Tag Archives: hashtags

The Well-fed Librarian

In the past two weeks I was fortunate to have two one-day opportunities to meet and learn from academic library colleagues. First, I got to attend the Vermont Library Association College & Special Library section‘s annual conference, “Reaching Across the Aisle, Reaching Across the Desk: Engagement, Inclusion, & Outreach in Academic Libraries.” Then I went to WALDO’s Open Access Forum at Simmons College. Afterwards, I visited Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, where a colleague generously spent about forty-five minutes telling me about her job and discussing some of our common challenges. 

Not only did I come home with notes and photos (of signage and of a well dressed skeleton) and email addresses and a renewed feeling of community with my fellow librarians, I came home well-fed. By which I mean, I felt nourished, both informationally and professionally. Taking time to meet and talk with other librarians about our work, I was able to reflect on my place in this profession, and in a long tradition of librarians serving students and faculty. Taking time to type up my notes, I was able to spend time thinking about what ideas might work at some point in my own library (a mindfulness space in the library,  participating in Fair Use Week, blogging about special collections, participating in online faculty orientation, using some new hashtags to spice up our social media channels), and what might be required to implement these ideas. And to think appreciatively about those ideas which might not work at my institution (a 24 hour library, embedded librarians, tiered student workers), but which I’m glad someone is carrying out in theirs.

Are you well-fed in your work? There are many other ways to nourish yourself besides getting to a conference or meeting like these, such as participating in online discussion groups, reading professional journals and blogs, or just picking up the phone or sending an email to a counterpart at another library and asking for a few minutes to chat. What do you do to feed your professional self?
Countway Skeleton.jpg

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An Occupy Wall Street Primer

Occupy Wall Street is a challenging movement to follow, since it claims to have no leaders and the media has put more effort into arguing about whether/when/how to cover it than they have covering it.  When I heard that my hometown would be the site of an Occupy Movement general assembly in our placid downtown park, I decided I’d like to know more about what the movement stands for.

OccupyWallSt.org includes the Sept. 17 call to action, a blog that references actions from other parts of the country and the world and live streaming coverage. The site includes contact information, directions and other logistical information, chat and discussion forums, as well as links to other sites. Occupy Together is “an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity” with the Wall Street protests. Both sites sport simple but cool design and highlight the techy savviness of this movement.

I found this timeline of  Occupy Wall Street and the accompanying Wikipedia article interesting. It’s fairly in-depth and contains a large number of links.  Wikipedia notes that since this is a current events topic, information can change rapidly, and that’s a good point.

Wired.com gives the hacker/maker flavor of Occupy a shout out with a photo gallery, but if you’re interested in who Occupiers are and why they are protesting, check out We Are the 99% on Tumblr. This is a social media movement, and Twitter is full of references to #OccupyWallStreet, #OccupyWallSt, #OWS, #Sept17, #Occupy, and other hashtags specific to locations, like #OccupyBoston.

If you’re more inclined to digest your news with a healthy dose of humor, news satirist-in-chief Jon Stewart has devoted a number of Daily Show segments to Occupy Wall Street, its critics, and the media coverage. Want a less profane but quite profound comedic response? Search Twitter for #occupysesamestreet.

See the comments below for more resources.

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