Balancing Perspectives

Had a SPLAT meeting last Friday. I was feeling a bit guilty going into it because I've been so focused on my day to day work that I haven't kept up on my "duties" like I should. I hadn't looked at my reader more than a couple of times in the last several months and I'd blogged about once. I have been involved with "It's Good for You" and I have done things like replying to listserv requests on gaming...but not much else. The meeting went really well though. Helped me get excited again about work we can be doing on a state-wide level and regain some perspective. And it reminded me that I need to find a way to balance my work and my planning.

Somehow - I haven't figured out my foolproof method for this yet - I need to be able to get the way-too-many-day-to-day tasks done (i.e. programming, collection development, reader's advisory, reference etc.) and still keep the big picture in focus. I need to be able to keep further reaching goals and initiatives (valley-wide, state-wide, and regional) in my mind and in the works. What I'd love to do is somehow be able plan a year ahead with the Teen Services side of things (still managing to be flexible and spontaneous when the need arises) so that my deadlines won't be quite so pressing and I won't feel so behind all the time. Hopefully that would also free my mind up enough to be able to focus more on the big picture. The trick will be to somehow make this happen... Just in formalizing my thoughts though I feel like I've made a step in the right direction

Something I'm learning...

and will probably have to keep learning again and again because I'm cool like that: there really isn't enough time to do it all. You've gotta set priorities and schedules and just do it. Whatever "it" is. My current case in point: going through my reader. Here I am, a member of SPLAT, promoting education and awareness through reading blogs, and until this week, I hadn't even logged into my reader for months. Months! It's so incredibly easy to be completely engulfed in the day to day. But other things are important too and I've gotta practice what I preach. Well, I'm off to play reading catch up...

Upcoming LibraryLand Adventure

Darnit! If I had only posted this a few days ago I could have tried to cling to the shreds of my blogging dignity by claiming that I at least posted every month...oh well...

Well I'm excited and a little nervous about my upcoming adventure (the positive spin is purely for my own benefit.) I'm leaving tomorrow with two other SPLAT members for a library conference in Twin Falls. I will be co-presenting on "Emerging Technologies" and will mostly be covering online social networks with a little bit of IM thrown in. The one thing I found most frustrating in prepping and putting together my PowerPoint was trying to find useful current statistics regarding social networking in general and MySpace in particular. I lucked out on Facebook as they recently put out a blog post that had lost of good info in it and I wasn't really looking for anything particular on Ning since it's so new, but as for MySpace - good grief! I eventually found some of what I was looking for, but I really expected to find better stats more easily. It's interesting the information you don't find in that supposedly endless sea known as the internet.

When I find a bit more time, I'll have to blog about something I'm really excited about. But until then...

It's a New Year!

Well, it's a new year and one of my resolutions is to actually post to this blog with some regularity. Since I last posted I graduated with my B.A. in English Lit from BSU and started working full time at my library. YaY! I'm excited about what I'll be able to do at work now that I'm full time. Now I won't be quite so overextended with only a few hours a week to do it in. I've already managed to start one project I've had on the back burner for a long time. I've created a MySpace page for SPLAT. You can check it out HERE. It's not much yet, but I'm hoping that with the help of D we can create a really neat, really functional page. I have a personal MySpace, so it's not all foreign to me, but what I want to do with the SPLAT page goes beyond what I've done before.

I'm also working on getting a MySpace page for my library. It's a process though. I get the feeling that our Board is pretty hesitant about it due to the scare that was going on last year with DOPA. While I can kind of understand it, I can't quite accept this fear as a reason to not create our page - because I don't think we'd be able to comply with DOPA even if it were passed. There's just too much that it restricts. Even commonplace sites like Ebay and Amazon, that are used by most everyone, would get blocked. I honestly don't think we'd be able to lower the quality of service to our patrons that much. We'd have to forgo the E-Rate funding. Hopefully it all resolves itself soon (in the way I want it to) and I'll be able to create a kickin' page for my library.