Communication

There is No Secret

/ dwakimoto

Hello, dear readers. I hope you are all well. I wanted to share a bit of a different post today than my usual tech, library, and archives related findings from around the web. Today I want to let you in on a secret of success; there is no secret. I feel the need to elaborate on this a bit after another year of teaching and also talking with undergraduates, graduate students, recent graduates, and early career librarians. There is no secret, only intelligent, efficient hours of work that create success. And I promise to only stand on my soapbox for a little while and leave you with something fun at the end.

Now we could talk about nepotism or how favoritism undermines a true meritocracy, but I don’t want to. Life isn’t fair and sometimes people get to ride on other’s coat-tails or seemingly get all the luck with finding jobs or being successful. But I believe the majority of people in our professions, speaking specifically about libraries and archives because they are what I know best, become successful because of hard work, grit, and an ability to see past the day-to-day grind and use what they are doing today to create the opportunities for growth in the coming years. Not to mention they have these two qualities in spades: a simple recipe: empathy and generosity.

I think that sometimes people have the false assumption that they have to be mean or unkind to get ahead at work, but I don’t believe that is necessary. It hasn’t been the case in my career thus far. Showing genuine empathy for others, being generous with sharing expertise and sharing the workload for getting things done at my work have helped me far more than being negative and unwilling to help out when needed. Being generous and kind almost assuredly makes me a more pleasant person to be around as well.

Also, putting your head down and getting work done that is important for the entire department is integral to success. You can’t just do the flashy projects, and you probably won’t get much chance to do the flashy projects, if you don’t first show that you can be counted on to get the work done that keeps the department moving along. I do a lot of scheduling and coordinating for our teaching program that isn’t flashy work, but it is incredibly important work so we can serve our students and make sure they get the classes they need. Follow-through is a key ingredient to success and that takes time and commitment.

This year has been a great year so far, with lots of long-term projects finally coming to fruition, which has been lovely. But none of it would have been possible without years of hard work and persistence for my long-term goals.

So basically what I’m trying to say is keep doing your work, keep helping others, and do make sure to tell people about what you are doing sometimes, too (while hard work will eventually get noticed, you do need to let your supervisors know what you are doing, too). It’s not an overnight way to success, but it is a lasting way to build success.

And for fun, check out this lovely TARDIS Easter Egg courtesy of Google Maps via Gizmodo.

Have a wonderful weekend! Allons-y!

Work and (Some Semblance of) a Balanced Life

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you have had a good week and have a lovely weekend to look forward to, too. Today I just wanted to share some good links on advice for trying to find and maintain some semblance of a work life balance. I think it is really important to do more than just work and to also understand how to try to create boundaries, especially with the ease of being connected all the time to work. So let’s get into the work advice.

I think this article on Lifehacker is fantastic, Don’t be a work hero. It is so important to have boundaries and be firm about those boundaries so you don’t allow work to swallow your entire day. Balance, however you define it personally, is a very good thing.

Even though you don’t want to be a work hero, you might want more responsibility so you can advance your career. Lifehacker has another good article on how to take on more responsibility at work without being a pushover. It’s important to figure out how to take on more when you are ready for growth, but avoid taking on others’ workloads. Again, boundaries are a good thing.

Finally, as long-time readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of productivity and efficiency. One of the best ways to get more done is to be organized. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I like this article on the top 10 ways to organize and streamline your workspace. Yay for organized workspaces! I always think better with an organized and clean workspace.

So enjoy your work, but do find a balance that works for you. I truly believe that there isn’t a one size fits all for people, but remember that burning out at work does no one any good. Doing so much that you are constantly stressed and frazzled is bad for you and bad for your colleagues, too. So remember to work well and relax well. What do you do for balance, dear readers? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

And now, I’ll leave you with a lovely photo from the Great Ocean Road:

12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road

12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road

Have a great weekend, full of whatever balance of play, work, fun, and productivity works for you! Allons-y!

