I lived in Anchorage, Alaska, for five years, which taught me some things about winter. I don’t claim to be an expert or the most awesome at winter—I mean, I did leave, right?—but I listened when long-time Alaskans talked, and I observed which advice helped the most. For your use and mine, here is the advice I’ve gathered from friends, coworkers, strangers, and the internet, about how to thrive when the days are short and cold.
When we came up to Alaska, Dale and I kept a shared blog. It was a fun way to chronicle a weird journey, both the drive itself and the transition to living in Alaska, which is a pretty unique place. It’s been useful to several people through the years, because…
I’m pulling together my thoughts for a panel on social media* aimed mostly at small libraries with small staffs. If we’re Twitter friends, you’ve seen me asking for libraries on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr who are doing a good job. (OK, I also asked for YouTube, but nobody had…
A surprising* number** of people*** are upset by the idea of a Code of Conduct/Statement of Appropriate Conduct/Anti-Harassment Policy (which I’ll refer to as “a CoC” or “CoCs” for the rest of the post). And, although I am unequivocally in favor of CoCs and generally frustrated when they are received…
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…
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…
Level up! Anchorage Programming Workshop held its first class last night, on GitHub, and I think it went really well. Besides the two teachers, four people showed up—fewer than we want, long term, but a great start, given that we really hoped to ease into this whole thing, anyway. Their…
I did a hackathon this weekend. (It’s funny. I did a whole lot of work to get skills-based volunteering practiced among librarians, and I ended up doing my first successful SVB as part of the software community, instead. Ah well.) I wasn’t initially planning to participate in this one—something about…
I’m taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python through Coursera, and I’m hoping other folks in Anchorage will be interested in taking the course with me! I want to plan a weekly meetup, where people can bring their questions and any problems they’re having. The course requires no previous…
Or something like that. (It’s a possible mis-quote of my department head. He was trying to make me feel better with this statement, and it was surprisingly effective.) This is the story of Librarians Build Communities (LBC) in Alaska. To jog your memory: LBC is an advocacy program, where librarians…
