Recently, a 1992 study of sex and libraries was published online having originally been published without much initial fanfare but then quickly leading to the firing of the columnist who published it.
Lots of interesting tidbits. I thought about listing what my answers would be but nobody needs to know which Shakespeare play my first time resembles (okay, half “Midsummer Night's Dream” and half “Comedy of Errors” if you really must know. 
)
(via reddit.com)
…then I get home and frequently forget about all of them. Good-night Gracie! 
I wrote about this meme before. Turns out that a couple years after these parodies gave their German-language art house film some international attention, the people who made the movie have decided that the single scene used for all these parodies is an “infringement” of their work. Well, they say that dinosaurs had small brains and that's why they went extinct…
My mom and dad had tickets to a magic show featuring Jeff McBride, courtesy their Investors Group rep so invited Shea and I along. Not your typical Tuesday night in Regina!
Here's an article from MSNBC on different libraries' approaches to reducing or eliminating fines including things like amnesty days (which I'd heard of) and “read it off” programs (which I hadn't) to even a “bike it off” program (which I couldn't even have conceived of!)
I'm sure I've written about how my first job out of library school was with a system that didn't have fines and that was a perfect fit with my personal philosophy and beliefs as well. That's not just my opinion though – studies have shown that whether libraries have fines or not, those who are going to return their books on time will do so and those who are going to be late will be.
Then there's the cost of having fines – how much valuable staff time is spent in dealing with (and then later, reconciling) all the little $0.30 and $1.20 fines that patrons have which could be used in a more productive manner?
Finally, there's a customer service element at play too. What sort of an institution, which prides itself on everything being free, creates a situation where we're (literally) nickel and diming our customers to death? (And you won't hear me call library patrons “customers” very often but in this case, I think it's appropriate.)
It's a not-so-dirty secret that fines can be a huge revenue line for a library (just check how many public libraries are willing to send patrons advance notices *before* books come due. Not many and in fact, lots don't even send overdue notices until a few days or even a week has passed rather than the very day the materials come due?)
Here's a quote from the article:
On Valentine's Day last year, the Anythink Libraries just north of Denver eliminated their fine system.
“Our
philosophy is that we want people to come to the library, even if their
heads are hanging low,” library spokeswoman Stacie Ledden said.
The
library system gives patrons 25 days after the due date to return a
book. It's then marked lost, and the reader is charged to replace it.
“Overdue
fines are definitely one of those traditional library conventions that
are worth taking a look at,” Ledden said. “It's intimidating to people.
They feel embarrassed about it. They feel guilty about it, and we don't
want people to feel that way.”
I first heard about Anythink Libraries during the PLA Virtual Conference and beyond everything else cool and innovative they're doing, they also need recognition for their awesome logo!
Regina had a wicked wind storm about a week ago and we lost a piece of the fascia on the front of our house. My folks were in today to help us fix the damage. Here are a couple snaps from the day…
The person steadying the ladder probably shouldn't be taking pictures!
“Hmm, how come they all get to stay on the ground?”
(I'm guessing one of them wished he could join daddy and grandpa on the roof though!) 
Our friends in the US are celebrating National Library Week which leads to awesome posts like this one from HuffPo on that country's most amazing libraries.
Of course the news isn't all good south of the border (check out the fourth or fifth comment down from MJinCanada!), especially right now.
The troubles for US libraries really hit me when we were hosting the PLA Virtual Conference a few weeks ago and the “Introduce Yourself” posts in the chat room were almost universally variations of “Wish we could be there but our budget was cut this year” or “Would love to be there but we're limited to in-state travel only for the time being.”
I've written about this in the past in the form of a post on the subject of “If libraries didn't exist, could you star them today?” Except the question is being reversed – libraries do exist but are heavily under attack from various sectors that don't support them (ultra-capitalists who think nothing should be free, tax-cut fanatics like the Tea Baggers, other mouth breathers.)
And of course I can't find it now but there was a great comment in a Reddit thread recently [edit: found it] talking about this exact idea – how libraries are in danger because some powerful groups are aligning against libraries because they simply can't wrap their heads around something being free in this day and age.
Scary times. And definitely not fun on any day of the week. But I've had all those links floating around for awhile so my initial link featuring amazing libraries provided a nice jumping off point to talk about a world when many of those amazing libraries are in serious danger.
In my interview for my first librarian job, I was asked that all-time favourite interview question, “Where do you see yourself going in ten years?” I replied “I'd like to be a director someday” but to this day, I honestly don't know how much of that answer was me being honest and how much was me saying what I thought the person wanted to hear.
Joke's on me – the person who interviewed me (who happened to be the current Library Director at that library) later said, “That was a bad answer – you were basically saying you wanted my job.” (“Well, I didn't say I want it tomorrow!” I remember replying…silently in my head, that is!) But that interaction has stuck with me having just passed my third anniversary as a professional librarian. Do I still want to be a Director someday?
Honestly, there are days when I don't even think I'd want to move up to management when I see the hours some managers put in and the stresses they deal with from above, below and the side. (I recently talked to a classmate who, as I think I was, seen by the rest of our class as the “future library directory” type – very involved in school activities, also won the school's “Spirit of Librarianship” award, etc. So I was a bit surprised to learn that she'd also had come to an “I'm very happy where I am now, thank-you very much!” position which I thought was revealing since I'd say she was very goal driven compared to myself.)
One other thing that's got this at the front of my brain – I recently went through some leadership/management training sessions and one of the things that stood out in the section we covered on personality types was that the type of folks who take up 90% of high level management jobs in any company tend to be the exact opposite personality type of myself, at least on the Myers-Briggs scale. (This reminded me that the Director who I mentioned in that first anecdote had told me something similar – and also happened to have that personality type – and was indeed a very good director.)
So is there any hope if I still *do* want to be a Director someday (other than the fact that by the time all the boomers retire, people in my generation might have no choice? 
)
Well, I just recently finished reading a book called “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving The Future of Business” and it's an early contender for The Hammy Award, the unofficial prize I give each year to the best book I've read in the last 12 months.
I'm going to quote one section near the end of the book on the future of work…
“What happens when the kids attending Adelphi [an American cybercamp for teens] enter the workforce? For starters, they'll accelerate the obsolescence of such standard corporate fixtures as the management hierarchy and the nine-to-five workday. As Thomas Malone, an MIT professor and author of “The Future of Work” points out, these conventions are artifacts of an earlier age when information was scarce and all decisions, for the sake of efficiency, trickled down from on high. Information is now available to anyone with an Internet connection. The result, Malone says, is that decision making has been decentralized.”
And maybe, just maybe, the type of personality type best suited to managing this emerging workforce isn't the traditional one either but the exact opposite one – more social, more open to experimentation, less concerned with hierarchy, rules and details. Maybe?
Just in time for Regina's mini-World Cup soccer tournament, the WCP Cup, Jaime Garcia has added some information to his web site targeted specifically at Regina's soccer community.
Jaime has a long history of involvement with Regina's soccer community and is still actively involved as a player and a coach. So in a riding where every vote is going to count, this type of micro-targeting of a specific audience could potentially serve Jaime very well if he can convert even some of the energetic, passionate and involved soccer folks into energetic, passionate and involved political supporters!