Negotiation

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope the week has been kind to you and you have something fun planned for the weekend. Today I just wanted to share a couple of articles that I found useful for learning about negotiation. Many people find negotiating intimidating, so sharing tips is always a good thing.

I like this Lifehacker article on how showing a little appreciation can improve your negotiations. Also from Lifehacker is a useful article on 5 tips to negotiate better.

I think my favorite book on negotiation I’ve read is Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever’s book, Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want. I found it useful, especially when it comes to negotiating for me and not on behalf of someone else, and maybe you will find it useful, too. What are your favorite tips and resources to become better at negotiating?

And, since it is Friday, we should end on something fun. How about e-reader versus octopus? I’m on Team Octopus, just saying.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend filled with lots of summer fun. I’ll be back next week with more. Allons-y!

Design and Creativity

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are well and have had a lovely week. We are past our week of a heatwave here in the Bay Area, which has made this week rather lovely and productive in my opinion. To get your creative juices flowing, and perhaps inspire some projects over the weekend, I wanted to share a few design and creativity articles with you. Use them at home and at work, and share them with others.

I love this chart on picking the right color for whatever you are designing based on color psychology. This is a helpful chart, especially if you’ve never given much thought to the emotions that many people associate with various colors. Perhaps a useful resource for the next time you need to create some flyers or a presentation for the library.

Also on the topic of color is this wonderful video, why color still matters. Enjoy it and share it.

I think we’ve all had times when we wish we were more creative and this article has some help in the form of nine of the best ways to boost creative thinking. I’ve used some of these techniques in the past and they’ve really helped increase my creativity, especially the tip on creating restrictions.

Finally, if you need a place to play to increase your creativity, check out this tutorial on how to build a ball pit on your balcony. This is awesome and inspired by the xckd comic, “Grownups”:

"Grownups" by xkcd

“Grownups” by xkcd

Have a wonderful rest of your day, a terrific weekend, and go out there and create something. I’ll be back soon. Allons-y!

Tips for New Grads and Anyone Looking for a Job

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope those of you in the United States had a very happy Fourth of July yesterday. It is very quiet on my campus this morning as a lot of people took a vacation day to have a long weekend. One has to love summer for the more relaxed pace and time to breathe. Today I just want to share a few articles that I think will be useful for new grads and others looking for jobs this summer.

Even with the economy picking up, it is still a very tough job market in many fields, including libraries and archives. So I think that Lifehacker’s article on 6 of the most common resume flaws and how to fix them is rather timely. A good resume or CV is still one of the best ways to convey your experience, skills, and knowledge to potential employers. A good cover letter never hurts either. As I’ve served on multiple hiring committees, I can definitely say that a readable resume that is tailored to the position is very useful to the committee. No one wants to search through a poorly constructed resume and many won’t take the time. Lifehacker’s article also gives good advice on how to make your resume as positive as possible, which I think is always a good thing.

Although not strictly about job seeking, I think Lifehacker’s article on break the ice in any situation is useful for those going on job interviews, too. Being able to connect and talk easily with people on a job interview can be difficult, but having some ideas of good conversation starters can be helpful. I think this is especially useful for those who have all-day interviews as there will always be an awkward silence or two that you might feel the need to break during the day.

Also, for those looking for jobs (especially in the library and archives fields), don’t give up hope, do try to continue to build your skills, and do try to remain positive. Don’t be afraid to ask others in your field who have more experience than you to look over your resume and cover letter. Having an extra pair of eyes, especially someone who has hired people before, look over your application materials is very valuable. Also, always get the names of the members of the hiring committee correct. Do your homework and come prepared to interviews with questions. Practice your answers to interview questions. Do send a thank you card or thank you email after an interview. And, once you get a job, give back. Offer to read resumes, talk with people who want informational interviews with you, and share your skills and knowledge.

