Libraries

Thinking about Design, Committees, and Libraries

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers. I hope your week has gone well and you have some fun planned for the weekend. Today I wanted to take a little time to share some thoughts on design and libraries. Or, more specifically design by committees, potential pitfalls, and a way forward.

I think about library design a lot. I can’t help it. One of my great loves is for good design, specifically good graphic design. I have an incorrigible habit of volunteering to design or re-design things for my library, even when I really have enough to do because I can’t stand having something get printed up or posted online that doesn’t reflect well on our library. Plus, I love design. I love the challenges and constraints and being able to communicate well visually.

I also think about library design a lot because I research graphic design and librarians. In an upcoming paper, I share information about best practices and processes already in place at libraries (article will be published soon, I hope, since it was accepted). One of the takeaways from my research thus far is the variation of how design processes are handled at libraries and the costs & benefits of design committees. Like all committees, design committees at a library can either be a blessing or a curse and either way, there is sometimes no way around a committee. But I wanted to talk a bit about how we can make the most of design committees.

First, try to get people on your design committee that actually know something about design. That always helps. If the people making the decisions don’t know about design, how can you expect to have great, or even good design, come out of the committee? Common sense, but sometimes committees are filled more by seniority or crystal ball than by actual experience or knowledge. So if you have control over a design committee, get people who know something about design.

Second, make sure your mandate and authority are clear. If you don’t know what you’re supposed to do or how much authority/control you have over the design work in your library, you are being set up for failure. Don’t allow it and get as clear of an answer as possible from whoever implemented the committee and has final approval over the designs you’ll produce.

Perhaps most importantly, remember that you aren’t going to please everyone with your design work and that’s okay. As Seth Godin wrote about the 2% who misunderstand you, they aren’t the ones you are designing for. You are never going to please everyone. If you try to, your designs will become so watered down and boring that it would have been better just to stick with the clip art and default typefaces you were using all along; at least then you would have saved time. Design is about function and form, but also about beauty and aesthetics. Not everyone agrees on those last two. Make your peace with that and, if you can’t, doing design work for your library is probably not for you.

Just like we shouldn’t create library policies based on one or two squeaky wheels, we shouldn’t make design decisions based on the squeaky wheels. Be bold, be daring, make a mark with your library’s designs whether online or in print, on a huge banner, in the remodel of a study room, or the sign-up form for your programs. Merge utility and beauty to create amazing functionality and fabulous form. Solve problems and present improvements, do user testing and read the research, and then get your committee moving. Don’t wait; don’t fuss; just make.

I wish you all the best in your design work at your library. I’ll be back with more thoughts and research updates. Until then, I wanted to share a couple more things that may interest you as a librarian designer. One, planner subscription services, who knew? Not me, but they look fabulous and fun. I’ve actually been ruling a personalized planner in a Rhodia journal my husband bought me. I couldn’t find a planner I liked at our indie bookstore and thought, why not make my own? So far so good. Also, another lovely freebie from Smashing Magazine: Office and Business Icon Set. Love these icon sets. Great, classy alternatives to the dreaded clip arts. Reward yourself and your designs and download this set!

Have a wonderful day and weekend. Allons-y!

Blog Action Day 2015: Raise Your Voice!

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! So today is Blog Action Day 2015 and this year’s theme is Raise Your Voice! It brings a spotlight on the silencing and abuse that people sometimes face when sharing their views, research, and ideas online. This is an issue that happens especially if you do not fit with the dominant majority (aka not white, cisgendered, heterosexual, and male). So Blog Action Day is a time for us to come together and spotlight this issue and take a stand against it. Today I’m sharing some information and how I think libraries and librarians can, do, and should be advocates and allies against the hatred and silencing that occurs all to frequently online.

Anita Sarkeesian, creator of Feminist Frequency, continually amazes me with her insightful commentary on representations of women in video games and her courage to continue her work through the vitriol and threats that she is subjected to constantly online for speaking out in an arena that a very vocal minority feel should remain a male-only space. If you’ve never heard of Feminist Frequency before, go check out some of her videos and interviews. They are amazing and I’m thankful that she’s continue with her work. She’s making a difference and we should support her against the bullies, trolls, and others who somehow think it is okay to threaten someone online.

