HTH?

How the heck did this thing end up lavender??? What was I thinking?

Tinkering with the Template

My new template looks a little sorry at the moment. I have hopes of getting back in to tinker with it sometime soon. My CSS skillz are in pretty bad shape.

Five Non-Librarian Blogs I Read

I never get "meme-tagged," but I'm going to just camp on to this one because I think a) it's interesting and b) it's easy.

So, here are five non-librarian blogs I read:

1. 43 Folders : I don't care if Merlin Mann is a Mac-aholic, I love his blog and all its accoutrements. This is honestly the only podcast I always listen to. 43F introduced me to GTD productivity and to the idea of getting over my personal suck, of which I have several, unfortunately.

2. The Chief Happiness Officer : reminds me that how work gets done is as important as if it gets done.

3. Slow Leadership : I'm the turtle, reinventing reference is the mountain. It's a slow, slow process.

4. Engadget : look at all the shiny things!

5. I Will Teach You To Be Rich : I have several personal finance sites that I read, but Ramit Sethi--of PBWiki fame--usually has the best links. A close tie is Get Rich Slowly. I don't have any intention of being either an entrepreneur or rich, but I'm also not planning on being elbow-deep in debt for the rest of my life. These two bloggers seem to have the right idea.

So, the blogs I read also seem to be a little peek into my mind: be productive, be the best manager I can be, keep up with the toys, and don't be poor. I will admit: while I clean out my library-related posts about once a week, I go through my "fun" blogs almost every day. I live and breathe library work, but I'm a human being, and keeping in touch with my personal needs helps keep me balanced.

All library and no fun make Whitney a dull girl.

The Grump Who Stole Libraries

Go now and read "The Grump Who Stole Libraries," by Andrew Pace.

Of course, now that I'm firmly enrooted in reference, I assumed that when the Grin...I mean, the Grump...took away the computers, the librarians would actually look things up in books, and I was disappointed to realize that wasn't exactly the point. I then realized that Pace is talking about the OPAC, in which case it is funny just as is.

I'm working on Toastmaster's speech #2, and this one is going to be about the future of reference. I'm excited, and hope to get to work on it as soon as I'm done with the January schedule. Also, for anyone who was there at speech #1, I promise not to cry at the end of this one.

If you had asked me a year ago, is it in your career plans to be a reference department manager, I would have laughed. I DID laugh when it was suggested to me. Reference is DEAD, man! But here I am, and it's good--even when I've got five weeks of schedule staring me in the face.

Reference services, creatively imagined, is the place where people and information meet. It can happen in a kaleidescope of ways, in physical and cyber space. It happens over thick reference books or quick, quirky chick lit titles. It happens in person, and it happens on the phone. It happens in ways both serious and fun. Reference is dead! Long live reference!