Afterwork Library Meetup at the Yacht Club

Posted on by pcsweeney

These meetups are weekly events so feel free to come out every Thursday! I promise to only invite folks every other week from now on since I got marked as spam for these invites. If you don’t want to be included in these community building and networking opportunities, please let me know and I won’t send you an invite anymore.

Once again we’ll start by having our drinks at the Peninsula Yacht Club and see what happens. Last two weeks we wound up at the Living Room doing some Karaoke and the week before we moved over to
Palo Alto’s Rose and Crown to meet with some other librarians where we joined forces and had a great time. There’s plenty of places within walking distance if we get hungry or want to party in a different scene and we can always order something at the club.

These events help us build some library community in the Bay Area so we can do awesome things in the future.

For those of you who don’t know about PYC, its pretty much a dive bar. The best dive bar in the bay area though! While it is usually
a private club, you don’t have to be a member to come because you’ll be my guest for the meetup. Just show up, let me know your there, write your name on the guest list, and have a drink!

You can just come as you are and drinks at PYC are $2-4 and there’s no tipping because I’m bartending. It’s gonna be fun and cheap – everything a librarian loves.

If we wind up moving on to somewhere, we’ll post something to the Facebook page so people can find out where we went.

Peninsula Yacht Club
1536 Maple Street
Redwood City, CA 94063

Facebook Event Page

Partying = Library Community

Posted on by pcsweeney

Since I’ve been banned from Facebook because someone marked me as spam for sending out too many invitations to library parties. I’m going to defend myself a little bit here.

I’ve been thinking more and more about partying as a professional activity so the next few posts that I do are going to be about how partying Makes It Happen. This post is going to be about communities of Librarians.

We desperately need a more closely knit library community. One of the best things I’ve learned from JP, Allen, and the ALA Think Tank is that if you want to build a community, you have to party. Partying builds social connections, strengthens our relationships, allows us to get to know each other without a Robert’s Rules Agenda, and because partying is a positive activity, it allows us to come together in a way that meetings about budget cuts or trainings just can’t.

So, here are all the reasons we need to party to build our local communities of librarians.

The world works on Social Connections
As I get older and watch the world around me I’ve come to the realization that the only reason that some people get ahead and others don’t is because of their social connections. If you look at people who are considered great and take a step back from the person, you’ll quickly see all the people around them that help them to make it happen. Nearly everyone, from politicians, to business owners, to movie stars got their start because of the people around them. If we want to get our start and get ahead as a profession, we need connections. No man is an island, Entire of itself.

Mentorship
I’ve been involved in a bunch of mentorship organizations for libraries and usually it’s extremely difficult to be a mentor when we live hundreds or thousands of miles apart and never met. If you want to be a mentor or if you want a mentor, getting involved in a community is a great way to do that. In fact, all of my mentors have been people that I’ve partied with at conferences, gotten to know, and been a part of my community of professionals.

Advocacy
Did you know that other, more successful, professional groups who are vying for tax money have very organized local communities? The police, for example, when general fund money is being discussed, have a large group of people that they can call on locally to go to city council meetings, run from a script, and help advocate for the money. We are much more powerful in large numbers and we desperately need those numbers.

Celebrate your Profession
While this is more about the party than the community, I want to point out that having a large group of local professionals that you are friends with, that you can text or email or call when you’re feeling down about what’s going on in our profession, is so extremely helpful! I have a quite a few librarians that I can get a hold of at anytime if I want someone to help me celebrate all the amazing things we do for our citizens.

Inspiration
Have you ever run out of ideas? Don’t feel bad, that happens. But how do you get new ideas? Well, if you have a community of professionals around you, it’s easy to find out what they’re doing and get some inspiration. We are all surrounded by so many great librarians and we hardly ever get the opportunity to see what the people working in the library down the street are doing. Having a community of professionals around you that are part of other organizations really helps!

Organizational Blues
Sometimes we get stuck in a rut and we look at our own organizations through the lens of the employee who has been there for so long that we forget about the excitement. Getting out with a community of people who work in other organizations might get you to find ways to energize your own library, or it might make you realize that yours isn’t so bad after all. Either way, that’s a win!

Collaboration
One of my biggest frustrations in our profession is that we don’t collaborate enough across our organizations. For example, Cheryl Lee is a fantastic librarian who does some amazing work at a library about 2 miles away and I really want to work with her to do something awesome (I don’t know what yet). The only reason that I know that she does awesome stuff is because she is part of our small but growing local library community. If we had a better and closer community, we could potentially do more together, share costs, and just generally be more awesome.

