Walt at Random

As I’m continuing with the 38-state, 5,957-library survey of current public library Twitter and Facebook practice, with 850 libraries left to go (but 2,406 to revisit beginning 11/25, four months after they were first checked), recognizing that it’s a heck of a lot of research for one book (a book that will not be entirely or even primarily research results)…

I think about what I’d like to do in the future–if there was an appropriate sponsoring and facilitating agency.

Sponsoring: To pay a modest sum (at least a modest hourly sum) for the research and writing. Facilitating: To make sure the results reached the appropriate audience–and maybe to extract the nationwide set of public library data (OK, so I could buy Access and extract it myself, or install a robust enough programming environment to extract it from the flat files…)

Not that I’m expecting anything like this to happen–it’s too small-scale for typical grant situations and I don’t have the institutional credentials or backing to seek such grants. Still, I think it would be highly useful to the library community, although that may also be misguided.

The idea

A true nationwide study of public library use of / presence on social networks, with possibly a few extensions on library website findability. Involving all 9,000-odd public libraries/library agencies. Ideally, done every year or every other year for at least two or three cycles.

For this to work as a one-man “crazed researcher” project, the sponsoring agency and I would have to agree on a set of data that’s plausibly gatherable in, say, three to four minutes tops for each library. At three minutes, that’s 450 hours of data gathering (but you go nuts spending more than 3-4 hours each day on this kind of work). At four minutes, it’s 600 hours. At five minutes, it’s 750 hours. I figure data analysis and writeup at 150 hours or more.

What I’m gathering now probably averages 90 seconds to 2 minutes per library, and I find I can do at most 125, maybe 150 libraries a day. Here’s what I’m doing now:

• Finding the library website if there is one, using Google and the name provided by the state library with the state name added, cleaning up some oddities as I go.
• If there is a website, following Facebook and Twitter icons or text links if they exist and work, to get the specifics below.
• If there isn’t a website or if one or both icons/links is either missing or doesn’t work, searching the first 100 results in Google for “faceb” and “twit” and, if appropriate sites are found, getting the specifics below.
• If this doesn’t work for either or both, searching within Facebook and/or Twitter to see if I can find something for the specifics below–and here are those specifics:
• For Facebook: How I got there (homepage, Google, or Facebook); the number of Likes (or Friends or Group members in special cases); currency of the latest and fifth most recent post (divided into categories of day, week, fortnight, month, quarter, six-month, year, and beyond: so, for example, libraries checked today would have date boundaries of 11/18/2011, 11/12/2011, 11/5/2011, 10/19/2011, 8/19/2011, 5/19/2011, and 11/19/2010 respectively); and whether there’s visible evidence of engagement (defined as at least one non-spam post, comment or like), recording “y” if there’s at least one comment, “l” if there are post-level likes but no comments.
• For Twitter: How I got there; the number of followers, number being followed, and total tweets; then the same currency notes; and obvious evidence of retweeting or responding (but I don’t spend a lot of time looking for this).

I’m not sure what would make sense for a longer-range, broader project, if indeed any of this makes sense at all. I think the measures so far are all useful (total tweets primarily for followup purposes–e.g., for the 380-odd libraries with Twitter accounts among the first 2,406 libraries I studied, I’ll know the tweet frequency fairly exactly). Possible additions:

• Existence of a  working MySpace link; unsure whether any visible MySpace measures are worth tracking at this point. Yes, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of libraries with MySpace icons.
• Existence of a working Google+ link (assuming this is done in late 2012 or later) and key visible measures, if those are available. Unsure whether checking for Google+ pages within Google search results or within Google+ would be useful–it’s a time sink, and for Facebook and Twitter I think the added yield for searches within the application comes out to about 0.1%-0.2%.
• Maybe existence of a working Flickr link and key measures, although Flickr is (I think) less of a social network than these others.
• Ditto YouTube…
• Possibly a number for relative placement of the library’s homepage within the Google result, although I’m not sure whether that’s meaningful.
• Maybe there are others I haven’t thought of. LinkedIn? Worth the trouble?

The idea would be to gather this over a reasonable period (3-4 months), write up a variety of results (and possibly make extracted spreadsheets available), and then redo it every other year (or every year), adding or deleting new social networks as appropriate.