And, just for fun, take a look at this chart explaining the difference between a geek and a nerd. I quite enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Thoughts about Publication Requirements and Open Access Journals

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Friday, dear readers. I hope that you had a lovely week and that you have a lovely weekend planned. It has been a very busy quarter here, wrapping up in the next few weeks. I’m almost finished with end-of-the-year reports, grading, and the like and am looking forward to summer. Summer is a great time to catch up on writing and work on research projects. But now that I’m looking to wrap up a few research projects and begin a new one, I’m left pondering the question of where to publish and how it affects my work as an academic librarian.

At my university, librarians have faculty status and go through the retention, tenure, and promotion process. Therefore, we are expected to complete research and publish in peer-reviewed journals. I actually like this requirement as I like researching and contributing to the knowledge base in the fields. But what I do have issues with is deciding to which journal I should submit my articles. And this is an issue, not because I don’t know the aims and scopes of the journals in my field, or which journals publish research that is along the same vein as my own, or even that I’m not aware of the prestige of different journals. It’s an issue because of the conflicting interests of publishing in a “publish or perish” environment that recognizes prestige of a journal versus my own desire to support open access journals by publishing my work there.

I support the open access movement and love that more journals, such as C&RL, have gone to an open access model of publication in our field. I have been a member of the Evidence Summaries team for a number of years for the journal, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, and love that anyone can read the journal and my work. I do think it is wrong that many publishers charge so much for journal subscriptions, both for libraries and for individual subscribers. I would love to publish all my work in open access journals.

However, I also recognize the reality that many of the top-ranked and well-regarded journals, with a large readership, in our fields of libraries, information science, and archives are not part of the open access movement. I also am aware that publishing in these journals is seen by many in academia as, if not a requirement, then a very important signal that your work is of value and at a high level of scholarship. And since my career is in academia and I am in a position to be tenured and promoted through the faculty lines, the prestige of journals is a consideration when publishing.

How does one then resolve these issues? What concern trumps the other? Publish in open access journals and hope the academia moves in time to see open access as a necessary change in the publishing model and valid? Or publish in journals with prestige that are not open access because of the pressures of academia?

So I suppose I’m wondering how others have resolved this dilemma for themselves. I’d love to hear about it in comments.

Thank you, dear readers, and I’ll write again soon. Allons-y!

Meetings

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has gone well. I’ve had a very busy week of teaching. I’m very much looking forward to some relaxation this weekend. But before we get into the weekend, let’s talk about meetings.

No one seems to like meetings and it isn’t hard to understand why. Lots of meetings are poorly run, have no clear agendas, and no clear steps for follow-up after they finally are finished. But although books like The Org can tell us why meetings are a necessity of modern organizations, that doesn’t really help when you are stuck in a meeting that just keeps going and going. Instead, what does help is when you can run a meeting and do it well.

To that end, check out Lifehacker’s article on the simple equation to run great meetings. Then get out there and run great meeting.

As, in a meeting related vein, check out the article, again from Lifehacker, on what if you could truly be yourself at work? I am just in awe of this kind of community in a work environment and think it would be wonderful to implement. What are your thoughts?

Finally, I want to leave you with this lovely video that I finally watched and am so glad I did:

Have a wonderful weekend! Allons-y!

Advice and Randomness for Friday

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! This quarter has been super-busy and I can hardly believe we are already in March. I think someone must be speeding up time. Anyway, I wanted to share with you some of the articles and resources that have recently come across my screen that I think may be useful to you and to those you serve at your libraries.

We’ve been talking about UX (user experience) more at my library, thank goodness, and so I thought this infographic on How to test your landing pages was especially timely. I even like that the infographic is well-designed and easy-to-use. I’m looking forward to some usability testing and UX re-design happening on our library pages hopefully in the near-ish future.

Because I seem to be constantly running up against the clock this quarter, the Lifehacker article on Simple secret to time management: Jedi time tricks was a good reminder on how to prioritize what needs to get done. Plus, who doesn’t want to be more like a Jedi?

As we are nearing graduation time (seriously, it will be here before we know it), I thought this article on advice I wish someone had given me for my first job was timely. It is also a good reminder to those of us who have been working at our organizations for a while to help those who are adjusting to org culture and to also keep on the look for burnout in ourselves.

