goblin cartoons

At our Kansas Library Association conference presentation, an attendee asked a very good question: with all of this social networking on the internet, where the personal and the professional often blurs, what happens if a potential employer does an internet search on you and finds things that could be taken badly out of context or just outright makes them not want to hire you?

This has actually happened, hasn’t it? A potential employer finds your Facebook or MySpace page, or old blog posts, or Flickr photos, or what have you, and discovers that you’re a recovering alcoholic or a Fundamentalist Christian or a homosexual or an enthusiastic Doctor Who fan or a swinger or…well, pick something that’s perfectly legal but potentially off-putting or downright offensive to someone somewhere. And this hypothetical employer decides not to hire hypothetical you on the basis of this dug-up information. Should you do everything you can to make your online persona as professionally inoffensive as possible, to make sure this doesn’t happen? Should you lock anything potentially iffy away behind secure, friends-only barriers?

I really don’t have the right answer for you. I have what I think is the right answer for me.

So, I’ll come clean and out myself to the world. On something of a dare, I casually threw the phrase “hookers and blow” into our presentation at Computers in Libraries. And if you listen carefully during the video of the Computers in Libraries Pecha Kucha session, you can hear me yell it out from the audience. It also shows up in the caption of a picture taken of me at the conference. The phrase came from a joke I’d started in Twitter a few days before the conference, although it actually started as a joke between my wife and me. At any rate, by the end of the conference, I was joking that my professional career was over, thanks to my liberal use of the phrase at inappropriate times.

But here’s the thing: if a potential employer does an internet search and finds my professional name associated with the phrase “hookers and blow” and doesn’t bother to find out more of the context…I don’t want to work for them. If a potential employer does know the context and still doesn’t find it the least bit amusing…we won’t work well together, and it’s probably for the best if you don’t hire me.

In my life, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things I’d do differently if I could. But I’m not going to hide who I am, I’m not going to censor my online expression, just to make sure I don’t put off any and all potential employers. There are people in this world I wouldn’t want to work with or associate with, and I’m not going to waste my time worrying about what they could find out about me that they wouldn’t like. I’ve got bigger yaks to fry.

I’ve just created a Library Society of the World page on Facebook. We’re everywhere!

Thanks to my conference sister Rikhei Harris, the Library Society of the World now has a group on LibraryThing. w00t!

I flew back to Kansas City from DC on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, I got up and drove 3 hours to Wichita to present at the Kansas Library Association’s annual conference. Erin Downey Howerton, Brenda Hough and I presented on using internet tools to network, to engage in conferences and community building beyond official conferences–blogs, wikis, IM chatting, Twitter and things like the Library Society of the World.

The presentation went well, although we probably could have done the presentation in one hour, rather than stretching it into a two-hour slot. Erin and Brenda are both extremely engaging speakers, Erin bursting with loads of energy, Brenda with a calmer enthusiasm. I talked about how important the LSW is to me and others, and used Laura Crossett as an example of getting professional help from the LSW when designing her library’s new website. (Laura has apparently become the poster woman for the LSW.) The presentation was much smaller, more intimate, more conversational than my Computers in Libraries presentation, which is just fine by me. I prefer smaller and conversational overall. Oh, and getting wifi at the conference was easy, because Wichita has a free citywide mesh network.

After our presentation, I hopped back into my car and drove another 3 hours back to KC. By that time, I was exceedingly glad to be home.

A year and a half ago, at my former place of work, a coworker and I came up with the idea of ripping off the St. Joseph County Public Library‘s subject guides wiki to replace the HTML pages we had that provided web links to users of our web site. I was appointed head of a “wiki task force,” presented a proposal to the Web Committee and library supervisors, got everything approved, recruited reference staff, and started the ball rolling.

Unfortunately, I completely underestimated how much work it would take, how much I would need to get everyone else on board, how much training and advice staff would need–basically, I underestimated everything, and the project stalled and slowed down before I left to come to my current job.