Monica Lewinsky gave a powerful and moving TED Talk about her dark days of personal harassment on the early days of the Internet and how she is speaking up now to reclaim her narrative and advocate for safety and compassion online. It is a great speech and reminds us that we need to practice compassion in all aspects of our lives, including online. Harassment and intimidation should not be acceptable to us no matter the medium. It’s up to us to create a better world online and off.

Finally, I wanted to note that I think all librarians can help advocate for and promote values of equity, safety, and compassion online through our work. Librarians already affirm core values of social responsibility and diversity, among others. I see advocating for the safety of all people’s to share their ideas and creations online without fear of death and rape threats, doxing, or other forms of harassment and threat as part of our role as librarians, as people who support everyone in our communities access to information and education, life-long learning and community-building. It is up to us to decide how we want to use our professional standing, our lives, to support and build up instead of tear down others. My hope is that we work together to raise our voices in strength and solidarity to support those who are silenced.

That’s all for today. It makes me saddened that we can’t act better towards each other online, that we are over a decade into the 21st century and we can’t seem to be rid of such vileness and hatred. I want us to have a world that is better than that, for everyone. So that’s why I’m raising my voice with Blog Action Day today. Enough is really enough.

Friday Fun for the End of Summer Term

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you had a lovely week and, if you are in the United States, have a lovely holiday weekend planned. Today, I wanted to share a grab bag of articles and things that are fun and useful and may help you to keep some of the summer feeling as we go into the school year and into fall.

I love summer for many reasons, but one of the reasons I love summer is because it always seems like the perfect time to have potlucks, BBQs, and parties. If you didn’t get your fill of fun yet, check out Lifehacker’s article on the top 10 tips for hosting the perfect get-together and schedule one with your friends to enjoy the last days of summer before the frost of fall.

While it is already September and a lot of people are back at school and work, it doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice good design or some fun. Check out the September Desktop Calendars from Smashing Magazine to give your work desktop a refresh. I love changing up my desktop wallpaper each month and this month it was such a hard choice with so many lovely wallpapers combining summer with autumn designs.

It isn’t a new article, but it is a great read, like a pep talk and a pat on the back for librarians as we roll into another school year. So reread Neil Gaiman on why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming because it is wonderful.

And it wouldn’t be a Friday without a bit of fun, so check out this previous Fashionable Friday: word nerd by The Well-Appointed Desk. Seems like a good one to share at the start of the school year.

Also, I can’t help but share this laptop scratching post lets your cat create its own viral content. So cute and silly.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and lovely weekend full of all good things. I’ll be back again with news and notes. Allons-y!

Teaching at the End of Summer

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I know the blog has been quiet this last month. This is mainly due to my co-teaching in our Summer Bridge Program. Next week is the last week of the program, which is bittersweet. It has been a blast teaching, but also exhausting. After the program is over, there is less than 3 weeks before we begin our fall quarter. So today, I just want to reflect a bit about this busier than I expected summer and some ideas that may be of use to you in your teaching.

So What is Summer Bridge?
For those who are not familiar with the program, Summer Bridge is part of EOP (Educational Opportunity Program) designed to help first-generation, low income, and/or historically disadvantaged students successfully make the transition to the university. At my university, Summer Bridge is an intensive five-week program with classes in math, information literacy, foundations, and ethnic studies or biological sciences (depending on student interest). The students are in class from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm five days a week. Although we all know that five weeks can’t completely prepare students for fall quarter, it can help them feel more comfortable at the university, make friends, learn how to interact with faculty and staff members, and get a leg up when it comes to navigating classwork in the fall.

So What’s the Library’s Role?
My colleague, Gr Keer, and I designed and currently teach the library’s class in Summer Bridge. We have 40 students twice a week for two hours at a time. The course is designed as a pre-LIBY 1210 course, which is the information literacy course required of all first-year, undergraduate students. We’ve covered searching the library catalog, finding textbooks, introduction to databases, identifying information sources, reading citations, evaluating information, information privacy, copyright, and more. I see our role as getting the students more comfortable with accessing and using library resources, understanding that the librarians are here to help them with their research, and reversing any negative reactions they have to libraries and librarians.

