Category Archives: Uncategorized

I am so excited for ALA this year.  Here is my schedule, but its not nearly as fun as some other great librarians.  Administration has its drawbacks:(

Friday, June 28

9:00am – 12:00pm Annual Unconference

12:00pm – 3:00pm Library Journal Mover & Shaker Luncheon (Chicago Firehouse, 1401 S Michigan Ave.)

4:00pm – 5:15pm Opening Session

Saturday, June 29

8:30am – 9:30am Auditorium Speaker Series: Jaron Lanier

10:30am – 12:00pm Presidents’ Program: Standing on Marbles

11:30am – 12:00pm Ignite Session: Mismanaging Future Managers: Are Library Schools Failing to Adequately Prepare Administrators? 

1:00pm – 2:30pm Developing Next Generation Leaders in Your Library and the Profession: Grow Your Own

4:30pm – 5:30pm [Proud Mentor & Boss] Do What You Love: Make Your Talents and Passions Work for You & Project Sheldon

6:30pm – 8:00pm Private Dinner

9:00pm – 12:00am ALA Afterhours EveryLibrary & Librarian Wardrobe Party (Blue Frog’s Local 22; 22 E. Hubbard)

Sunday, June 30

8:30am – 10:00am Friction: Teaching slow thinking and intentionality in online research

10:30am – 11:30am Mergers & acquisitions: A roadmap for effective organizational change

2:30 – 3:00pm Poster Sessions

3:00pm – 4:00pm Cory Doctorow: More than a Book-lined Internet Cafe

Then who knows

My blogging continues to decline here, but never fear, I’m not done here yet.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on a new life challenge and project.  I’m happy to roll it out here.  I’m now working on the Balancist.com.

Where is our Steve Jobs?  Ok, maybe not Steve Jobs exactly, but libraries are in dire need of someone to push us to the next level.  We need someone to take the stage and move us, our industry, and the user experience to the next level.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz push their organizations and ultimately entire industries to next levels.  But in libraries, many of the innovations that we so desperately need are not even controlled by librarians.  Yes, I’m going to rant some more about our awful vendors.  Our vendors have not brought us a new ILS ever!  That’s right, more than 30 years later our ILS still basically functions and does the same exact thing it did.  Our ILS is built on a card catalog system, so in essence, we still run a card catalog.  And those original ILS systems were created by librarians then turned over to vendors.  Its 2013 and most of our ILS vendors can’t even deliver a web-based system, instead we have a crappy client application.

Our vendors, most controlled by equity firms and venture capitalists, have 1 motive.  They are ONLY interested in making money.  While many of us didn’t vote for Mitt Romney, we have let people of his ilk run libraries for far too long.

The vendors have absolutely no desire to improve the experience for our patrons.  As a result, we now have to deal with so many vendors.  We have patched together some Frankenstein style experience for our users.  We have a website, an ILS, mobile app, eBook vendor(s), database vendors, book cover vendor, review vendor, events registration, PC reservation and print management vendor nightmare.

Our system should be designed like Apple, Amazon or Google.  Amazon doesn’t have a separate interface, vendor, application or experience for finding books, reviewing books, or even checking books out.  Their eBooks and print books are on ONE FRIGGIN SCREEN.  How hard is this?  I have written about learning from Apple.  We need to have a fully integrated and controlled experience for our users.  Our service needs to be integrated, simple, and beautiful.

But while we need to address the issues of vendors, user experience and control, we really need a library leader to stand up and lead the rest of us.  Yes, there are many great library personalities.  Many good librarians are doing awesome and inspiring things, but is any of it that different? So I leave you with this Think Differently video