Happy Friday, dear readers. I hope your week has gone well and that you have an enjoyable weekend planned. I have the usual assortment of goodies, tips, and tools for today’s post. So let’s get into how to shrink people who overtweet, recover some of our time, and of course watch a fun video.
I love Twitter. It’s one of the few social media tools that I find incredibly useful for my teaching, my personal life, and my professional life. However, if there’s one thing that I find annoying is the overtweeting by some people. Luckily there’s a tool to help you figure out who’s overtweeting and do something about it. If this is an annoyance to you, too, check out Lifehacker’s article on the tool, shuu.sh.
If you find, however, that you are spending too much time on Twitter or something else that is robbing you of your productive work time, you might want to check out Lifehacker’s article on Reclaim your time using RescueTime. I think it is rather telling that I had to bookmark this article to come back to read because I was too busy at the time to stop for 5 minutes and read it. Perhaps I need to rescue some of my time too.
As the school year has now started on most campuses and schools (and is in full swing on semester campuses), I thought this article from CNN is a valuable read: what teachers really want to tell parents. Teachers, at all levels, have incredibly difficult (but usually rewarding) work. We need to support our teachers so we can all learn and improve the system.
Speaking of improvement, or rather instructions for improvement, check out Life’s Instructions. I love lists and this is a great one. Read it and then give someone a hug. It will make you both feel better.
And for those of you who have time to spare, and/or are looking into getting into consulting, check out The Instant Consultant post over The Art of Non-Conformity blog. It’s a nice, simple overview of the process of becoming a consultant.
Finally, while you are being super-productive, don’t forget to take a break and stretch. Perhaps meditate on this lovely image from beautiful portals.
Whimsical Rain Drop Cottage
And when you need to smile and laugh, check out the wonderful Simon’s Cat video below:
Have a lovely rest of your day and a great weekend full of relaxation and rejuvenation. I’ll be back next week. Allons-y!
Happy Saturday, dear readers! You read the post title correctly–The Waki Librarian blog turns three years old today! I can hardly believe that I’ve been blogging for three years or that I’ve been at my current position for just over three years. Time really does fly (even if it’s a bit wibbly, wobbly).
I was thinking about what I should write about for my 3-year anniversary post and I had a lot of ideas. But the phrase that kept running through my head over the last few weeks is: “Momma was right.” So I thought I’d share some wisdom and things my momma taught me that have helped me in my first three years as a professional librarian and archivist because they might help you, too. So let’s get into the good stuff.
First, you have to understand that my momma is a pretty brilliant woman. Besides teaching me to bake a mean pie and replace a kitchen garbage disposal, she also taught me that we are in control of a lot more of our lives than most people want to believe. She sold her car to buy a motorcycle in order to afford the first payment for tuition to veterinary school at a time when women just didn’t become veterinarians. She doesn’t buy into the societal delusion that there are just some things that women don’t do. And, even though she’s not a librarian, she instilled in me an awesome appreciation for libraries and self-taught learning. And she was pretty much right about everything, not that this fact is at all surprising to her.
So what did my momma teach me that have been essential in my work? I’ll give you three things that are essential for success at work and in life that I still don’t see a lot of people doing.
Being kind is super-important
Being kind (aka being nice) seems to be a lost art on most people. But my momma impressed upon both her daughters that being kind is super-important. It’s what keeps us civil and makes the world a little nicer place. Everyone wants a little kindness and not only will being kind allow you to sleep with a clear conscious at night, it will help you in your work, too. People like to help the people who have been kind to them and who go (even a little) out of their way to be nice. So as you are fast-tracking your way to the top of the librarian or archivist heap, be nice about it. Say hi in the morning to everyone, remember that it was their niece’s birthday party over the weekend and ask them how it went, and even bring in cookies once in a while.
The great thing about being kind is that it makes the world a better place and it doesn’t matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert, you can still be a nice person. Being nice shifts your perspective and will get you through the chaos, trust me on this. But, if you are like some people I know, and need a concrete reason for changing your behavior so you get ROI, think of it this way: being nice will ultimately get you what you want. So if you can’t be nice just because it’s the right thing to do, be nice because it will help your career (although my momma might have a thing or two to say to you if she finds out this is why you are being nice).
