Two years ago, I felt it was important to spend the 4th of July thinking about what it really means to be a citizen of the United States. I went back and read the Declaration of Independence and realized how little of it really felt true to me. So I re-wrote a passage of the […]
Revisioning Libraries
The Blue Table
With brilliant collaborator Maggie Frankel, I developed a model for creative collaboration and team development. We worked on this for the past year +. The project explores how wellness, productivity, and professional development can be furthered by activities that don’t always get valued in organizations. So with a piece of bright blue paper wrapping up […]
Understanding Motivation
REVIEW: Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work… And What Does by Susan Fowler One of the joys of ebook collections from my library is that I can easily borrow half a dozen titles at a time and read as much or as little as I like. I find that it is almost always a mix of […]
Three Films to Watch
We find inspiration everywhere. There are three films that I found so inspiring, that I know that I will return to them again and again. You will be surprised. They aren’t about libraries. And they aren’t motivational presentations. They are about experience. Our work in libraries is really about the complex dimensions of experience. Marina […]
We are Polyglots: Why It is Okay to Use Business Concepts in Libraries
Libraries have a vast and specific vocabulary. We speak librarian with each other and with our patrons. We really speak our own language which includes a healthy dose of acronyms: MARC, RDA, ALA, IL, ISBN and ILL. From annotated, Boolean, and bibliographic utility, to stacks and truncation, we are finely tuned to talk about the library […]
The Magic of an Organized Desk
We are a culture of multitaskers. We don’t take our time. There is always too much to do! However, taking the time to do something right can yield great benefits. Recently, I spent some time clearing away my desk. It is something I have to do periodically, and it seems to clear my mind at […]
Bringing the Calm
Technology always brings with it a learning curve. We think that technology should just work and should always make sense. But sometimes it doesn’t. I have stepped in to help resolve tech issues with presentations, cabling, settings and more. While I have a strong comfort level with technology, I have a secret. It isn’t only […]
Patrons, Customers, Clients, and Guests
Libraries have worked hard to be accessible to the communities we serve. We hope that our strong commitment to service makes those we serve feel welcome and supported by what we offer. There has been quite a bit of discussion about how we describe those we serve. Patrons: Patrons is the traditional description of those […]