The Other Librarian

 
It all started because I Blogged where I should have Twittered. . .   Greg wrote a post called “Stepping into Marketing“ talking about Mitch Joel presentation.   And I wrote this:
I actually had Mitch in my Twitter list, but he didn’t follow me, so I took him off. I might put him back though.
Whether or not you think this [...]

I’ve had a tongue-in-cheek post-in-waiting for a while now that would look at traits I notice in online cultures as a way of understanding whether or not a particular service is for you or your library.    It had been percolating, percolating, percolating. . . and then I read Greg Schwartz’s post on Managing His Own Social [...]

UPDATE: Since I’m venturing into potentially controversial territory, I thought it would be a good time to remind my readers that this is my commentary on a situation that occurred in a library in California and not necessarily the opinions of my employer. I will say that I believe we are [...]

Ten more ideas about how I can make my life better, in libraries and elsewhere:

 Plan an unconference — somewhere, somehow.

The field needs more unconferences, and I’d like to host/organize one for local librarians this year — probably in the summer sometime.

 More controlled and productive computer time.

No, this has nothing to do with social software.   I [...]

There have been lots of exciting things happening in my life these days, which means I have backlog of the things I would most like to write about.    Expect January to be busier with my blog than December was.
But, to tide you over until then, I think these Kids Help Phone reports are invaluable [...]

Libraries pride themselves on their ability to provide access for all.   We do not care how much money you have, what you look like or what you choose to have for breakfast — you can access information for free, most times.
In comes the Internet and the world of information becomes even more free.   [...]

 
Designing an organization is not something that managers should take on without a good deal of thought. Unfortunately, the coverage of organizational design in library management courses is often simplified to a toying around with two organizational dichotomies: flat or hierarchical; centralized or decentralized. The impression you get from such a surface [...]

I’m in a bad mood lately about mainstream media. Here are some examples:
1. The Appalling video about Paula Ryan giving advice to librarians about how to dress.
A couple of points:

The dowdy librarian is nowhere close to my reality, where I see a wide group of well-groomed, smartly dressed and professional looking librarians [...]

UPDATE:
Thanks to all of you who tried the survey, so far.    I realized that I forgot “students” in the demographic information — apologies for that!    If you want to take the survey later, I will have a link to the survey on the right-hand column of the blog, in relative perpetuity (under contact [...]

The big story today was the Ontario government’s banning of Facebook from staff computers. I do not really know how this impacts Ontario libraries yet.  I hope not much, because in my view having a “no facebook” policy in libraries is kind of like having a “no cooking” policy [...]