Today was our library region's AGM and, though it fell on a different day (April 5 this year, March 31 last year), in my mind this marks one year that I've been with Southeast Regional since that was the day that I officially started.
It's funny to think back to that first day – just trying to remember the names of my new co-workers let alone figure out what was going on with all the policy and budget discussions that were happening as the day progressed.
Here are some other random memories of my first day on the job…
All the staff were wearing library golf shirts so I asked the staffer working the merch table (yeah, librarians are like rock stars – we sell t-shirts! ) if I could get one. “Oh no, you don't get yours until you pass your six month probation,” he replied. “Oh…uhm…okay” I kinda mumbled (while thinking something a bit stronger in my head.)
The funniest part is that the shirts are stored in my office so I happened to “acquire” one quite a bit earlier than the passing of my six month probation. Oh, and that's something else that I think I first heard that day – my boss doesn't usually pass professional staff at their six month performance review even if they do a really good job because (I think) he believes very few people make enough progress in six months to earn a passing grade. Something like that anyhow. Well, I must've managed to pull the wool over his eyes because I managed to pass mine (to be fair, as did the person I was replacing so it's not like it's unheard of either.) Of course, in the end, that and a handful of loonies will get you a Starbucks coffee, right?
I remember wondering if it was a conflict of interest to give a hug to the Indian Head trustee who also happens to be a longtime family friend whose son is currently renting our farm land? (I did anyhow.)
More small town stuff…I remember talking to the rep from a town near Indian Head and (of course) he knows my mom because she taught him CPR.
I remember rushing around with the person I was replacing to print out copies of the Branch Awards pamphlet and take some plaques to be engraved in the few short hours before the start and end of the meeting. (I understand why my boss runs this surprisingly politically sensitive decision about branch awards by his Executive at their morning meeting before making it official but it does make for a bit of a crunch during the day!) Today wasn't too bad because I'd printed the pamphlets yesterday with the knowledge that I could still print more this morning if there were last minute changes or the Executive didn't like the little dashes of humour and “personal voice” that I inserted into my write-ups over the more typical generic blurbs that are used. (“Library A wins the Branch Service Award for having a committed board and successful programs that have led to increased circulation and a much respected place within the community. Congratulations!”)
I also remember thinking “Holy crap – this is a lot I'm going to have to know how to organize for next year!” (and then not realizing for nearly six months, until right before the very similar fall semi-annual meeting, that it was a different staff person who did all the organizing for this one! I'm only responsible for the twice-annual Branch Librarian training workshops.)
I gotta admit – I was a bit taken aback that first day to hear that staff didn't get paid for the hour we spent at the AGM over lunch – even though we were obligated to be there and true, not really “working” but still, it wasn't like I could take off for an hour to go visit Shea or whatever so it wasn't like that hour was mine to do with as I pleased. I'd never worked in a place where this was the case before so I'm not sure if it was a literary non-profit vs. library thing or just a local policy or what. Being my first day (and knowing it was only a year and a half contract), I decided not to make (too much of) a stink about it anyhow.
I don't know if you do that thing where, maybe you wake up in the night and look at the clock and go “Oh, five more hours of sleep..yay!” or have a busy week ahead of you and think “If I can just get to Friday, I'll be fine.” I was doing the same thing on my first day – not in a positive or a negative way – but just wondering, “What am I going to be like a year from now? Will any of this make sense? What will I have accomplished in the next year? Am I going to make it as a librarian or will I have to go back to school for my Masters in Journalism?”
Going to the bar with my new co-workers at the end of a long day and having one of them jokingly slurp up some beer that someone else spills on the table. “This is going to be a really interesting year” I remember thinking to myself.
A new site, Brijit provides 100 word summaries of magazine articles in a number of categories. Sort of a MetaFilter for magazines and you guessed it…via MetaFilter.
Part of the reason that some librarians prefer to call patrons “customers” is that they believe in ideas such as “the customer is always right”. But here's a good list of Five Reasons Why “The Customer is Always Right” is Wrong.
We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or
two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When
it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you
every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who
demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose
side are you going to be on?
Why not take a moment to nominate someone you know who fits the following criteria?
LAST CALL for emerging leaders in the LIS student community
Library Student Journal (www.librarystudentjournal.org) believes that LIS students have new and exciting ideas. We see information needs in new places (and new worlds). We can, and should, make a vital contribution to the LIS field while we are still students.
Do you have a colleague who is doing innovative research? Have you met someone at a conference whose blog you read daily because it inspires you to think in new ways? Has a classmate come up with a creative solution to address a current problem in your local library?
If so, we want to hear about these people!
The deadline for submission has been extended to April 7, 2008. (Sorry - current LSJ staff members are not eligible for this award.)
