putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999
This is a theme update. I was looking for a way to sort of merge this blog and my newsletter. I have not managed that, but I did get this site looking fairly decent for now and maybe like it was designed in the last half of this decade. If you see anything looking broken, let me know.
Hiya!
I needed to fix a thing with my reading list so I needed a widget-ready theme so I changed to this one and had a “to do” item to update and then a number of things happened, none of which are interesting. So it’s been a while and I have a few things to mention.
1. If you see something weird or broken with this theme, please drop me a note? I got very into working on it and then less into it and I’m concerned that I was not totally done.
2. You may have seen this amusing article that I was interviewed for a while back. 3 Ridiculous Misconceptions About Dating a Librarian. It’s amusing. I was asked to link back to it. I said I would. And then I haven’t updated my website since. Sorry about that. Here’s the link.
3. This is very important. I’ve spoken a lot about the Fair Use Best Practices documents that have been put out by the Center for Media and Social Impact. They have a new one out that you should read: Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Orphan Works for Libraries & Archives and other memory institutions I’m just digging into it. All of these documents have good advice and, most importantly, lots and lots of examples and processes explained by working librarians, archivists, and cultural heritage workers of all stripes. And then looked at by lawyers. Very useful with things you can put into practice. Lots of nice citations.
I’ve started a new gig writing for Medium this month, so I’m working on a few pieces about DRM and Buy Nothing Day and I’ll be sure to link to them here. My gig at the Open Standard came to an abrupt end when my editor was suddenly no longer working there after (maybe?) some GamerGate related stuff. I don’t know details but I was asked to put my articles “on hold” for the time being. It’s not quite like being fired. Meanwhile I’m working on a longer single-topic post about Ferguson and the library and what people are doing. When you’ve got the Annoyed Librarian’s non-crabby attention, you know you’re doing something right.
I failed to communicate the “why†of this project to the volunteers. Before turning my volunteers loose, I needed to explain the general workflow of the library. By saying, “here is a list of books to pull†or “adjust the shelves so they look like this†wasn’t enough information for them to grasp the bigger picture. Taking a moment to discuss how the library functions, sans library jargon, would have helped them understand the overall goals for the project.
Every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard. So, if I was given a choice that 50 years from now I could either have a dollar or knowing that some kid was listening to my song, I’d go with the kid listening to my song.
Just having one of those days where I am in favor of a picture-based approach to what I’ve been interested in.
Press release | official website
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Right after I got back from New York, Hurricane Sandy hit and I spent a lot of time in the quickweb spreading links about how people could help libraries affected by Hurricane Sandy (you still can – NJ, NY) and making my own donations. A week after that I also got the news that I’d been elected Justice of the Peace of my small town in Vermont. This is neat news. Similar to my stint on ALA Council a long time ago, I’ve often felt that helping people different from you to solve their problems often involves working from the inside. So in addition to weddings, local JPs help out with elections and tax abatement hearings and it seemed like a good way for me to get involved. Because I didn’t know much about this position, I’ve been doing (surprise!) a lot of research and I’ve been collating that into a post-a-day blog called For Great Justice. Feel free to read if you’d like to.
I have also still been reading a lot of the trade publications and the usual Twitter/Facebook/blog stuff, I’ve just been doing a poorer job of radiating it outward. The latest thing I’ve been reading that has made an impact is this long ALA Think Tank discussion of a blog post by Stephen Abram about managing “hig potential” employees or, as he puts it, The Rock Star Dilemma.
As I may have mentioned in the past, I have this problem. Not like “Oh I am so terrific at work all the time!” but that I have a lot of energy and ideas and have often found that in real-world library jobs this is not only not appreciated (okay, that’s fine) it’s actively discouraged, de-emphasized and occasionally disparaged. This bums me out. So it was interesting to read the long discussion on how not just management but “high potential” employees themselves can better manage these awkward situations to achieve better results for libraries. Stephen has created a lengthy follow up post where he includes a thoughtful list of suggestions and tips that synthesizes a lot of the ideas that came up in the discussion. Worth a read.
