Hello, dear readers! I hope that your week is going well. I just wanted to share a couple of videos to give you a work break for the day. So let’s get to it.
Also, I’m a sucker for videos that compare current and historic urban landscapes, so I had to share this video of what London looked like in 1927 and 2013. It is really quite lovely.
I hope you have a wonderful week and I’ll be back on Friday with more news and notes. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your week is going well and you have a lovely weekend planned. I apologize for not posting anything on Tuesday; I’ve had a cold all week and have been slower than usual in my work. So today, we have a mix of fun in the forms of maps and tea, with a useful bit of news thrown in. So let’s get to it.
And although this map won’t help me with planning a trip abroad, it is still a wonderfully detailed map of the internet. It reminds me a bit of the maps created by xckd and are just lovely, too.
Speaking of maps, I am rather partial to this map of world’s biggest tea drinkers. We in the United States need to do better with our tea consumption. I always enjoy traveling in countries that drink a lot of tea as it is always easy to get a good cup of tea. And also, in tea news, I just wanted to share the link to the online home of one of my favorite tea shops, Tealuxe. Massive thanks to my friends still in Boston who keep me stocked with my favorite teas!
And, finally, because we should have a bit of useful tech news, the classic Bic pen now works on your smartphone. I think this is just a lovely combination of the physical and digital worlds, even if it is a bit pricey. Very nifty.
So I’m going to go now and hope that my voice doesn’t give out while teaching and then go drink lots of tea with honey this weekend. I wish you all the best, dear readers, and will be back next week. Allons-y!
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!
If you like making jewelry, this is a lovely tutorial on making a paper ring. I’m not sure if I could actually cut up a book to do this, but I still like how it turns out.
Happy Friday, dear readers! I had a plan to write a post on connection and its importance in library work today, but then the week got away from me and I was rather upset by the Net Neutrality ruling and didn’t finish up my post. So hopefully that will come next week. But today, especially since we are heading into a long weekend, I thought I’d just share some fun stuff and articles that have been hanging around in my saved feeds because I couldn’t find a coherent way to make them all work together. So let’s get into it.
This short article and link is a good reminder that to surround yourself with positive coworkers. Calmness and positive attitudes are contagious just like anxiety and negative attitudes.
Happy Tuesday, dear readers! I hope that your day is going well and your week is shaping up to be a good week. I have a small assortment of fun stuff to provide a nice break for your day. Let’s get to it.
If you wear scarves, or have a friend that likes to wear scarves, please share this video: 25 different ways to wear a scarf. Especially with it being winter, scarves are an essential in my wardrobe and I loved learning some new ways to wear them. I’m looking forward to changing up my look a bit using the instructions from this video.
This last week has been a bit of a creative writing/authors/reading-focused kind of week with my husband’s friend in town promoting her second book, Shadowplay. (I’m currently reading it after having read Laura Lam’s first book Pantomime in the day before her book launch so I would know what people were talking about. It was a lovely book and I’m looking forward to getting further into her second book.) So with that backstory, it was funny that this article from Gizmodo popped up in my feeds on an algorithm for calculating if your novel will be a best seller. Not sure about how this algorithm would work when placed against current best-selling works, given the study used books available via Project Gutenberg, but it is an interesting concept.
Also, if you want to read more about Shadowplay or hear more about what Laura Lam is doing, check out her blog.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and week. I’ll be back on Friday with more news and notes. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! It is lovely to be at the end of the workweek and ready for the weekend. I’m excited that we don’t have anywhere to travel this weekend and hopefully can do some reading and relaxing. With the term back in session, the weeks are quite busy. Today I have a couple of useful articles and some thoughts about starting a new year. So let’s get into it.
Lifehacker has a number of wonderful posts and I think this post on the best time to buy anything is particularly appropriate at the beginning of the year. Yay for savings! Especially if you are planning to buy anything big this year, timing your purchase can really help financially.
While I love having colleagues all over the world, scheduling meetings in multiple time zones can be difficult. So I’m looking forward to using World Meeting Time for my next multiple time zone meeting and hopefully it will make the planning easier. If you have any other tools you use for scheduling meetings for people in multiple time zones, I’d love to hear about it in comments.
