Librarian by Day Bobbi Newman | I'm not that kind of librarian

The year isn't even over and I'm already looking forward into 2009, as far forward as April!  I thought before I get too caught up in what's to come, I should take a look back at 2008.  This list is more for me than you, sometimes I get so busy I forget what I've been up to, so I'm picking one major event from each month to remind myself of all that has happened in 2008 January - Library Learning 2.1 kicked off February - cohosted a two day Web 2.0 workshop for the state library March - attended Kansas Library Camp April - Presented at a conference in England May - the laptops from Read more [...]

I copied this post from The MLXperience to ask you - What DO you wish your patrons knew? Seattle Books Examiner's Danielle Dreger-Babbitt took an informal poll of librarians in Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, New York City, and Portland about what they wish library patrons knew or did. Here's the shortlist: 1. Use us! 2. We support Intellectual Freedom 3. Be respectful of our library patrons 4. Pay your fines 5. Return your items on time 6. Tell us what you like 7. If possible, check out all materials at once from the circulation desk 8. Please listen to us the first (or even second) Read more [...]

Last week I attended a WebJunction townhall meeting on Tough Economic Times.  I got some good info from it (there are two more coming up if you're interested). Someone in the meeting said we need to appeal to people's emotions. It made me start thinking how we can connect with patrons emotionally to demonstrate our worth to the community.  Showing them numbers isn't enough, we need to connect with them on a personal level.  Today I saw this slideshow from Nancy Dowd.  She participated in the Pecha Kucha at Internet Librarian and she showed us a video of the type of stories she is teaching Read more [...]

Here is the deal, my RSS reader, its overwhelmed, I have waaaayyy too many blogs in it.  I've tried weeding (something I'm known for being good at around the library) and I'm still not down far enough.  I think I have a new plan. I'm going to unsubscribe to everything.  If its good and worthwhile it will find its way back right? So if you were going to recommend 5 blogs to someone starting a new reader account what would they be? Read more [...]

I am way overdue on this post.  Several months back my friend Maurice recognized the absence of a specific forum for library staff to discuss and share information about training, so he created the T is for Training podcast.  Every other Friday a group people get together (virtually) to share tips and tricks and discuss training related issues.  If you'd like to call in or join the chat session you can find information here.  If you'd like to listen to the podcast you can find it here. This week, among other things, we'll be discussing Roy Tennant's Top Ten Techie Traits post. Other Library Read more [...]