So Why Am I a Part of Summer Bridge? (Or, Why Be Exhausted for 5 weeks When I Could Be Catching Up on Research and Writing?)
I’m a part of Summer Bridge because I believe it is the most important thing I could be doing with my time in the summer. I believe that these students, my students, deserve support in transitioning to college and that librarians are some of the best people to help them with this transition. We’re all about helping and supporting students. That’s what libraries and librarians do! Plus, it is a fantastic way to connect more deeply with our fantastic EOP leaders and promote the library as the go-to help point for students when they are researching during the upcoming hear. Plus, I love teaching and teaching in Summer Bridge is one of the places that I feel I can make the most positive impact on our students. Working with upper-division and graduate students can be loads of fun, but I don’t feel like I can make as great an impact on them as with the students in Summer Bridge or in the freshmen classes I teach during the academic year.

Having an impact makes the exhaustion worth it. Makes the hours I could have used to write up my research papers and finish analyzing more data worth it. Seeing and hearing students become passionate about information privacy, understand how to find a book for their class, or find the courage to answer a question in a class discussion for the first time makes it worth it.

So my summer will be over soon and the craziness of the academic year will start up. Could I have gotten more research done on graphic design in libraries if I didn’t devote hours to prepping and teaching Summer Bridge? Sure, but I still managed to get research done anyway this summer. Could I have finished processing another collection in the archives if I hadn’t been expending energy getting students excited about using Boolean Operators? Sure, but the collections aren’t going anywhere.

Everything we do in our work and our lives is a trade-off and goodness knows I’ve made choices that definitely weren’t worth the trade-off. But I can 100% say that teaching in Summer Bridge was and is totally worth any opportunity costs this summer. And I hope to see some of my students in my information literacy classes in the coming year.

I hope you’ve had a lovely week and have a lovely weekend planned, dear readers. I’m hoping to be back soon with more news, thoughts, and notes. Allons-y!

Teaching Digital History: Or, Out of My Comfort Zone

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week went well and you have a lovely weekend planned. Today I want to share some of my experiences from the last quarter, especially about being outside of my comfort zone in my teaching duties. This spring quarter I taught a digital history class that I had created for the history department for the first time and it was both completely fun and completely terrifying at the same time. Let me explain.

I was asked last year by the chair of our history department if I would like to create a digital history methods course. Of course, I said yes! After checking out as many digital history course syllabi as I could find online and digging through lots of literature I began to draw up a syllabus with input from the history chair. We wanted the course to combine theory and practice so the students would get an opportunity for hands-on work as well as getting a grounding in the theory of digital history and current discussions surrounding digital history. After a few iterations of the syllabus, we had a course that we thought would be good so we were able to put it forward to be approved for the next academic year. Happily, the approval process was fairly straightforward and we were on our way for having it taught this spring quarter.

I’ve taught for six years on campus, but I was totally terrified (and excited) to be teaching for the history department a brand new course with non-first year students. But after a bit of shuffling of students in the first few weeks of the course, we settled into the groove of the course and got into the discussions and work of the digital history project. After reviewing the students’ course evaluations, which were overwhelmingly positive, I can’t wait to see where the history department takes their digital history courses next. I just wanted to share a few thoughts about my experience and how it helps in all my work.

First Thought: Just because you are talking with someone in an allied field doesn’t mean they know or understand your field.

This was one idea that has really stuck with me after teaching a digital history course. I really wanted the course to be cross-disciplinary, so I challenged my students to read outside of their comfort zone of history articles and texts. We read articles in Science on using big data for research, library science articles, articles written by archivists studying historians, and more. Some of the students talked in class and wrote about how it really pushed them and was hard at first to understand these other fields. Many of the history majors talked about how they weren’t aware of what archivists did or that anyone was studying how historians used archives. It was really interesting for me to figure out how to translate research from different fields and get students excited to learn about things outside of the history field and see the interconnections that they could use as they go out and become teachers, public historians, etc.

Second Thought: Digital History is always changing so it’s okay to experiment, too

As anyone who works with me knows, I like to have plans and to be prepared for class before the quarter starts. I’m happy improvising up to a point, but winging an entire class doesn’t work for me. Happily, I found a middle ground with this class. While the main bones of the course were all settled before the term started so the students knew overall what to expect, we were able to experiment and improvise with parts of the course so that we could focus on issues that were of interest to the students. It was great to be able to pull in new online videos and articles into the class discussions and readings that would make our learning richer. Some sites didn’t work when we tried to use them in class, other sites seemingly disappeared. Sometimes things that looked easy from the help tutorials turned out to be crazy hard and other times things that looked hard turned out to be easy. Being open to experimentation is key, which leads me to my next thought.

