Librarian by Day

I survived my first ALA! It was intense and exhilorating and tiring, but worth every minute of it.   When I return from conferences there are always a lot of thoughts rolling around and it takes me about  a week to solidify everything.  But here are the things that really stuck with me and what I’m thinking about.  Expect to see at least some of these as full blog posts when I’ve got my thoughts in line.

• You may not have signed up for this job but it’s the job you have deal with it
• admins and managers let your staff go, the worse that could happen is that you have a failed project you learn something from
• these technologies are not a magic wand, you shouldn’t just have a blog to have a blog, you need to do what your community needs, have a plan a strategy, don’t just jump in without knowing where you’re going
• how long have we had computers? Why do you still have staff who are intimidated by computers, why did you hire them? Why are they still working there?
• we don’t have any problem doing what we’ve always done, but if we don’t do anything more than we’ve always done we’re going to be in trouble
• Patience is hard to come by for innovators, we see something and want it now, and have made the change before others even see it coming
• Get comfortable with ambiguity
• Push power down org chart wherever and whenever possible
• Don’t try to do too much or some of your projects will rust while pursuing others
• Not everyone knows who Darien Library is or what they are doing, look outside your bubble
• Library 2.0 never promised anything

And some photos, although I didn’t take many.