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Itchy Itchy Scratchy Scratchy
I have a raging poison ivy/oak/sumac rash at the moment, I’m not sure which & I’m not going back out there to inspect the woods behind our rock wall to find out. In the process of finding...
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What is a library? Mission, vision, and inner workings.
I’ve recently started a new position at my public library, managing adult services (reference and circulation). Along with my colleagues, I also select materials (fiction in my case), plan and market...
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PLA 2014 impressions, the first post
I got back late last night from Indianapolis and PLA 2014, my first. My synapses are still firing furiously. Everything you’ve heard about learning as much in the hallways at a conference as you do in...
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Personal librarians
One of the things we’re working on at my public library is increasing our personalized readers advisory services. We’re planning to use a form, and I hope we can also do some staff training to increase...
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The flip side to serving the homeless in libraries
Over the holidays my son and I had lunch with friends and the subject of what I do at the library came up. I explained that librarians these days do a lot more than recommend books, help people with...
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Nobody reads
It’s been a while since my last post and if I’m honest, it’s because I didn’t feel I had anything new to say. And the conversations I’ve heard about libraries have been either the same old rehash of...
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More hand wringing and some hope
This was going to be a post about how good it was to meet colleagues at ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston Monday, hearing what’s going on in their libraries and what they are doing to serve their...
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Back to the beginning
Today I went to my local public library. As a patron, not a staff member. It was, admittedly, a strange sensation, not least because I couldn’t find my hold, which turned out to have been cancelled...
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Responding to violence
Last year when I worked at a public library, I suggested we do more displays on current topics in society — racism, refugees, gender issues, etc. This was met with resistance as the city I worked in...
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The Well-fed Librarian
In the past two weeks I was fortunate to have two one-day opportunities to meet and learn from academic library colleagues. First, I got to attend the Vermont Library Association College & Special...
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Information literacy, millenials, and the presidential election
I recently posted on my Facebook page that the current election campaign is a helpful example in my library instruction classes, because when I tell my university students that they need to think...
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Mindset, QFT, active learning
One of the cool things about being a university librarian is that I get to hear what faculty are learning. Today I attended a presentation about a math professor’s sabbatical project, which included...
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The garbage man librarian
It’s been some time since my last post — I’ve completed my first year as assistant library director at a small university, and I admit that budget season, the end of the spring semester, performance...
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Millennials rock
As longtime readers know, I used to work in a public library and transitioned back to academia a little over a year ago. In both cases I’ve been in management roles, and have been bothered by the...
View ArticleGeeking out on assessment
It’s “intersession” — that golden time between semesters when we can catch our breath, catch up on projects like weeding and shifting in the stacks, and assess how the previous semester’s library...
View ArticleA fringe benefit of the Trump era for librarians?
I read a fascinating and also somewhat irritating piece today by David Beard at Poynter, contrasting two polls about public mistrust of the media in the Trump age with one establishing how high public...
View ArticleWoes and whys of weeding
I started at my new library as director this week, and one of the first things my small staff wanted to discuss is weeding. A recent assessment of our print collection revealed it’s not very up to...
View ArticleFull catastrophe living for libraries
Many years ago when I was first learning about mindfulness, I read John Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living. He writes about how mindfulness — in brief, being in the moment, observing and...
View ArticleCommunity college librarians and student success
A study came out this week looking at community college libraries and student success. This isn’t a new topic, but a new approach — the authors asked college students to define success, and only...
View ArticleMore knowledge for good: research as resistance
I heard about a project recently that I somehow missed — Emily Dreyfuss wrote in Wired about it in June, when the family separation crisis was still in the public eye. A band of what Columbia...
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