“Google Reader is a great tool for organizing all the blogs, sites, and content you subscribe to, but it’s not always the most visually stunning. It’s a list of endless posts from various blogs, and it can be overwhelming, especially when you have 1000+ items unread. That’s where Flipboard comes in!”

The process of writing the application involved significant effort, but was very valuable. First, it was exceedingly collaborative. Multiple people wrote sections of the narrative. We also had an all staff meeting where we took time to think about how we meet the needs and serve the mission of the college. All of our staff’s voices were represented in the final application and this made the final application that much stronger.

Second, it was valuable to think of what value we provide to students, faculty, and staff and then prove it. Our thinking was closely related to the Value of Academic Libraries Report that came out last year. Instead of thinking of inputs (how many books we own, amount of funding, etc.) we thought about outputs (the impact that we make on faculty, staff, students, and ultimately the college as an institution). We had to give evidence of that impact. That evidence came in the form of both statistical data such as information literacy assessment data and Noel-Levitz data, but it was also anecdotal and included quotes and tweets like the one below directly related to academic success.

Hey, Paula @champlib, I got an A on the final paper you helped me with.;)THANK YOU!!!

— Megan Goodell (@megan_goodell) May 3, 2011

We were all ecstatic to have won the award, but even if we hadn’t I knew that we had a great team doing some special things together and a document that we could be proud of. We’re a “small but mighty” staff and we have a lot of fun in the work that we do together. Being able to articulate that in a way that proved our value to others and brought all of our staff’s voices together was extremely rewarding.

Photo by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region on Flickr

The Vermont Library Association is launching the Librarian Relief Fund to assist librarians who suffered personal property damages as a result of Hurricane Irene. You’ve likely seen the devastation on the news. What you don’t always see though is the extremely long, labor intensive process of cleaning up after something like this. It’ll take people in these communities a long time to get “back to normal.”

A lot of folks did not have flood insurance, and people are going to need support above what federal and state agencies can offer. If you feel inclined to help a librarian in need, please consider making a donation or sharing this post. You can donate online here, or you can mail a contribution to:

Vermont Library Association | Attn: Librarian Relief Fund | P.O. Box 803 | Burlington, VT 05402

I really enjoy a lot of the blogs that won and were nominated. I was excited to see the Hack Library School won for best newcomer. It is written by some great folks, and they post on much needed topics for students. Many library schools are severely behind, and this group of folks are helping students be more proactive and working to make sure that a library school education does not get in the way of learning. I really admire what they are doing and was delighted to have the chance to post on their blog about some of my experiences in school.

I also feel honored to be in the company of such smart, enthusiastic and dynamic people like Buffy Hamilton, Sarah Houghton-Jan, and Brian Herzog. I have been subscribed to all of their blogs for a while. In addition, I appreciate what Salem Press is doing in putting on these awards. Not only does it incorporate a little fun into staying current in the profession, it also allows people to discover new blogs that hadn’t been on their radar. I just discovered and subscribed to the Waki Librarian.

Also, most importantly, I don’t want to forget the people who read this blog and voted for it. Thank you so much for reading, commenting and chatting with me on Twitter. I get tons of ideas from people’s comments and conversations with me, and I’m glad you all are getting ideas too. I really appreciate this and I look forward to continuing the conversation here.

In librarianship, speaking in public is necessary if you want to be in academia, present at conferences, or hold any sort of leadership position. We have to teach classes, run meetings, present to faculty, other librarians, and the public, and sometimes even give presentations to land a job.

Read the rest here

image by Graham and Sheila on Flickr

We have ideas all the time. At conferences, in the shower, talking to co-workers, lying in bed, riding the bus, there is no shortage of ideas. Some are great and some are duds, but it’s necessary to capture them if we ever want to act on them. In fact, generating and capturing ideas is a key step in the innovation process as I learned in a presentation by David Dahl at the ACRL national conference. If we do not purposefully and regularly capture our ideas, it’s easy to lose them.

On a personal level, I am sure most people have preferred ways of capturing their ideas. My colleague Sarah uses nice notebooks and different colored pens to capture her idea in an analog format. I use Evernote on my two PCs, my iPad, and my Android phone to capture notes anywhere at anytime and automatically have them sync across devices. Other people might use lists or sticky notes or different digital methods to capture their ideas. There is a wide variety of ways to capture ideas and not every solution will work for every person. You need to find what works best for you.

But we also need to capture ideas on a shared staff-wide level. We have good ideas about how we can improve library resources, but if those ideas aren’t shared, they’re useless. I have a Evernote notebook titled “Work.” My colleague Sarah has her stack of notebooks with library thoughts and ideas in them. I bet if we brought some of these ideas together, we would both get excited and some of them would get implemented. There can be a lot of magic that happens when ideas collide.

Just like personal idea capture, there are a variety of ways to bring staff ideas together. David Dahl in his ACRL presentation mentioned some of the more obvious ones like wikis, intranets and even less obvious ones like innovation management software. In talking to Steven Bell at the ACRL conference, I learned about another cool way of capturing ideas as a staff. At a library staff retreat at their institution, staff members were given small notebooks. They were to use the notebooks to capture ideas about library stuff or ideas that came from observing library users. Then at some point in the future they will come together again and share their ideas. I thought this was a creative and fun way to collect ideas, and it showed that not everything has to be shared digitally. Analog can work just as well and sometimes better.

