Library Stuff

I was cruising the ODP the other day and noticed that they are starting to include RSS Feeds in their listings. (example – scroll to the bottom of this page). I’m not a big fan of this method at all. Why not just have an orange button (or a link that says ‘RSS’ or ‘ATOM’) after the description of the site? This would make finding the feeds a lot easier and the double listings would not be necessary. Also, there are only 3 feeds listed in the category linked above. Note to ODP staff: What’s going on over there?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the RSS Feeds are not listed in the Google Directory, which has become almost non-existent on their search results anyway. Sigh.

Sarah Houghton comments on her upcoming conference presentations, and the conflicting schedules of the California Annual Conferences and Internet Librarian:

“I’m really disappointed that the conference organizers couldn’t get their $*&# together enough to have these conferences not conflict. I fully realize that many attendees of the Internet Librarian Conference are not from California, but as the conference is being held here in CA, I’m willing to bet there is a lot of overlap. And my life is going to be raucous hell for that week.”

While there is an overlap between the two conferences, it is only a small one. The CLA conference ends on November 15th, and Internet Librarian begins on the 15th (not counting the pre-conferences, of which Sarah is quite upset in missing). As a presenter at many conferences over the past few years, I have been fascinated at the number of library conferences that are out there. There’s national, state, and local conferences, divisional get-togethers, as well as regional committee meetings. Basically, a lot of stuff to go to. I think that’s great. Many will argue that there are too many library conferences, but I’ll beg to differ (please oh please can I differ?!). The more the merrier, I say. The problem arises when there is overlap, which can’t be avoided. There are only so many weeks in the year for conferences (basically from September through November and then again from Mid-January to May are the prime periods) and so many conferences to put on. Overlaps do happen.

That said, I’m so glad that Sarah will be joining us at Internet Librarian this year (not sure if she attended last year). Has anyone mentioned a bloggers dinner yet? Thoughts? (I promise that I’ll make it this time).

The good folks over at LISNews pointed me to this well-written article on special librarianship from Career Pro News. Some good quotes:

“Savvy managers know better. Really savvy managers know to deploy special librarian skill sets in every area of the organization’s life where information plays a role: corporate memory, document management, customer relations management, etc….

…And really savvy special librarians know how to sell themselves in order to get the job and keep it. “It may seem pushy, but you have to sell yourself every day by providing service that is on time, on budget and meets or exceeds expectations,” says Mitchell Brown. Brown is a mathematics and physics librarian at Princeton University.”

I’ve mentioned this on many an occasion and feel the need to bring it up again now. I believe that I have to justify my existence at my firm every minute of every day. Which means that I go the extra step when performing research by doing more follow-up with the attorneys, anticipating their needs before they ask me reference questions by sending out new material (articles, cases, etc) as they are published, and by marketing myself as a necessary commodity to the overall development of the firm. The managing partner has a saying: “Grow the firm”. I believe that my job is to assist in this growth by any means possible. Librarians, this is not the time nor place to be humble. I make it a point to tell the marketing department of every accomplishment (no matter how small) in my career. and it has paid off. The “big wigs” know what I have done over the past 3 years and that makes us all happier. It’s a no lose situation.

Because of posts like this. Aaron is the epitome of the hard working techie librarian who just wants to show his patrons the neat stuff that his library offers. Not only does he write about it eloquently in his weblog, but he teaches us as well. Consider the footnote to the linked entry:

“This concept is essentially like the concept of the teachable moment except nothing really is taught. In place, services or technologies (in this case library related) are introduced.”

Simple, yet profound. We don’t have to set up lavish workshops for our patrons. We (and they) are too busy for that. This concept of “teaching on the go” is what I try to do at my firm (especially now due to the hiring of the summer associates), and what Aaron has accomplished at his library. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to his RSS Feed.

I only had a minute to peruse through Social Software in the Library (an article released a few days ago on LLRX) due a lack of forward planning on my end (I fell behind and my laptop hasn’t worked for the past few days), but it seems really interesting. I’m loving this paragraph:

“This is a critical time for both the social software industry and librarianship. On one hand, businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies increasingly are turning to social software to communicate with customers, students and constituents because other media channels have proven less effective. On the other, the increased availability of these tools suggest to the uninformed that a librarianÂ’s role is diminished or unnecessary. But librarians can use the social software movement to their advantage: librariansÂ’ proper adoption of social software not only can help the organizations for which they work, it can help boost librariansÂ’ credibility and value as information agents at a time when the value of librarians is being questioned.”

Also, I’ve subscribed to K. Matthew Dames’ weblog (shared with Stephen Arnold), which I should have done a long time ago.