So I read Johnson's book and it didn't blow me out of the water for her writing style, nor the constant references to herself, but I thought she had some good chapters for a librarian to be to read in terms of what s/he can do with the MLS degree. My favorite being creating 2nd Life libraries which can be explored in a 3rd space.
But I digress. Johnson's keynote was more of a "rah- rah- sis- boom- bah-" for a profession which is under scrutiny for their relevance in the digital age especially as many (or at least those in the public eye) are employed by governments or are funded by government money (school libraries, public libraries, academic libraries). But I suppose this was a good thing, because you know, we could use the moral booster. Some quote to take home and use when our necessity is called into question. Here are a few:
"Libraries are the engines of democracy."
Libraries are:
"Books, Social justice, Free speech, Open access & Privacy. Not covered in billboards. Neutrality, Value questions- not sitting in judgment, an Intellectual service..."
She urged librarians to:
"share more than books- cake pan collections; tools; create unusual collections"
"put patrons to work applauding you" - basically, instead of responding to a thank you with you're welcome, ask patrons to tell someone else about their experience and to pass it forward.
Librarians can provide a pre-address, stamped post card for patrons to fill out their positive experience and send on to political officials OR have a link on the site which allows patrons to email their positive experience directly to politician's email.
All in all, a nice speech with some good pointers to implement, but not what I was expecting. Which is a different post.
1 comment:
from a different workshop, another cool comment was to mail the annual report to all tax paying residents to alert them to the successes of the library.
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