This Month
| May 2008 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
|
|
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
Tuesday, May 13
Which Makes Me Think...
by
Jason
on Tue 13 May 2008 11:01 PM CST
I drove nearly four hours round-trip today to do a five minute presentation at a tea in honour of a branch assistant who's been with our region for fifteen years......which makes me think that rural librarianship has some unique requirements you won't find in any other type of library......which makes me think that rural librarianship also has some unique rewards including the joy of homebaked cookies and dainties, a fly on the wall perspective for two hours conversation covering all manner of small town comings and goings plus the inevitable "Saskatchewan One Degree of Separation" moment of finding out that one person attending the tea has a daughter who signed a document for you in her role as a Justice of the Peace in your hometown and the former librarian who is also attending has a son who is married to a friend of yours from University...
...which makes me think that the afternoon tea is the small town female equivalent of the more male dominated "coffee row" which I've also sat in on in a couple different communities while traveling as part of this job...
...which makes me think of how, when we were traveling to a series of meeting in branches near my hometown and after hearing me talk about my experiences growing up in the area, my boss commented "I don't know why you want to work in Regina. You belong in a rural library."......which also makes me think about how many people have said (some variation of) "we'll miss you - you understand rural libraries" as my contract begins coming to a close......which makes me think that sentiment is properly better captured as "you understand the rural mindset" (trust me - I've barely begun to get a handle on rural libraries!)......which makes me think of the fact that we have a special line in our acquisitions budget to buy copies of one book for every branch in our region (rather than the more usual practice of buying one copy that rotates through the region one branch at a time) and how this year, I bought a book called "Our Towns" which features historical information and background about hundreds of towns across Saskatchewan...
...which makes
me think about how this book was being discussed on talk radio today
and I got the tidbit that "coffee row" is a phrase that originated in Saskatchewan and another tidbit that, at its peak in the late
1800's, my hometown of Indian Head had the most elevators of
any community in Saskatchewan (12), a fact I never knew...
...which makes me think that this book was a pretty good pick for a "branch perm" as we call them whereas the books I picked last year on "The History of Patents", "The History of Inventions", "A Child's Guide to the Night Sky" and "A Health Guide for Those Over 50" weren't maybe as good of picks (long story!)......which (also) makes me think how those picks led to one of many screw-ups I've had over the past year when I asked that the books be catalogued as "reference" materials when in fact, the proper designation was "branch permanents" which means people could actually, you know, take them out......which makes me think that as excited as I am about whatever may come next, I will truly and honestly miss working in a rural library system, with all of its quirks and challenges and small magical moments such as the care taken to design a perfectly arranged tray of goodies...
Sunday, May 11
Jessamyn West's Endnote Presentation from the SLA-MLA Conference
by
Jason
on Sun 11 May 2008 08:45 PM CST
Jessamyn passed along word that she's got both the speaking notes and the slides from her presentation at the recent Sask Library Association-Manitoba Library Association joint conference online (good thing she has the speaking notes up - she uses that minimalistic "one photo, one caption" style for her presentations so you might not get much out of just the slides.)I have to say it's been interesting to ask people what they thought of her presentation over the last couple weeks. I'm a bit naive but every time I ask, I expect the person to be similarly enamoured and, like me, think "yeah. Yeah! That's it. That's what it's all about. Whoo-hooo!" (or something along those lines anyhew.  )Instead, I've heard from a few people who were underwhelmed or even disappointed by the presentation. I hate to generalize but so far, this division has broken down completely along generational lines - older librarians I ask who weren't very impressed found the presentation meandering, off-point, etc. etc. Younger and/or newer librarians found the presentation engaging, exciting and inspirational.This isn't just about a conference closing presentation though. Instead, it embodies a generational divide that is causing a lot of tension within our profession in general. On one side, you (tend to) have younger, technology-focused, cutting-edge, "just do it" new librarians. On the other, you have more hierarchy-based, old-school, cautious "voice of experience" librarians. (I hasten to add that there are older boomer librarians updating their Facebook profiles from their Blackberries and their are curmudgeonly new, young librarians who think Web 2.0 was the sub-title of the second Spiderman movie. I also admit to having had more than one sleepness night in the past year wondering if I'll acquire some or all of the traits I currently find so frustrating as I move forward in my library career? And whether this is necessarily such a bad thing?)Anyhow, in my mind, Jessamyn's presentation did not suck ("was not sub-optimal" to use her suggested terminology substitution for the word that we X'ers do tend to over-use way too often!) but it apparently did not always reach the people that it should have either.
