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Cliff June 10th, 2008

Rather than boring everyone to death with a play-by-play of the conference, here are the things that I learned from my trip.  Videos are here, photos are here.  Check out the ACURIL website, the conference page and the conference blog.  I really enjoyed ACURIL; if you get the chance, go!

Things I learned about librarianship:

• Librarians are the same everywhere. We all face the same problems, and all have our own quirks. And we generally like meeting other librarians.
• US libraries/librarians and ALA are pretty much like a clique on a very large playground. They ignore (and are pretty much ignored) by the rest of the kids on the playground, who are all hanging out with each other. The only ones losing out are the US; no one is looking to us for inspiration. It is I who have been inspired.
• A master’s degree isn’t necessary to be a librarian.  Librarianship is a skill that is learned through practice, regardless of the degree in your hands.

Things I learned about Jamaica/the Carribbean:

• Everything starts about 15-20 minutes late…”Jamaica time.”  I felt right at home.
• Walk on the left.  Since people drive on the left, they walk on the left.  If you walk on the right, you stop traffic.  I finally got this down by the end of the week.
• Lots of camera, few laptops.  I realized very quickly that I was among librarians when there were more people recording the cultural events with their cameras than there were folks just watching; after all, we’re in the business of preserving history & culture!  Hey folks who took pictures, share them on the ACURIL2008 Flickr group!
• People are cold and unfriendly at first, but they’re quick to warm up once they realize you’re not a self-inflated tourist or American jerk.
• It’s “yeah, man” not “yeah, mon”
• It’s “persons” not “people”
• Don’t believe everything you read.  The poverty, crime, etc. won’t eclipse the amazing people you’ll meet.  Positive news stories don’t sell papers.

Things I learned about traveling:

• It’ll take some time to adjust to the accent.  Be prepared to ask people to repeat themselves.
• You don’t *really* need all that stuff that you pack.
• Doing travel laundry is ok for manmade fabrics, but it’ll make cotton stiff.
• Time your meals and showers–there’s always a rush on both at certain times.
• Check the iron before you iron your clothes.  Rust can be quite a surprise on a new white shirt.

Things I learned about myself:

• A vacation alone isn’t really a vacation.  Experiences are meant to be shared.
• My idea of a great holiday is sitting around watching cartoons and napping (i.e. letting my brain rest).  Not sitting in the sun.  There’s no need to feel guilty for not wanting to hang out on the beach.
• I value the people in my life, and really do miss those I love, no matter how independent I believe myself to be.

• ACURIL2008 , Libraries , me , presentations
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Cliff April 15th, 2008

I’m back at work.  I had a blast at CIL2008, and took plenty of photos of the DC area and my friends.

Since I’m overloaded here with doing the Technology and Electronic Resources positions (and on the search committee for the ER person…and trying to prep for upcoming talks…and trying to prep for the graduate class I’m teaching this summer), I’ve been a little lax in blogging.  I’m working on all sorts of cool stuff, and I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve actually completed some of the projects.

To be continued….

(muhahaha)

Oh, and just FYI, listening to Star Guitar on the Metro is teh awesome.

• CIL2008 , me
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Cliff February 23rd, 2008

My home computer has crashed.  Anyone with more than one minute’s experience with a computer will have experienced a devastating crash.  Luckily, I had enough of these in my past that I purchased online backup, and am in the process of retrieving my files.  It’s slow-going since I have to download about 33 gigs of data, so until I get everything fixed, my posts and photos are on a bit of a pause. Wish me luck.  And patience.

• me , personal information management
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Cliff January 28th, 2008

Hey South Georgia/North Florida!

Join me on Thursdays from 7-8pm at the Aquinas Center in downtown Valdosta, Georgia.  The Aquinas Center is just down the street from Hildegard’s.  Jennifer and I will be teaching East Coast Swing over the next ten weeks, starting Thursday, January 31st.

Swing on by!

• Dance , me
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Cliff January 23rd, 2008

I did this email interview for an MLIS student from my alma mater. I figured I’d share it. What advice would you give to future librarian leaders?