Being kind is not the same thing as being a pushover
This is something my momma made sure we understood when growing up. Being nice doesn’t mean you have to be the pushover that some sections of society thinks you should be if you are kind (especially if you are a woman). I think this is one of the stereotypes that I’ve had the most trouble fighting most of my life. People need to understand that you can be both a nice, kind person and a strong person.
Especially when you start your career, there will be people because of your age, or your inexperience, or because you smile, who think that you’ll be easy to push around and use for furthering their agendas. Remain civil, but nicely say no to their machinations. You don’t need to put up with any of that. And, if you’ve been nice (and I mean sincerely nice and caring) to others at your work and in your life, they’ll have your back, too. See? Being nice creates an environment that allows you to be strong. It won’t be easy all the time, but it’s worth it. If being kind allows you a clear conscious at night, being strong will give you a happy state of mind and confidence.
Being yourself will ultimately make you successful
Everyone says this and they’re right, but my momma’s lived it and that makes her evidence stronger, in my mind, in support of being ones’ self at work and in life. I’m not an extrovert by nature and I’m definitely not someone who is comfortable with “tooting my own horn.” I also don’t promise pie in the sky to people, if I can’t deliver. And, while I love bright and shiny tech tools as much as the next person, I’m a private person by nature and so some social media and I don’t really get along. To some, especially if you read marketing blogs or professional development advice, this means I’m on the fast track to oblivion.
I beg to disagree. Hard work, as my momma would say, wins out in the end. If nothing else, us Waki women work harder and smarter than a whole heck of a lot of people. And this, over the course of say three years combined with being kind and slowly building relationships, will make anyone successful. Does it take more time? Yes. Is it as glamorous as blowing up on Twitter over night? Nope. But it is the way to building a lasting career? Totally.
I believe in continually learning and growing. My momma taught me that. But I also believe in staying true to what makes you unique and you because then you do your best work and hopefully find success and pleasure in your work and in your life.
So those are just a few of the life lessons my momma passed on to me and that I’m now doing the nice thing and passing them on to you. You’ve probably heard it all before, but have you taken the time to try being kind, being strong, and being yourself? Try it out and don’t forget to have a cookie once in a while, cookies are cool, too.
And whenever I get down or need to remember my momma’s advice, I hear this song in my head (really not surprising, if you knew my momma, even if it’s not quite about what we’re talking about now):
Have a wonderful rest of your weekend, give your momma a call, have dinner with some friends, and curl up with a cat and a good book (and a cup of tea or glass of cider, whatever wrinkles your prune). I’ll be back next week with our regularly scheduled archives, libraries, and technology programming. Allons-y!
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):
Kitty with books from Bohemian Homes
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!
Happy Wednesday! I hope your day is going well, dear readers. It finally feels like summer here in the Bay Area, which is actually a nice change from the cold (at least in my opinion). Today I just want to write a little bit about courage as I’ve been thinking about it a lot and want to hear your thoughts on courage and your work. Let me explain.
Most people would probably agree that courage is a positive attribute or characteristic to possess. Two of my favorite quotes about courage are from Ernest Hemingway and Ruth Fishel, respectively. Hemingway wrote that “courage is grace under pressure” and Fishel wrote that “courage is fear that has said its prayers.” What I like about these quotes is that they remind us that it’s not an all or nothing proposition when it comes to courage. We can still be scared and worried when we are courageous. Courage is not, then, some super-human feat of perfection. It completely works in with my “fake it ’til you make it” approach to a lot of things in life.
So why am I thinking so much about courage lately?
Three reasons:
It is summer quarter which means I have time to breathe and actually reflect instead of simply running around trying to keep up with day-to-day stresses of the regular academic year.
This reflection has led me to ponder how I can foster more courage in my students to stand by their own goals in their education and life. How can we foster courage?
I also wonder how I can have more courage to boldly challenge, share, and implement ideas, research, and projects that may be challenging to my current work and colleagues.
It can be difficult to be courageous and also difficult for some to separate being courageous from being pushy or foolhardy. Perhaps, it comes down to creating an environment that is supportive and encourages people to speak up and share what could be unpopular ideas. Maybe that’s the classroom–it’s a training ground for being both respectful and courageous and through these experiences we (both teachers and students) can be courageous in our work, in our sharing, and in our lives.
Or maybe I’m just over-thinking things and others feel that they are courageous enough in their work and are, for lack of a better term, “change agents” who actually get things accomplished in ways that bring people, ideas, and projects together.
Let me know what you think in comments.