Finally, some thoughts on the beginning of the year. I always find it lovely to have a fresh calendar at the beginning of a year. It makes it seem like anything is possible. It is just my first week back at work, but already my planner is filling up with meetings to attend, classes to teach, and more project deadlines. I’m hoping to be able to maintain some sense of calm as the quarter continues and make sure that I spread calmness and not anxiety in the library. So I’m going to be more mindful of my energy levels and how many projects I currently have in play so that I can devote my best energies to my current commitments and only add those things that I can also fully commit to doing well. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. I’m also excited to be teaching again this quarter and hopefully by the end of the quarter my students will be excited to have learned a lot in class, too.
Have a wonderful weekend, full of all the things that you love. I’ll be back next week. Allons-y!
Happy 2014, dear readers! I hope you had a lovely winter break and spent time with family and friends. If you have been snowbound and/or delayed by the polar vortex that is creating havoc in the United States right now, I hope you are somewhere warm and safe (and I hope that the airlines are able to resume their scheduled flights soon)! Today is Tuesday, so I have some fun to help you through your day as you settle back into work mode. Let’s get going.
First, I love making mini-pie in jars. Love it. I have several in my freezer right now, ready for pie emergencies. So obviously, I love this recipe for apple pie baked in an apple. Adorable and tasty! I may have to make these in the fall after apple picking.
Also, for those of you out there who haven’t yet seen them, I link you to the set of vintage READ posters. These provide a wonderful glimpse into the past and great ideas for some faux-vintage posters to create in the present.
Finally, if you are in the East Bay tomorrow, you really ought to come by the Cal State East Bay Library on the Hayward campus as Laura Lam will be doing a reading from her second book, Shadowplay. It’s at 6pm in the Biella Room and should be fun. Laura is a graduate from Cal State East Bay, so it is exciting that she is coming back to campus for this reading. It should be fun, so come if you can.
Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, dear readers. I will be back on Friday with some more news and notes. Allons-y!
Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and have something fun planned for the weekend. I have a couple of articles to share, well, actually an article and a slideshow, today before we all get into the weekend. So let’s just get into it.
Since many people are getting ready to leave on vacation for the holidays, I thought Lifehacker’s article on 10 household things to check before you leave for a vacation to be particularly timely. A nice list to check before leaving on your next trip. I’m a firm believer in checklists when packing for travel and getting ready for travel. Use your brain space for things other than remembering if you packed your toothbrush or not, so this was definitely a good article for me and hopefully useful for you, too.
Also, the holidays are a time for telling stories and often for catching up with family and friends. And who doesn’t like a good story? I love listening to people who tell good stories and reading work from author’s who write good stories. So I really enjoyed this slideshow on Pixar’s 22 rules to phenomenal storytelling. While it is obviously aimed at writers of fiction, I think it could be used for oral storytelling, too, especially during the holidays. Because, while we are catching up on what has happened over the year and that is usually non-fiction storytelling, “all good stories deserve embellishment,” as Gandalf would say.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and lovely holiday, wherever the road takes you. I’m going to be taking a holiday break from blogging, too. The Waki Librarian will be back in the new year. May you have a wonderful rest of the year and an amazing start to the new year. Allons-y!
Happy Tuesday, dear readers. I hope that your week is going well and that you are not feeling the stress that seems to come around holiday times. You know, a great stress reliever is having some fun, so today I have a couple of bits of fun. It is the end of the quarter and I know everyone around here, at least, could use a bit of fun.
I Love Typography has another lovely post on this week in fonts. I’m particularly enamored with Alex Trochut’s Trojan and the possibilities of using it for very lovely book cover designs.
Also, probably of no surprise to readers of this blog, I am rather fond of tea. So it should not be a shock that I quite like this project to make a tea cup lamp. Also, the video tutorial looks quite easy to follow, so yay! I love good instructions when taking on a DIY project.
Finally, because it is definitely the holiday season, I thought we could all use a Simon’s Cat Video: