myth of the multi-tasker

Yesterday’s article in the New York Times about the myth of the multi-tasker was really interesting. And here I thought I was just a poorly skilled multi-tasker! Confession: multi-tasking distracts me and for all of the wonderful things that technology and the internets have made possible (and I wouldn’t give up any of them), it also takes up a tremendous amount of my time – time that I might be using to actually get things done.

I’m writing this as I’m sitting in a workshop about using Social Software in Libraries (multitasking) so I don’t have time to complete the thought. But at least you know I was thinking.

Librarian Workout Tape (1987)

Found this on YouTube today:

only $69.95!!!

Another blow to the hostages

Just as libraries often treat their users as hostages (by assuming that they have no information or public resource alternative), library vendors are guilty of extraordinarily poor track records in both their product performance and their customer service. After this week’s announcement by SirsiDynix, I have to admit I’m feeling a little victimized. Hopefully this will turn to empowerment soon (in that my library will get a new decision to make and this time I can actually be a part of it), but right now I’m just plumb frustrated.

I’ve known about the abandonment of Horizon for a few days now, but as my library is one of the suckers that was scheduled to begin migration this summer, I wasn’t in a place to talk about it here for the rare possibility that one of my coworkers might read it. Until we have more information about what Rome is and whether or not we will go with it, the announcement has not been made to our staff. I’m not looking forward to the announcement. Given the fact that our staff has been eagerly awaiting the migration to Horizon for a long time now and the fact that our library system has invested a considerable amount of money, preparation, training, and based a tremendous amount of strategic planning and budget requests on Horizion — not Unicorn and certainly not Rome.

Now that this is out all over the internet and blogosphere, I can talk about it.

Not that I have much to say at this point. Except I’m in the ILS market if anyone has any ideas. I wish we could go open source, but I’m concerned with our lack of IT staff. We do not have any programmers on staff and I do not feel confident in my ability to support a fully functioning open source system. Also, our system requires full acquistions and serials management capabilities and I don’t think the open source systems have that functionality at this point.

I’ll keep you posted.

making progress and moving on to new battles

I had a great meeting with my web team yesterday and we were able to draft a great policy for our participation in social networking sites! Woo hoo! Things are starting to look up. We based our policy on the Newton Free Library blog policy, but loosened it up to apply to all existing and potential social networking sites which we defined as, “any web site or account created by WCLS which facilitates an environment for library staff and library users to share opinions and information about library related subjects/issues.”

Now the policy just needs to be edited for clarity and sent on for approval. I’m hoping to fast-track this as much as possible as we are already about 5 years behind, but who knows what fast-track means in a government agency?

Next issue: IM. My library doesn’t do it, doesn’t offer it, and is frankly putting up a whole lot of stink over it. Staff wants it. Users use it (just not with us!). But the systems staff is stonewalling – big time. Using their standard stonewalling defense that they use for anything new, exciting and even the least bit useful – it’s a “security risk.”

Being that I am new to the world of systems technology and network administration, i don’t have a lot of pack to my punch when trying to know down this wall. So I consulted my friends at the Web4Lib listserv to get some help with how to fight the good fight and get this done.

I’ll keep you posted on how my library enters the 21st century. It’s all so very exciting. I’m so happy to have this opportunity to learn things and bring new and useful services to my library and its staff and, most importantly, it’s users.

stranded on policy laden disclaimer island

I want to encourage user interaction with my library system — in the form of Myspace, blogs, flickr, youtube, etc., but before I am able to implement these wonderful things, I have been charged with developing a policy to deal with all of the potential (albeit UNLIKELY) scary, terrifying problems that opening these doors will cause.

Am I wrong or is opening doors supposed to be a positive thing? One that libraries and librarians have made it their mission to promote? Why, then, do we as a profession have the tendency to approach new things as the most demonish of devil’s advocates full of fear and pessimism? Why must we assume the worst of our users? Don’t we understand that this type of negativity and paranoia and unnecessarily compulsive obsession with controlling everything is what causes them to hold less than desirable stereotypical perceptions of us?

I’ll keep you posted on the status of the policy development and the future (probably much delayed) implementation of these useful technologies.