Life Story

I grew up across from a library in Lake Park, Georgia, and spent a lot of time there. I went to Auburn University first majoring in Horticulture, and then in Religious Studies. As I was about to graduate, I was looking at my options, and I met a reference librarian who explained her job to me. It sounded like a good option, so while applying to grad schools in Religious Studies, I added FSU’s MLIS program. I was accepted to FSU’s MLIS program and chose it since it was ALA accredited and was all distance education. I figured librarianship would be a good “back up” career (after all, there aren’t many options for a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies unless you’re headed to seminary or are planning on starting a cult). I enjoyed my time at FSU, and completed two semesters worth of internships at Valdosta State during my last year at FSU (I strongly recommend internships to all MLIS students!). Upon graduating, I began a job search and applied to graduate programs in Religious Studies. I took a position at Valdosta State as Library Instruction Coordinator, later became Reference Facilitator, and am now Associate Professor and Technology Librarian. My particular area of “fame” (wink wink nudge nudge) in the library world is for my work on the impact of social networks on libraries. More on what I do can be found at http://clifflandis.net/

Leadership Definition

Leadership is taking the ability to turn a vision into reality and involving other people in the process.

Life’s Dream

I have chosen to experience life via relationships. Therefore, I emphasize humanity in all of my experiences. I try to be a good person to those around me, whether I’m teaching, answering questions, writing email, giving a presentation, going bar hopping with friends, or having lunch with my mother. There’s a lot to be said for the joy of being nice and polite. I also recognize that not everyone around me chooses to experience life in the same way–others create, build, destroy, hope, travel, want, fight, or whatever. This is the way that they choose to experience life, and so I try to respect that (meaning that not everyone’s going to appreciate my perspective on things). So as to “achieving my dreams,” I don’t look for a certain thing to have or do, but more a way to relate to those around me. I try to add more to Life than what I take away.

What does it take to be a good leader (leadership model)?

I can’t answer that one clearly because it lacks context (just like a Reference Librarian to do a reference interview for a simple question, eh?). I’ll ignore the obvious leader-of-people-and-or-teams definition. Instead, I’ll address being a leader in a particular field or area of research. Good leadership means: 1) staying in touch with developments as they happen, 2) having the ability to quickly analyze, understand, synthesize, and communicate information from a variety of sources to create new ideas, 3) to understand both the micro- and macrocosm of a particular area of human experience, 4) having the ability to create and maintain relationships with a variety of people in the field, 5) having the ability to communicate clearly and effectively in any form of communication (written, conversational, presentation, email, instant messaging, SMS, etc.). Oh, and lots of energy. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I’ve got at the moment. I’ve drawn on a variety of disciplines to gain the skills and ideas that I use in my writing and presentation work.

Leadership Principles

This is tough, because there are benevolent leaders and malevolent ones (some effective leaders have just shot the competition). So instead, here are my Benevolent Leadership Principles: Leaders know when to lead and when to follow. They also know when to step down from leadership, and when not to take it on in the first place. Leaders know themselves, and therefore know the difference between personal, group, and institutional goals, and when it is appropriate to fulfill each.

Life’s Mission

Well, that’s pretty much the same as my Life’s Dream. Be nice and polite to those that will accept it, while seeking my own joy. (And BTW, I do fail at this mission a fair bit, and I also have met folks whom I have learned to not relate to–discernment is a good skill for anyone)

Advice to future librarian leaders

–Do an internship (two if possible). Being a librarian is a learned skill where you will apply what you’re learning in class now.
–Learn to enjoy change, and learn to recognize good change vs. bad change.
–Be ruthlessly self-reflective. Know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and whether there is a better way.
–Learn as much as you can about human communication, in both theory and practice.
–Learn how to like people, both in theory and in practice. :) You’ll be dealing with them the rest of your life.
–Learn how to be organized and productive. This too is a learned skill that you have to study and practice. I recommend Zen Habits and the book Getting Things Done by David Allen.
–You have the ability to choose how you are going to experience your life. Make a choice and stick to it, and if you don’t like it, change your choice. Me? Being nice has been working out so far.

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Cliff January 11th, 2008

In the style of “My Summer Vacation” reports…

The first few days of my winter vacation consisted of cleaning my house and doing a lot of bookbinding.  I’ve got several journals ready to go up on etsy for sale, but I need to take pictures of them first.

Then it was off to New Orleans to see Kryss and Kate.  We went to 80’s night at One Eyed Jack’s and danced madly.  Since our friend Xian works there, we were lucky enough to get to rest in the VIP lounge (read: balcony).  After we woke up all bleary-eyed, it was off to Austin to see the Asylum Street Spankers.  It was my first time getting Spanked (going to see one of their shows), and the venue was packed.  By mere chance, the doorman asked Krys how many were in our party, and then gave us booth seats literally attached to the stage.  Wammo was sick that night, so Guy Forsyth rejoined for the evening–and it rocked!  I was screaming at the top of my lungs; if you have a chance to see them live, do eet!