Advice for Choosing a MLIS Program

Posted on by pcsweeney

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked in the ALA Think Tank about what MLIS program they should enroll in. They wanted to narrow down their search to a school that would allow them to do well in a museums and archives library. It didn’t take long for many people to answer her question in a few different ways and it got me to think about what made my Graduate program as San Jose State so successful for me. I thought I would share a longer post about my thoughts on getting the most out of your MLIS Program for your future career.

Don’t Pay Too Much!
I know a couple of librarians who paid to go to private institutions or otherwise very expensive schools to get their MLIS. I would advise you not to do this. The MLIS that you receive is pretty much the same no matter where you go and the big difference is the dept you have when you’re done. You probably won’t get paid more if you go to a prestigious school and the starting salaries for librarians are pretty sad. However, you might come out feeling well trained or that you got a good education, but most librarians I talk to and many of the ones that paid for those expensive schools said that they learned more in their first week on the job then their entire academic career. I would suggest (as sad as it is) to select your library program on price.

Meet People
So what do the big schools have to offer if they’re so expensive? Well, a lot of those schools have professors or other contacts within the profession that will help you out later in your career. For example, Pratt has John Barry and his words of wisdom and mentoring have helped more than one librarian I know out of that school. But I’ll tell you this, many of these same people go to conferences and other events where librarians gather and you’ll do just as fine meeting them there. So the money you save from not going to those expensive schools can take you to conferences around the country where you get the same perks and the option to meet even more people!

If you can’t afford that then I would suggest joining Twitter, youtube, starting a blog, joining the ALA Think Tank, or another Facebook group, and connect with people there. In the end though, I would always suggest that you back up your online persona with your real one so at some point meet people face to face.

Make It Happen
Still don’t have the money to get to conferences? No problem, start your own meetups and gatherings for librarians in your area. For example, in the Bay Area there are three Meetup Groups for librarians. There is the Bay Area Librarians Group, the Information Amateurs Social Club, and the Information Professionals Social Club that put on events. But beyond just meetups and socials etc… you should just generally try to make it happen wherever you go. If there is something that you think that profession needs, just go ahead a do it! For example, Andy Woodworth created the People for a Ben and Jerry’s Themed Ice Cream Flavor, a bunch of people in SLIS made a Librarians do GaGa video that gained them notice in the profession, and there many other example. Basically, I’m saying make something awesome happen!

Get Involved
Schools typically have a student chapter of the ALA or various other leadership opportunities that you can take part in. These kinds of things look great on your resume and show that you’re taking a serious interest in your profession beyond the day to day job. If they don’t have one of these you can make it happen and start one.

Find an On the Job Opportunity
I know a couple of folks who didn’t work at all during their SLIS program and once they got out where surprised to find that employers want someone with some kind of experience. Please, I’m begging you, if you don’t take any of my advice, at least take this one! If you don’t have library experience prior to enrolling in your SLIS program then you need to volunteer, do an internship, find a library job as a page, or at the very least offer to wash a library’s windows or something! Here is a cool tip BTW – go to your local elementary or highschool districts and offer to volunteer in their libraries. Many of these are closing and you might get some pro-points by voluntarily running one. This is a rocky subject because these libraries SHOULD NOT be run by volunteers, but at least both parties get a little something out of it. If there are school librarians on campus they are usually way over worked, way underpayed, and in some cases they are not even librarians so they are even way undertrained. This place is a goldmine for exciting work that can show how important libraries are to these communities of students (but that’s another blog post)

In end, let me just reiterate what I said at the beginning – It doesn’t really matter what school you go to, but what you do with your time there.

Top 10 things sailing has taught me about being a Library Manager

Posted on by pcsweeney

I recently read this article in the Sailing Magazine blog and I was thinking about this post from the past when I wrote this.  Basically, I’ve been thinking about how being a sailing captain metaphorically relates to my work as a library manager.  I’ve been thinking about writing a longer and better article about this so, to better organize my thoughts I put together this top ten list.

1)      There are far more scary things than e-books.  For example, being caught in 30-35 knot winds with a following sea and a heading that will take you either into a safe harbor or into a rocky breakwater with only 40 feet being the difference.

2)      Being a ship captain is a lot like being a library manager and there’s room for improvement in both.

3)      Keep a ship’s log of both the library and the ship.

4)      Navigation is just as important in sailing as it is in management, the destinations are just a little different.

5)      Communication is important.

6)      A misplaced matchbox once sank a sailboat. (I need to clean my office)

7)      Rum is even more delicious after a storm.

8)      DON’T PANIC!!

9)      On long trips at sea or long days at the library, it’s important to keep yourself and your crew busy.

