Committees
Committees. A word that is ingrained in every librarian’s brain and will stay with them until the day they die. A word that librarians can love or dread. A word slightly less scarier than “low circulation” or “low attendance”. Ohhh just the thought of it gives me goosebumps.
Every librarian soon learns after leaving the nest of library school and entering into the big bad world of the public library that they will be “asked” to join committees. Right now I’m on a couple committees for kids:
- scary books (list) committee
- technology program committee
- kids website committee
- Amerks program committee (now done)
I think that might be it. For some reason I thought I might be on one more, but I’m not sure. I also somehow was put on the teen webpage committee, which I think has one or two more people on it, but I’m not absolutely sure. I think it may be because I opened my big mouth and came up with an idea for the teen section of the website: have kids/teens draw caricatures of the librarians and then have people vote on the best which will then be put on the main page of the teen site with a link to each library. Some of the librarians were slightly disturbed about having a caricature done of them… it just occurred to me, maybe we could have teens come up with a library mascot or character that represents the library as they see it, instead of the caricature of the librarian… that might make them slightly happier.
Well anyway, as you can see I have quite a bit on my plate, which is probably why when at one of the meetings my boss went to they were talking about creating an emerging technology committee, she thought of adding me to the committee… but then thought better of it. Come on now! That actually seems like a committee I could commit to 🙂 LOL Yea. I know stupid, but its almost one in the am. You cannot blame me for stupidity this early in the morning.
So anyway, now my interest is piqued. I want to know who else will be in this group and what the group will be focusing on. COME ON! I need answers! I was afraid to sound too interested to Sally, because… well now I don’t really know why. I think that this would be something that I could sink my teeth into. I am all about libraries taking another step forward into the 21st century. We need to keep up with the Jones’ if we want to stay alive. Public libraries need to be more competitive if they want to get some of the funding that everyone else is fighting for, and I think that by taking advantage of technology and marketing ourselves to those who don’t know that we exist we will be taking a step in the right direction. At the moment we’re merely a place that “dirty men look at pictures of naked people” and a place to pick up tax forms. I, personally don’t want that to be our image. Sorry folks. I think its time for change. Unfortunately, I think that someone is going to need to rile up the chicken coop to get it going. Luckily, I think that there are enough librarians that are receptive to what needs to happen that it shouldn’t be too awful. Maybe they’ll just need a middle-sized fox to get into the coop, not an ex-large one. 🙂
Don’t really know where I’m going with this anymore. Time for bed. G’night.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I considering the emerging technology committee. I think I’m going to do it. It would be cool if you did, too — although you are committed to a whole lot more committees than I am already, so I’d totally get why you might take a pass.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I decided that I’m going to do it. The technology program is tomorrow, so that’ll be done. The kids/teens website committees will mesh well with the emerging technologies committee, so that would just leave the scary books committee… which I think has quite a few other people on it. I’ll have books to read for it, but don’t we always have books to read?