Monday, April 06, 2009

A Manifesto for the Library

Last week John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor spent some time together thinking about what the library is for and what its future might hold. The result of that deep thinking has now been published on John's blog under the title "The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians."

Opening with the ringing statement that

The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization

they then provide their own gloss on what this means for individual libraries, and for librarians.

There is a lively discussion going on in the comments on John's blog, as well as less thoughtful sniping going on in more "annoying" blogs. I think that this is something that will engender quite a bit of conversation in the month's to come.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

I'm a Shover and Maker!

Since only a few people can be named "Movers and Shakers" by Library Journal, Joshua Neff and Steven Lawson created the "Shovers and Makers" awards "for the rest of us," under the auspices of the not entirely serious Library Society of the World. I'm very pleased to report that I have been named a 2009 Shover and Maker (by myself, as are all the winners).

The Shovers and Makers awards are a fun way to share what we've done over the past year or two and they're definitely a lot simpler than writing the annual performance review that HR wants. Think of this as practice for writing the speaker's bio for the conference keynote you dream of being invited to give.