10)   Things change quickly and you can’t always control the weather when it does.  Sometimes you just have to ride out the storm and hope you make it out on the other side. “They come ya fast and they leave ya fast” – Captain Ron

Stop Branding Your Library!!

Posted on by pcsweeney

Ok, so I’m totally going to admit when I’m wrong but in my defense it wasn’t my fault. I got my MLIS at San Jose State when all they could talk about is branding and how important it is to brand your libraries and I went into library school after managing a heavily branded retail chain. In fact I was so enamored with the idea of branding libraries that I wrote all of these posts about it.

But then, I had my interview at the library system I currently work at and I spent exactly 5 minutes in a room with Martin Gomez and realized everything I thought about branding libraries was absolute crap. While I could never even dream to express what he said to me as eloquently as he did in those five minutes, and it’s taken me years to come to terms and process what he said to me, I am going to write about why I now think I was so wrong.

1) What is the goal with branding?
The first thing I started to think about after that interview was, well… What problem are we trying to fix with branding? Basically, I think that branding allows marketing the available services, programs, and materials, at your libraries to be easier and centralized and that’s really about it. If that’s a library’s goal then that’s fine, I get it. Branding is all about marketing. But if someone thinks it’s going to do much beyond that, then I’m wondering what other problems they think it’s going to solve. Please comment below on this one as I’d like to hear from you.

2) How many people go to multiple libraries in the system?
This, I think is a critical question. Because one of the arguments I hear in favor of branding is that a library is trying to show that when someone walks into a library they know that they are in such-and-such library system. But, if a library system finds that a very low number of patrons go to multiple branches throughout the system, then maybe this isn’t that big of a concern after all?

3) Part of a consortium?
A problem I see with a branding a library as part of a larger consortium is that there are libraries in the consortium that are actually part of another library system and aren’t branded the same. Are they branding themselves as something different? I find that they typically are. This is probably not a problem if we look into the concern above, but in our area in the bay, we do see a lot of patron crossover from nearby library systems and they all have different services available (which I think they should). My question here is, do people really care that they are in this library system or the next or do they care that they can use their library card?

4) Critical mass of libraries with the same brand or at least using the same card?
This brings me to this thought. If library systems aren’t branding themselves alike across the board, then do we have a critical mass of libraries necessary to create a brand? Brands like Starbucks work because they are so wide spread that wherever you go in the country (and the world) you can easily recognize it and know that you can get a venti mocha that will taste pretty consistent with the last place you got it. In the case of libraries, are enough libraries offering enough of the same services that what is available is easily recognizable? Probably not.

5) Same services available?
I would argue that for many library systems, offering the same services from system to system (or even branch to branch) would not be a great idea since so many communities need such different services and programs. A rural library doesn’t serve the same function as an urban library in a lot of ways and so branding them both the same by offering the same services wouldn’t work out. This is also why, when I’m overseas and visit a Kentucky Fried Chicken, the menu is slightly different than it is in the states. Sometimes, it’s better and more profitable to be different and give out what people want instead of what we want to provide.

6) Looking the same
Well, that Kentucky Fried Chicken looks the same as the ones here in the states! Once again, I would argue that this only works because there is so much crossover of customers from store to store at KFC and would refer you back to numbers 2, 3, and 4 on this list. There are enough people moving from store to store around the county, the fact that a more common or easily accessible currency is used that allows that movement (money) as compared to library cards, and that there is a critical mass of outlets offering the same or similar goods and services.

But here is where I think Branding is right. If a library system serves a small enough or similar enough community of users that they typically want or need the same services and programs etc… that there is a large enough crossover of patrons between the library system’s branches who are not also using a number of other libraries in the area or that the use of those libraries would not dilute the brand they are trying to create. And of course, that the cost of trying to rebrand every library is far lower than the benefits. I’ve only seen 2 public library systems where I would argue that this occurs.

One the other hand, sometimes I wonder if many libraries are already branded? I’ve been to many libraries around the country that are branded as community libraries. They are branded separate and distinct to the community they serve even though they are part of the same library system. Maybe building community libraries and branding them as the library that serves their community is the way to go. In which case, it is simply the library’s role to serve their community and provide what their community wants and needs. Or, maybe to REALLY stand out from the crowd you shouldn’t brand your library like every other company?

Governor Brown’s Proposed Budget for FY 12/13 has no money for public libraries

Posted on by pcsweeney

Governor Brown’s Proposed Budget for FY 12/13 has no money for public libraries. We’re asking the State Legislature to restore $15.2 million in funding.

