Great post by Ann Arbor District Library Director Josie Parker on two years in the life of AADL.org. http://www.aadl.org/node/4722 In my Web 2.0 talks, I usually get the question about letting staff publish blog posts directly to the Web. Wait! Shouldn’t they be proofed (well, yes) and shouldn’t a manager sign off on each one — or maybe a committee? 🙂 Not at AADL. Check out Josie’s words on trust: We trust our staff, and we know that when we expect the best of people that is usually what we get. Allowing staff to post in an unmoderated fashion has […]
Categories Leadership
35 posts
Dear Director – Is your door actually open? How are you talking with all levels of your staff? Are they involved, included, and interested? What’s your idea of transparency in your organization? Today’s library director can facilitate transparency by building openness within the organization and using the power of communication to reach out to the community. Open organizations, where staff and public feel free (and safe) to contribute new ideas and suggestions and to play a role in their implementation and evaluation, will win more long-term proponents than closed organizations that hide failures and weaknesses. Full Text
By Michael Casey & Michael Stephens The job of library director is difficult and often underappreciated. These days, library directors are more like university presidents, needing to build support in the community, raise money, and make a name for themselves and their library. Obviously, this varies by the size of the community, but all library directors need to garner sufficient political and community capital to get budgets approved and expansions funded and to keep door counts high. It’s no longer enough for the library director simply to keep the place running. Today’s director is politician and lobbyist, fundraiser and spokesperson, […]
Michael Casey and I are writing our next column for LJ’s The Transparent Library and we realized what a perfect place to discuss the recent Wired piece “The Naked CEO” by Clive Thompson. Thompson blogged about the article while writing the piece and asked for input. At his blog, Thompson sums up so much of what we’ve been discussing about the advent of web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the almost-left-the-station Cluetrain: Reputation Is Everything: Google isn’t a search engine. Google is a reputation-managment system. What do we search for, anyway? Mostly people, products, ideas — and what we want to […]
Darien Tag Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre. http://wanderingeyre.com/2007/02/21/darien-library-gets-tagged/ They trust their people. Everyone on their staff who wants to blog, can, in their own voice, and style. When speaking with Louise Berry and Alan Gray at Midwinter, I was impressed with their desire to see their staff succeed, for their voices to be heard, and for their library to be the kind of place that works from the bottom up. This was not mere lip service, which is what I fear is the noise I hear most often. They were striving to, not only create a human face for their […]
You have new Picture Mail! Originally uploaded by libraryman. Nice signage at OCLC… How many times, librarian, have you sat in a meeting for three hours and realized at the end nothing was decided? These rules might help with that. 🙂
New ways of thinking about work. New priorities. New additions to the family. How does your library’s adminstration repsond to NextGen employees? In Priorities & Professionalism in the new LJ, Sophie Brookover ponders how libraries might encourage and embrace the work-life balance of employees: Ask your employees what they need. Work with them to make the changes that work best for the organization as a whole. You probably can’t give your employees everything they want, but the mere act of asking them what they need is important. A staff that is empowered to share its needs is a happy staff, […]
Take a look at this thoughtful post at a Blog About Libraries: http://blogaboutlibraries.com/2006/08/which-culture-of-is-your-workplace.html Do you work within the “Culture of No”? If you are a leader, do you foster a “Culture of Maybe?” Continuing to wonder why it was that all libraries in the country have not started IM reference led me to start looking at organizational cultures. I came across some interesting stuff that I am certain applies to many libraries. Every innovator in libraries has probably dealt with “NO”, or “Death by a thousand cuts”. There is a subtle difference between the two, the former being (obviously) an […]
Remember this? A TTW reader just sent this: http://newsletter.logoworks.com/index.php/top-ten-reasons-why-people-quit-their-jobs/07/31/2006/ Top Ten Reasons Why People Quit Their Jobs Includes: Management promotes someone who lacks training and/or necessary experience to supervisor, alienating staff and driving away good employees. Management doesn’t allow the rank and file to make decisions or allow them pride of ownership. A visitor to my website E-mailed me a message that said, “Forget about the “professional” decisions—how about when you can’t even select the company’s holiday card without the President rejecting it for one of his own taste?” I can’t help think of the Teen Librarians at ImaginOn at […]
Via Blake at LISNews: http://www.publicagenda.org/research/pdfs/long_overdue_five_things.pdf Libraries are highly valued Libraries are important 21st Century resources Voters love libraries Libraries use tax funds wisely The public welcomes a greater role for libraries (includes a safe and engaging place for teens!) So much to say about this but for now: Attention public library adminstrators: if you are not avctively building an engaging, welcoming space for teens to congregate, staffed with librarians who can interact with them and guide them as needed through all the information that bombards them, you are sadly missing the boat. (and the Cluetrain!) Gaming initiatives, teen advisory boards, […]