A Wandering Eyre

It is that time of the year again. Leaves are appearing on the trees, the azaleas are blooming, the sun is out, and college basketball is on at the Rochester house. I, under orders of Mr. Rochester who is not even home, have the first games on of the season. I suppose he thinks the aura of the games will fill the house with shiny thoughts for his arrival home this evening.

I have filled out my bracket which is nothing to write home about. I use the very scientific method of picking and choosing the winners from teams I like. In the years that we have been doing brackets with our friends, I have never come in last place. That’s not nuthin’, as the Captain himself would say.

If you have teams in the tourney, I wish them good luck, unless they are playing my team, that is.

–Jane, is there a cure for March Madness?

DLK is featured on NPR’s Get My Vote page. Rock on, David!

–Jane, librarians are cool

I am very pleased that Jason Griffey, my conference husband and friend extraordinaire, is joining the TechSource Team. He is a super smart guy and is always amazing me with the things he knows and finds. I know he will have some very good things to tell us.

Welcome, Jason.

–Jane, loves to see her friends do amazing things

I am very humbled to be included in this list for 2008 from Library Journal. I love that some of my very favorite librarians are receiving this award and I can not believe I am on a list with them.

Congratulations to everyone. May you all have continued successes and many blessings.

If you are looking for a list with actual names and blogs, Librarian By Day has come to the rescue.

–Jane, moving and shaking in 2008

I am still trying to figure out how to plan my work, house, and napping needs around the hours of my day. I think I am finally getting an idea of what is and is not possible in a 24 hour period for the stay-at-home Jane.

I am catching up on some much needed reading this morning and read Meredith’s post (finally) on Building 21st Century Librarians and Libraries. Meredith points out that it is not just SLIS schools that are to blame. As I have stated many times in frustration, our organizational cultures are not equipped to be flexible enough to allow for the growing need of tech skills in ALL our public services staff. Meredith says:

It’s also the way organizations are structured. So many libraries have a 1.0 org chart for a 2.0 world. They’re not structured to support public services technologies like blogs, wikis, etc. They’re not set up to allow for the sort of experimentation and agile decision-making that is required to meet the changing needs and wants of our users. So I don’t know that in an environment like that, hiring an emerging technologies librarian or a 2.0 librarian or whatever is the answer. You’re just putting a band-aid on a problem that goes to the heart of how your organization is structured and how decisions are made.

How do we make our organizations more nimble?

I think we have to start with the belief that all public services staff should have some level of tech skills. We have to stop relying on those one or two people to figure things out and then hopefully find time to teach the rest of the staff. We should all be learning and sharing with each other all the time or we should have someone on staff to train and plan for technology.

That kind of sharing is how the online tech oriented librarians learn from each other. We learn and share all the time. I certainly do not know everything and see all the cool stuff first. I am linked to a plethora of really smart people that I keep my eyes on, librarians and non-librarians. That is the only true way to “keep up.”

Not only do we need to believe that public services staff should know how to use technology, we should require it. Our users, our customers expect us to know it; we should expect it of ourselves.

This also begs the question: If an organization is unwilling to devote time and money to training its staff in technology skills are they really trying to be flexible and innovative? If an organization does not allow time for their staff to learn new skills are they really supporting continued learning?

–Jane, put your money where your mouth is

I am not sure expelling this student for being the admin of a virtual study group is the answer to this problem. If what the students say is true, they were only using the group to help each other, much as people do in a real f2f study group, not give answers to homework or tests. There has to be a better way to have this discussion with students.

It is likely that the administrators of Ryerson University do not know what was actually going on within the facebook group and do not understand how the students were using the technology. This is a classic example of cutting of your arm because you have a hangnail on your finger.

–Jane, doubts many of the “adults” in this situation have spent time in facebook

This job ad, for a developer at I Can Has Cheezburger is one of the funniest I have seen in a long time. I wonder how many applications they will receive.

The web has made it possible for companies and libraries to advertise for new employees in many different ways. I have seen job ads for library positions posted on blogs, listed on LISJobs, and traded around on Twitter. Many librarians I know say the job searches at their libraries routinely receive a large number of applications, anywhere from 50-100. This is especially true for entry level positions.

Using the internet to circulate your job openings, will increase the diversity of your applicant pool and thus provide you with better choices. This seems simple, but there are many libraries who still only advertise in the same old places and then wonder why their applicant pools are so low.

