Yes.

So. Grey, cloudy day here, chilly day in the office (I have a space heater on!), and it took a while to wake up, but my Monday is looking good, and I've got high hopes for the week! Hope you do too!

1. Unclutterer has a post about mise en place while cooking. I'm a big fan, especially for new recipes. It helps avoid doing the "oh crap, I don't have that essential ingredient" in the middle of delicate recipes, and makes the whole thing more enjoyable.
2. Speaking of cooking, we had excellent culinary adventures last week. I made a whole roasted chicken, and then we made meatballs, and then we made broth from the chicken carcass. Tonight, it'll be home made chicken soup... and it's perfect weather for it, too!
3. Our first pre-AGM Think Tank is this afternoon! In 45 minutes! Going to finish some stuff, grab a coffee, and head to another one of our libraries to help facilitate it. So excited!
4. Last week was the Week of Contracts. This week will also be the Week of Contracts, only it is shaping up to also be the Week of Excellent Negotiation Results, which I am eminently pleased about.
5. This week is also a Short Week, followed by a looooong, family and cottage a turkey-filled weekend, which I am looking forward to.

Ready, set, cook!

Think Tank Excitement

So, our library pre-AGM Think Tanks start next week (on Monday!) and I'm super excited about them. Our Chief Librarian sent the email inviting people yesterday (late, I know - I was sick Monday & Tuesday, and out of the office for most of the day on Wednesday and yesterday!), and I sent a reminder email today - and people are signing up! It's really exciting to me to get questions about it, and see the people who want to attend.

On that note, the questions I've received have been a great reminder to over-explain on a new idea. Most people get it after I explain... but there has been some confusion. Which is totally fair. A couple examples:

• Is this going to be really gloomy? Is it going to be people getting together to complain? No! It's going to be upbeat, lively, and totally imaginative - we want a conversation that's totally blue sky, and not constrained by practical considerations... we'll get to those later. Certainly not a bitchfest! My co-chair and I will have none of that. 
• Can co-op students participate? I don't want to take someone else's spot... YES! Students have a great perspective - they get what we're doing, coz they've worked with us, but aren't emotionally attached to the way we do things, AND they're likely talking to other students in other libraries... I WANT our co-op students there - I think their comments will be really valuable.

So yeah, I'm really excited about the next month at work - I think that these pre-AGM conversations, and the discussion of what we learned at the AGM, and going to be really interesting, and provide us with a nice infusion of enthusiasm and energy to shake things up. 

Destroy old ideas!

Reimagining Library Real Estate

So, I'm on the planning team for our library's AGM this fall, and we're going to be doing something a bit different - convening mini think-tanks on three key strategic areas, and then rolling up the discussions and reporting back at the AGM. This way, we get to hear more voices/voices that aren't usually heard, and really engage staff at all levels, and in all areas (our library system is country-wide!) on some important issues/potential issues for our library. Specifically, we're going to be talking about:

• Reimagining Real Estate
• Reimagining Technical and Access Services
• Reimagining Library Services

My planning co-chair and I had an awesome discussion yesterday about the think tanks, and then we got to thinking about the space we occupy here in Ottawa... and we got REALLY radical. (I don't want to expand at the moment, because I don't want to influence the discussions...) And it was exciting. And now I want to build a business case to actually do it.

My hubbub pointed out last night that these are decisions "above my pay grade." True - but I've been thinking a lot about where my strengths are (as I said yesterday, I don't think they're in reference, even though I like it), and I think it's strategy. And planning. So I want to do more of that. So that's what I'm going to do, insofar as possible. The way to learn how to do it, for me, is to just do it... This is why I'm so glad to work in a library where it is okay to make wild suggestions, even if they're not strictly within your job description.

(Also, the BeerBrarian has a good post about transforming library spaces. I'm going to have to see how to apply his suggestions at our libraries.)

Toughest Reference Librarian Questions

Part of why I love reference work (even though it isn't my strongest suit as a librarian) is that you get to learn cool stuff. So I thought that this article, "What are the toughest questions tossed at reference librarians?" was a very neat one!

