Sarah has a great post about her transition to library administrator. Because she feels awkward in that cloth she’ll likely do great. Naturally, being The Man myself (a few times over), I have my own twist on her observations. There’s a fine line between being transparent and over-sharing. I don’t believe in transparency so much […]
During Holy Week, I am making a short pilgrimage to the ER&L Conference in Austin to participate in a panel on leadership with Bonnie Tijerina and Char Booth. We met last week to explore this panel and review possible questions we’d field. I think particularly for women, the hardest part of leadership is owning it. […]
That’s what I’m doing right now, ensconced in my window seat in coach on my flight home, playing Aretha Franklin’s “Young, Gifted, and Black” tuned up loud enough to drown out the food-smackers behind me while I tidy up trip reports and budget forecasts and put the buff on a small preservation planning grant. But […]
Sometimes we go in search of our New Year’s goals. Sometimes they are gifted to us. I will be one of the keynoters at the 2012 annual conference of the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA). The conference is to be held in Palmerston North, New Zealand. I am thrilled not only […]
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 […]
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 […]
Roy Tennant just posted a marvelous set of advice for new(er) librarians in Library Journal. To riff on his points, allow me to remind my Gentle Readers of my post about mentoring from 2008 (and if you liked that post, also see this one, about how mentoring was key to restoring my faith in myself […]
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 […]
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 […]
Working for a vendor, it’s been hard for me to figure out how to personally respond to the recent Liblime brouhaha. What is a “personal” response in a world where our private/public lives are so blurred? But I feel this event personally, because it touches on so many things I have written and talked about […]