Welcoming Cynthia to the LG Blog Team

When Pete, Robert and I originally discussed Library Garden one of our original goals was to have voices on the blog team that represented a spectrum of views about libraries and librarianship. In particular, we wanted diversity in terms of types of libraries and also years of experience to ensure that we could have a variety of perspectives to add to our conversation.

We talked earlier this summer about adding a blogger that would represent the voice of a current LIS student or recent graduate and we have finally found one who is willing to join us. The bloggers of LG e are pleased to welcome Cynthia Lambert as our "newbie" voice.

I asked Cynthia to send me some biographical background information to put in her welcome post. Here is her response:

In brief:

Cynthia Lambert

Librarian-to-Be

Former Cubicle Dweller

MLIS Candidate at Rutgers

Loves to knit, geocache, scrapbook, read, and spend time in the garden.

A bit longer:

Cynthia is a part-time library assistant at Princeton Public Library while completing her MLIS at Rutgers. Her focus is on Adult Reference and User Instruction. Prior to entering the library profession, she was a financial analyst for ten years. Cynthia loves to knit, geocache, scrapbook, read and spend time in the garden with her husband and giant cat Bocce.

I hate to tell Cynthia that her days as a cubicle -dweller may not be over. I am a librarian and I dwell in a cubicle most of the day. Do you?

Reason #454 to Love Being a Librarian

Inspired by a post over at A Wandering Eyre, I have decided to post yet another reason to love being a librarian: you are sometimes lucky enough to be the muse for a poet!

I was reluctant to post this at first, but after telling Amy about this yesterday over snacks at Applebee's (and seeing Michelle's post today), I guess I will share. Here’s the back story…

Romina Gutierrez and I had a tour and lunch with the some of the staff at Princeton University Press a few weeks back. While at their offices we noticed that they had the newest biography on Garibaldi on display, it was hot off their presses and being released that week. We were able to get a freebie copy during the course of our conversation – but it was not for the PPL collection that we wanted the freebie. We wanted to get this for one of our favorite long-time customers, an elderly gentleman who takes a bus some distance and then walks several blocks to reach us so he can do research on Garibaldi at our library. He has been here on an almost daily for as long as I have worked here (9+ years). The staff all know him by name and we have literally purchased or done an ILL on every book and article every published about Garibaldi by this point.

When he was given his own copy of the new Garibaldi biography to keep, he was deeply moved – we knew he would be happy, but we had no idea how happy. Here is the poem he wrote and typed on his typewriter and mailed to administration to give his thanks. It brings a smile to my face to read it (I have it on my bulletin board next to my desk).

O Janie! O Romina!
Wish I knew a better way,
To let my heart (thank you) say,
For your generous book gift,
Giving my sagging spirit a lift.
Newest bio, I do not own,
On “Garibaldi” which I’m prone.
To some librarians, well known,
Thrives the noble gestures pull,
Into that zone of the wonderful.
Eye-ing graciousness hue
Embedded in Library’s two.
In parting, I will plead
Words are _______ next to the deed.
-- A.C.

Anyone care to share Reason #455 to love being a librarian? Perhaps the making of a meme...

Crickets in the Garden

I hear the sounds of crickets in the garden -- the Library Garden, that is! My guess is that not only myself but all the other members of our blog team have been swallowed whole by September and all that it entails with the start of the academic year, new jobs, and new programs to plan. Not to mention that we have had a lot of good weather in NJ the last few weeks and I, for one, am taking time to enjoy it while I can. I do believe that this is officially the longest our blog has been quiet.

When Pete, Robert and I first talked about starting Library Garden we really felt that having 6-7 contributors was essential. The three of us all knew that our schedules would not allow for us to have individual blogs that we could maintain with any sort of consistency, but we felt we had a good shot if we had a team to blog with us. Our strategy has worked so far and I know that this silence on LG is just a matter of life trumping blogging for a few weeks.

