| Planning for the Future |
[Oct. 25th, 2005|01:27 pm] |
I'm in the first presentation of the day- the wifi is holding out okay; so far so good; steady as she goes...
This is Accelerated Planning by Rebecca Jones. I have high hopes for this - I'm TERRIBLE at planning. I'm impatient, I was to DO stuff. In this way I'm more of techie than I am a librarian... yes, I'm making generalities, but I've noticed, especially in my institution, that traditionally librarians are OKAY at planning, while the techies that have come before me have not at all which has had not-good long-term results. Basically there have been implementations that techies have done, presumably to make the lives of the served librarians better, but they foist something on them, then walk away. They don't talk to them about what they need, revisit them to be sure they're happy with the new product, and they're not always cheerful about providing support. I want to break this trend... doubly hard because I don't want to.
Some little thoughts from the presentation:
Know where you want to end up... what are you doing - WRITE these down... it makes you crystallize it.
What's your decision criteria?
How much time have you got? - don't be afraid to set your own deadlines. If you can't, ask someone else to do it for you.
Planning expands to the time allotted - This is true of most tasks, isn't it?
Take control of the process.
Already know the baseline - I read this as having a team leader who might be the one who's initiated this new project and they should arrive with the team with an documented goals for the end product plan.
Choose a team that's diverse, focused, committed, from many departments, levels of employment, seniority (new and long-term staff)... plan to use them to get staff buy-in.
Who owns the plan - the owner is the person who will implement the plan.
Have a clear goal BEFORE you call a meeting.
Be clear at the beginning that you might not use everyone's input.
Follow through - or you lose your credibility with potential future team members.
[Total aside because I'm doing so many things at once - I'm hearing lots about Konfabulator. I think it's time to check it out.]
SWOT - Oh man, I thought I could forget about this after my management class... but it *does* make sense - know your strengths and weaknesses.
Talk to people about it - get stakeholder input.
Natural light and be comfortable with the risk - if you don't do this, the project will not work.
Teams need a leader.
Be aware of what you're going to STOP doing in order to add something new. Make sure that happens, don't just say it.
No martyrs... we're all busy and we'll share the load.
Apologies for the choppy-ness... I just think much better this way. |
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| Ethics and Blogging |
[Oct. 25th, 2005|02:28 pm] |
Presented by Karen Schneider, director of Librarians' Index to the Internet and author of Free Range Librarian; one of my favorite blogs. She already has blogged her own talk = vg. I thought this would be a great one to attend considering that advocating for a blog at UNH is my new cause and I expect this will be a concern for my colleagues- as it should be and I want to be able to answer their concerns.
We're not about books - we're about people... You know what this is, right? Core services, mission statements, and goals... they don't change digitally. (Where have I heard this before?)
Okay, so, this is a good session for me - I need to clean up my poor blogging habits. I need to cite more -
Blog rules:
1. Transparency - Be sure you're a real person on the blog... give a bio. "Who you are and where you're coming from." (Karen) People are there to read your thoughts, meaning they're interested - so tell them who you are too. Ooo, that was good... we have to be aware of how you're represented to the outside world. Especially if you're writing as a profession and also representing the profession.
2. Cite It - See above... this is *really* important and I promise to go back and add a bunch of links and references. In my defense, I usually, at the least, give the name of my sources and inspiration... even if not a link. But I'll try to give more complete citations and links - hold me to that, will you?
This is going to become even more important - absolutely crucial, actually, in a library hosted blog. I wonder what could be done to facilitate citations... as in provide a special form in the entry space that will list footnotes. This might be another reason for me to try and write my own blog facility instead of buying one.
Ask your souces if you can quote them... this is an excellent tip.
"Blogging turns information into a conversation." THAT is a brilliant quote... and so relevant for libraries trying to move into the social realms of which blogs are already a part.
I'm not sure I got all the rules... surely there's more than two... I'll post back later.
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