Jenica has a post about applying to academic library jobs well worth reading by anyone in the job market. But in my head I’ve been writing the following post for a very long time… so out with it. Once you have interviewed for a library position, you have established a relationship with that institution and [...]
Here is a very interesting question others have posed: are libraries that license ebooks through Overdrive violating state patron-privacy laws because Amazon retains user data? (For context, Sarah Houghton-Jan, who last spring proposed an eBook User’s Bill of Rights, recently taped a video recording her thoughts about the Overdrive-Amazon deal enabling Overdrive books to be [...]
This year I’m doing a core dump from the scheduler — I just don’t have time for anything else. See you there! Happy Hour (LITA) Friday, 06/24/2011 – 5:30pm – 8:00pm Offsite Location – Howlin’ Wolf Den Tbl 1 (High Priority) Social event Here’s your chance to catch-up with your LITA friends, and maybe make [...]
The latest kerfuffle from LibraryLand comes courtesy Jeff Trzeciak, university “librarian” at McMaster’s, whose recent speech has garnered tart responses from other librarians and library directors (spoiler alert: count this as another notch on that post). I have this theory that an uncomfortably high percentage of research library directors are fundamentally very anxious about their [...]
Over last weekend, while librarian outrage over HarperCollins’ decision to limit ebook loans (among other restrictions) grew, librarians Brett Bonfield and Gabriel Farrel launched a project, Boycott HarperCollins. Kate over at the Loose Cannon Librarian sums up the rationale for joining the boycott as well as I could state it, and this week I’m too [...]
Last weekend on Twitter I saw a post: “Tell me your favorite books on failing and failure, especially as it relates to innovation and leadership.” I responded with this comment: “another blog post I don’t have time 2 write: how failure is overrated, & often confused w iterative design.” I got up a little earlier [...]
In February I’m giving a talk to medical librarians that explores these questions: How do we know when and what to let go? What are the ingredients to effective change management? How do we inspire buy-in from those we work with and from our key stakeholders? I would add this final point that has arisen [...]
I was teaching a library-science class about a decade ago when a student snaked her hand into the air. “You know how no good deed goes unpunished?” she asked. “No,” I said, and continued lecturing. I knew where she was going with that question, because I knew her from another context, where she was the [...]
Imagine, all this time I’ve been working my behind off in library jobs, and I could have spent it reclining on a chaise-lounge reading fat novels? Or so says LSSI, the library-outsourcing company, in a deliciously slurpy quote for the New York Times: “A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are [...]
In the end, I don’t think I “lost” or “won.” USAA was very nice to me, and I even got a nice letter and phone call from MasterCard. Avis pretended to be in the cloakroom the whole time. Probably the best moment (if a year of wandering in the bureaucratic gulag has best moments) was [...]
