I was very domestic today:
- 🍪 baked PB cookies
- 🪑 cleaned the outdoor cushions
- ☠️ had to buy more borax for said cushions
- 🍊 made OJ from my tree
- 🌶️ harvested beets, peppers, and cauliflower
I was very domestic today:
I love it when a plan comes together.
Hannibal Smith, The A-Team
The older I get, the more I enjoy the process of setting goals for the new year. Perhaps I am simply grateful to have been given another year. Maybe I increasingly feel the weight of an ending. Whatever the cause, I am no longer ashamed to say that I enjoy New Year’s planning! (previously: 2023, 2022, 2021). And it has proven successful. While I don’t accomplish everything, I do make notable progress. This past year, for example, I wrote more frequently, I did a better job planning my weekends, and I learned new skills at work.
Once again following in the style of CPG Grey [YouTube], my theme for 2024 is “creativity.” In 2023, I came to the realization: I am stuck, especially at work but also to some extent at home. This feeling of immobility only dissipates when I am engaged in deep creative work: writing, photography, planning, etc. So this year I want to be attuned to opportunities that allow me to exercise my creative faculties.
Years ago, I bought myself a decent EOS Rebel camera and zoom lens. I’ve used it on and off since that time, mostly for photographing work events, but rarely for personal ends. This year, I want to change that and spend some quality time learning (and practicing) how to take better photos, mostly with the DSLR but also with my mobile device. I know many of the basics of the camera’s mechanics and creating a good composition, so I’m starting from a good place. Photography is an art form that I feel, with enough practice and critical reflection, I could get fairly proficient at.
Last year, I worked through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. While I have mixed feelings about whether I would recommend the book, one aspect that I did enjoy was the idea of the “artist date.” Essentially, each week you set aside time to “treat your inner artist”. This could be as complicated as going to a museum or as simple as listening to recordings of ocean waves. I wasn’t successful at doing this every week, but I never regretted the experience when I did. So this year, I plan to make “scheduling my artist date” part of my weekly planning process.
At some point in the past few months, I got it into my head that I wanted to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. It must have been inspired in some part by my daughter’s tiny role as a Windsor child in Merry Wives this past summer. Even after sitting through no fewer than seven full run throughs of the show, I still found new sparks of joy hearing Shakespeare’s words. So my plan is to not only read all his plays, but also to watch at least one, but preferably two, performances. I may try to throw in some critical and derivative works in there, too, as time permits.
In the process of moving to Mastodon, I learned about the Indie Web community and POSSE. I’ve been exploring the websites of users in that community and it has inspired me to flesh out my website considerably. In addition to publishing on my own site and syndicating elsewhere, I plan to add new pages for current projects, things I find interesting, and other evolving projects.
The internet is about to get weird again by Anil Dash
“There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet.”
Dash’s post contains a number of fascinating examples of the “weird” (read: unique) that I could easily lose myself in for hours.
Top 14 Social Media Trends (2024 & 2025) by Alison Zeller
“Social media usage is expected to remain on an upward trajectory over the next 2-3 years. New features, such as AI and AR, are ensuring that users stay glued to top social media platforms for longer periods of time each day. Brands are taking advantage by increasing their budgets for content creation, influencers, and ads.”
I am skeptical that social media usage will continue to rise, but there is data to support that conclusion. My skepticism comes from what I’ve observed among Gen Z as a more lassie-faire approach to social media: it’s fine, but it’s not essential in the same way that previous generations have (and continue) to approached it.
January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day by Jennifer Jenkins
“For the vast majority—probably 99%—of works from 1928, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason.”
Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle by Jennifer Jenkins
“Disney is both an emblem of term extension and its erosion of the public domain, and one of the strongest use-cases in favor of the maintenance of a rich public domain.”
How to Lose a Library by Carolyn Dever
“Librarians are by profession information wizards, belying any analog-digital binary by instrumentalizing information as useful and as necessary. The job is to connect users and materials, to create that alchemy that blends the stuff and matter of life with the ephemera of knowledge.”
One of the many things I love about gardening in Los Angeles is that I get oranges during the winter months. My Washington navel was so overburdened with fruit this season that one of its lower branches snapped off under the weight a few weeks ago. Normally, these trees need very little pruning, except for diseased branches and those hanging too close to the ground.
My wish for 2024 is that every story that starts with “A new study from the [name of institution] found that” includes the name(s) of the author, the study’s title, and a link to the actual study.
@BuffaloResearch on Mastodon
Need a new world wine made in an old world style that is drinkable now? Look no further than this wonderfully complex cabernet. Cherry, spice, and dried flowers on the nose. A silky, medium body, with oak and bright berries, finishing off with cherries and watermelon candy. You can feel this one all over the palate. I think the use of 25% American oak gives it a much subtler taste. I would buy a few bottles of these to just have on hand.
My hardware is Millennial. My software is Gen X, but there are Gen Z apps running in the background.