Do you have a blogger on your staff? Someone who uses Twitter regularly? Ask them to post a link to the job opening at your library. Encourage them to write about your library in their own words. As prospective employees, people want to know about your library, so make information about your organization easy to find.

–Jane, use the great people you have to be your best recruiters

I must admit I am still a bit fuzzy on how the delegates shake out in terms of caucus and popular votes here in Texas, but I thought it would be fun to share my first caucus experience.

I voted Tuesday, like normal and then returned home to my parents house* to use my Mom’s old computer, with old Windows, and old IE to do some work. Exhausted from those efforts, I took a nap. After a nice dinner with my parents, I headed back to my voting site to caucus at 7pm.

The Democrats were in a tiny room in an apartment complex that catered to older, retired people on scooters. The room was cramped and as more people kept coming in, some of the people attending started getting grumpy. I was just excited. Some less grumpy people around me, who had lived in Texas longer than I have been alive, never remembered having a caucus before this one and were excited with me. We waited, some patiently, some not, for the Caucus Chair to come in and give us instructions.

At this point some of the older ladies, two of which were on scooters, started griping about this taking a long time. We had been waiting about 10-15 minutes at this point and it was about 7:15. Caucusing was set to start no later than 7:30. “I hope we start soon. It is past my bedtime.” If I heard that complaint once, I heard it about 10 times. I wanted to ask her if she was voting for Hillary and then tell her to just go to bed already if she was, but I am nice, remember?

I am in a small caucus district, so I was not expecting many people. When the Caucus Chair came in the overflowing room he was shocked. He said in the last election, 8 Democrats voted in the caucus district. That day, almost 300 Dems had voted, and 57 of us had returned to caucus. We ended up switching rooms with the Republicans, who had a larger room and fewer people.

The process was fairly simple. We lined up and the volunteers checked to make sure we had voted earlier in the day. We then signed a sheet of paper with our name, contact information, and our vote: Hillary or Barack. While the two volunteers counted up the votes, we split off into separate sides of the room and counted ourselves. We were split 50/50 for the candidates, which was confirmed later by the official count.

Since we were evenly split, each group chose 5 delegates and 5 alternates to attend the County caucus this Saturday. From there, delegates will be chosen to go to Austin, and after that, the delegates chosen will go to Denver for the DNC in August.

As I said, how the actual numbers shake out in terms of how Barack and Hillary actually get delegates from this process is confusing, but it was fun and exhilarating to participate. The whole process was over at about 8:20. I hope those cranky old ladies made it home to their beds. I was right. The crankiest of the ladies did vote for Hillary.

–Jane, cranky ladies or no, it was a shiny experience

*Due to some complications while trying to register in my own county, I am still registered to vote at my parent’s address under my maiden name. As a result, I had to trek across town to do my civic duty. Hopefully, I can get this issue resolved soon, before the November elections.

I know many of you are pondering this title. It is not Spring yet, you may say. I am still shoulder deep in snow!

I have sad news for you Northern folks; It is Spring here in Texas. We have a “cold” front coming in later today and it will get as low as the 40’s, but it pops back up to the 60’s during the day. The birds are out, the flowers are blooming, and the grass has started growing. Mr. Rochester has mow and edge the lawn on his To Do list for the weekend. Spring has sprung.

The growing smells in the air, coupled with my own daily growing, had reminded me it is time for updates and changes to this space. I have updated the Presentations and About pages and I have added a page listing Writing.

–Jane, updates her status to “very round”

I am Out, One Last Time

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre

My last day at work on Friday was very nice. Some friends and co-workers took me to lunch and we stuffed ourselves silly with Greek food. I am not sure what they do to gyro meat, but I swear I could eat it everyday.

After much consideration, I also decided to have a conversation with my boss on my way out the door. I wanted her to know some things that have been hard the past few months for me. I must say, it was rewarding to finally be honest. She was pleased both with my honesty and my willingness to share. We talked about her ideas regarding the future of the group, which involves a lot more online support for students, and some trends on librarianship. It did not change my mind about leaving, but I think she has some great ideas about where to take Instruction in the future.

I have spent my first day home doing laundry and running errands. Nothing too glamorous. It is raining here and the dog and I are on the couch enjoying the dreariness of the day.

–Jane, her belly jiggles, like a bowl full of jelly