tweets of the week: organization

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

i subscribe to an rss feed for a search of twitter for the word organization (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=organization). here are the best tweets of the week (by best i mean they amuse me):

VISpandex (Tynell Francis)
FYI when you invite someone out on a date have a plan! Organization is sexy!!

christiebrkt (christiebrkt)
“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” George Carlin

JeanineA (Jeanine Anderson)
Writing a list of things I need to write. Is that procrastination or organization?

brendanwenzel (Brendan Wenzel)
Organization is such an important business tool. Without it, valuable time is wasted looking for things.

edscott (edscott)
Interior decorating is the most stupid thing in the world. Just saw a woman organize a familys books by color. Ugh.

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i shove, i make

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

Shovers and Makers 2009: I’m a winner! (So are you.) shoversandmakers.net

check out my award acceptance at http://www.shoversandmakers.net/2009/marie-kennedy

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license agreement negotiator heroine

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

license-agreement-negotiator1

you won’t allow proxy access? guess again!
no post-cancellation access rights? ha ha.
ILL not permitted? please rethink your stance on that.

made over at the heromachine

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archie mcphee, an organizational nightmare, yet delightful

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

every once in a while you need to be reminded that your way of doing things isn’t the only way things can be done. take archie mcphee, for example. if that were my store i would reorganize the bins and put things in thematic order: bottle stoppers, three-fingered chemical gloves, nuclear pants would all go together; wind-up cows, hopping lederhosen, dashboard jesus would all go together. that kind of organizational scheme would work well in a library but is a horrible, boring solution in a toy store. the delight of archie mcphee is finding a giant rubber bat in the same bin as rubber brushes and a couple of bouncy balls. the disorganization is intentional and the result is really a lot of fun. i may reconsider the way i’ve got my office set up. maybe i need more monkeys.

brushes, balls, bat

marie as the cap'n

big ups to nikki for taking me there, twice!

Posted in acrl 2009, monkeys/bananas | 5 Comments

social research methods take a front seat at ACRL

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

It was encouraging to see so many librarians at the ACRL conference using social research methods.  As discussed in the sessions I attended, there is real effort to understand the culture in which we work so that we can serve our patrons effectively.  Some of the methods used to find out about the faculty and student population are contextual inquiry, Q methodology, and focus groups, to name a few.  Awesome!  I think I’ve found the conference that matches my needs and curiosity level.  See you in 2011 in Philadelphia, ACRL.

Here are some posters and presentations that used the methods I mentioned:

(poster, used contextual inquiry) Millennial students’ mental models of search tools. Lucy Holman, Langsdale Library, University of Baltimore
(paper, used Q methodology) Conflict and Consensus – Clusters of Opinions on E-books. Aaron Shrimplin and Andrew Revelle, Miami University
(paper, used focus groups) Fishing for Information: Using Focus Group Research to Discover Student Perceptions of Library Services and Resources. Rebecca Byrum and William Weare, Valparaiso University

bonus geek fact: the word research was used in the titles of eight poster or paper presentations at this conference

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poster sessions, a chance to show off your failures?

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Marie Kennedy

you know what i’d like to see at a national conference someday? a poster session of failures. each poster in the session would have to demonstrate some aspect of a failure in a library, and what was learned from it. so much focus at conferences is given to successes, but i think our profession would gain as much from learning about each other’s failures.

Posted in acrl 2009, library | 1 Comment