On to some timely practical tech advice: How can I stop losing and breaking my headphones? This is a great article for everyone to read and hopefully will save you time and frustration in using your headphones.

Also, do take the time to watch this amazing TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on how your body language shapes who you are. I found her talk incredibly insightful and moving, especially at the end. And Dr. Cuddy reminds us to not fake it ’til we make it, but “fake it ’til we become it.”

For your Friday fun, check out this post on how to repurpose some old hardcover books:how-t: hardcover book lamp. Then check out this lovely video talking about Neil Gaiman’s Calendar of Tales project:

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Job Tips, Sleeping, and Randomness on a Friday

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! Today is a big day at my campus as we have the President’s Investiture today. So this blog post will be brief, but still filled with some interesting and helpful tips and links. So let’s get to it so I can then go off and figure out how to correctly put on my robes.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I love sharing great articles from Lifehacker, especially about productivity, interviewing, and basic job tips. Naturally then, I wanted to share this article on how to avoid the inevitable feeling that your job sucks. Great read, good advice, and definitely worth sharing with others.

Also, I really appreciated this article on how to be assertive without losing yourself. I think it is especially good for introverts since it explains that you don’t need to be pushy or cold in order to be assertive and that being assertive doesn’t mean being aggressive or being a bully. That difference is really important to remember. My favorite people to work with are assertive, but still empathetic and respectful and are definitely the people I consider leaders.

Also, if you want to check out another project aimed at using cloud storage for digital preservation, check out ArchiveBox. This is an interesting project that I hope I’ll have time to explore more this weekend.

Because it is almost the weekend and a lot of people (including myself) look forward to the weekend to do a bit of sleeping in, I thought I’d share this article on how to find your ideal bedtime with the morningness/eveningness questionnaire. It’s a quick questionnaire to fill out and helpful to find a good bedtime. I am, very unsurprisingly to my friends and family, a definite morning person. However, I’m not convinced about only getting 7 hours of sleep a night, as the results are based on, but it did re-confirm my preferred bedtime (although getting up at 5am is completely *not* my preferred morning wake up time).

I want to leave you with this photograph of a beautiful staircase that I would totally recreate in my house, if I had stairs:

Book Staircase on Beautiful Portals Tumblr

Book Staircase on Beautiful Portals Tumblr

Have a wonderful weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back next week with more tips and tools. Allons-y!

Communication, Cool New Tool from CDL, and an Archives Song!

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! Toady I’m going to share some links that I find helpful in the realms of communication, new data curation tool from California Digital Library, and some weekend fun. Let’s get right into it because the weekend is calling!

I really appreciate this article from Lifehacker: how to avoid awkward conversations when meeting someone new. So if you feel like this xkcd cartoon below in conversation, do yourself a favor and read the article. Just say no to awkwardness in conversations!

internal monologue by xkcd

internal monologue by xkcd

Also, check out this article on asking questions to determine if a manager will be a good boss. Always good to figure this out before you accept a job offer. Pass it on to those you know who are looking for employment.

I think Data Up is so cool and will be of great use to researchers who need to manage and preserve their data (in Excel format) because of grant requirements and wanting to share data with others. From the press release:

CDL partnered with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Microsoft Research Connections and DataONE to create the DataUp tool, which is free to use and creates a direct link between researchers and data repositories.

Please share the information with the researchers you know or work with at your institutions. I love seeing great products and tools created for digital curation and preservation. Even better, the code is open source so it can be improved, which is “strongly encouraged.”

Thank you to all who attended, volunteered, and presented at Library 2.012 this week. It was a lot of fun. I think my group’s presentation went well and I enjoyed listening to some fantastic talks on recent research and digital preservation work. If you want to listen to any of the recordings, you can find the links on this page.

And finally, to leave you with something fun, check out this wonderful parody video and share it with all the archivists you know. Many thanks to my friends for making me aware of this video!

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back next week with more. Allons-y!