Turning over Librarians Part 1

No, I do not think that librarians are like rocks and that if you turn them over you will find all kinds of interesting things crawling around. I do know that librarians (or most of them) are multi-dimensional individuals that do know a lot of interesting and amazing things, if you just ask they may well tell you. In using the phrase “turning over librarians,” I am referring to the term often used by businesses, “turn-over.” This will be a two part post. In the first one I will discuss turn-over in lower level employees and in the second I will discuss turn-over and the lack thereof in upper level employees.

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Accepting the Public in Public Library

Recently there has been a bit of media coverage on incidents that have happened in public libraries ^[2]. As a public librarian I find myself a bit bewildered by the tone of these articles and the outrage expressed by some citizens and librarians. What do they expect to happen in a public space? Where have they been for the past thirty years?

Are libraries safe places? I would argue that libraries in general are as safe as any other public space. Does this mean that it is a good place to just drop off your kids or to leave your purse sitting around? No. You should not expect your local public library to be any safer that the local shopping mall.

Kindle Update

For those of you who read my original Kindle report, you know how my experience with it went. If you did not read it you can find it here: My Short Life with Kindle.

Since then the kindle has been circulating through the library staff and four more people have had the opportunity to experience it. Reaction to date has been completely positive. Some of the issues with usability/ergonomics that I originally pointed out have been repeated by other staff members. But along with the criticisms there have been many more comments from my fellow librarians like:

Presentation

Yes this is a filler post and is basically self promotion!

Last week I had the opportunity to give a 15 minute presentation and participate in a panel discussion at the Midwest Library Technology Conference. The session was called “Avatarbrarians: Librarians at the Point of Need, Virtually” and my presentation was titled “Learning to be Avatars.” If you forget the first part with the puppets (inside joke) things went well. If you would like to see the slides from my presentation you can view them on SlideShare.

This was my first presentation at a library conference, buy not my first presentation. I had a great time at the conference and recommend it to all librarians in the Midwest, think about adding it to your calendar for next year. After many discussions between sessions and over food, I have several more thoughts on presentations I am gong to be developing, some I have already touched on in previous posts here and others are thoughts I have been developing lately that play off my technology and marketing backgrounds. I look forward to sharing them with you.

DRM is Evil?

I heard it at CiL 2008 and have heard it talked about on blogs. There seems to be and obsession with DRM (Digital Rights Management) with many librarians and with some of the general public. Since I come from a business background I don’t quite understand all the huff amongst librarians. Following is a reply I made to a post on another blog regarding DRM that kind of encapsulates my current thoughts on the issue:

The above comments offer great insights into the whole libraries and DRM issue, but I have a little bit to add, even though I am a public librarian.