What it would need

Some form of sponsorship and distribution method so that the results were widely available–and so I’d be getting some kind of remuneration for the work. (How much remuneration? Certainly in the five-figure range, with an actual figure depending on what’s feasible, whether the results would appear under my name or not, and, um, special arrangements for one or two institutions that are highly unlikely to go for this anyway. And no, MFPOFTW–my former place of full-time work–is not one of those institutions: I’d be delighted to work with them.)

This is mostly dreaming out loud. I think it would be worthwhile–but that may be wrong. I find the research fascinating (if slogging), but certainly not worth doing beyond the book’s publication if no money is involved.

If anyone’s interested and knows of a way to make this happen, you know how to contact me–comments here, mail to waltcrawford at gmail.com.

I won’t be holding my breath. I just wanted to get this down for the record.

 

“Making the case” for what, exactly? Well, really, for “semi-” still being part of my self-description as semi-retired. Oh, and for going to ALA conferences (or any library conferences) after this year, as part of staying involved in the field–which, for reasons of real economics and household harmony, needs to involve some appropriate earned income.

To recap:

• Making the Case 1 notes the solution I’d find most desirable–finding ongoing sponsorship for Cites & Insights or (and) Walt at Random.
• Making the Case 2 starts with a surprise (the shutdown of the Library Leadership Network) and considers the possibility of a new site providing diverse essays that can inform library leaders (and managers) and possibly generate conversations on relevant topics.
• Making the Case 2.5 explains some fine points (that 1 and 2 aren’t either/or, that finding a home for much of the LLN content is relatively easy but also less interesting, etc.)

I think this is the last of this post series, both because it’s getting close to ALA Annual (the ideal spot to discuss these possibilities) and because I’d rather get back to other topics.

Research

I’d love to be involved with some group involved in real-world library research, and I believe I’ve demonstrated my ability to carry out focused, transparent projects.

I did some of those projects on speculation, hoping that they would result in some modest amount of income either from book sales or, potentially, from speaking or other invitations. The results–not only monetary, but even having the research noticed–have ranged from mediocre to abysmal. It’s hard to justify doing any more projects except out of pure personal fascination, unless there’s some up-front sponsorship.

At this point, I don’t see how this is likely to happen. I’d love to be proved wrong.

Other improbabilities

When I was first looking for a new gig, three years ago, I did get a couple of offers–one to teach a library school course (after designing the course), one to do seminars. It’s also been suggested that I should become a consultant (hmm: suggest that someone out of work become a consultant–what a novel idea!)

Why haven’t I followed up on these possibilities? Turns out John Scalzi has a post today at Whatever that speaks to this situation: “The Self-Awareness of Incompetence (or Lack Thereof).” An excerpt:

I think there’s a critical intersection between being willing to try things you’re not good at (or good at yet) to learn and experience them — and thus accepting that there’s an interim period of incompetence in the area while one gets up to speed — and the self knowledge (or lack thereof) that no matter how much effort you put into something, you won’t ever reach a sufficient level of competence. Or in shorter words, there’s a cross street between “try something new” and “give it up, already,” and I think it’s interesting to find out, when people get to that particular curb, if they actually know where they’re standing.

I’ve done loads of the former–starting with computer programming and going on from there–with, usually, reasonably good results. I’m willing to continue.

But…

• I really don’t believe I’d be more than mediocre as an adjunct faculty member at a library school, and I do believe that if LIS students are to be taught by non-MLIS holders, those non-MLIS holders should be a whole lot better than mediocre.
• I know I’m not enough of a self-promoter to be a successful consultant, and the question “Consult about what, exactly?” keeps coming back to haunt me. I’m not closing this off entirely, but it’s clearly not My Future.
• As for webinars, quite apart from the ungainly name…well, not impossible, but it appears that I’m no longer in demand as a speaker (possibly for good reasons), and I think I’d be even less spectacular as a webinar presenter.

So, well, I haven’t followed up on these. Maybe that’s wrong.

Otherwise, there are always columns, articles and books. I have one book proposal (yes, with somebody else publishing it) in the works now. I suspect I’ll have one or two others along the way, although the sheer multitude of books in the field (ten at a time?) gives me pause. (One topic that’s been near & dear for many, many years might be ripe for book treatment…) Always possible–columns and articles. But with all of those, maybe books more than others, the issues of compensation and value add come into play. That is: I don’t want to write books that I don’t believe add substantial value…and most books and articles don’t really yield much of a revenue stream. They’ll be part of it, I think, but not a major part. (Psst: Thanks to the two people or institutions who’ve purchased But Still They Blog this month!)

