Daily Thoughts 11/18/2012

Daydreaming, A. Seifert, 1901

Daily Thoughts 11/18/2012

This morning, I did my laundry and read some more of True North.  I am almost finished reading it.  It has helped me focus a little bit more on what I would like to do.  It helped me do a short rewrite of the beginning of my Linkedin profile.

I learned today that there are some new limits on Twitter.  There is a maximum of 2000 people which an account can be following.  This encouraged me to go back using the application Friend or Follow and make some adjustments to the library Twitter account.  It should be a bit more effective now.

I received my membership application yesterday from the American Library Association.  I am taking a serious look at what I should spend my money on.  American Library Association has not been as helpful as ASIS&T (American Society of Information Science and Technology) to me when I have gone to librarian events.   However, the ALA online classes have been excellent.

 I am considering ASIS&T instead of ALA.  I won't be able to afford both.  The most helpful organizations to me so far have been the New York Librarians Meetup which is free as well as New York My Metro which will definitely continue being a member of.  I have not been to many events lately.  A lot of this has been about focusing on what I should do.

I finished reading True North Discover Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George.  This book is different than almost every book on leadership that I have ever read.  A lot of it is about having a moral compass, self awareness, and being able to lead through a variety of styles most of which are not control oriented.  I learned about how knowledge, learning, persuasion, delegating and empowering other people are ways to lead. The book had sets of exercises at the end of every chapter which touched on subjects like purpose, family life, interests, and many things outside of the job which give people character.  It was well worth reading.

Web Bits

Lessons for Book Publishing from the Music Industrys Digital Street Fight
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/lessons-for-book-publishing-from-the-music-industrys-digital-street-fight/

Thoughts for the Day

The Last Whale blog http://thelastwhale.blogspot.com/ asked me to read a book on his subject, so I put a book on hold called Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin. It should be interesting.

Today has been pretty slow, more weeding of reference and producing bookmarks for distributing to other libraries. Nothing particularly exciting.

I've been looking over the RUSA-- Reference and User Services Association guidelines for libraries. It might not be that interesting to most people. We have been asked to make long term plans so I am looking at the guidelines so I can get a better sense of where we might be going. This is pretty thick stuff. It says a lot without saying anything at all. I have been looking at the New York State library guidelines as well. There isn't much there. But, there is a subtext about expectations in libraries.

http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/protools/referenceguide/guidelinesinformation.cfm

I am a member of the American Library Association, my professional association as well as RUSA. I have found RUSA to be much more useful for me than ALA. I do a lot more work with Reference than anything else.

Random Thoughts.

Andrew Carnegie, Patron of Libraries

I am going to start reading the Djinn In The Nightingales Eye by A.S. Byatt on the way home on the train tonight. Hopefully, it will be well written like most of A.S. Byatt's work.

Today is library tour day. I had to walk a couple people around the building and show them things. I showed the whole building top to bottom. This includes all the nooks and crannies. Where I work is a very old building it was built in 1904, it is a giant old Carnegie building which has truly seen better days. If you walk downstairs we have two floors of mezzanine with many last copies of books from the last hundred years. The building has a kind of creaky character all of its own.

The train is on a repair schedule, they are putting in new signal equipment, so I have to leave a little early today. It gives me a longer time to read, but it also takes longer. I can't stand it that they have to repair things while people are on the same line. The conductor announced the train will be continued to work on until February 29.


I put in my professional association memberships. ALA-- American Library Association, with the subdivisions RUSA-- Reference and User Services Association, IFRT-- Intellectual Freedom Round Table. I also joined my local library association. I am debating whether I should shell out money and pay for the CBLDF-- Comic Book Legal Defense Fund membership http://www.cbldf.org/ . It is a rather unusual organization. Their website is really interesting. They document all of the legal cases against comic books which are occurring all over.

Of the organizations, I have found RUSA to be the most useful. They have a nice magazine which they put out every quarter-- Reference and User Services Quarterly, and they also have various online classes for improving reference and collection development skills that are inexpensive. My particular strengths in librarianship are reference and collection development.

I really enjoy looking through catalogs of books to order. I like the feeling of looking in the Baker & Taylor ordering system. Book catalogs have a nice glossy feel to them.

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Today, I am trying out a new advertising system. I wonder if it will work. The advertising is based on bidding for spots on my website. I put four spots up. The site is called Project Wonderful. Currently, the ads at this point cost nothing.

Right now, like most of the stuff I have for advertising purposes it is in the experimental stage. I am cheering for an initial 75 cents so I can buy a can of selzer from the staff vending machine.