That’s all I really have to share today. Let’s end with today’s great comic strip by xkcd. It *so* reminds me of the craziness with metadata standards.
standards by xkcd
Have a wonderful day and I’ll be back on Friday with the usual round up of tech news and notes to share with your family, friends, and archives/library patrons. Allons-y!
Happy Wednesday, dear readers! I hope that your day is going well. I hope that this post goes up and is publicized via Twitter as scheduled considering I’ll be on a plane going to a friend’s wedding when this is supposed to be posted and who knows when I’ll be back online. Anyway, today I just want to riff on one of Seth Godin’s latest posts and what I think it has to do with archivists and librarians. So let’s get into the fun of content programming.
Seth Godin recently wrote this post, In Praise of Programming. It’s a nice, short, interesting read. I’ll wait here while you read it. See? Quite interesting, right? It reminded me immediately of the work that archivists and librarians do everyday. We constantly do programming, whether we are in a public library setting, academic setting, or community archives.
I think it’s important to remember that we are about programming and that programming is a social activity. It’s not that we are just data curators or content distributors, we are also about value-added programming. This may be in the form of recommending what to read next, explaining how to actually use that shiny new tech tool in a meaningful way in the classroom, or directing the researcher to that newly processed collection that hasn’t made it into the online database just yet. We create meaning and connections through programming. I think this is one of the most important things that we do each day.
It is also a reminder that we need to remember our audience in all that we do. We need to involve the users/patrons/researchers in our programming. This is a great time to flex your evidence-based practice muscles and gather some data from your users to improve programming at your archives and library.
It’s such an exciting time we live in, with tons of change and new opportunities. But instead of running around like kittens, cashing every new shiny thing in our path, we can thoughtful collect, curate, and program our services and resources to have maximum impact in our communities. It is an art and I think we are more than up to the task.
So that’s what I have to say about programming. Now let’s move on to something else that is super-interesting: Moveable Type! I’m excited about the Type Truck coming to my neck of the woods. A letterpress in a truck! How amazingly awesome is that? I’m very much looking forward to the demonstrations. So check out if the Type Truck is coming to your area and let me know what you think.
That’s all from me today, dear readers. I hope the rest of your day goes swimmingly and you have a relaxing evening. I’ll be back on Friday with more. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely day and have a relaxing weekend planned. Today’s post will be very short. I have two things to share and a cute video to leave you with today. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly.
First, an apology for lack of posts the last few weeks. I’ve been ill and not up to doing much of anything other than sleeping. Luckily, I’m on the mend so there will be more regular posts on The Waki Librarian going forward, as per usual. But I just wanted to let you know the reason behind my silence on my blog and Twitter. Illness: so inconvenient for getting anything done.
Anyway, now on to the fun announcement/introduction. My friend, Jesse, has started blogging! You should check out her blog over at Low Tech Librarian. It’s also a great blog to share with those you know who might be a little more reticent to dive into the wild world of digital, online, crazy tech tools, programming, coding, etc.. And, although, I’m probably more than a little biased, I think it’s a lovely blog. Jesse updates it once a week. So go on over and give a new blogger a welcome the the librarian/archivist blogosphere.
Finally, to end, enjoy a study/work break with Simon’s Cat:
Have a wonderful rest of your day and a glorious weekend. I’ll be back next week with more archives, libraries, and tech news. Allons-y!
Happy Wednesday and Happy June, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely start to your month. We actually have sunshine today, so I’m happy. Today I just want to share with you some of my reflections on my time spent as a committee chair and then send you off with a tech article that should be shared with everyone you know.
Yesterday was the last Academic Senate meeting of the academic year which was the end of my duties as the Chair of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Research. As we are wrapping up our Spring Quarter, I wanted to share a few things that I’ve learned that will hopefully help you in your committee work, even if you are never foolish enough to become a committee chair.
First, as many of you probably already know from first-hand experience, committees take a lot of time. It’s not the meeting time, but the preparation time that seems to eat up large portions of days. And if you are Chair, you will spend even more time preparing for meetings. But what can really make or break committee work, in my opinion, are the people on the committee. As Chair, it was my job to facilitate meetings and make sure everything ran smoothly and efficiently because everyone is super-busy and no one likes to have their time wasted. Which brings me to this great post by Lifehacker, use compassion to combat difficult coworkers.
