I’ve started working on a new website project for my new job (another library). Most of the groundwork was laid down by my predecessor, so I don’t have to do everything from the ground up, which is kind of nice. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t do some research myself. So I went to user experience blogs I knew, and did some poking around. These are the things I’m reading now:
Working Through Difficult Workplace Situations: Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes
In almost every interview I’ve had, I’ve been asked how I deal with difficult workplace situations. Often, they’ll ask for an example of one such situation, and how I handled it.
I find these questions difficult to answer partly because my work doesn’t involve many difficult situations with other colleagues, partly because I’m bad at remembering, and partly because of how I view disagreements.
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Book Review: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
This may be my favorite book now. I rarely give anything five stars, because to me that means the book was perfect. Even though I read a lot, I am rarely so thoroughly engrossed in the world of the character and able to feel as they do. I found myself thinking about this book while at work, and wondering how Cyril was doing.
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What Not to Do on Your Library Website, or the Library Websites’ Hall of Shame: Quick Links
Welcome to my Hall of Shame series. One of the many things I work on as a librarian is websites, more specifically, the usability, accessibility, and navigation of a website. In this series I will show examples of website sins libraries commit, and explain why they’re not good ideas. In all of my examples, the names of the libraries, and any other identifying information, will be blacked out to protect those guilty of these sins.
This time we’re talking about having a navigational item on your library’s website called “Quick Links.” Below are three examples of library websites that use the term” Quick Links” as a navigational item. These are by no means the only libraries that do it, so if your library is guilty of this, listen up.
Who and Where are the Librarians?
I was talking with a woman a couple of weeks ago, and she was surprised to learn that the Environmental Protection Agency has librarians. It hadn’t occurred to her that librarians existed outside of the traditional public library setting, and especially into a corporate or government setting. Yet, as I was talking with her she described to me a person at her company who most likely is a librarian, but doesn’t have that word in her title. This isn’t surprising; most people have only interacted with a librarian in a public library setting, but there are many other types of libraries and librarians.
So who are these librarians, and where do they work?
Dhruti Bhagat-Conway 