But I’m very happy to say the project didn’t die, and the Olathe Public Library Subject Guides wiki has officially gone live! It’s in the basic, starter stage right now, but I expect it will grow at a nice pace now that it’s up and running for the public. Check out the wiki and let them know what you think in the comments on their blog.

In my other life in the world of tabletop role-playing games, I’ve been participating in online web forums for years. I’ve become a big fan of this form of asynchronous conversation, liking them much more than email lists or Usenet groups (even if they have approximately the same number of idiotic flamewars).

I love the Meebo chat room for the Library Society of the World, but I’ve been pretty busy at work and home lately, and I haven’t found the time to log in to chat as much as I used to. Now Tangler has appeared, a free web forum site, and I decided to try adding asynchronous conversation to the LSW mix (beyond the wiki, which is so-so for this kind of thing). I created a Library Society forum the other day and sent out some invitations, but it’s an open forum, so anyone can sign up and join in on the conversation. It’s definitely an experiment, and so far I haven’t seen an outpouring of posting on the forum. Past library forums I’ve seen haven’t really overflowed with conversation either, so maybe library folk just aren’t into forums that much (it seems to me their either heavily invested in email lists, which I pretty much detest, or stick with blogs, IMing and Twitter), but we’ll see how it goes. If it suits your fancy, go ahead and join in the forum. Add to the conversations and start your own topics.

Amy Kearns had an idea yesterday. I think it’s an interesting one.

What do you think of some sort of WORLDWIDE, 24/7, 365, volunteer, independent TWITBRARIAN or something like that (name can be something else)?

What I mean is – what I’m thinking is we are all on Twitter all (much) of the time. I know some of us are working – sometimes we’re not working – and I know it is also a source of “fun” and/or pleasure, socializing, etc., and not necessarily work, or a place we would want to end up getting work from…But – I can’t help but think of what an incredible social resource we are – all of us LIBRARIANS from all over the place on TWITTER…

Cindi Trainor has thought about it some more and put forward some good ideas (and possible pitfalls). I definitely think it’s an idea worth considering and brainstorming about. To that end, Amy has written more about her idea on the Library Society of the World wiki, created a wiki just for this idea, and reserved a couple of domain names (just in case). So let’s get crackin’!

The New York Times has released TimesMachine, a specific wayback machine that allows you to browse replicas of past issues, from September 18, 1851 to December 31, 1922. Hovering over an article brings a little box that contains the beginning text of the article and a link to read more, which opens up a PDF of the full text of the article. Each PDF even has its own URL, so you can link to it.

It’s loads of fun to play with, and I think the educational potential of this is inspiring. I’ve been looking at the news printed 100 years before I was born, and I’ve been having a ball.

Today is my birthday.

I’ve gotten used to having a birthday the day before Christmas. In fact, I rather enjoy it. But one thing that’s always been something of a drag is how cut-off from my friends I generally feel. I’ve never had a birthday party with friends on my actual birthday. My family has always been good about giving me a good birthday celebration, but because of the holidays, I’ve never gotten to have my friends around me on my birthday. It’s always made me feel a little lonely, no matter how good a time I was having with my family.

I didn’t feel lonely today. I still didn’t get to have any friends hang out with me, but I got very nice birthday wishes today from people on Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, and through email. The social web has made me feel as if I was surrounded by friends, old and new, even if they weren’t in the same room with me.

Are our libraries making people feel connected, even when we’re closed? At 3 a.m., on Christmas day, on Easter Sunday, are we connecting people with information and with other people?

Thanks to everyone who sent me good wishes today. You’ve brought a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. And in 2008, let’s see if we can’t bring more smiles and warmth to our patrons and to each other, especially at times when people can be at their loneliest.

My teammate Amy is a wizard. Today, she added a line of code to our Library homepage so that when you go there, you can add our Library catalog to your IE7 or Firefox search box. Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait here.

Back? Good, because there’s more. She also created a widget for your iGoogle page which also allows you to search our catalog. There are now two ways to search our catalog without having to go to our site at all. Pretty nifty, eh?