Let me just say, the questions mentioned in this article are tough. If confronted with one, I think I'd look like this...

Have you had any especially difficult or amusing reference questions?

How To Pick a Library School

The first thing you need to do is watch this video about why going to library school is a bad idea. And then you should watch the sequel, about library job hunting!

So, there is lots out there about picking a library school - most recently for me, a thread on reddit from someone who wants to go to library school, asking where people went. I suggested that people going to library school should not worry about school reputations (unless you're hearing terrible things and want to avoid it), because employers don't care where you went to school. And I stand by that.

Employers care about:

• You having a piece of paper from an ALA-accredited institution
• Your skills
• Your experience

If you have a very specific area of interest (archives; specific data or information management interests), you should go to a school that will cater to that. But everyone does public libraries, children's libraries, cataloguing, etc. So if you just want to go to library school, don't spend a whole bunch more money to go to a "better" school because you think it'll give you an edge up. School names rarely do.

Also, I'm very familiar with the challenge of "I need library experience to get a job, but I need a job to get library experience." The best thing I did at Western, in terms of my career, was to participate in the co-op program. (My first job was with the consulting firm I worked for for my 2nd co-op term; I was eligible for a special hiring vehicle, bridging, for my current position because I worked for the Government of Canada for my first co-op term.) So take advantage of work experience opportunities. Take advantage of networking opportunities. If you're the kind of person who will do that, go to a school with a co-op program. But whether or not you'll use those programs is highly dependent on the individual, and most schools do have some kind of co-op stuff (in Canada, anyways).

Bottom line: Don't spend extra money to go to a "better" library school. In terms of your career, it doesn't matter what school you go to. You're going to learn on the job. Do some research, avoid library schools that have bad reviews from students, and maybe pick a school with subject matter depth if you have a specific interest. Other than that, you should probably go to the cheapest place you can.

Friday! Lovely Library Links

So, yesterday was great! Loooong, but great. I didn't end up touching a camera, but was the organizer-person for my team (we were 2 teams of 2 videographers and an organizer person), and it was great. Finding people we needed to shoot, making sure we had everything we needed, keeping an eye on the schedule (and rejigging frequently, oy!), telling execs that they had to use the bathroom at the other end of the hall coz we were filming... aaaah. Good times. And the people I was working with are awesome, which always helps. Next up: editing! Others have the lead on it, but I'm planning on lending a hand - need to practice, or I'll forget how to use Premiere!

We're going camping & whitewater rafting this weekend. I can't wait. So excited. And here's some excitement for you (library types, anyways)!

15 Incredible Libraries Around the World (saw this on Twitter, and Facebook - thanks, K!)

Soooo pretty.

Meet The Guy Spending 10 Days in Jail for Overdue Library Books

Poor Guy.

How A Bad Date May Improve My Library's Marketing

Let me tell you about my weirdest date

Yesterday, someone at my work (I don't know who), brought in 3 boxes of dried dates. Not sure where they came from, but the boxes are shiny, so I picked one up, grabbed a date (yummy!), and then looked at the box more closely.

I told you it was shiny.

But the front isn't the interesting part. The back is:

Crazy claims about dates.

Can you read that text? According to the box, "modern science" has confirmed that dates will help cure everything from your sexual debility to your obesity to your childbirth difficulties.

I swear this has to do with libraries

I am skeptical of the claims made by the date box. They're not even logical, let alone "confirmed" (stating a thing does not make it so). So I did what I do when I'm skeptical - I mocked the box. And as I was reading some of these random, not-actually-confirmed, not-actually-logical claims to a coworker of mine, I started thinking about what the company was trying to do. As far as I can tell, they're trying to show that the dates are good for everyone! Everyone should eat the dates! You should eat these dates, and then buy more! But by trying to appeal to everyone, they lost me as a customer. The company actually strikes me as a bunch of nutjobs now, and I'm not inclined to go find more dates to buy. I mean, they were fun while they lasted, but I won't be back.This marketing ploy was totally ineffective. And it's common speak in library land.