I was extremely lucky to have an amazing bunch of faculty members on the committee this year, but I’ve also been on committees with warring egos and clashing personalities. In either situation, dealing with people with compassion and consciously relaxing so as to not start from a place of defensiveness has really helped me facilitate positive interactions, even with very difficult personalities, in my opinion. I really do believe, and this has been borne out by this year’s amazing amount of work that we accomplished on the committee, that coming into a room with a positive energy will make other people more positive and willing to work together. Being Chair was a ton of work, but it was also incredibly satisfying to have productive meetings and get people motivated to work together.
Customer experience and humanizing technology are just as important for committee work as they are for businesses and libraries. Being approachable, available, and actually caring will always make for a good customer experience and a good interaction with a committee chair. Also, even though I love shiny technologies, it’s the people that actually matter. For example, the Academic Senate uses a fully functional, but incredibly clunky content management software program to distribute information and store documents. I, of course, had to send in documents to share with the senate that way, but I also made it easier on my committee members by emailing documents and sharing Google Docs.
So for incoming chairs next year, good luck. It will be a wild ride, full of work, annoyances, victories, and lots of laughs. Remember to keep your sense of humor, don’t pontificate, and for goodness sake end your meetings on time, if not early. Do those things and you’ll be fondly remembered as a great committee chair. Bringing cookies occasionally doesn’t hurt either.
Okay, so now on to the article that you should share with everyone, top 10 simple privacy tricks. Once again, Lifehacker has come through with an article of simple to implement tips that will have an immediate, positive effect on protecting your privacy.
To end with something fun, check out Joy the Baker’s recipe for whole wheat garlic knots and enjoy some garlicky goodness for dinner this week.
Take care, read a lot, and I’ll be back on Friday with some more thoughts on libraries, archives, and technology. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely day and, if you are in the United States, have a lovely Memorial Day weekend planned. I plan on accomplishing a lot of relaxing during the weekend in order to have energy for the last bit of the spring quarter. I just want to talk a bit about communities today and how important archives and libraries are (or could be) in fostering communities.
Public libraries seem to get the lion’s share of press when it comes to libraries fostering spaces, resources, services, and events that increase community involvement and interaction. However, academic libraries and archives can also be extremely important places for fostering community spirit among library and archives users. But it seems that we are not as pro-active on the whole about demonstrating our value to the community as public libraries. I know that my library could do a lot better at reaching out to students and getting them involved with changes in the library. One of my projects this summer will be working on cheap (read: free) ways of doing outreach and getting students involved. Our library is “the heart of the campus” mainly because it is open when nothing else is on campus, but I don’t think that students really feel “ownership” of the library and that’s a problem for engagement.
In the latest issue of C&RL News there was a great article by Gfeller, Dutterfield-Nagy, and Grignon, Imagine: A student-centered library, which described the Fogler Library’s outreach and marketing campaign that heavily involved students. The graphics they produced were awesome, prominently featured students, and would be easy to replicate at other university libraries given a bit of time and a little bit of money for printing posters. Just think of the fun of having students involved with the photography and designing of the posters, as well as creating tie-in events using mobile technologies, QR codes, and other student-led, student-driven activities. There is so much room for engagement and increasing the interaction with users in academic libraries. We can foster community, but we need the time and support to do it.
While archives might seem like a world away from public libraries and academic libraries in terms of fostering community, I would argue that they can also be at the heart of communities. I study community archives and will hopefully be sharing some of my research in the near-ish future with a wider audience because I’ve not finished up all my work yet. But in the meantime, I can say that community archives are hugely important for community history, memory, and public programming. And, most community archives operate on a shoestring budget, so they have many ideas to offer libraries on how to get things done when money actually is a huge object.
Anyway, just some food for thought. How does your library or archives engage with your community members? How do you make sure that people feel connected and involved with your library or archives? I’d love to hear suggestions in the comments as I work with our community members over the coming months.
I wanted to share this photograph of a post-it note I found affixed to one of the water fountains on campus because it made me smile. Unexpected messages of kindness and positivity are always welcome.
Surrounded by True Friends Post-it
Also, for a short work break, check out anatomy of a mashup: Definitive Daft Punk for one of the coolest visualizations I’ve seen in a long while. Plus, the music sounds awesome.