And I think that’s it for the cluster.

Availability during ALA: Most any time Friday from noon to 6 or so, any time Saturday (period, so far), and Sunday from, say, 2 p.m. through dinner time. But contact me beforehand, ‘cuz I still travel without a netbook or notebook or iPad or iTouch or…  waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

This is a followup to this post from last week, and I won’t give it a subtitle because I’ll discuss more than one possibility. (As background: Since I lost long-term sponsorship for C&I at the end of 2009, one of my print columns was discontinued at the same time, and LYRASIS discontinued my Library Leadership Network work–at least on a paid basis–as of tomorrow, I’m looking for other possibilities if I’m going to stay semi-retired rather than fading away entirely. To date, other than LSW’s remarkable actions, there have been one or two very tentative nibbles to which I’ve responded, nothing more.)

Sponsorship of Cites & Insights is still the #1 possibility, to be sure–it’s a case where I believe there’s demonstrated and somewhat unique value, and it’s something I’d like to keep doing if I can justify it.

What of other possibilities?

• I’d love to be an adviser/consultant/participant in a center for evidence-based librarianship, doing and collaborating on real-world quantitative and qualitative research that expands the quantitative work I’ve already done (all of it essentially for nothing–or, in one case, for perhaps $2/hour net results). I have neither the foundation contacts nor other pull/contacts to try to set up such a center; you’d expect that sort of thing to be at a library school or national organization or foundation. Anyone who does have such contacts–well, I’d love to talk. I rate this as an outside chance.
• While I believe I’ve demonstrated my editorial and synthesis skills in working with a broad range of library bloggers to create worthwhile new materials, I can’t imagine who would be likely to pay me to do that work on an ongoing basis, if LYRASIS decided it wasn’t worthwhile. I’d love to be wrong here; frankly, I thought I had a remarkably good and effective network set up, and am sad to see it go away.
• Individual projects may happen, and I’m open to possibilities, but I’m now wary of doing much “on spec.” There’s also the question of whether individual projects make sense in terms of financial return vs. desirability.
• Back when I was considering future projects (with the part-time job still in place), one that stood out was the idea of creating a workshop/webinar/book/resource/whatever for libraries that wished to serve as local publishing resources, either to publish local history and other works or to support patrons who were interested in doing their own work. I haven’t entirely given up on that idea, but after a little initial enthusiasm I found very little ongoing suggestion that libraries/associations were ready to pay for such resources–or that they were actually interested in doing these new services. The complexity of designing the support system to make this work also grew…not entirely off the plate, but also not on the front burner.
• Similarly, I don’t see speaking as a likely candidate for any significant amount of income. I’ve never been a One Simple Message guru-type speaker, I’ve rarely given the same speech twice, and I suspect that the lack of invitations means I don’t really have a great track record–or at least not one that leads to lots of word-of-mouth invitations. Given the sheer joy of air travel these days, I’m not going to push this one hard–and, since I don’t go out trying to convince people they should bring me in (can you really do that and also ask for expenses plus a fee?), I don’t see it happening. Last year I had one paid engagement (OLA, and that was great); this year, so far, I have zero. I think I had my 15 years of mild prominence as a speaker, but was never a really Hot Item.
• My wife suggests using my experience doing PoD publishing, but not on a library basis. She suggests finding local organizations that need or want to do this sort of thing, volunteering initially, then being a paid adviser to those wanting to do such books. That’s interesting–but, particularly with production problems in my wife’s current attempts, problematic. It’s also, as far as I can see, a field rife with paid resources–Lulu has loads of services available for those willing to pay. Still…
• Become a consultant? On what? One problem has always been that I’m not much of a self-marketer or entrepreneur; at this point, a bigger problem is that I’m not The Expert on any one thing, and I don’t have years of library experience. Now, it’s possible that existing consultants might find my background (and name, such as it is) useful, and I’d welcome possibilities, but I just don’t see setting up a library consultancy at this point.

So I guess this makes “2 of 2″ rather than “2 of n.” And I now see why I kept delaying this series of posts…I’m somewhat of a Candide by nature, and so far this isn’t a Candide-ish situation.

