I spent this weekend at the annual face to face meeting of the Alaska Library Association’s (AkLA’s) Executive Council, which is made up of our E-Board (President, Treasurer, etc.) and the chairs of all of the association’s committees, roundtables, and chapters. It’s a great group of people, with a lot…
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 talked (for what seems like the millionth time, though it’s not) about Librarians Build Communities at the Pacific Northwest Library Association conference, yesterday. This is what I gave as the description of the talk: Librarians have a set of very useful skills, which could benefit our local communities enormously.…
For the last year, I’ve had an extracurricular activity that, while professionally-related, won’t ever go on my curriculum vitae, workload, or activity report: I coordinate Anchorage’s “Interlibrary Lush,” a monthly happy hour for LAM (libraries, archives, and museums) workers and friends. It’s been fun getting to know more of the…
I’ve been very fortunate, in my nearly three years as a librarian, to have had the opportunity to participate in two library leadership programs: PNLA Leads and ALA Emerging Leaders. The programs have different methodologies and different goals, so, unsurprisingly, my experiences and takeaways were very different. I should acknowledge,…
I’ve kind of put off writing this post, not because PNLA Leads was anything short of amazing—it did not fall short in the least—but because I wasn’t sure what to say. The facilitators asked us, very nicely, not to share too many details of the program, and I can get…