The future of ALA

I've been thinking about this for a number of years, and after two years of COVID cancellations followed by the in person experience I'm still wondering what are the people at ALA thinking? Just over a year ago, this post about ACRL's conference appeared: Service Ceiling: The High Cost of Professional Development for Academic Librarians.…

From the archives: Taking that PTO

There has been a lot of change and movement in the world thanks to COVID and the Great Resignation, and people have been thinking and rethinking the idea of "time off". Anne Peterson has a good column about why the "feel free to take time off" directive doesn't work as well as it could, mostly…

From the archives: Moving up a stage

This isn't quite "leveling up" and it could possibly be thought of as moving down a stage, but it is movement. What am I talking about? In this post, Shelagh discusses these professional stages: Theorist Donald Super offers these 5 stages of self-concept & career development:  Like Shelagh, I'm in the maintenance phase, but moving…

From the archives: Where do we go from here?

(This was planned for the pandemic shutdowns, but it definitely resonates now that we're, as Dr. Fauci says, not in an extreme pandemic phase and are considering the "new normal") What does it mean to have a new normal? The past 20+ years have generally been ones of intense, rapid change. When I went to…

From the archives: What about ALA?

Increasingly, people are saying "ALA is broken". There are many reasons, but when I have friends tweeting things like this: Two years on, it's not much better. There was an interesting post Let's Fix ALA in 2020 that still resonates. Sad, no? Here are some of my observations and suggestions: More virtual opportunities to serve,…

From the archives: Things I hope we keep

As we move to a post-pandemic kind of "normal", there are things we adopted that I hope we keep.  For example: Not every class has to be in-person. And not every class has to actually happen.  If students are working on a project, maybe they can check in with the teacher if they need/want to…

From the archives: Movers, Shakers and Just Plain Folks

It's that time of the year, when people who are leaving the profession are feted and appreciated for what they've contributed to our lives. Some of these inspirations are only known within their school, or their city, some are known by a far wider audience. Soon, the nominations for the I Love My Librarian award…

Clearing out the archives

No, not the archives at work (although that's a project, too, given the construction projects going on). This is about my digital archives, snippets of posts I've got in draft form, or things I've saved planning to turn them into a post. The ever-inspirational Nancy White has been doing a similar project, and I'm determined…