To nominate an emerging leader, please send us the following: 1. Full name, school affiliation and email address, of nominee. 2. Reason for nomination. Try to be as specific as possible - which project, event, concept makes this person an emerging leader. 3. Your full name, affiliation and email address.
Send your nomination to librarystudentjournal [at] gmail [dot] com, and be sure to put "Nomination" in the subject line.
The special issue will appear in April 2008. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Yesterday was my one year anniversary with Southeast Regional. I was going to a post to celebrate the fact…but then I just went to bed early. The last year's flown by but I think that has more to do with Pace than the job. (Last night wasn't much better – Pace was up and down, waking up screaming, spinning and flipping all night long.)
Speaking of Pace, he's finally said his first “real” non-“da-da”, “ma-ma” word yesterday. I've got a video clip of it up here.
Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:
Five Things The Internet Is Killing 1. The Music Industry – I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year. That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!
2. The Movie Industry – see above. It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer.
3. Real Estate Agents – I keep hearing these commercials that slam “do it yourself” real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you. Frankly, they reek of desperation. Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet – many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications. Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property – the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?
4. Traditional Software – increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins. MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.
5. Newspapers – I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do – are usually from memory. Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!) Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely. Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?) The New York Times gets it right – all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.
Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing Books – outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else. To paraphrase Twain, “the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated.” I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books. Really? Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet. I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship. When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre. Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship. I think that's what will happen with “real” books and e-books. E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books.
(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)
[2008-08-11 – Edit: here's another list on the topic from Cracked that counts phone books, MP3 players, DVD's, magazines, catalogues and newspapers, hard copies of video games, and cash. I'd also add “Post Office” to the list of things you'd think the Internet is killing but isn't.]
Pace was babbling up a storm the other day while grandma was watching him. So she rather ingeniously decided to call our Regina number and leave a message of his babbling so we could hear it later. (I've got a neat feature enabled on my message manager that forwards all messages to us by e-mail so she knew I'd get it later that night.) The funniest part? At the end, how she has to clarify “That was Pace!” in case we didn't know.
Congrats to Amy Buckland for getting the nod! (<old man voice>I remember when Amy was just a wee lass, firing off e-mails to library school-focused blogs asking about the merits of various schools.</old man voice> Obviously I didn't do a good enough sales job for UWO and she landed at McGill. London's loss is Montreal's gain.)
Looking at the list of recipients and seeing how many of those named have blogs (and/or are doing work focused on technology and Web 2.0 stuff), it made me wonder what sort of relationship there is between having a blog and the “real world” of libraries?
Classmate John Miedema of the Slow Reading blog recently presented at Salt Lake City Public Library's “Thinking Ahead” conference. I'm not sure if his blog was how they found him and/or if it helped lend credibility to his application if he “cold called” them as a potential speaker but I'm sure it didn't hurt.
Maybe that's part of it – you need to have a certain specialty or theme that you're “known” for? (See #4 here.) Amy runs Library Student Journal, John has become a leading proponent of the Slow Reading movement.
I haven't won any awards or been invited to any conferences because of my blog (yet! ) but as I recently blogged about, it's been an amazing way to become connected to a wider library community that I wouldn't otherwise have in the pre-Internet days.
(Of course, I also have my days when I think bloggers are a lot like poets and professors – namely, a group of people who are mostly interested in what other people in the same area are doing while no one else gives a toss. I've organized enough poetry readings in my life to know that 99% of the people who come to them are other poets. And the citation count wars of academics trying to get their papers cited by other academics often seemed like more of an academic circle jerk than anything. )
Er, anyhow, ranty tangents aside, being a part of the conversation has been useful, even if it hasn't paid off in awards, conference invites or Google-buyout offers. Even something as simple as being able to post the full version of my essay that won second place in the CLA student essay contest last year since CLA didn't have room to print anything but the winner in Feliciter has generated the a couple hits from people who searched for it after the winners were announced last year. And who knows – it may do so into the future as well. And then? That CLA conference invite can't be far off! (How can you tell it's conference season? I'm hoping to go to SLA this year – and to maybe get a chance to meet the famous Jessamyn West of librarian.net and MetaFilter.com – but CLA looks like it's not going to happen, what with the price of diapers and whatnot.)
The Globe and Mail recently had an article on the benefits of reading and good literacy to your health (PDF). This is probably not a huge surprise but lines like “While we obsess about our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the single best predictor of good health and longevity is probably literacy.” are pretty big statements to make. (I'd have guessed that the single best predictor of longevity might have to do with healthy eating and exercise.)
(via one of our branch librarians who in turn, got it from a librarian at RPL)
All the staff were wearing library golf shirts so I asked the staffer working the merch table (yeah, librarians are like rock stars – we sell t-shirts! 
) if I could get one. “Oh no, you don't get yours until you pass your six month probation,” he replied. “Oh…uhm…okay” I kinda mumbled (while thinking something a bit stronger in my head.) 