Email Woes ... and the answer to my woes?

I have spent the better part of the last 5 days at work writing emails, responding to emails, trying to delete as much email as possible, organizing email, and so on. I used to absolutely love email when I first started using it 15 years or so ago. Now, not so much. In fact, I would have to say that at this very moment that email is my arch-nemesis.

I have long thought about declaring email bankruptcy, but I know that this is not really a viable option for a variety of reasons. Still, I dream about actually doing it one day and can imagine that it would feel very liberating.

In the not too distant past I had a rule of thumb for my inbox at work: No more than 100 messages at any given time and I was not allowed to leave on Friday until I was below my 100 quota. Messages either had to be answered, deleted or filed. The ones that remained were generally there for a good reason.

My current inbox is suffering from a severe case of bloat -- both in terms of the number of messages that it contains and the length of those messages. I generally have in excess of 1,000 messages in my inbox and at the current moment I am approaching 1,600 (largely due to the email that accumulated during annual in DC). This does not include my spam or junk folders, this is legitimate email. My email flood began last summer when I took over as Program Coordinator at MPOW. I never imagined that organizing programs for a library would require such intense email efforts (and I will leave my rant about voice mail for another day).

Since I feel unable to surrender to email bankruptcy, I am thinking that the Web Worker Daily has delivered my solution to me : Stop being "Nice". A light bulb went on as soon as I read the following:

We’re suffering from outdated rules and expectations about email that don’t work in our email-saturated world. Perhaps short emails without extra niceties are not just acceptable but preferable in our connected world on the web. Now that we have better ways of connecting on a human level (think IM, IRC, blogging) maybe we can put email back into its rightful place as merely a convenient way of communicating when we don’t have a real time connection..

... for getting work done on a daily basis, we could all benefit from an email etiquette that calls for short and to-the-point messages.

.

I admit that I am guilty of being "nice" in many of my email transactions and perhaps this is what is really slowing my productivity down. I am going to work on being a little less nice and a lot more to the point in my email from now on. Any tips on how I can accomplish this would be appreciated -- oh, and if anyone else wants to share the bloat of their inbox it might be interesting to see how many of us our caught in the flood.

One year and 200 posts later...

Today you're invited to join us in celebrating two milestones at the Garden: It's our one year anniversary, and by coincidence, this is our 200th post. I guess it's appropriate that the Library Garden sprouted up during the first week of Spring!

Some random thoughts:

First, It's been an honor and a pleasure blogging with the other regular bloggers here at LG, Janie, Robert, Marie, Amy and Ty. Old friendships have deepened, while new ones have been formed. The idea for Library Garden sprung into my head about 15 months ago, and was largely inspired by the wonderful group-blogging that was going on over at It's All Good. A special thanks to Alice, Alane, George and Eric for showing us how it could be done. (Chrystie came along later, and a fine addition she's made. Congrats on the LJ M&S!)

A special note of thanks also to Janie and Robert, for immediately agreeing to do the blog and encouraging me to get off my duff and actually start it. I could not imagine two more spirited partners!

I'd also like to thank Michael Stephens, Jenny Levine and Karen Schneider , three generous souls, for their early and continuing support. Thanks so very much for the link love, the encouragement, the comments, and the advice. If IAG inspired me to get going, you three inspired me to keep going.

Finally, I want to thank everyone (oh my god, this kinda sound like an Oscar speech...'my mom, sniff, my dad, snuffle...') who actually ever reads this blog. I'm always kind of surprised when I realize that anybody is reading it. So thanks for sweeping your peepers across our page.

Looking back over the last year I see that the Garden, while not sticking 100% to our original vision, has nevertheless found it's niche in the biblioblogosphere. My goals for the next year are to post a little more frequently and a little more personally, to do more interviews, to encourage more guest posting, and to add a new voice or two to the regular roster.

With much gratitude and appreciation in my sleepy little heart,

-Peter

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