No, I’m not going to become a Wal-Mart greeter. I’m not a fan of Wal-Mart, and our financial situation isn’t that bad. I might become involved with the local FOL group, but of course that’s volunteer work…

It’s once again been made clear that some librarians (including primarily, to my considerable pleasure,  librarians much younger than I) continue to value what I do. But it’s also been made clear once again that I’m highly expendable. Interesting times…

[For the record: Sales of C&I books since all this started continue to stand at zero, at least at Lulu, with one copy of my oldest self-published book sold at CreateSpace. That's also useful data...]

Well, it was fun while it lasted…

I was informed a few days ago that my services are no longer required as Editorial Director of the Library Leadership Network. As of April 1, 2010, I’m either fully retired or unemployed, depending on your perspective and what happens in the future. (No, this wasn’t my decision.)

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do next, but some things are clear:

• I could really use a sponsor for Cites & Insights (or, I suppose, a whole lot more donations than I’ve gotten so far!). That’s no longer “extra money.”
• If someone knows of something (possibly very part time, definitely not more than half time, definitely not involving relocating, possibly project-oriented) that suits my peculiar set of skills as a library writer, editor, speaker and systems analyst, I’d be delighted to hear about it. (Anybody setting up a center for serious evidence-based librarianship? I’d love to do some qualitative as well as quantitative research on how library blogs are working and what’s working best, for example, but that can’t happen without explicit advance sponsorship: Selling the results is clearly not working.)
• There’s mild urgency on one point: I’m supposed to be speaking in a program at ALA Annual this year, and with a nearly complete loss of earned income, it’s a little hard to justify the costs of the conference. I need to make some decisions within the next month or so…
• Yes, I’m delighted to be semi-retired. No, we’re not going to starve, be put out of house and home, or go begging. On the other hand, “semi-” suits me; I’d like to keep actively involved in the library field and believe I still have much to offer. It would be nice to have some portion of that involvement recognized as valuable in the form of compensation.

Feel free to get in touch (waltcrawford at gmail dot com). Of course, a solid sponsorship for C&I, including conference funding, would make this all a lot easier…

There’s a meme of sorts going around, along the lines of “Why am I a librarian?” When Steve Lawson posted his response, he broadened the theme by tagging a couple of people who are, as he calls it, “library-types” rather than honest-to-MLS librarians.

I’ll use “library professional,” which is part of a phrase I’ve used in the past: “I’m a library professional but not a professional librarian.” That is, I don’t have an ML[I]S and am increasingly unlikely ever to get one–but I’m not a “paraprofessional” or “support staff,” and indeed I’ve been in exempt (“professional”) positions for longer than I can remember, always either within a library or working on behalf of libraries. And my ALA card says “Continuous Years 34.”

There seem to be two parts to this topic: How (why?) did I become one of those library types, and why am I still in the field?

How I got here

Luck, chance, recognizing in one situation that I could provide unique skills and make a difference. To wit (sorry, long answer):

• As an undergrad (in rhetoric, then called speech, at UC Berkeley), my first part-time job (summer after freshman year–freshmen weren’t supposed to work back then) was busing at the Bear’s Lair, the on-campus dive. A few weeks later, when a library page position came open, I got out of that busing position as fast as I could. So I was a page/reshelver in Doe Library (the main library, some two million volumes, primarily humanities) from then on–and at some point, as an early riser, became one of those who helped with the Hollerith-card overdue system (the due date was punched in to the charge cards, which were then sorted manually into call number order; at 6 every morning, someone had to pull out the overdues to send notice).
• As a fledgling grad student–still in rhetoric, and beginning to realize how much I hated grad school–I was told that the full-time circ system supervisor was leaving and asked whether I’d train the replacement. I said I wouldn’t, but that I’d do the job–as a two-thirds-time employee, and I’d guarantee it would get done in a timely fashion. They bit. At two-thirds-time, I was sitting on my hands after the two or three hours a day that a diligent worker needed to carry out all the duties…
• Then I learned that, for the third or fourth time, an order had been placed for an IBM Collator–nine-month waiting period and you could cancel without penalty up to the eighth month. The idea was more automated circulation; the problem was that nobody knew how to do it, particularly since the university librarian wouldn’t allow book card pockets to disfigure the books. Doe used five different call number systems, which didn’t help. Since I’d done a lot of paging and maybe even more reshelving, I knew the call number systems cold–and said “If I can come up with a design that will work, without using book pockets, will you let the order stand?” They did, I did, I took a temporary timeout from grad school–one that eventually became permanent–and the rest follows.
• And, let’s face it, I liked the people in libraries, I always felt that libraries were about as unmixed a social good as you could find, and I’ve had reasonably frequent occasions to provide unique services: To do something nobody else would (or could) do or to do something particularly well. So I stuck with it. Didn’t hurt that I met my wife (who is a professional librarian, but was in library school at the time) in the library…

