Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your week has been peaceful and productive. I have a few links to share with you today that should be useful for yourself and for sharing with patrons during this back-to-school season. Speaking of back-to-school, as some of you eagle-eyed readers have no doubt caught from occasional references on this blog, I’m currently working on my dissertation. This means not only does my kitchen table look like it’s having a tiny book and paper sale (bonus points if you got The Big Bang Theory reference) due to the enormous stacks of research material I have on it, my wrists are also acting up from all the typing I’m doing trying to get a lot written before the start of classes and teaching at the end of September. This means The Waki Librarian will be updated once instead of twice a week until classes begin in order to save my wrists. I hope you understand, dear readers. So let’s get on to the good stuff.

First, because I teach in the university, I’m constantly thinking about the coming school year. And to me, that means thinking about social media because I use it in my classes and talk about it with my students. So this post from Stephen Abram on what not to do on social media is definitely going into my discussions of social media this year. While not everything is totally applicable to my students, it should give us some points of discussion.

Speaking of teaching, one of the most powerful things I’ve learned that has helped my teaching is knowing when to be quiet and just let people think. Too many people want to rush to fill silences and that doesn’t help in meetings or in the classroom. Check out and share this Lifehacker article on how to use the power of silence to be heard. It is really helpful and a good reminder that not every second has to be filled with noise.

And for those of you with a lot of gadgets, and who haven’t already seen this post on Craft (which was then picked up by ThinkGeek), check out the tutorial on how to turn a book into a gadget case. If you are going to cut up a book, it better be turned into something at least this cool.

Finally, an image from Bohemian Homes that most certainly will want to make you curl up with a good book (if not also a cat and a cup of tea):

Have a wonderful rest of your day and relaxing weekend. I’ll be back next week with more. I’m off now to write. Allons-y!