PVLD Director's Blog

Sabbatical

Regular readers of this blog probably have noticed that it has been some months since I posted here.  I was struggling to find anything fresh to say, work and personal obligations have been consuming most of my time and energy, and since many of the blogs I follow seem to have lost some of their steam too I've been a bit short of inspiration.

That all translated into an unplanned sabbatical of sorts.  The break has been refreshing, and I'm not quite ready to jump back into the swing of things yet...but thought I would at least put up a note to say I'm still alive and kicking - just not blogging.

I'm thinking this break will probably last a couple more months, but am starting to feel motivated to write again once some travels and work commitments are out of the way.  In the meantime a redesign of the PVLD website may lead me to try a new blogging platform and/or format...but I'll announce any changes here.

In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a great summer and I look forward to reconnecting via the blog in the fall!

 

Go Library! Visiting the libraries in the Los Angeles area

Ellen November, a PVLD volunteer and community activist, has begun a mission to visit and blog about libraries across Los Angeles County. She got the idea from Oleg Kagan, a Librarian at the County of Los Angeles Public Library's West Hollywood Library and husband of PVLD's own Ashley Kagan.

I'm looking forward to this virtual library tour! If you want to join along click here to view Ellen's Go Library blog..and share it with your friends.

I'll be back soon

I've had "Write a blog post" on my To Do list for over a week now (yes, I really am that anal!)...but as the saying goes, stuff happens, and between a death in the family (my beloved Opa, subject of a recent post), a short trip to Vancouver Island, Canada for my niece's wedding, a persistent virus of some kind, and meeting-filled days at work I haven't had the time, energy, or mental capacity to write anything worth posting.

Tomorrow I'll see the doctor to try to get a handle on the virus, and on Monday I'm off to San Jose for the culmination of the 2010 Eureka Leadership Program (sure to be the source of plenty of inspiration as the 2010 Eureka Fellows present their projects)...and I hope after that I'll be back on track for more regular posting.

Thanks for your patience!

 

Blank spots in the blog posting schedule

Some family challenges have been consuming a lot of time and energy lately, making keeping up with blogging even more of a challenge and causing a fair amount of stress. 

This post by one of my favorite personal finance bloggers, JD Roth, describes a situation that differs significantly from ours in the detail, but is substantially the same in the basic nature of the challenges, (although our situation is further complicated by distance)...not the least of which for me personally is wrestling with JD's question -  How do we juggle what we want to do with what we ought to do?

We had planned a summer full of short trips, visits from out-of-state family, and time at the beach and are now having to recalibrate our plans significantly while still trying to keep up with demanding jobs and work schedules. 

I want to keep up my writing as it is one of my sanity-savers, but like JD I am likely to have some "blank spots in the posting schedule"  until our family situation settles down.....

A tale of two Iphones and a wayward blog post

This past weekend I dropped my Iphone in the swimming pool.  No funny story - just bad luck.  I tried to dry it out in a bag of rice, but no success...it was dead, and so was the warranty since it doesn't cover water damage.

Took it to the AT&T store where I bought it and they said take to the Apple store wherethey might let me buy a replacement for $199 (instead of the retail price of over $500).  I made an appointment at the Genius Bar,told my soggy tale to the very nice young "Genius", and he replaced the phone...for FREE!  And in the process made me into an Apple fan for life.

Brought it home, restored all of the apps and settings from the backup in Itunes, and I am up and running again. 

The only thing is, in the process of restoring everything a blog post about unattended bags that seems to be lodged in the bowels of my phones memory got reposted for the second time since I did the original post in May.

All of this is a long was of saying disregard that last post!

500!

That's the number of posts on this blog since I started it nearly 4 years ago through the one I wrote yesterday. It's been quite a journey, and more work than I ever envisioned when I started.  I've had some dry spells, and written a few things that I later regretted, but overall it has been a great experience and wonderful personal development tool.  It has forced me to make time every week to read and think - something that would have continually fallen by the wayside if I hadn't made the commitment to regular posts - and the blogs, articles, and books that have fueled my posts have enriched both my personal and professional lives.

To a large extent I write the blog as much for me as for anyone else, but I hope those of you who read it have gotten at least some benefit.

Now, with the Labor Day weekend nearly here I plan to take a few days off before I embark on the next 500 posts!

Blogging Sabbatical

The past couple of months that have been extraordinarily busy and issue-filled, and it's been hard to find the time or energy to write this blog.  Even the other blogs I follow have not been their usual source of ideas and inspiration.

Over the next few weeks I will be away from work for all but a couple of days for one reason or another (a bit of vacation, a couple of conferences, and a week serving as a mentor on a residential leadership development program for emerging library leaders) and I suspect I will find it even harder to find time and energy to write anything interesting or meaningful.