In which I get to the point
I get it. There are people who luuuuurve libraries. Generally, I'm one of them. Those are the people who will agree when you just make vague statements about how libraries are awesome for every demographic of a given population (like they did about dates on the box). I'm not saying it is untrue, per se (unlike the claims on the date box. I don't think those are true), but that when you're portraying yourself as everything to everyone, in vague terms, then you're not going to connect with anyone who doesn't already see the value of libraries - and that's not our target audience.

Thinking about my own library's marketing efforts, I can see that we've fallen into this trap. (And I swore I wouldn't, when I was in library school. So annoying.) We've got a wide variety of audiences to appeal to, and we don't have a lot of staff to do it (a commond refrain among librarians. Everyone join in!). We genuinely do have resources, knowledge, and skills that can help people from all groups in my organization - and to library staff, the value of the library is so self-evident that the generalities don't seem vague at all. Of course we can be of assistance to a geologist headed out for a field season, a junior policy analyst, and an Assistant Deputy Minister - and they should just know that, right? Wrong! So they're not using the library, and that is a problem.

What we should be doing is making statements about the library that resonate with the clients, rather than making statements about the clients that resonate with the library. The date box statements are navel-gazing; they're about how absolutely fantastic dates are, but none of them were about why the dates were directly relevant to the particular issue I was looking to resolve (namely "you're hungry, and we're delicious!")

Don't get me wrong - we don't always fall into this trap. When we're one on one with a client, or presenting library services to a specific group, we're great at identifying our clients' particular pain points when it comes to information they need, and addressing them. And that's what gets us the repeat customers. We're just not doing it in our more general marketing - because it's tough. It's way easier to just be general, and trust that that's enough.

But it isn't enough. It's what gets us overlooked, and what puts us at risk for losing our libraries due to budget cuts. And at the risk of seeming like a tease, I've got what I think are some good ideas on how we (I) can make this situation better at my library... but this is plenty long enough for today, so it will have to wait until later. I'm excited to be thinking about this, though. And excited to be working in a place where I believe I'll be able to make a change, too.

Post-Cottage Monday

So, we were lucky enough to spend last weekend at the cottage with my in-laws. Seriously, it is tough to be back at work after a long weekend of this:

Gorgeous lake

with this guy:

Gorgeous husband.

But back at work I am! And it is going to be a busy week; the summer lull is officially over. For those of you interested in what a week in the life of an acting Manager, Licensing and Access Services librarian type is like, here's what I've got on my plate:

• Complete drafting an outline for updates to our Collection Development policy (which was mostly written but never officially deployed), including suggestions for appendices/supporting documents. Meet about it on Tuesday to discuss with colleagues. Keep working on it. Woohoo, policy suite development.
• Review contract with publisher to see how much wiggle room we have in dropping/changing subscriptions for this year's renewals; if necessary, convene team of subject specialists to review subscriptions and make renewal recommendations.
• Touch base with team members on renewals for a different contract.
• Meet with video production team (meeting not yet scheduled) for the video capture of the Deputy Minister's Leadership Forum, which I've been asked to participate in.
• Move meeting scheduled on the day of the DM's Leadership Forum, as I'm going to be out of the office that day. Sorry folks, paper beats rock, and DM beats all.
•  AGM Planning team teleconference Tuesday, and follow up (including, something tells me, drafting communications materials) throughout the week.
• Populate the new contract management spreadsheet. This is overdue, and it's going to require lots of attention to detail and combing over contracts. This may be my toughest task this week, no joke. Tasks that require a significant amount of attention to detail are tough for me; I'm definitely more of a big-picture thinker.
• Try to schedule a meeting to review a Drupal module that we may be able to implement which would take the place of the contract management spreadsheet that I'm going to spend many painful hours working on, because we do need an updated tool NOW, and can't really wait for the Drupal module to be implemented. 
• But we definitely need something better than a spreadsheet, so if the Drupal module looks like it won't work, I'm going to be outlining requirements for a database. Which I then will probably have to contruct. But next week. 
• And if the Drupal module looks like it will work, I'm sure I'll have a hand in that, too. Again, hopefully next week.
• And of course, putting out fires and responding to client requests as things come up.