You can help:

  • Register today to receive legislative alerts here

  • Mail or fax letters NOW to the members of the Senate and Assembly Budget Subcommittees on Education Finance and other key legislators listed here
    A sample letter can be found here

  • Go with other library advocates to visit your state legislators in their district offices during the months of March and April. You will receive another message soon with a link to the CLA member who is CLA’s legislative contact for each legislator responsible for making appointments. You can contact that person to learn the time and place of the appointment. Talking points for those meetings are on the CLA website here

    • Be sure to add what the impact on your community is of losing all state funds for libraries and the double whammy of losing federal funds because of lacking the required matching funds.

    Act today – You can make a Difference and Save State Funding for Public Libraries!

    Two Awesome Internet Things that Libraries Should be a Part of

    Posted on by pcsweeney

    Last week I took a good look at two different websites that I think could help libraries out quite a bit. Take a look and tell me how you feel about it.

    LoudSauce
    Is a crowdfunded media buying platform that lets people spread the word about things that they think matter. They’re vision is “to transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation. What if we had more power to shape which messages were promoted on our streets? What if our billboards inspired us toward a future we actually wanted?”

    Basically, this is just like the Kickstarter website that I’ve written about except for advertising through various multi-media things billboards, radio commercials, televison ads, etc… Since, I know that libraries spend almost nothing on advertising everything awesome that we provide, this could be an amazing way to promote our stuff! All you have to do is put together a campaign, let your friends know about it, and hopefully get them to give a couple bucks to make it happen. My big complaint here is that there is no way to search the campaigns that are going on now. I wanted to search for library campaigns but I couldn’t find any. Its a brand new website so maybe that’s coming.

    LiquidSpace
    “ Book last minute or plan ahead. Browse, reserve, and check in to space immediately at hip coworking venues, high-end business centers, or handy hotel lobbies or libraries. With LiquidSpace, choose a better space for what you need to do now.”

    In the Silicon Valley there is a huge movement towards these kinds communally available workspaces for local start-ups and business meetings. In fact, there are some businesses that cropped up that ONLY provide a comfortable workspace and what’s worse is that people are actually paying for what libraries already offer!

    Almost all libraries have rooms and workspaces available to the public for free but don’t have an efficient way to manage them. This would solve that problem since this also works as a great online room reservation system. There is a mobile app and a web version. I set it up for my libraries and it only took a couple of minutes. All you have to do is put your library or its meeting rooms on the website and people can reserve the meeting rooms, or they can find out about your library as a workspace in the community.

    LibraryLab – Library Boing Boing is up and Running!

    Posted on by pcsweeney

    ALA Happy Mutants Rejoice! Library Boing Boing is here with its inaugural post! This is something that I’m very excited about, but haven’t had a chance to be as involved in as I originally would have liked (sorry Jenny and Jason). Basically, the amazing and wonderful Jenny Levine from ALA put together an opportunity to post to the great website boingboing.net using the name Librarylab. The content will be based around libraries and exposing all of the amazing things that libraries do for people on a non-library based forum (which you know I support).

    Proposed Mission:
    To bring librarians and Boing Boing readers (aka, Happy Mutants) together to generate support for and raise interest in libraries via projects at local libraries.

    Proposed Goals:
    • Help find and propose content about libraries that could be posted to Boing Boing.

    • Provide active ways for Happy Mutants to support and get involved with their local libraries (eg, toolkits, best practices, ideas for local projects).

    • Create dynamic programming at library conferences that Library Boing Boingers can then take outside of the library community to promote libraries (eg, SxSW, local community events, etc.).

    • Work together to help Happy Mutants advance our shared interests (eg, copyright reform, net neutrality, game culture, digital divide issues, open government, etc.).

    • Coordinate an international community of librarians working with their own Happy Mutant groups.

    It’s being organized though the ALA Connect medium and you can join the backchannel discussion there. Jason Griffey and Jenny did an amazing job getting the folks together who did all of the background work and laid the foundation. But now, it’s time to get content and that’s where you come in! We’d love to hear what kinds of things your excited about in libraries that you think the world should know about. Have a great maker story from the library? A new library technology or innovation that you think the Happy Mutants would love to hear about? A thought on how folks can connect to the library in a new ways that people should know about? Tell us about something you think should be up on Boing Boing and see it up on the blog!

    This Facebook Ad Campaign Might Save Your School Library

    Posted on by pcsweeney

    John Chrastka is a BOSS! This is a guest post from him about his campaign to get signatures on the White House Petition on School Libraries

    On Wednesday, January 25th, a call went out for donations to help support a targeted advertisement via Facebook in support of the White House Petition on School Libraries. Quick creative, keywords, and copy were built about the petition and fielded to an initial audience of 3.8 million people. By 10pm that evening, 34 individual donors pledged $1,250 in support of this outreach. The initial ad targeted Facebook users people who have keywords on their profiles indicating that they were supporters of libraries, reading, and books, or were professionally involved in the library field. From 2pm CST on 1/25 through 2pm CST on 1/27, the ad was seen at least once by 255,000 people.