No matter how ideas are captured, they can’t just sit there. Ideas die in captivity. They need to be shared and examined and studied to be able to flourish and become an actual change in your library.

How do you capture and share ideas?

Photo cc by gregwake of Flickr

One of my favorite aspects of being a librarian is the variety of the work. I am never doing the same thing day in and day out, and I’m constantly challenged in new ways. This may be because I work at a small institution with a fairly small number of librarians, so we all have to do a bit of everything. But I think in general, as librarians, we often have to wear so many different hats.

We are teachers. We experiment with new pedagogical methods and attempt to design effective, engaging curriculum. We are scholars. We publish research and present at conferences about the interesting things we’re doing. We are technologists. We experiment with and implement new tools in order to improve the delivery of services to users. We are detectives. We are able to solve mysteries and pull together a case from a mishmash of clues. We are oracles. We are able to give thorough and satisfying answers to questions that at first glance seem impossible and stultifying (it only seems like magic).

We are marketers. We to promote our resources and events and sell the idea of “the library” by being vocal advocates in our community. We are analysts. We attempt to improve our services by assessing learning and collecting data on things like reference interactions, classes taught, and usage of our resources. We are managers. We are either directors, department heads or simply leaders in meetings or committees, trying to help others reach their full potential. We are customer service representatives. We try to provide the best experience possible for our users and get them exactly what they need to ensure they come back and tell their friends. We are event planners. We plan great programs that pack the library and bring the community together.

There are plenty of other hats and they’re not all positive (copy machine repairman, janitor), but the wide variety of the work that we do is one of the things that really makes me love this job.

What hats do you wear?

“I love customer service in libraries. I love improving our systems and services so they are more user-friendly. I love helping students with their research and answering their questions. But I don’t want to make things easy for students. If I did, I wouldn’t be giving them what they want: an education.”

Check out the full post at the ACRLog, and subscribe if you haven’t already.

Image from Yuba College on Flickr

It can be difficult to drop things that we’re doing or get rid of things we’ve had for a while. Just watch the show Hoarders. We become attached to our possessions and ways of doing things. It is necessary though. We can’t do everything, collect everything, and be all things to all people. If we try, we will either become bloated or stretch ourselves too thin. We have to know our communities and tailor our services to their specific needs.

Gretchen Rubin, the author of the Happiness Project wrote a great blog post over at Zen Habits about identifying and getting rid of clutter. Much of what is in this post is relevant to libraries and the way they collect resources, implement technology, and provide services.  Here are a few of Rubin’s questions seen through the lens of libraries:

• Would I replace it if it were broken or lost? If we’re not replacing specific library books when they get lost, did we really need them in the first place?
• Does it seem potentially useful—but never actually gets used? A book or database or technology may have seemed like a really great idea and perfect for your community, but it isn’t getting used. Sometimes this has to do with marketing. Sometimes it was simply a bad decision. Don’t retain a resource or maintain a service because it seemed like a good idea at one point. Retain the ones that are valuable and used by your community.
• Does it serve its purpose well? Is the collection you purchased doing what you thought it would? Is the new service you’re providing doing what you wanted? If it’s not actually doing what you intended you may need to reevaluate it.
• Has it been replaced by a better model? Has a newer edition of a book come out? Does a technology you have been using have a new competitor that might be cheaper or  work better than what you’re currently using? If so, maybe it’s time to upgrade. Conversely, don’t get something simply because it is the newest and shiniest. Evaluate if you need it or if your version of it still fills your need.
• Is it nicely put away in an out-of-the-way place? Perhaps you’re considering offsite storage or compact shelving for books. This could be an option for some institutions, but maybe you just have too much stuff. Could you just get rid of some of it?
• Does this memento actually prompt any memories? Sometimes we develop emotional attachments to things. “We need to keep this specific collection because we’d feel bad if we got rid of it. Libraries are supposed to have this reference set!” If your patrons don’t use things, there is no need to keep them around.
• Have I ever used this thing? Look at your reference statistics. When was the last time that book circulated? Never?! In seven years?! Hmmm, it might be a good candidate for Better World Books. The same thing goes for electronic resources. We have the ability to look at usage. Tie your decisions to your patrons usage. They vote with their clicks and their checkouts.

I’d bet you could start getting rid of things today, reducing clutter, and begin freeing your funds, space, and time for much more valuable ventures. What clutter do you have at your library?

“Technology is part of the evolution of the human race. It’s neither divine nor diabolical. It’s up to us how we use it.” -Deepak Chopra

This quote was about robots, but it could be just as applicable in libraries. Often people get hung up on technology. They think the newest thing will be a “game changer” or will revolutionize the way things are done. Or they vilify it as something ruining culture or as just another fad. Chopra points out that technology is not good or evil, but that we should be thoughtful in how it is used and applied.

I’d recommend watching a couple of these 7-8 minute videos. They’re inspirational and they bring up a number of fascinating ideas. The videos got me thinking about how libraries can start dreaming the impossible. Instead of making statements like “we don’t do it that way” or “that can’t be done,” we should be asking questions like “how can I make this vision a reality” and “why not?”

How can libraries dream the impossible?