Why I’m still here

• “Where else would I be?” may not be a satisfactory answer. At this point, I’m mostly a writer and editor–but I’m a library writer and editor, after 5 decades of being that as a sideline but a library systems analyst/programmer for a living.
• I still like the people, I still regard libraries as an almost entirely unmixed societal good, I still find challenges and, once in a while, feel I’m making a real contribution.

Who I’ll tag

• Nobody. I’ve never been much for tagging. If you feel like answering, consider yourself tagged.
• My curiosity would suggest tagging a few people who write as though they dislike most libraries (at least in their current state) and most librarians. But that’s pathological curiosity, so I won’t indulge it.

Thanks, Steve. Sorry for the long reply. I’ve been posting so little recently that a free topic was too good to pass up.

Now, back to (other) writing…

I know, I know, I’ve said more than once that people shouldn’t need to explain why they’re not blogging for a while…but always with an explicit or implicit caveat: unless they want to.

I want to.

You’re unlikely to see any posts here for at least five days, maybe more–which is even a little more irregular than this irregular blog usually runs.

Why? For positive reasons, in this case–positive but also disruptive:

• Tomorrow I’ll fly out to Philadelphia, and go from there to Baltimore. (This means getting up way too early to drive to SFO instead of SJC, my favorite and closest airport–because there are nonstops from SFO to PHL, even if on airlines I’ve never used before. In this case, a 7 a.m. nonstop makes the whole trip workable.)
• What’s up in Baltimore? PALINET’s Annual Conference & Vendor Fair, at the Tremont Hotel & Conference Center, October 29-30 (with a Digitization Expo October 31, but I won’t be going to that).
• On the way from Philadelphia to Baltimore–and much more so in Baltimore–I’ll meet the people I’m working for and with in my new (part-time) position as Director and Managing Editor of the PALINET Leadership Network. Up to now, everything (including interview and hiring) has been done on the phone or via email.
• I’ll also get to meet some of PALINET’s members and start talking up the PALINET Leadership Network. I’ve gotten off to a running start over the past two weeks in setting out milestones and looking at the current beta wiki to see how things might proceed. We decided not to add me to the program as such–probably just as well, given how early it is in the process–but I will be meeting with most of the PLN Advisory Group to work through some issues I’ve identified.
• Why am I flying into Philadelphia rather than Baltimore (an airport I like quite a bit)? Because Tuesday night we’ll drive back to Philadelphia–and I’ll spend Wednesday morning at PALINET headquarters before flying back home Wednesday afternoon (just in time to help deal with trick-or-treaters, specifically the older ones from outside the neighborhood who show up after dark).
• I still travel without technology–at least for the moment–so I won’t be blogging during that period (or checking email, or reading Bloglines, or…). And chances are I’ll spend Thursday and maybe Friday writing up notes and catching up with everything. So a post prior to next weekend is fairly unlikely.
• For my LSW Meebo friends, that also means I’ll be even scarcer over the next week, as in not there at all. Which has mostly been the case since 10/15, so no big surprise…

Not that you’re likely to notice. A bunch of bloggers at IL will cause blog overload for most avid liblog readers anyway. If experience is any guide, readership numbers will probably rise as long as I don’t actually write anything (that’s not just my experience–it’s a fairly frequent occurrence).

If you need a dose of my writing, there’s always the current Cites & Insights–you can write nasty email after reading the ©3 essay, see whether you find the 12-page “Thinking About Blogging” standoffish, and try a few Trends & Quick Takes on for size.

Better yet, if you’re in a public library or library school, buy a copy of Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. (Or Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change, same link–both books also available at Amazon.com.)

I feel as though I should write two more posts “between jobs.” This is one of them.