Third Thought: Being uncomfortable is a part of learning and having a supportive environment allows us to work through it

Many of my students talked to me about their difficulties working through some of the new theory presented, some of the technical specifications we talked about, and trying to create online projects instead of writing a research paper. There were definitely moments of discomfort and stretching in class, but that is what learning is about. We have to challenge ourselves to keep learning, to find new ways to communicate history, and to find new ways of engaging with others. While learning may be uncomfortable at times, it was my job as the instructor to maintain a supportive environment for learning, for making mistakes, and for ultimately creating some awesome digital history projects.

My time teaching this course was an amazing experience. I learned a lot that I want to incorporate into my other courses and I hope that I have a chance to collaborate with our awesome history department and students some more in the future. So, I guess what I’m saying is that while the students may have been challenged, I was challenged, too, and learned so much. It was a tiring, fun, terrifying, and invigorating class and term. I can’t wait to see what the next academic year brings.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with some more news and notes. Allons-y!

Online Tutorials for IL Instruction: Thanks NCCPL!

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has gone well. Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking at a workshop hosted by NCCPL (Northern and Central California Psychology Libraries) on using online tutorials for information literacy instruction. It was a lot of fun and I just wanted to share a bit from that talk today.

The NCCPL Workshop was held at the lovely Palo ALto University. I’d never been there before, but it was great to be up in the hills for the day.

Palo Alto University sign

Palo Alto University sign

It was a great, friendly group of librarians and we heard about new information literacy modules from vendors as well as the information literacy module process undertaken by Menlo College Bowman Library. (Very interesting process and cool module with open source code that you can download and modify for your organization.)

I talked about best practices in creating online tutorials, contexts for using online tutorials, and showed how we use online tutorials at my library. Happily, my laptop even held up through a brief walk through of the tutorial software we use. (*happy dance*) And no one fell asleep during my talk, even though it was after lunch. I just wanted to share my link to the resources and tools I talked about yesterday: http://goo.gl/1qI6jQ. Hopefully you find something of use.

I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back next week with some more news and notes. Allons-y!

A Day in the Life of an Academic Librarian

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your week has gone well. It has been another busy week here on campus, but I’m excited because we are finally getting some rain and I also get to read my students’ rough drafts today so hopefully that will be fun. Today I just thought I’d write a bit about life as an academic librarian as it may be useful for LIS graduates considering academic librarianship. So here we go!

In July of this year I will have been working as an academic librarian for six years. I can hardly believe that it has been that long already and am excited for the next six years. Along the way I have learned a thing or two about being an academic librarian and as I love sharing information I thought I’d share a bit in the form of “a day in the life” that seems popular in library land. While there is no typical day in the life of an academic librarian, I’m going to share a few different types of days that I have working as an academic librarian.

But first, a bit of context. I work on a campus where librarians are faculty members and we have instructional, research/professional development, university service, and community service requirements for retention, tenure, and promotion. Many academic librarian environments are like this and many are not. So all of talk about what I do during the day is within the context of spending most of my time, thus far, as an untenured library faculty member, and spending the last year as a tenured library faculty member. Just fair warning.

So I think, if I were to divide up the main categories or types of days I have as a librarian, there would be three main types of days. First: days when I have a lot of teaching and reference duties. Second: days when I have a lot of meetings. Third: days when I have time for research and writing, along with other project work.

The first two categories, teaching/reference and meetings, take up most of my days as a library faculty member or rather meetings take up a lot of time if I’m not careful about it. I love teaching and public service, so I don’t mind days when I have a lot of classes and reference or research appointments. These days usually fly by and I might teach a course-integrated instruction session, have some hours on the reference desk or be teaching a credit-level course for information literacy. Of course, prep time for instruction takes up some more of my time as a librarian, but happily in the summer there is always time to completely revamp my classes to make them more effective for the coming year.

Days where I have six to eight hours of meetings can be killer. Meetings are important for dissemination of information and for checking in, but back-to-back meetings are something I do not like and always try to avoid. Also, for those contemplating academic librarianship, meetings mean that work gets piled up, especially emails, especially at the end of the term, which still have to be dealt with after meetings are over. My suggestion: become an email guru and figure out a system to get through your inbox quickly and efficiently so you aren’t drowning in emails. I personally like logging out of my email and only checking it a few times a day so I can get through a bunch of email at once.