Have a wonderful day, a fabulous weekend, read a lot, and I’ll be back next week with more thoughts on libraries, archives, and technology. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and have a great weekend planned. As you read this, I will hopefully be on the road driving back to my beloved Bay Area from my research trip in SoCal. Today I thought I’d share a handful of articles about Twitter and some fun pages about typography that should be useful for you and your patrons. Then let’s all agree to relax and get ready for the weekend!
I’ve been collecting links to articles and posts about Twitter over the last couple of months and I’ve rounded them up here so you have a convenient list of links to give out to people who may need some convincing that Twitter can actually be a useful tool. There are also some good ideas for those of you who already use Twitter, but want to use it more effectively.
If you use Twitter on your Android, you might be interested in Twicca, which is a Twitter client. Only downfall is that it can only be configured for one account. So if you have multiple Twitter accounts, I suggest Seesmic. (And yes, I’m that person with multiple Twitter accounts. I use Twitter for my classes, so I’m not a narcissist, really.) The regular Twitter app is quite good too. Yay for choices of apps (and the mobile web) for getting your Twitter fix while on the go.
Now on to typography, which really has little to do with Twitter other than the fact that I’m rather interested in both. First check out this great post: You Don’t Really Strike Me as an Ariel on font selection and then for some fun, check out the infographic, So you need a typeface. If you really love typography, I can’t recommend I Love Typography enough. It has so much to inspire you, including this post all kinds of type. Maybe if we all work together we can rid the world of poorly used fonts and bad typography. Even if we can’t, we can at least look at some lovely examples of typography.
To end, check out Improv Everywhere’s “Gotta Share! The Musical”
Have a wonderful rest of your day, a lovely weekend, and I’ll be back next week with more library, archives, and tech fun. Allons-y!
Happy Wednesday, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely day. I can hardly believe we are to the middle of another week and I’m off on another research trip to the archives. So today, I just want to talk a bit about some of the stuff buzzing around the bibliosphere right now and leave you with some tasty recipes for your tea breaks.
So if you have been hanging around the blogosphere at all this week, you’ve probably already read Seth Godin’s, Future of the Library article. And hopefully you’ve also read the very well-written and balanced response by Agnostic, Maybe. I just have a few comments to make about Godin’s article that will hopefully not duplicate everything that’s already been written and why I think it is just as important for academic librarians to pay attention to what Godin wrote as it is for public librarians.
Yes, of course, Godin got some stuff about librarians and libraries wrong (in my opinion). Libraries are still needed, freely accessible resources are definitely needed, and the digital divide is still a real problem. But on the whole, Godin got it correct and some of his misconceptions about libraries can be chalked up to the failure of librarians and the library profession in general in marketing our services and resources.
Now some librarians do an excellent job in outreach and marketing efforts, but on the whole, we obviously don’t do enough. If we did, Godin (along with the majority of people) would realize that libraries subscribe to many online resources and databases that have the ability to blow Wikipedia out of the water and are able to make researching more efficient and effective. It’s not that we don’t have the resources, it’s that we don’t make people aware of them. I see this in my own library and in classes I teach where the instructor will tell me after that s/he had no idea we offered so much or could help in so many ways.
This ties into my last post about caring. We have to demonstrate that we care about our users and market our services, resources, and general awesomeness as librarians in ways that our users, be they a public library user or an undergrad in an academic library, find relevant. We are the awesome teachers, info curators, guides, and sages that Godin says we are and can be, but we need others to “get it.”
So instead of saying how Godin got it wrong, let’s use his post as a call to (more) action. He got some parts wrong, but so do most writers and people. His main message, that we need to use our talents to connect people with information to create value is right on the mark. I think that having people honestly write what they think about the future of the library and librarians is fantastic, especially by people outside of the profession. This makes us take a hard look at what we’re doing right and what we can improve on if we read such articles with an open mind and with an open heart looking towards improving ourselves and services instead of being defensive when obviously our message as librarians is not as clear, or as powerful, as some of us believe it to be. We need to become, in Godin’s words, a purple cow–something remarkable. I’m working everyday to make my work and interactions with people remarkable, are you?
And finally, for some tasty fun, check out Joy the Baker’s post on love and sugar recipes. These are fabulous and, if all else fails in your marketing campaign for the awesomeness of librarians, bake ’em cookies. Everyone is a fan of cookies.
Have a great rest of your day, help someone out, read something lovely, and I’ll be back on Friday with some tech stuff to share with your friends (family, library users, students, etc.). Allons-y!
