In case you haven’t heard about the coolest new award in librarianship, I wanted to add my congratulations to all of the Library Society of the World Shovers and Makers award winners. This award was developed by three of my favorite people (who always manage to make me smile) — Josh Neff, Steve Lawson and …
Take a look at this truly amazing group of people that Library Journal chose to recognize this year. I’ve never known more folks on the list and so many are folks I absolutely adore: Sarah Houghton-Jan – it’s kind of amazing that she had not been recognized as a Mover and Shaker before this given …
Yesterday, I gave a talk for the ACRL Virtual Conference entitled Can’t Get There From Here: Achieving Organization 2.0. If you’re registered for the Virtual Conference or the regular ACRL Conference, you can access the archive of the talk, and if not, my slides and links to what I discussed are provided on my presentation …
I have been so touched by the kind words people have written about me with respect to my winning the LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology (or as my father-in-law started calling it to everyone he saw last weekend “tech librarian of the year” — lol). I always feel …
I’ve been lucky to have had some recent involvement with two online conference models — one that recently happened and one that will be happening soon. I’m really pleased to see more organized professional development opportunities being offered online in light of the current economic situation and, selfishly, the fact that I personally won’t be …
For the past year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure of serving on Jim Rettig’s Presidential Advisory Committee. I honestly had no idea at the time what it would mean to be on this committee, but Jim seemed like a really cool guy with a vision for a more inclusive ALA, and I really …
It’s easy to ignore a meme that you get tagged for once. When you find yourself having been tagged a half dozen times though, it becomes more difficult to ignore. So I finally decided to jump on the 25 Random Things… bandwagon, though I promise that I won’t tag anyone else. 1. My grandfather taught …
Be sure to see the update to this post at the bottom of the post. Close to a month ago, I wrote about the awful experience I had with Pottery Barn’s customer service. Since a bunch of things have happened since then (and I’ve had people ask if anything has changed), I thought I ought …
Yesterday I received the ALDirect (from American Libraries) Special Issue on the Tough Economy in my Inbox. It contained great information about library advocacy during tough times. What I found glaringly missing from this email was any discussion about or tips for librarians who’ve been laid off or about-to-graduate LIS students. Obviously, if we advocate …
We are sadly losing our beloved Distance Learning Librarian to her family (but good for her!), so we are again in the position of looking for a new Distance Learning Librarian. The position reports to me and I’ve had a wonderful time mentoring our current DLL and growing in my role as a manager. I …
When I read David King’s post about Ask-a-Librarian services last week, I didn’t have a strong emotional response to it. That was, until he wrote a follow up which brought my attention to some of the responses people had made to it. With email reference, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not a synchronous medium. We …
Last April, I started in my new position as Head of Instructional Initiatives, though for the first four months, I was also still doing the job of Distance Learning Librarian. Since taking this on at the end of July as my only job, it’s been a wild ride. I took a lot of risks, tried …
You can view an update to this post (and an update to my update) here. In an economy where there’s lots of competition for a smaller and smaller number of dollars, good customer service becomes an issue of survival. While product is important, customer service can make the difference between creating a life-long customer and …
My friend, the incredibly awesome David Rothman, has co-authored a book (with another fantastic medical librarian and a physician) on Internet Cool Tools for Physicians. The book is designed to help physicians find the best medical resources on the web. Given the glut of medical resources online — some questionable, some excellent — this should …
I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case for every librarian to learn how to program. Dorothea Salo responded to it and described how she thinks technology should be taught in library school. …
Last week, my students in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking class I teach (at San Jose State) presented their fantastic proposals (via web conference) for implementing a specific social tool at a specific type of library. I was so impressed with their creativity and professionalism. Each of them made a very good case for …
I know people have been bemoaning the death of blogging in recent months. I certainly haven’t helped any with my lack of posting, but it’s certainly not from a lack of inspiration nor from my immersion with microblogging (which I’ve never quite managed to get into on a regular basis). I actually have lots of …
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine commented on the fact that I hadn’t written anything about the Annoyed Librarian being paid to blog for Library Journal. That was more a result of my having kidney stones and being in excruciating pain than my not wanting to comment on it. But also, I really …
The Maintain IT project is awesome, so when equally awesome Stephanie Gerding asked me to pass on info about their new offerings, I didn’t hesitate: The MaintainIT Project is pleased to announce the latest Cookbook! “Planning for Success, a guide for the overworked librarian” http://www.maintainitproject.org/cookbooks/planning-for-success This free online resource brings together the most current ideas …
I know I’m late in posting this, but Brenda Chawner (a long-time expert on library open source software in New Zealand) has developed a survey for her PhD research that explores people’s satisfaction with free/open source software and their satisfaction with any F/OSS projects they’ve been involved in (MediaWiki, Koha, Drupal, MyLibrary, DSpace, etc.). If …