For new library school gradates, or for more seasoned librarians ready for a change, entering the job market can be an intimidating, frustrating experience. We hear that there are no jobs available, and that the few libraries that do advertise new openings are inundated with applications. Perhaps less publicly, we also hear administrators express concerns […]

Introduction Almost three years ago, Emily Ford wrote a post on ALA’s membership pyramid.  In this post, she commented on the need for the American Library Association to engage people she called Level 2 and Level 3 members – those who paid dues to ALA but who were not involved or only marginally so.  She […]

All I want for 2010: Brief notes about practical or totally pie-in-the-sky ideas for things we’d like to see happen in our libraries, in libraries in general, or in the profession We thought the New Year would be a good time for us to get together and do another group post; what do we want […]

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest author, Kristine Alpi! Kris is the Director of the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Library of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University Libraries. Why do document delivery technologies limit information transfer? The technologies that libraries use for interlibrary loan and document delivery […]

If you want to start a passionate conversation, ask a past Emerging Leader (EL) about their experience in the ALA Emerging Leaders program. Created by former ALA President Leslie Burger as one of her presidential initiatives in 2007, Emerging Leaders was initiated to put new librarians “on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership” […]

So ALA has joined the ranks of two point oh. Last month it rolled out ALAConnect, a service influenced by Ning, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Docs, and other online networking platforms and shared work spaces. Despite the hoopla about the system I hadn’t even heard of it until one of my working groups was asked to […]

Only a few information technology organizations predict the future by inventing it.1 One of the canonical examples is Xerox PARC, which in the early 1970′s produced the first mouse, pioneered Graphical User Interfaces, invented Ethernet, and developed the first laser printer, along with dozens of other innovations. Among contemporary organizations, the inheritor of this lineage […]

Since October something has been weighing on my professional mind: my abusive relationship with Google. I love Google, I don’t ever want to leave my Gmail, my Gchat, my GoogleDocs, my web searches, my Google Reader, but right now I wish I weren’t so dependent on it. The weight to which I am referring is […]

“…i [sic] only renew [my ALA membership] out of a sense of professional obligation, and also because of the fear that i’ll [sic] put it on my resume and get busted as not being a member.” –c-dog Membership in the American Library Association means professionals are bound together by the tenets of librarianship. Technically, this […]