To Follow Or Not To Follow

I've received criticism in the past few months for making some unpopular decisions. On the one hand I've been criticized for just following what other libraries are doing. I have also been criticized for not following what all the other libraries are doing.

Hmmm. To follow or not to follow? I guess the answer is neither and both. I am a strong advocate of paying attention to what other libraries are doing. And I don't just mean other ARL libraries. I look at what public librarians are doing. I look at what school librarians are doing. I don't have all the answers or all the ideas. I think it would be foolish NOT to occasionally follow. The league of librarians cards weren't our idea; we followed Carlton College library.

And on the other hand, we can't be paralyzed and only do things if everyone else is doing them. Sometimes we do have good ideas and good solutions. We never would have hired an anthropologist to do user research if we had waited for everyone else to do it!

So I guess the answer is, it depends.

Excuses to Email my Advisees

Rereading the title of this entry, makes me think that maybe I have created my own problem... I feel weird/creepy/over protective emailing my advisees very often. Probably they would just ignore my email if I sent too many.... Instead I'm come up with a "reason" to send them an email. At the beginning of every semester, I look up the syllabus of the big, survey classes - bio, chem, econ, etc - and put the exam dates on my calendar. Then I have a justified excuse (at least in my mind) to send them an email before/after the exam. I also know when to expect a flurry of correspondence, i.e. after the first bio and chem exams of fall semester.

News of League of Librarians Cards Spreads!

I posted the set of League of Librarians cards to both my personal facebook page, the libraries flickr site, and to several flickr groups (Libraries and Librarians and 265 Library Days Project) on August 19.

Nothing much happened. There was a little flurry of activity on my facebook page when my friends saw the cards but not much else.

Wednesday, September 2, there is a mention of the cards on PAMNET with a link to the flickr set. Thursday, September 3, there is a short paragraph with a link to the flickr set in American Libraries Direct.

Stand back! When I left work on Thursday there were more than 10,000 views on the flickr set.

By Friday morning, there are another 5,000 views.

There was also a flurry of activity on twitter. bckaemper from Germany (!!!) read the PAMNET post and twitters. Wow. At the end of the day, there were 49 tweets on "league of librarian(s)" These were the twitter comments: fantastic, awesome, too cool, adorable, we need some, funny, love this, wow.

Of course I've pretty much died and gone to social networking heaven. Now let's see if our STUDENTS think they're as cool as librarians. ;)