Library Stuff

I’m having one of those “someone is trying to tell me something” days. I’ll break it down for you, then I’ll get to my point.

+ Hallie woke up with a terrible cold and cough this morning and we’ve been following her around with tissues all day (and man was she cranky [I can't blame the kid]). Throughout the day, Barbie and I were making plans to rent a movie. We haven’t seen a movie in a while (when we go out alone, we want to talk, not sit in a movie theater!), so we were giddy about it. After finally getting Hallie to sleep, I went to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought 2 cups of joe (decaf for the wife, high octane for me) and 25 munshkins. We popped in There’s Something About Mary (Barbie hadn’t seen it, I hadn’t in a few years) and had a relaxing evening (Hallie fell asleep on her own accord very early [5:30PM] and is still passed out as I write this). My point is that I really love spending time with my two girls and really miss them when I go to conferences.

+ This afternoon, I spoke to my grandmother, who is undergoing radiation treatment (nothing major, but major enough that she is getting radiation). After talking about our new baby and her filling me in on her treatment schedule, therapy, etc, we were about to end the call when she asked, “Steven, why do you have to go away so much?” I gulped (felt a bit guilty) and explained that I speak to library groups because, honestly, I like it, and the money is not that bad either (for a librarian!), but given the choice, I’d rather make the same supplementary income from writing, which is (for now) less than what I make when speaking to groups.

+ Tonight, while catching up on my aggregator reading, I came across this spoof called Family 2.0.

While in San Antonio last week, I had another realization. I hate not being with my family. I hate not being able to kiss Hallie and Barbie goodnight. I hate missing out on the funny moments that I hear about when I get home. My dad worked his ass off for us when I was little and, in speaking with him recently, I think he kind of regrets not spending as much time with us as he would have liked. I think of my mom all the time (who is still walking with a limp after her car accident in April) and want to spend more time with her. I love Barbie’s parents and want to share more simchas with them as well. I want to see my brothers more. I want to kiss my nephew on his cute forehead more.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of signing a third book contract and will be finishing up a chapter in the second one this week. In addition, my first column will be published in Information Today next month. I’m writing more and more these days and have accepted mostly all of the speaking engagements that I have been offered. Adding to this, I have more responsibilities at work. My life has been very full lately.

Don’t get me wrong, I love presenting to library groups, but recently, I’ve been thinking about turning most of them down because I don’t want to leave home. After my April speeches, I will not be leaving town until October and will probably not accept any engagements unless the opportunity is right for me (more local stuff if anything – I love day trips!) It’s not worth the money if I miss my family terribly. I just won’t do it.

What does this mean? Well, after April. more writing, more family time, and less traveling. This was not an easy decision to make, but at this point, I just can’t do it anymore. I’ll still do the ITI events (as long as they’ll still have me) and ALA/PLA conferences, which, to be honest, is all that I can handle right now.

One last “Someone is trying to tell me something moment”

+ Reading the end of the latest post by Michael Stephens really hit home:

“We can’t forget to take care of ourselves and each other. No ILS, RSS Feed, blog, iPod or Treo is going to take care of our physical, emotional and spiritual selves. That’s up to us and those we love. Don’t miss out on that part too.”

Damn right, Michael. I may not agree with most of your commentary these days, but with this one, you’re 100% correct. Thanks!

When I mentioned to Walt the other day that I’m now reading just under 600 feeds in my aggregator, he calmly said something like, “In this day, that’s not a lot” (I think he said something like that – I hadn’t even touched my first beer of the evening, so I think I am on target).

I agree. It’s really not that much. First, consider that only about 50% of these feeds will update once a day and many will update only once a week. It’s really not that much reading. It only takes me 1 hour to go through a days worth of feeds built up in my aggregator. 1 hour! And it’s very close to everything that I would want to read. While your considering that, ponder this. Many of my feeds are customized feeds from PubSub, Yahoo News, and Topix.net, which means that my aggregator (via these services) is scouring over 30 million resources for me and only bringing back what I conceivably want (that is, if I formed the right query). Wow!

It’s not about how many feeds you read, it’s what you do with them that matters. Robert Scoble subscribes to 840, but I doubt he reads 840. He probably reads far less than that every day. The power of aggregation is that we don’t have to worry about when a news story comes out or when someone mentions our company. That stuff will come to you when it happens.

Sure, Robert went a bit haywire with this edge case stuff with Liz Lawley. But he did put the whole thing into perspective when he wrote:

“How many stories does the average newspaper have? So someone who spends two hours reading the New York Times on Sunday is an “edge case”

Again, it’s not how much you “read”, but what you do with the information that you READ that counts.

One to read closely. A new report from Pew about the Internet and social networks. A must read when researching for the book. File….Print!

The team at PubSub is blogging away. I thought I’d take the time to link to all of them:

+ Mandell Online
+ You’ve Got Ismail
+ Spathis.com
+ As I May Think…
+ Waka Waka Waka
+ ilovett
+ Eugeni.us

I haven’t mentioned this often, but the folks at PubSub are a wonderful team to work with. I’ve been there for just over a year and I’m glad I made the move from traditional librarianship to a start-up Web company. Since I’m plugging PubSub, we’re going to be releasing more community lists over the next few months, so if you have an idea for a list, let me know (scohen [at] pubsub.com).

Libraries and Librarians are terrible marketers. So, when I see articles about great library programs when I’m doing work for the PLA Blog, I get excited. Here’s one that I loved to read.

Brookfield Public Library (located in the library blogging capital of the country [Illinois]) has set up two blogs and the process was written up in the local paper:

“The blogs also should help capture the interest of some elusive patrons, Youth Services Librarian Cindy Moriarity said.

The library’s latest plunge into cyberspace is apparently working, based on initial responses to a posting on the possibility of hosting network gaming.”