With that in mind I've decided to declare a brief "blogging sabbatical".  I'm not planning on writing any posts between this one and when my upcoming travels come to an end on November 2nd.

That said, I'll still my skimming my usual assortment of blogs and other reading material and I am hopeful that the changes of scenery/routine, the exposure to new energy at the Eureka Leadership Institute, and the opportunity to hear new things and interact with colleagues at the Internet Librarian and California Library Association conferences will reinvigorate me. 

Who knows, I may just have a flash of inspiration that leads me to break my sabbatical!  If not, I'm looking forward to returning to more regular posting in November.  Stay tuned!

Recharging my blogging batteries!

Its been a while since I've felt that I have written a really good, thought-provoking post on this blog.  I really could relate to this post from Logic+Emotion about the challenge of consistently writing really great posts.

I've got more than usual on my plate at work at the moment (budget challenges, union negotiations, issues with our major supplier of books that are resulting in bare shelves and customer complaints, plans for the renovation/expansion of both branches and the associated fundraising efforts, the usual Spring rush of community and legislative activities, negotiations over the proposed redevelopment of the property next to our main library with potentially big implications for us, etc. etc. etc.)

Combine that with lots of houseguests, a string of appliance failures and home maintenance issues, and the normal busy-ness of life and finding time to read and reflect (which for me is a pre-requisite to a good blog post) is a real challenge.

I've also noticed that while I still try to skim my normal complement of library and non-library blogs, they have not been the source of much inspiration lately.  My bet is that some of my fellow bloggers are feeling some of the same pressures I am, but I also think that ideas that seemed new and exciting to me a year ago are less so today.

This blog is important to me, so I'm going to keep at it...but I'm going to try posting a bit less often and putting more time and thought into the posts I do make.

Next week I'm going to be spending the week as a mentor at the Eureka Leadership Institute, a weeklong program for emerging library leaders in California.  I'm hopeful that even though I am there as a mentor and not a participant I will have a chance to reflect on my own leadership abilities and performance and also to recharge my batteries though being in a new environment with a group of energetic young professionals.  I don't expect to be posting much, though!

Hopefully when I get back to work in early May my batteries will be re-charged and you'll see an improvement in this blog....

News from the Public Library Association Conference 2008

Adult Services Assistant Manager Debra Petersen and Branch Manager Jennifer Addington attended the Public Library Association's biennial conference in Minneapolis last week and came back full of ideas and enthusiasm.

They are sharing what they learned and their thoughts on their PLA Minneapolis blog.  Check it out for some great ideas...and keep checking as there is more to come!

I think we might transform this blog into the "PVLD conference" blog as a way of sharing what we learn at the various conferences and workshops that staff attend. 

Twitter for Libraries

People who follow this blog or visit my Facebook page may have noticed that I have been putting information out on Twitter .  A few weeks ago, during a period in which I was sending out "tweets" much more frequently than I have been doing more recently, my kid brother sent me a Facebook message asking "What is Twitter and why are you doing it?".  Good question!

For those who don't know, Twitter is what is known as a "microblogging" application.  It allows you to use either the Twitter website ( www.twitter.com ) or your cell phone to send out very brief (only a couple of lines long) messages, sometimes called "tweets".  You can elect to have these messages appear on Twitter's "public timeline" or use "widgets" (downloadable mini software applications) to have your Twitter posts automatically appear on your blog or Facebook account.  You can also "follow" other people who have a Twitter account and receive their Twitter messages either as messages in your Twitter account online or as text messages to your cell phone.  Likewise, people can "follow" you and automatically receive your tweets on their cell phones or in their Twitter accounts.  Finally (at least as far as my knowledge of Twitter is concerned...there's probably more you can do!) you can set up Twitter so that you are notified every time a tweet containing a certain word or phrase, like "library"  or "Palos Verdes" is issued by anyone.

That answers the question "What is Twitter" but not why I use it!

As an individual, I've been experimenting with Twitter as a way of adding brief updates to my blog and Facebook without having to actually log in to Typepad (my blogging software) or Facebook....and it updates both at once!

As a Library Director, I'm interested in exploring how we can use social networking technologies to offer library services or promote the library.  Back in October I wrote a post about my initial experience with Twitter and some early thoughts about how libraries could use it, and last week I was excited discover how the Brooklyn Museum is using Twitter to promote museum events and activities (sorry I can't remember whose blog pointed me to this one!)

Not only does this allow someone to join Twitter and "follow" the museum, staying up to date on its activities, but the "tiny URLs" (which Twitter creates automatically everytime you include a hyperlink in a tweet) link back to the museum's blog and website so you can get the full story if you want.   And because the tweets appear on the public timeline its another way of letting serendipity work its magic.  Who knows who will find their way to the museum via this path!

A very cool idea!  Now we just need to find the time to set up the PVLD Twitter account and telling people to "follow us"!