The last six or seven months have been interesting. For most of you, this post was the first you heard about my situation. Things actually started a few weeks earlier, but initially I only contacted a dozen (or so) people. Shortly before that post, I sent similar email to more than a hundred friends and acquaintances.

Within a week, I was overwhelmed by the extent to which other libloggers picked up on my situation, and wrote this post as a followup. I also heard from more than half of the people I sent email to. In all but one case, the responses were heartwarming (and I’ll just ignore the one remarkably heartless response–at least others who really didn’t give a damn or didn’t have anything to say simply didn’t respond).

I won’t go through the other job-related posts; you can read them by selecting the “job” category from the sidebar, if you’re so inclined. I was approached by three groups, in two cases with offers that could be small parts of a patched-together consulting-style future. (The third case is still evolving and may yet be part of what I do. Oh, and I was also approached by Marydee Ojala, editor of ONLINE, with an offer to start a new column there, where I’d written for more than a decade–a suggestion I cheerfully accepted.) Along the way, I recognized two things:

• My respect for good consultants (and good adjunct faculty and good trainers) grew.
• I became aware that the kind of self-promotion required to do this effectively, while entirely valid, was so counter to my basic personality that it would substantially interfere with Cites & Insights and other writing projects.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t go that route, and probably be pretty good at it–but that it’s not my style. We also looked at our budget a couple of times during the long summer (we’ve been aggressive savers for some time, we’re terrible shoppers–that is, we don’t much like shopping and acquiring, and that all makes a difference) and came to some conclusions about worthwhile balances.

In the end, as noted here, a long-time friend, Peggy Sullivan, was the key: Not in getting someone to craft a special job for me, but in forwarding a position that she thought I might find intriguing. I did indeed find it partially intriguing; after a conversation with Ann Yurcaba of PALINET, I concluded that it could be a worthwhile challenge that made good use of my skills while encouraging me to expand those skills.

You know the rest. I’ll start in as Director and Managing Editor of the PALINET Leadership Network next Monday, with a whole lot of learning and networking to come. It’s not a full-time position, and that turned out not to be what I really wanted at this point. I’ll be back in touch with two groups, probably deferring any action indefinitely. And we’ll see what happens with one other activity…another one that plays to my skills while providing new challenges, but definitely secondary to PLN.

Mostly, then, this is to say thanks to everyone who posted, emailed, commented, hung out at LSW Meebo, and otherwise supported me during this odd quest. I was deliberately vague at the beginning, wondering what would come up. I’m delighted with the way things worked out, and could not have begun to predict that course.

Thanks. I’ll see some of you in Baltimore in two weeks and a day. I’ll see more of you in Philadelphia in just under three months. And, of course, I’ll continue emailing, posting, reading blogs, and once in a while hanging out with that odd group at Meebo for a few minutes here and there–and writing and learning.

Oh, and reading: After too many months, I was back at Mountain View Public Library yesterday afternoon. Two p.m. on a weekday at a library with excellent evening and weekend hours (including Sunday hours), so the library was…not even close to being deserted, with quite a few people in the bookstacks, a bunch at computers, a group in the Teen Zone, kids in the Children’s Room, and even one or two in the media section. Because, like any good public library, MVPL cherishes books (as do its patrons) and also goes beyond them, in a way that–to my mind–pretty much assures its future.

Hmm. Maybe that’s the other post, in two sentences. We’ll see.

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One postscript: If you see sentences with no space separating them, it’s not my sloppy typing. WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor has a nasty habit of swallowing paragraph breaks–sometimes even when you’ve put in the HTML. Some day, I’m sure they’ll fix that; some day, I’m sure Microsoft will fix the Vista notebook wifi problem…

I think it’s worth noting that the PALINET position discussed here didn’t just come to me–and I didn’t happen upon the job posting by scouring all available library jobsites.

A friend forwarded the job posting to me, with the thought that I might find it interesting.

Dr. Peggy Sullivan was ALA Executive Director when I was LITA President. A few years before that, she was ALA President. She was a pleasure to work with back then (when I was LITA President–when she was ALA President, I was a fledgling in the organization and exclusively associated with ISAD, the former name of LITA). She believes in what she does and believes in people. She’s had a distinguished career. I’m honored to call her a friend.

And, to be sure, as promised in a very early job-related posting, I’ll be sending her a complete autographed set of my books–past, present and future.