The end of the year tends to bring some of the most interesting writing. And so my tbr list of articles is already longer than Santa’s list. Here’s what I’ve enjoyed reading so far this week.
“We need trustworthy AI. AI whose behavior, limitations, and training are understood. AI whose biases are understood, and corrected for. AI whose goals are understood. That won’t secretly betray your trust to someone else. The market will not provide this on its own.”
“AI and trust” by Bruce Schneier
“Lots of likes is an okay-ish signal. Lots of comments is a clearer signal. A small handful of comments or private replies from people saying they’ve never felt so seen or understood by a piece of writing—that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to discern and quantify here.”
“Measuring what matters” by Rob Hardy
“Few institutions collect as much data about the people inside of them as colleges and universities do. Residential campuses, in particular, mean students not only interact with their schools for academics, but for housing, home internet, dining, health care, fitness, and socialization. Still, whether living on campus or off, taking classes in person or remotely, students simply cannot opt out of most data collection and still pursue a degree.”
“He wanted privacy. His college gave him none” by Tara García Mathewson
“After all, we’re the libraries. We have plenty of experience with corporate entities that don’t reflect our values. We deal with the journal publishers who practice a business model that hoards the world’s knowledge and maximizes profit from the research that our university’s scholars conduct. When it comes to the academic publishing system, institutions of higher learning have made a deal with the devil, and we, the libraries, are the campus units who pay the bill.”
“Why we’re dropping Basecamp” by Duke University Libraries
“In 2024, strategic organizations will push back against unjustified expectations to be on every platform. They’ll unlock their top-performing channels based on ROI, and focus their attention on those—and only those. If they’re really confident (and brave), they might even abandon one or two altogether.”
Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends 2024
“The platforms that control search were conceived in sin. Their business model auctions off our most precious and limited cognitive resource: attention. […] Critical ignoring is the ability to choose what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. Critical ignoring is more than just not paying attention – it’s about practising mindful and healthy habits in the face of information overabundance.”
“When critical thinking isn’t enough: to beat information overload, we need to learn ‘critical ignoring’” by Hertwig, Kozyreva, Wineburg, and Lewandowsky
After all, we’re the libraries. We have plenty of experience with corporate entities that don’t reflect our values. We deal with the journal publishers who practice a business model that hoards the world’s knowledge and maximizes profit from the research that our university’s scholars conduct. When it comes to the academic publishing system, institutions of higher learning have made a deal with the devil, and we, the libraries, are the campus units who pay the bill. We do it every year, often facing steep price increases with flat budgets.
“Why We’re Dropping Basecamp” by Duke University Libraries
I’ve been thinking about something I heard at the LMCC 2023 conference: “Marketing should drive usage which in turn creates impact” (source: Cordelia Anderson).
I often forget that middle piece when developing outreach strategies for my library. At the risk of oversimplifying, I’m extending Anderson’s use of the word “marketing” to the entire outreach enterprise. For sure, there are programs and initiatives the directly impact usage: a recent campaign to promote our streaming video collection, the curation of recommended reading lists, and the annual open house. However, there are some programs that skip right over usage to create the end-goal of impact: our storytelling programming, our faculty speaker series, and our haunted library. These latter programs directly impact our students by creating a sense of belonging and bringing together our community through the celebration of its creative works, but that impact isn’t achieved via the library’s services and collections.
I would consider creating impact via the library’s services and collections to be a traditional approach to library outreach, one often taken by teams where outreach work is embedded within reference and instruction departments. This is where you find info lit workshops, custom bibliographies, instructional handouts, e-resources campaigns, video tutorials, etc. For teams like the one I manage (we are our own “outreach and engagement” department separate from our colleagues who focus on teaching and collections building) we go straight to the impact: feel good events, mental health programs, community building, productivity support, and service learning opportunities. The motivations for our work come unfiltered straight from either the library’s broader mission or the university’s strategic goals.
I’m not suggesting one type of outreach is better than the other. Having both is important, but finding the optimal balance between the two is a conversation for every individual, team, library, and organization to determine on their own terms.
Another successful (mostly) vegan Thanksgiving: sweet potato casserole, mushroom Bourgogne, roasted root veggies from my garden, baked beans and this lovely bottle of 2009 Chateau Margaux.
“Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules— and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.”
(Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan, epigraph, 1959)
Last week, I attended the 2023 Library Marketing and Communications Conference in Indianapolis. This is one of my favorite conferences to attend. It’s relatively small, relatively affordable (with meals included!), and attended by people who get me. Regardless of whether we work in academic libraries, public libraries, as librarians or as professional staff, we all speak the same language. We understand that not everything can go on the website. We know that fliers are a net waste of everyone’s time. We know that creating social media content is a specialized skill that few people actually do well. We realize that more promotion does not equal more awareness. We understand the power of storytelling. We value having a consistent brand. And yes, we all spend too much times on our phones, but secretly (or not) we enjoy it.