Sunday, May 4
"[We] discussed who had learned to drive on a tractor [answer: almost everyone, including me]"
by
Jason
on Sun 04 May 2008 08:39 PM CST
Well, the conference is over for another year! We finished off the joint SLA-MLA conference with a great social event at the Cathedral Village Free House where I was finally able to meet Jessamyn West.
Well, that's not quite true - I've "met" her before but this was the first time meeting her in person. Since long before I became a librarian, I've been reading Jessamyn's posts on MetaFilter and librarian.net. I first made official contact with her while in library school (I tried to bring her in as a "Lunch Bucket" speaker but wasn't able to pull it off...one of my great regrets of my time at FIMS) and have occasionally been in contact since then.
Jessamyn wrote a bit about her time in Regina on her personal blog (which is where the title of this post comes from) and highlighted the presentation given by Sabina about the BC Evergreen initiative on librarian.net. Very cool! Saskatchewan public libraries had a massive project underway during the past year to create a similar province-wide library system but didn't receive funding in the most recent provincial budget. The project is still moving forward but in a modified form. I don't know if we'll use an open ILS like BC has but I hope so. Perhaps the lack of government funding may turn out to be a blessing in disguise if it encourages the participants to more seriously consider the open source route. I'd seen a presentation by Sabina's boss on the BC experience during a meeting of the Saskatchewan Single Integrated Library System project late last year so decided to skip her presentation for one on "open" libraries by Patricia Moore from U of S (who happens to be in the background of the photo below.) (And as an aside, my preference is conferences where similarly themed presentations don't overlap so you can hit all the "technology" ones in a row or all the "management" ones or whatever without being forced to choose between two similar ones.)One really good point by Pat was that we have to shift the perception of open source software and technology as somehow inferior to its commercial counterparts. "Open source is essentially peer-reviewed software and if that's the gold standard for the journals we supply in our libraries, it should be the gold standard for the technology that we utilize too."
What else? Jessamyn's presentation on "Towards Open Libraries" was excellent - full of humour and insight into the current trends in librarianship and seemed to be very well received by the crowd. She usually puts slides and notes from her presentations on librarian.net - the Saskatchewan one isn't up as of this writing but I assume it will be eventually.
I think Pace enjoyed meeting Jessamyn too!
 [Edit: I see that Jessamyn added some of her own photos from her Regina visit to Flickr. Shea's quote upon seeing the following photo: "You don't even look that drunk." Me: "It was early..."] 
Friday, May 2
Five Really Crazy Ideas for Public Libraries
by
Jason
on Fri 02 May 2008 04:22 PM CST
I'm at the SLA conference right now and, inspired by all the great sessions, here's a list of some ideas for wild, outside-the-box ideas that public libraries could do to draw more people and attention in their communities. Some of these are ideas that I came up with, some I found online and some are things I heard about at sessions at the conference:1. Lend People Instead of BooksThe human “books” on offer vary from event to event but always include
a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but
richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and
Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and
Young Person Excluded from School.
2. Have a Drive-Thru Window For Returns...and check-outs? ("Yes, I'd like a Grisham paperback, a recent copy of Time magazine and a literary western, please.")3. Loan Video Games"In the midst of updating their state-mandated strategic plan last fall,
Oti and her staff decided to offer video games for loan after going to
a regional workshop promoting the idea and surveying younger patrons.
Three weeks ago, the staff put up signs announcing a new 50-title
collection comprising games based on sports and animated movies. Within
two hours, all the titles were checked-out, and most now have long
waiting lists."Many libraries are off-setting declining book circulation by buying more non-traditional library materials such as DVD's, CD's, graphic novels, and comic books. Video games haven't seen the same adoption rate but likely will increasingly be found in libraries as a way to reach a younger, more visually-orientated audience. (There's actually a "games room" at the conference with a Wii and various other games and platforms available - subliminal message for the assembled librarians?)4. Stay Open 24-7This is very common in academic libraries, if only around exam time but public libraries haven't tried this as far as I know. But if grocery stores, coffee shops, drug stores and other retailers can offer round-the-clock hours as a service to their clientele, why not libraries? 5. Don't Charge Overdue Fines"It takes an incredible amount of staff time to collect 50 cents, to
monitor it, and send out notices. We weighed the actual costs of
collecting fines against the revenue brought in and decided it was kind
of a wash."
|
|
