Category Archives: ala

A Much Happier Post

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 4, 2013 - 10:45 pm | , , , , , , , , , ,
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happysun

My last post was a serious downer, and I apologize for that. I debated skipping the medical stuff, but I really felt like I needed to justify my decision to back out of ALA—if not to everyone else, then at least to myself. (And enough people have asked “What did you do to yourself, Coral?” that it seemed worth getting it all written down somewhere I could share it, anyway.) Deciding not to do ALA was a hard call. People have been super supportive, though! I am really grateful for the amazing folks in the library world, and I’m glad … Continue reading →

Not going to ALA Annual (and bummed about it)

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 3, 2013 - 10:36 am | , ,
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It’s funny. Earlier this week I compared conferences to summer camp. You have your conference/camp friends that you only get to see once or twice a year—though today’s world beats the world in which I went to summer camps, where our options for staying in touch were “hand write and mail letters” or “nothing”—and you really look forward to seeing those friends and hearing about what they’ve been up to. I’m going to miss campALA this year, and that makes me really sad. It’s taken me a week to 1) realize, 2) accept, and now 3) act on this reality, … Continue reading →

Playing Fiasco

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 17, 2013 - 10:15 pm | , , ,
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standoff

I’ve been writing a lot of serious business kinds of posts lately (and I have another queued up), so let’s take a bit of a break, shall we? I just spent several hours playing a tabletop roleplaying game called Fiasco with some friends. If you’re not familiar with tabletop roleplaying games, Wikipedia explains it fairly well. If the idea of acting out a character in an improvised radio play without a script doesn’t sound fun to you, I’m probably not going to sell you on it with this post. But if you are vaguely into the idea of RPGs but … Continue reading →

Approval Voting (a guest post that could help us make some fixes to ALA)

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 12, 2013 - 5:23 pm | , ,
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A (sort of weird) example approval voting ballot

There’s been a ton of discussion, all over the place, about ALA Council and ALA voting turnout and the membership feeling invested in their representatives. I’d kind of like to approach this from a different angle, though. Rather than talking about the size of Council, maybe we should talk about how we elect them—and, in turn, everyone else whose job it is to represent us in ALA. It’s possible that, when we cast our votes, we aren’t (collectively) getting what we want. And since I just happen to know (actually, to have married) someone really knowledgeable about voting methods, I … Continue reading →

Question 5 – #TT4ALACouncil

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 5, 2013 - 4:06 pm | , ,
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Questions 3 and 4 didn’t require tons of discussion, so I didn’t end up blogging them. You can see all of our answers on the ALA Think Tank Caucus for Council Facebook Page. Question #5: What are 3 reasons people should vote for you? 1) I’m accessible – I’m easy to find online (and my phone number and work address are actually pretty easy to find, too), but even beyond that, I think I’m about as unintimidating as a person can get: I’m not famous; I’m not cool; I’m super informal in my blogging and other online presences; and I … Continue reading →

Question 1 – #TT4ALACouncil

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | February 19, 2013 - 1:49 pm | , ,
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Preface, so people know what’s going on… I’m sure I’ve mentioned it once or twice in this space before, at least in passing, but I’m running for ALA Council with a really good group of people. We’ve put our “Statements of Professional Concern,” as asked for by the ALA balloting people, on the About section of our Facebook page. (You have to click “See More” to read all of them.) And that’s pretty great, but we wanted to open up the floor for questions, too. After all, part of our purpose in running together is that, if we win, we’ll … Continue reading →

ALA Midwinter 2013

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 30, 2013 - 1:44 pm | , , , , ,
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I’m combining my obligatory “lessons learned” post (past ones: here… and the others all got left in draft format) with my “how’d conference go?” post. I didn’t learn that many lessons—not enough for a full blog post—and, spoiler, I had a great conference. Quickly, my lessons: Get a prescription for sleeping pills before conference. Because, seriously, I laid in bed for hours before sleeping, each night, and it wasn’t even an uncomfortable bed. Sounds crazy, but here’s my theory: I squash down my inner introvert all day, at conference, and I act totally extrovert-like. But, as social as I enjoy … Continue reading →

ALA Conference – In Style!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 5, 2013 - 3:51 pm | ,
7 Comments

I’ve been to ALA enough times, in enough cities, that I think I finally have a handle on how best to get around, get to the things I want to do, etc. My way may not be the perfect way, but I thought I’d share it, in case you might find it helpful. Some folks will give you the advice to skip sessions entirely, and while I understand their point, I disagree (and not just because I have to go to sessions to get even partially reimbursed by my employer). Instead, my advice is “Don’t ONLY go to sessions you … Continue reading →

2012 is over, time for 2013!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 1, 2013 - 9:30 pm | , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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2012 was an incredibly hectic year. I have been especially tired, this winter, even beyond the normal sleepiness that comes from short days—enough so that I took the three workdays between Christmas and New Years off, which I never do. (It’s so quiet! You can get so much work done!) I tried really hard not to think about work, or much of anything else, during the time off, with moderate success. As a result, I feel almost (but not quite) ready to go back to work, now. But you know what? Looking back, I kind of feel justified in my … Continue reading →

Peer mentoring (comes free with rant: “why you don’t need an Old Members Roundtable”)

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | November 6, 2012 - 6:36 pm | , , , ,
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I know I said I’d write about web stuff. I’m getting to it. But I am also going through my “to blog” list and trying to write up the coolest things. This is one of those cool things. (Yes, there’s a rant tagged on to the end. That makes it cooler, right? Right?) I work at an academic library, which means I’m part of the tenure system. (Cue the booing and hissing. I don’t entirely disagree with you; rock on.) Traditionally, the library’s tenure files have been among the best in the university. I think because we’re different from faculty … Continue reading →