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Killing Fear

Librarian, administrator, and former boss extraordinaire Jenica Rogers is in the midst of posting an excellent series on "killing fear and getting things done."

Her posts are packed with important thoughts, ideas and provocations for killing fear and moving libraries forward. These are the types of conversations we need to be having as librarians and as educators.

Here is part one. But you will find them all worth reading and pondering.

Drawsome Growth

Like so many others I was drawn into the Draw Something craze. What is shocking (aside from my terrible puns) is that the app is only 6 weeks old and has been downloaded 20 million times. This makes Draw Something is one of the fastest growing apps of all times. According to their CEO it's earning it's makers 6 figures per day. Not too shabby.

What can we learn as librarians from this version of what is essentially a digital Pictionary? Perhaps it's time to rethink some of the things we do that we take for granted.

How do we know what to target? Let's look at our statistics to see what services are currently less effective than we hope for or look to see what services show the biggest drop in usage over the last ten years. Most importantly let's ask our users. 

Here's the full story from Business Insider.

Image via Best of Draw Something

Update: OMGPOP the developer of DrawSomething was just purchased by Zynga for $180 million.

Now this could be fun.

Doodle Defense from Andy Wallace on Vimeo.

Books I read in 2011

For the last few years I've written a yearly "books I've read" entry and each year I feel like I didn't focus enough, or that I read too lightly. I'm guessing this happens because of my mindset at the time of authoring the post and not the time I'm selecting each read. So this time next year I will surely look back and think, "why did I waste time reading x?" One difference this year is the addition of books in formats other than print. I've begun listening to non-fiction audio books on my way to and from work, and reading public domain works on my Kindle (I've still not made real purchase with the Kindle (TAKE THAT AMAZON!)).

There are certainly some highlights in this list, most notably Lonesome Dove which is now easily in my top 5 favorite books of all time. As for non-fiction the Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography was spectacular.

Unlike previous years I am not setting any goals for myself in regards to literature vs nonfiction. I am just planning on reading a lot more great books.

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