So here are a few of my takeaways from this year’s conference.
Libraries cycle through outreach and communications folks like trends on Instagram. Constantly developing new ways to connect with users takes a toll on all of us. A number of sessions this year spoke to the necessity of setting up guardrails, taking time to step away, and the need to find ways to reconnect with your creative spark. Sadly, there wasn’t much talk about burnout being a systemic and organizational problem that needs to be solved at the management level, but that might be a result of there being so many new professionals in attendance.
Everyone is looking for an excuse to get off X/Twitter. No one is interested in Threads. TikTok is banned in many states and the rest of us are reluctant to jump on. But email… email is king. Email offers a stronger analytics story, a closer connection to users, and a more dependable way to reach out. And it’s what our users want! A number of presenters confirmed what I’ve discovered at my own library: users prefer to be contacted by email. Instagram is a close second, but only as a vibe check. If email is for sharing information, Instagram is for sharing feels.
If it wasn’t apparent from my opening, one of the best aspects of LMCC is the collective kvetching. One strong theme this year was how many of our colleagues misunderstand the complexity of our work, most notably the time it takes to develop content. A 10-second Instagram post may only take an hour to film, edit, and post, but what you don’t see are the countless hours searching for inspiration: finding the right music, twisting the arms of the right colleagues, waiting for the right time of day to film, coordinating with all the other communications going out that day. We spend far more time consuming content than creating it, but that’s necessary for understanding how our work fits in with the ecosystem of any given platform.
How I’ve Changed My Thinking About Burnout by Anne Helen Peterson
“I am doing less. I am lowering the bar. I am loosening my schedule. But I also have a fuller life, with so many places to direct my attention and time. It’s both less busy (with work) and more busy (with other life) than ever before.”
Nobody Wants Their Job to Rule Their Lives Anymore by Eloise Henry
“If I had a shorter work week and a dignified salary then they’d get a well-rested, enthusiastic and switched-on employee. Instead, they’re getting a poor and exhausted worker.”
Adopting the Perennial Mindset by Tara McMullin
“Quality-of-life guarantees could help people make life transitions—at any age—with more ease. And while these guarantees do benefit individuals directly, they also benefit our society. Fewer people scraping by, falling behind, or burning out because of unreasonable expectations is an overall cultural and economic good.”
Until next year, friend! For about 6 weeks, this lovely orb weaver rebuilt her web between the top of my dwarf orange tree and the power cables running to our house. Each evening before sunset, she would meticulously reweave her web, which by midnight would already be full of flies and the occasional honey bee. I haven’t seen her for a few days so my guess is she either returned to being strictly nocturnal or, more likely, she mated, produced her offspring, and died. It was comforting to greet her each day when I came home from work.
Protip: browsing and borrowing from your local library can satisfy the shop therapy part of your brain without costing you money
ami_angelwings on Mastodon (h/t Dense Discovery)
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these (see also: 2017, 2015). For folks considering working in academic libraries, or shifting to outreach and/or library managerial work, I hope this glimpse into the day of one librarian is helpful!
8:30a: Arrive at work. The first thing I did this morning was sign a stack of thank you cards for our campus partners on the latest library event. Sent a message to my employee who is coordinating the distribution of these to let them know they were ready to be delivered.
9:00a: I’m trying to develop a meta-analysis project so I spent a good portion of the morning reading through different models, methodologies, and critical appraisals. There is a lovely faculty-only space in our library where I like to go when I need uninterrupted time to work on my research.
10:30a: Spent 30 minutes processing email.
11:00a: I serve on the ACRL University Libraries Section’s Academic Outreach Committee. This year, we are toying with the idea of building a directory of academic library outreach folks. Another committee member and I have been assigned the task of developing a plan, so we met on Zoom to hash out our initial ideas.
12:00p: A couple years ago, I decided my health was more important than anything my job could possibly throw at me, so I schedule walks, yoga classes, and/or gym time throughout the week into my Outlook calendar. Today, I spent 40 minutes on the elliptical during my lunch break.
1:30p: Had my weekly 1:1 with one of my direct reports.
2:30p: Posted some content to the library’s Instagram account and updated the graphics on the library’s homepage to promote our upcoming events. Edited a short reflection piece written by a student about a past event, reviewed and uploaded a recording of that event to our YouTube page, and combined the two to create a news post for the library website.
4:00p: More managerial work. I sent reimbursement information to other campus units, drafted a follow-up from an earlier meeting, delegated tasks to my student workers for when I’m out of town next week, and reviewed the details of an upcoming report deadline I need to work on when I get back. Had to double-check the construction of a Qualtrics survey that was currently collecting respondent data (it was fine). Caught up on a few open loops with one of my employees before they left for the day.
5:30p: Cleaned up and locked up so I could go pick up my kids from their after-school program.