Week One: Blogging AKA: Inventive Librarian Training

Some wonderfully inventive librarians have come up with their own spin on the original 23 Things concept. While I am fairly tech savvy, I am planning to participate in order to hone my skills and maybe even find a few new things. It's a Kansas Library project but they will let those of us who live or work out-of-state participate.

Take a look at Librarian, Erin Howerton, hosting the opening module: Blogging. 23 Things - http://www.23thingskansas.org/

Stephen's Lighthouse has also provided a little history on the 23 Things project.

Alaskan Librarian

One of my fellow librarians has come up with something so brilliant that only, well, a librarian could have thought of it. He has taken all of the results from people doing Google searches and has started to put together posts answering the question that had somehow led them to his site. I have been endlessly entertained and impressed with his ability to take bizarre sets of search terms and provide clear, well thought out answers (in case that person ever comes back). He is a librarian in Alaska so I have a feeling his stats have gone through the roof lately which hopefully means that people's odd searches will provide endless blog posts for him and endless information for his readers (or at least for his geeky librarian readers).

I would do this too but 90% of the stats on my site come from authors looking for reviews of their books or people looking for reviews of those same books. Imagine that.

Monday 7/14/2008

• Got up and got ready for work.
• Checked work, Twitter and personal email accounts on my Trio.
• Marked email that needed attention.
• 15 minute drive to work.
• Got the deposit ready to go to the bank.
• Worked on the list of customer holds that needed to be pulled.
• Opened the branch.
• Answered a customer email.
• Sent out a message to staff about the importance of collecting accurate statistics.
• Sent out self-evaluation questions to staff person to complete for upcoming evaluation.
• Investigated an online book club management system and created an account, inviting a few of the current book club participants to join.
• Worked on a staff evaluation.
  
• Called downtown to get clarification on new statistics gathering system.
• Worked the customer service desk for about an hour where I got to answer a Reader's Advisory question (yippy!) I also checked in and out books, answered a couple of basic reference questions.
• Dealt with a customer disturbance issue and filed an incident report.
• Worked on Notable Award list.
• Ate a rather boring but nutritious lunch…hummus, carrots, peach…awhile skimming KC blogs, library and book blogs for interesting tidbits..
• Worked on finding a second leader for the newly expanded Jewish Literature program, found and invited second book discussion leader.
  
• Talked with staff about the proper way to structure an incident report.
  
• Talked to an upset customer about overdue fines.
• Had a staff "birthday cupcake" and a little social time.
• Cleaned up a portion of the “Missing Book” printout.
  
• Worked the customer service desk.
• Wrote a blog post about the Jewish American Literature program.
• Talked with Public Affairs about various promotional details for the program.
• Dealt with three bike theft issues and wrote another incident report
  
• Stopped at the grocery store, ran home and then headed downtown for a library program.
• Listened to my smart librarian friend do a presentation and cheered wildly.
  
• Got home at 9'ish, read a bit of a notable read and then went to bed.
  

I took these notes last Monday as part of The Day in the Life project first seen on the Librarian By Day blog.

Librarians

Asylum's Top 10 Occupations Inaccurately Associated With Sexiness

What to guess who appears on the list? My question is, how did they collect this data. Did they approach each and every librarian with a suitably hot guy and see how they reacted or are they just guessing? Just wondering because I cannot ever recall choosing a date based on his understanding of the Dewey Decimal system.

New committee members appointed

Next year's list of book award committee members has been announced and Nancy Pearl (the closest thing librarians have to a celebrity) is one of the newly appointed committee members. Until I was cautioned that I "shouldn't feel intimidated by her" it hadn't occurred to me to be intimidated. Anyway, for those of you non-librarian readers (which would be most of you), Nancy Pearl has written several books and more importantly, is the model for the librarian action figure. Yes, there is a librarian action figure and yes, I own one.

I just wish that the shushing action didn't make the action figure look quite so much like she was picking her nose.

Librarian fun

Just for fun...

http://librariandressup.com/index.htm

In case you were wondering

From Craigslist: Seeking the heart of Librarian.

The tagline for the Sony Reader is that it's "sexier than a librarian". Hmmmm.....

Just for fun....

Discover Your Inner Librarian



Do some good...

FreeRice

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

A customer just brought this in for me because he said it sounded like me (without the tattoo's). Not sure I am the demographic they are really talking about but it was sweet anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08librarian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Being A Librarian

The library profession is such an interesting field to get into. In the past week I have gone to a hip/hop gathering, a neighborhood business association meeting, a rotary club meeting and a young friends of the library (20 - 40) book discussion group. I have talked about graffiti and hip/hop artists, literary fiction, local politics and international service projects. Where else can you get that variety of experience and such a wealth of potential new friends?

Librarian Costume

Librarian Costume
Originally uploaded by Librarian Avenger.

Darn. I found out about this too late for Halloween. I believe in the library world they are calling it the Librarian Hooker Halloween costume.