Then it was off to Winter Movement Monastery, a week of movement and dance.  I got sick on day two, with a trip to the emergency room in the middle of the night to treat a cold-turned-respiratory infection.  Unfortunately after that I was tired and cranky most of the week, so I felt like I never truly plugged in.  It was noone’s fault, but recovering on a diet of squash was tough.

Kryss and I left a day early, and that night we celebrated Kryss’ birthday by going to see The New Orleans Bingo Show at Le Chat Noir. She had a “mantourage” of 5 guys keeping her company that evening, which made for quite the sight–all of us trying to outdo our gentlemanly duty to the birthday girl.  Later that evening it was off to Pravda and the Whirling Dervish for drinks.  The next day we picked up Kate and headed out for sushi, drinks and dancing.  The next day was my long drive home, and then up early to head in to work!

I had an (exhausting) blast, and can’t wait to do it again.  It definitely made me pine for New Orleans, and desire to move there to be close to my friends and the artistic scene that’s growing again in and around the French Quarter.  Until then, I’ll just have to make due with my next visit–during JazzFest!

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Cliff November 30th, 2007

Mostly because folks were leaving me meebome notes without any contact information (bad design on my part!).  So now you can read all about my work and home life.  Hopefully it will give some added context to my blog, since many of my posts are non-library related.

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Cliff November 5th, 2007

I’m sorry that I forgot to post a follow-up on the status of my sister Mandi & her family (thanks for reminding me, FRL!). Their house survived, and Mandi was busy working as the small animal Veterinarian for two different clinics during and after the fires. Here’s a clip from Jeremy’s email:

Monday night it sounded like they had it back under control and we went to bed. I got up a little after 2 am to check on things and the fire had come over San Miguel and was working down the western shoulder. The pictures Amanda took around 3 am right before we left. The grey dots on the one are actually falling ash. The other pictures I took Thurs. during the day to show where the houses were. The shoulder of the mountain is w/in 2 miles of us, so we decided to leave and beat the rush. It seemed to be moving slowly, but as you can see the flames were large, about 20 ft at times, and I felt if the subdivision at the base of the mountain went up, things would deteriorate extremely quickly. We loaded up the dogs and left at about 3 am…

So needless to say, we are very very very grateful to everyone who prayed and sent energy (but didn’t light candles!) for the safety of Mandi’s family and house, and that of all the firefighters and families in the area. It meant a lot to receive all those good wishes.

It still stinks that I missed IL2007, but I know I would have been a hot mess. At one point of major chaos, I was trying to use my “mad librarian skeelz” to find a ground line phone number for the house of the folks that Mandi was evacuating to. As it was, I was unable to concentrate on much of anything here anyway for the rest of the week. If I know I’m going to do a less-than-stellar job, I’d rather not do it in the first place. So at this point, I’ll just plan on seeing everyone at CIL2008!

• IL2007 , me
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Cliff October 24th, 2007

Sadly, it looks like I won’t be attending Internet Librarian 2007 this year.

My original plan was to fly into San Diego on Thursday, spend the weekend with my sister, and then have her fly me up to Monterey in her Cessna.   My sister’s family is now evacuated and safe, but we don’t know at this point if her house or plane still exist.  I tried to get my flight redirected to Monterey, but all the flights are sold out (no doubt for all you lucky IL2007 attendees!).

So if you were planning on attending my cybertour on Wednesday, know that I really appreciate it, and would have enjoyed entertaining and educating y’all.  As a presenter, it sucks to have to cancel at the last minute–you can’t help but feel like you’re letting folks down.  But alas, it seems like the cards are just stacked against me for this trip.  I really hope to present at and/or attend CIL 2008, so that I can get to see all my 2.0 Librarian friends.

Please keep the firefighters & all of southern California in your thoughts.

• IL2007 , me
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Cliff October 5th, 2007

About two months ago I ceased being the Reference Facilitator and became the Technology Librarian.  This is probably part of the reason for my sparse updates over the last little while–I’ve been swamped trying to help create a website usability study, a library instruction assessment tool, and a blog for our upcoming Big Read.

The most exciting thing for me about the new position is that I can find places where we can improve user services.  Jane made a good point about being a 2.0 Librarian in a 1.0 Library, and I think that a lot of the frustrations that we feel as techie Librarians can be channeled effectively.  That’s why I enjoy being part of the Library 2.0 community–I’m always seeing folks do amazing things, thinking of creative ways to improve service and information quality.  I’m glad to be a part of that.

• Libraries , me
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