Reading Time: 6 minutes
The time has finally come. When my twin brother was taken hostage by the Russian government over 4 years ago, we tried to preserve his online life in amber for his return. This involved taking control of his accounts as best we could. Now Twitter and Google have announced inactive accounts will be deleted. I
Continue Reading When Push Comes to Shove
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I had some small hopes that generative AI—like Google Glasses and Facebook Smart Glasses—would be a flash in the pan. It still might be. But Microsoft and Google have now embedded it into their search and so it has become inescapable from an information searching perspective. It was interesting to me, then, to see a use
Continue Reading Tech When Tech Is Needed
Reading Time: 10 minutes
I work in a service profession. There’s nothing worse than when something gets in the way of the customer being served. Sometimes it’s within our control to remedy and sometimes it’s not. Law libraries intermediate most of our electronic materials, so if a legal information provider fails to function, we don’t really have much to fall
Continue Reading It’s a You Problem
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I struggle with perspective on a regular basis. You look at a problem and you see it one way and then you talk to someone else and they see it differently. Sometimes it’s just two ways of seeing something but, when you’re making a decision, the difference can determine how or whether you invest resources. The
Continue Reading Out of Frame
Reading Time: 12 minutes
AI chat doesn’t hold a lot of interest for me. It’s social search: search results presented in a way that imitates a human interaction. To that extent, it will feel like a reference interview for people who use it, with an AI guesstimating appropriate resources. As I was preparing to speak to the AALL Encore Caucus
Continue Reading AI Search Chat and Reference Interview Value
Reading Time: 10 minutes
I’ve just completed my first year in my new role. I was reflecting on the time while it’s still somewhat fresh. The rule of thumb is not to change too much in the first 12 months, but that wasn’t possible in this role. What is most interesting is to look back at a list of potential
Continue Reading First Year Report Card
Reading Time: 11 minutes
We value what we can measure. In law libraries, that means we sometimes value only a subset of what is actually valuable in our organizations. But metrics can help you to show funders and decision-makers like governance boards your impact. Web-based metrics may be a growing part of the measurements we use, as physical metrics—foot traffic,
Continue Reading Turn On the Analytics Flow
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I run a bunch of web apps. It’s usually pretty easy. Each app updates as new features or fixes roll out. They all run on PHP and I have worked with them for a couple of years or more each. After an update, I can usually get in and fix things that aren’t working. But recently,
Continue Reading Careful Migration
Reading Time: 8 minutes
Over the last couple of years, I’ve done a lot of virtual meetings. Mostly interviews, if I’m exact about it. One morning, as I was preparing to join a media platform, I hit peak frustration. I had slowly added about a half dozen virtual meeting apps to my PC and this platform required yet another one.
Continue Reading Reasonable Expectations
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I’m coming up on my first year working directly with a governance board again. As some of you will know, a board will have its own personality. You may have one that is right in the middle, neither hot or cold. Some boards I’ve worked with will have one or two very active members. Those can
Continue Reading A Delicate Dance
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I am working on a presentation for an AALL caucus in the next month. It’s given me a reason to play around with Microsoft PowerPoint’s Cameo feature. It validated a concern that I have about virtual presentations, which is that the speaker and the presentation are split, visually, and that it doesn’t need to be that
Continue Reading A Cameo Appearance
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Twitter remains a key social media tool for me. Its value has substantially diminished in the last 6 months, although some recent changes like view count have been enlightening, emphasizing that diminution if anything. I have used TweetDeck as well, which is a Twitter tool that enables post management. It has lagged behind – or been
Continue Reading All Hands on Deck
Reading Time: 9 minutes
I read a lot about management and leadership. Other than my family, the people I work with are among the most important people to me. It’s not that we’re all great friends. I think I’m a difficult person to be friendly with, I’m pretty private. But when you run an organization, those people are your responsibility.
Continue Reading What is Your Baseline?
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Empathy is a foundational leadership skill. The ability to understand another’s feelings is integral to understanding how to work with them. It can help you understand what motivates them. Or when they are pushed to their limit and you need to ask less of them. But I am struggling with fear.
Empathy, and its manifestation as
Continue Reading Out of Reach
Reading Time: 9 minutes
This blog is a multi-purpose outlet for me. It was fun to have to really stop and think about why that is. AALL asked me and Sarah Glassmeyer to do a coffee chat recently. The starting point was what we put out on the internet and why. As with any final product, the coffee chat left
Continue Reading Whys and Wherefores of Content Sharing