Daily Thoughts 6/8/2010

Joseph Conrad, 1916

Daily Thoughts 6/8/2010

Today has been a quiet day. I worked a little bit on the Bookletters page, we are almost ready to post the first example to our website which should be interesting. I also worked with a colleague on writing a bookmark for books in Spanish in our collection. I have a couple of periodicals to read, Booklist and Library Journal. I also did a search for books to be sent out on the book mobile. The book mobile stops at the armory which is mainly older folks. I usually get requests for history, biography of actors and politicians, World War II, art, mysteries, and bestselling fiction. There is an occassional request for family sagas.

Last night, I finished reading Rex Riders which was a lot of fun to read. I'll write a review of it later this week. Right now, I am reading Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Daniel H. Pink writes a lot about intrinsic motivation; autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Things which don't fit easily into a top down command structure based on managers and workers. He is making an argument that many new jobs that are being created have artistry built into them and don't follow the reward and motivational structure of modern corporations. He also tells us that 18 million Americans are self employed as well as 11 million Americans work from home at least occassionally. This makes the top down command structure not work very well in many jobs. So far, the book is quite interesting.