Colorado Writes

Excerpted from the blog So Tell Me Why You Want to Work in a Library...

Purpose

The current board of TSAD attended sessions that seemingly had nothing to do with their jobs. Erica Olivier, Chair, and Liz Neuhalfen, Chair-Elect, avoided anything technical services-related and chose programs that would, instead, help to bring diversity and thoughtfulness to TSAD in the coming year, as well as to strengthen their professional skills outside of the cataloging realm. Technical Services is not a small room, disconnected from the rest of the library and we aim to reflect that in our division.

Erica's Perspective

Ned Potter in his blog post “Moving beyond the Echo-Chamber” defined the echo-chamber as an ‘enclosed space’ where like-minded people quote your own beliefs back to you. He asks the library community: “What if we’re only really preaching to the converted? What if we have our own echo-chamber, beyond which lie the people we really need” to convince to stay worthy and relevance?¹

Libraries in the United States are currently facing cutbacks at the same time dealing with increased usage, resulting from economic hard times. When citizen patrons are in desperate need of information to deal with dramatic changes in their lives, they turn to libraries for the latest news to deal with these challenges.

Books did not make George Washington Vanderbilt II wealthy or famous—his family name did that. But books were his life. While Vanderbilt’s grandfather, father and older brothers spent their lives collecting and managing the family’s unprecedented railroad and shipping fortune, George read. He read as a child, he read while traveling abroad, he read at his North Carolina estate, Biltmore. While recovering from appendectomy surgery in Washington D.C., he turned page after page of Henry Adams’ third volume of History of the United States. He never finished it.