    It quickly became apparent that the funding could be used for more targeted advertising to a wider audience. Within the first 24 hours, ALA’s Office for Library Advocacy created a special post on the I Love Libraries Facebook page to support this project. By Friday at Noon CST, five new ads with extensive, targeted keywords were fielded to the following groups out among the public: Libraries, Books and Writing, Education, Parents, and Friends of I Love Libraries Fans. A 6th group, ‘Civic Minded’, is ready to roll in case we need it. This phase of the campaign has a potential audience of 44 million people and will direct them to the special ILL page. The keywords and creative for this phase are attached and available to you open-source for future use in local, statewide and regional campaigns.

    As the campaign wraps up after February 4th, a full set of statistics about the efficacy of these keywords will be available for you to benchmark your own projects.

    This ad campaign is not the only thing helping this petition along nor is it the only driver. We could have $10k to spend but with our run way we need word of mouth and friends and family to help us deliver as well. We have 7 days (through Feb 4) to make it happen across the library ecosystem as we use our networks to get the word out. Help light a fire yourself by posting and sharing the petition and the I Love Libraries FAQ.

    Thanks to Jaimie Hammond for her social media skills and creativity, Marci Merola at ALA OLA for her leadership on ESEA reauthorization and school libraries, and the ALATT crew for stepping up when it is needed.

    Thanks to PC Sweeney for the guest post. (no John, Thank you!)

    John Chrastka | jchrastka@associadirect.com | facebook.com/chrastka

    The ALA Think Tank’s Partyhard Guide to #alamw12

    Posted on by pcsweeney

    Alright team, here it is in all its glory! The ALA Think Tank’s Party Hard Guide to ALA Midwinter 2012. Each of these links to an event in Facebook because they are not all on the official conference scheduler and they are not all Official Conference events. Some of these are just meetups and good times put together by folks who want to meet and network. The events that don’t have a link are only in the conference scheduler and for some reason the links don’t work in the scheduler. But if you want to try, here is a link to take you to all the Official Social Events at ALA.

    I have a strong belief that these social events are becoming more and more important. We trade ideas, talk, celebrate our profession, network and meet people, and freely brainstorm amazing new ideas. I can’t tell you how many things have come to my career by simply talking and interacting with librarians in these social events. I have so many stories about some of the things that have happened through these events that I won’t share the details of them here, but know that most of the things I talk about on this blog were helped in some great way by the people I’ve met. So I’m not asking you, I’m telling you (especially newcomers to the field) take the time to socialize and meet everyone you can! With that in mind, here is my current list of networking and meeting opportunities at ALA Midwinter 2012.

    Thursday
    Pre-ALA EL & Friends Meetup
    8:30pm-?
    Iron Cactus Mexican Grill And Bar

    Friday
    Lita Happy Hour
    5pm-8pm
    City Tavern 1402 Main Street, Dallas, Texas

    YA Lit Trivia Night FUNdraiser
    8pm-10pm
    Omni Hotel, Dallas Room B

    Emerging Leaders Meetup
    8pm-10pm
    City Tavern 1402 Main Street, Dallas, Texas

    Saturday
    Yalsa Happy Hour
    5:30-7pm
    Iron Cactus

    NMRT Social,
    5:30pm-7:30pm
    The City Tavern, in Dallas, TX

    The 5th ALA MW Newbie & Veteran Librarian Tweet-up
    7:30pm-10pm
    Anvil Pub, 638 Elm St, dallas TX

    ALA MW ’12 After-Hours Social
    10pm-2am (or they kick us out)
    LaGrange 2704 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas

    Sunday
    Hacklibschool / Library Boing Boing Meetup
    7:00pm-9:00pm
    Adairs Saloon 2624 Commerce St. dallas TX

    Social (GLBT RT)
    6:00pm-8:00pm
    Dallas Public Library, J. Erik Jonsson Central Branch, 1515 Young Street, 4th Floor Gallery.

    Elsevier Desert Reception
    7:00pm-11:00pm
    Eddie Deen’s Ranch, 944 S. Lamar St., Dallas TX

    The Amazing Erica Findley even made a map! Check it out.

    I’m sure there are far more being put together that I don’t know about. If you know of one, feel free to leave a comment below, email me, reach me on twitter, or Facebook, and let me know! I’ll add them to the master list.