Also, with meetings, don’t be afraid to delegate work, you are a team or committee after all. Also, if at all possible, never go to a meeting without an agenda and never end a meeting without some action items. Make your meetings efficient, too.

One of my favorite types of days are days when I’m not scheduled in any meetings and can take the morning to work on my research and writing. I love research and I love sharing my research. Having a large block of time makes it much easier to write, for me, and make good progress on manuscripts. That being said, I’ve gotten much better (as I should after six years) of fitting in quick bursts of writing and research whenever I can, but having a block of time is the best. Also, days without meetings allow time for other projects, whether that be in the archives, figuring out analytics, completing collection development projects, or writing assessment reports.

Also, remember, although days as an academic librarian can be really, really busy (especially during the main academic terms), it is really important to take time to relax, breath, and step away in order to come back to things with clear eyes. Plus, being a calm colleague will make you a valuable colleague. Also, some of the most important activities you can do, especially as a new academic librarian, is to talk with your colleagues, hear what they are working on, and figure out how you can collaborate. One of the great joys is being able to collaborate with colleagues on projects and research.

I hope that gives you a helpful overview of a few days in the life of an academic librarian. It really is a great job.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back next week with more news, notes, and thoughts. Allons-y!

Good Customer Service

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and are looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Today I just want to talk a bit about customer service and then leave you with the wonderful Idea Channel Video from this week. So let’s get to it.

I was thinking about customer service as I was sitting in a bank earlier this week. My husband and I needed to speak to someone about our accounts, so I dutifully made an appointment online for after work thinking this would make it a short, easy trip. Unfortunately, when we got to the bank, we saw a goodly number of people waiting for appointments and a sign-in sheet. So we signed in and noted we had an appointment where asked on the sheet and took a seat. About twenty minutes after our appointment time and after about a handful of people went before us, I was able to get the attention of one of the bank employees and ask about when we would be seen because we had an appointment, had signed in, and noted our appointment time as asked on the sheet. He looked at my appointment form that I had printed out, at the sign in sheet, and said we were next so it would be whenever they got to us and that next time we should say we have an appointment to be moved up. Then he walked away. He wasn’t unpleasant or rude, but it was an unsatisfying customer service interaction. Happily when we were seen by another employee, she was very helpful and nice and apologized for us not being seen sooner when she saw the alert on my account that I had an appointment. Apparently their systems don’t line up so she and the other employee helping people with their accounts never see the appointment alerts until they actually sit down with a customer, which is less than ideal.

All this gets me to the point that customer service and clear signage and directions are really important. We really appreciated the employee who helped us with our accounts, but the first instance of interaction left me a bit annoyed and thinking how much more impressed I would have been had the employee acknowledged we had an appointment and then helped us himself as there were open workstations at that time. In 10 minutes he would have taken care of our accounts, we would have left on time and with a very positive customer service interaction that would likely have us recommend them to other people.

It all ended on a very positive interaction, so all is well that ends well, but it got me to thinking about libraries and how much I appreciate that in my library we always try to help people. I often stop as I’m walking around the library to help any students that look lost or if I see that there is a line at the reference desk. I love that people who work in libraries seem programmed to always help and make sure that our patrons get what they need when they need it and we don’t make them wait. I love that we try to make directions and signage as clear as possible and work to decrease the number of hoops and red tape it takes for people to get access to information and sources that they need. To me that is not just good customer service, but what we should be doing. And caring about the people that we help is what makes libraries such wonderful places to work at and be in. And that’s what I’ll be remembering when I’m on the reference desk in the coming weeks, that everyone wants a great customer service interaction and that means being present, being mindful, and being willing to help out, even if your shift is over.

Finally, I want to leave you with this great Idea Channel video, The Experience of Being Trolled. I think I’m going to use this in my information literacy class as it may create an interesting discussion about privilege and experience:

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back next week. Allons-y!

Thoughts at the End of the Quarter

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you had a good week and a lovely, relaxing weekend planned. I can hardly believe we are to the end of another quarter here. The fall term has gone incredibly quickly this year, although I think it always seems that way. So I just wanted to share a few thoughts at the end of the quarter with you today.

