TRUE NORTH Pressure ridge and melt water at the Geographic North Pole. Photo credit: Christopher Wood. Source: Shuttershock There is a beauty in isolation (when it is temporary), giving time for reflection and connection with the rhythms of nature (which the Stoics recommend for a quality life). This week I edited an article about alignment of ancient sacred sites (to compass and other directions), and found out that there have been at least four North Poles over the last 100,000 years, some on different continents. This got me thinking about the librarian’s compass and how we use it to help […]
Categories Creativity
67 posts
When you ask my father to draw a picture of a dog, you get this: When you ask me to draw a picture of a dog, you get something like this: My dad is an artist and art instructor by profession and a semi-professional guitar player as a hobby. My mother was a practiced pianist and seamstress while working as an attorney. My sister can master any type of dance. I can sing, but play no musical instruments. I cannot sew and my dance moves, while enthusiastic, wouldn’t be considered skillful or graceful. The joy of being part of a […]
My new column is up at Library Journal. It’s called “Telling Stories.” This piece marks the seventh year I have been writing “Office Hours.” My summer reading pile included a preview of Annie Spence’s Dear Fahrenheit 451. Spence is a former student of mine who went on to be a public librarian. Her new work is a collection of personal “letters” to books of all kinds—i.e., Dear Color Me Beautiful or Dear The Hobbit. There is also a dash of “It’s You, Not Me” breakup style notes for soon-to-be weeded titles destined for the book sale. It is a funny, […]
Or whatever other dystopic future you can conjure up. Author Cory Doctorow, no stranger to the dystopic future, writes: “Public libraries have always been places where skilled information professionals assisted the general public with the eternal quest to understand the world.” Well, imagine the world you wished you understood up and vanishes one day – alien invasion, plague, zombie apocalypse… Perhaps these all sound like the unhinged ravings of someone who has consumed too much YA SciFi or bing watched the new X-Files. You would probably be right. But, let’s just imagine that world for a moment and how the libraries of […]
Back in 2012 I had watched Susan Cain‘s TED Talk on how introverts can share ideas, a talk otherwise known as “The power of introverts” (video below). I purchased her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking… And it sat on my (virtual ebook) shelf for long time — a very bookish, very librarian, guilty habit. Until now. After several years in the MLIS program, listening to and conversing with classmates, this report became an opportune assignment! As I read Cain’s book, I found myself reflecting on creativity and motivation, the diversity of personalities we […]
Warren Cheetham writes: I am very proud of this, because it’s taken a cultural change of about five years to allow something like this video to be produced. How so? Digital storytelling is relatively cheap and easy to do, using the tools that most people carry with them each day – tablets, digital cameras and smart phones. Encouraging staff to take time to play with those devices at work has taken a lot of encouragement and support. It was seen as something outside of the ‘real job’ and the idea of taking work time to play seemed a bit wrong. […]
I am honored to guest write at Tame The Web – a lighthouse for positive librarianship – with Michael’s philosophy of encouraging the heart. We all have different things that encourage our hearts and give us inspiration to do what we do – and make the world better. For me music is a big inspiration, a shelter and a motivator. Being a library person deep down in my heart, I have a theory that a lot of artists have positive experiences with libraries from their lives and that they have been inspired by libraries in some way when they were […]
Malcolm Gladwell famously defined the “tipping point” as that magic moment when an idea or practice crosses some invisible threshold, tips, and spreads widely throughout a culture or society. Lately I’ve been wondering if the practice and benefits of mindfulness meditation are hitting that tipping point. The many benefits of mindfulness meditation have been known to Buddhist monks and western scientists alike for many years. But it is only recently that mindfulness seems to be recognized in the workplace as a valuable practice worth promoting and fostering among employees. In the past few months there have been a flurry of […]
I love highlighting cool things libraries are doing beyond the norm here on TTW. I’ve done it for years in the “Library Innovators” category. It’s easy to get stuck in our grooves…the same programs, the same services, over and over and over again. From Justin Hoenke: http://justinthelibrarian.com/2013/04/09/community-libraries-ukeleles-and-love/ All of my love, support, and thanks to Kirsten Cappy and Michael Whittaker. These people are the future of libraries. Got Uke? No? No worries, your library does. Portland, Maine library card holders can now check out ukuleles and equally hip young adult books from the Teen Room of the Portland Public Library. This is so in […]
What keeps you up at night? I ask this question at some of my library conference presentations as a way to break the ice and get people sharing. The answers are usually in a similar vein: budgets, ebooks, and losing relevance. We might even call those answers the unholy trinity of librarian insomnia. Relevance seems to be the most troublesome for our profession as we find ourselves yet again doing all those things that begin with “re”: reimagining, reinvigorating, and renewing this, that, and the other. And just as librarians struggle with relevance, I sincerely hope those of us in […]