, forwarded a database error on to our Head of Digital Initiatives and a Norwich history question to our Archives. 8:30 am – Director called me into her office to let me know that she’d heard back from the office that …
With many of my colleagues on vacation and no students around, this isn’t the most exciting time to be recording my time at work. I will definitely do something similar during the Fall or Spring semester when I’m knee-deep in instruction. 8:00 am – arrived at work and checked email. Started creating a basic wire …
This is part of the Library Day in the Life meme going on this week. What an awesome idea! I cheated on this a little — I wrote this up on Thursday since I’m not working until Wednesday. Until mid-August, I’m only working 2 days per week so that Reed can wait until he’s 4 …
I remember the first OCLC Blog Salon at ALA very fondly. It was like fangirl overload for me. I have to laugh now when I remember that I begged Michael Stephens to introduce me to Roy Tennant because I was too nervous to introduce myself to someone so smart and awesome. There was such a …
Adam, Reed and I have been back from Chicago for a few days, but it’s taken a while to recover, unpack, and get back into our routine. I’d been worried about traveling with an infant, and the irony was that traveling with Reed was much less a problem than traveling without the use of my …
I must admit that the last time I read a non-baby-related book was probably last Fall. And now all these great books are coming out from the LIS presses that I’m absolutely dying to read! This is torture! The one I’m probably most excited about is Chrystie Hill’s long-awaited Inside, Outside and Online which is …
I still don’t quite think it’s hit me that I’ll be leaving in a few days for ALA with my husband and baby. Not only is it Reed’s first flight ever (and I sure hope he likes airplanes!), but it’s my first time speaking at an in-person conference since October (I gave two talks online …
Since before my brain was hijacked by baby stuff, I’ve been thinking a lot about how many third party Web 2.0 vendors libraries are dependent upon (not to mention all the ones we’re dependent on personally!). I actually wrote a column for American Libraries on the subject, but 600 words could not reflect the whole …
As a new mother, I spend a a lot of time awake with Reed when most sensible people are asleep. Consequently, I’ve seen plenty of infomercials and commercials that are rarely if ever on television when sensible people are awake (my personal favorite is the Lee Majors Bionic Ear — “it won’t cost six million, …
Paul Pival wrote today and yesterday about “mafia tactics by Harvard Business School Publishing”, wherein they are trying to charge libraries to link to articles from Harvard Business Review in EBSCO for online classroom use and then are turning off PURLs to HBR articles in Business Source products if the school refuses to pay. I’ve …
I recently had a not-so-fun experience with our local hospital which reminded me of how important it is to ensure one’s front-line staff are empowered to question things. During our childbirth class – which was sponsored by the hospital where I was going to be giving birth – we were told by our childbirth educator …
I realize that while there have been little blurbs about this on FriendFeed, Facebook, Flickr, etc., I haven’t actually blogged anything about the new man in my life. Probably has something to do with the fact that the only opportunities to go online have been when I’m nursing him and it’s difficult to write an …
Yes, I knew I’d have to teach people how to use email. And unjam printers. And help people use copiers. But I don’t think I ever understood in library school how important sales and marketing would be to the success of our profession. Within a month of starting work as the Distance Learning Librarian at …
A while back, I read an excerpt from Aaron Swartz’s blog post about management in the post Upside Down Org Chart: Better Way to Support Employees? by Stewart Mader (his is a great blog to read if you have any interest in wikis). It took me a while to finally read Aaron’s original post, and …
Let me preface this post with the statement that I hate the term Luddite. I think it’s often used to dismiss people and ideas that differ from our own. It’s much easier to dismiss someone as being anti-tech than to try and understand what may be their very rational argument against something you love or …