At the end of a quarter, I feel the end to step back and reflect on my work for the last ten weeks to see what I can learn and what I can do better for the next quarter. For me, reflection is key to improving my practice as a library faculty member and keeping energized about teaching, research, and service. So I thought I’d share just a few things from these reflections today that may help with your work.

1. Keen focus on one task at a time is key to accomplishing more in less time, with better outcomes and less stress. I love being productive, not getting busywork done, but being productive and helping students, doing research, and completing projects. The key to getting a lot of things done, within the same time period and with tight deadlines, is to focus intensely on one task at a time and then move to the next task. Multitasking doesn’t work for me, and I suspect doesn’t work for anyone else either, and is just a recipe for getting too stressed and not accomplishing anything by the end of the day. By really focusing on the tasks at hand, I’ve been able to get a lot of projects finished this quarter and have been able to keep my stress level to a minimum, even with unplanned tasks popping up as they often do.

2. The partner to intense focus on one task at a time is being organized and having a plan for the day. I create a to-do list for each day and an overall plan for my week and quarter, since my life at work revolves around the academic term. I always get more done if I have a plan for the day, but I also leave wiggle room in the day for unexpected tasks and meetings or students that need help in special collections right now instead of being able to make an appointment. By being both organized and flexible, I’m in control of my time and energy and am able to get through all those important and urgent tasks, as well as make progress on my longer term projects. Project management skills are so essential and I’m definitely on team daily planner.

3. Cultivate positivity and share that positive spirit with others. I totally know horrible things happen in life and at work. Some things just can’t be made better, no matter what perspective you have, but luckily these are few and far between for most of us. I’m a generally positive person; I’m lucky that I have that innate leaning, personally, but I believe everyone through meditation, reflection, whatever works for you, can cultivate positivity and it makes such a difference. A smile is really disarming and can make an anxious student more comfortable asking a question of a reference librarian. Thanking committee members for a job well done is just good manners and makes everyone more amenable to tackling the next problem on the agenda. And being positive just helps your health and your stress levels. We all have bad days, and I’m not saying I’m always perfectly positive, but I truly believe positivity makes a huge difference in our daily work and helps me get through long days and lots of report writing.

4. Really listening is one of the most powerful talents and gifts we can give each other. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it when someone gives me their full attention when I’m talking with them instead of trying to type an email at the same time. It makes me feel heard and also makes it more likely that the conversation will actually be productive. So I always make it a point to fully listen and try to empathize with the person who is speaking with me. And if I catch myself trying to do another task, I stop and refocus on the person because I know how much it means to be heard. Really listening also makes it easier to cultivate positivity in the workplace, which is also a very good thing.

I know none of the points above are new points, but I think it is important to remember them and reflect on them as we continue to do work that has the possibility of truly, positively impacting people.

And, in honor of The Hobbit, check out the news that you can 3D print your very own Key of Erebor. This almost makes me want a 3D printer.

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

Grab Bag of Tips for Friday

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! Can you believe that we’ve finished up a week in November already? I can’t. Anyway, today’s post is a grab bag of tips and interesting reports that I wanted to share today. No real theme other than I thought these were interesting and/or useful and wanted to share.

This Lifehacker article is both useful and something you could do this weekend: how to make your entire internet life more secure in one day. Always good to be up on internet security.

For a couple of reports that I recently read (and really enjoyed), I thought I’d share California Digital Library’s CDL Strategic Themes and CDL Annual Report 2012-2013. I’m super-biased when it comes to the CDL and the OAC because I’ve never had anything but good experiences with the people there, our university archives is part of the OAC, and I really just think they are doing an awesome job at all their programs and are super-generous with sharing and helping out other, smaller institutions (like ours). So it was great to read a couple of documents that were easy to understand and outlined both accomplishments and goals for the coming year. I can’t wait to see what else gets rolled out and am looking forward to getting more of our archival documents into the OAC in the coming year. Nice work CDL.

I thought this was a nice article on 3 mental tricks to deal with people who annoy you. We all get annoyed, but these are some ways to at least downgrade the annoyance.

Also, because I really do enjoy being productive and getting things done, I wanted to share this infographic on how to productive. It’s quite a lovely infographic and distills a lot of very good advice into one easy to read graphic (which I know is the point of all infographics, but this one actually works).

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