the state of libraries and the admin blog
Posted by Jami on August 15, 2007
David Lee King has linked to a few sites of note lately – the first is a link to an interview he did for degreetutor.com in which he describes both the most useful and useless elements of libraries and librarianship today and the most difficult challenges that we need to face in our libraries today. I like that David is able to call a spade a spade and doesn’t pull punches when discussing important elements of the transitions that are happening in librarianship. This is evidenced in his recent post about the non-techie truth about library 2.0 – and he is spot on. Give it a read!
Next, and perhaps most interesting to me, is that David has announced the new blog of his boss, the Deputy Director of Operations at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. While it has yet to be filled with daily posts – I’m certainly hoping that it will. It is important to get the opinions and insights of those folks who, whether they like it or not, control our organizational cultures. As evidenced in David’s interview, in previous posts of mine and around the professional blog-world, if not even the literature, our organizations and the traditional models of our own making are often our biggest barriers to becoming more vibrant and alive in our service to our communities. I’m hoping that these Admin Musings from a Deputy Director can help offer tips and help for really implementing institutional change rather than just writing about what should be as so many of us do – which (don’t get me wrong) is equally valuable, but it’s only half of the story. Some must dream and some must make it happen. A single person trying to do both will never be as successful as they could be and either the ideas or the implementation (or both) will suffer.
Rob Banks said
Thanks for the plug for my blog. This is new for me, so am still trying to find my voice. I don’t know if I’ll make it to “daily” posts, but it gives me a good goal. I really appreciate how you grasped what I am trying to do in Library Admin Musings (libraryadmin.wordpress.com). As you mention, many people are doing a great job of talking about new ideas and issues. It seemed to me, with strong encouragement from David King davidleeking.com, that there was a need to have someplace to talk about benefits, consequences, etc. of implementing these new things. Administrators have to balance a lot of demands on limited resources. What can we do, how do we need to change our thinking, how can we get to “Yes” are all types of questions we need to discuss. I thought it would also be helpful to those who aren’t in a position to make final decisions to understand what might be some of the barriers to their ideas, so they can understand why they were told no or how to develop their proposal to achieve yes. I hope that the blog can play a small role in that effort. As a shamless plug: Gina Millsap, Executive Director at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library and I will be doing a SirsiDynix Webinar called “Dump the Org Chart – get ‘er done” on September 18. You can go to their website to sign up. There will be time for questions and answers. If anyone is interested, I would like to have comments on my blog libraryadmin.wordpress.com in advance of the webinar. I’ll do a post today asking for barriers to ideas that people have faced. Hopefully, I can work them into the presentation.