Month: February 2016

Leaving the library, going to #beyondcomments

Posted on by jessamyn

OK many of us know that online comments suck, but why do they suck and how can we make them not suck? I went to a conference to explore that topic.

index

One of the better pieces of advice I’ve heard from people within a single industry is that there’s a lot to be learned from cross-pollination… going where people are who don’t necessarily share your preconceptions and learning about what is important to you. I’ve been out of the community management game from a job perspective for a few years now but I remain interested in how to achieve great user experiences and community engagement from a library perspective, and interacting with the tech world with that same mentality. The Coral Project is a group trying to do just that. Their seed funding comes from journalism originally, but their lessons apply all over the place. If you’re curious I suggest signing up for their low-volume newsletter or reading along on their blog.

This weekend they had a conference. I usually look forward to all day weekend conferences the same way you’d look forward to a complicated dental appointment but this was a GREAT event: well managed; well-attended, well documented. I don’t want to go over anything you could read elsewhere but I’ll point you to the important bits.

And then, doing my librarian thing, I extracted URLs and Twitter handles from the notes and organized them. You can follow links to things you might be interested in here. Corrections welcome.

Coral & Conference Ppl

Coral: https://twitter.com/coralproject
Andrew Losowsy https://twitter.com/losowsky
Matt Carroll  https://twitter.com/mattatmit (local organizer)
Sydette Harry: https://twitter.com/blackamazon
Greg Barber https://twitter.com/gjbarb
Anika Gupta: https://twitter.com/DigitalAnika (local organizer)
(more staff at this URL)

Lightning talks

Panel

Post-Lunch Panel

Second Lightning Talks

Collected URLS

my world of work and money 2016 edition

Posted on by jessamyn

I did a similar post about this on my personal blog in 2010. For someone who says “I am a librarian” I think it’s useful sometimes to discuss how and when I get paid and by whom. I know people are curious, they often ask. The work news in my life is that I’m upping my hours at the Internet Archive so that I’m now officially half-time. I am pleased about this and I hope it lasts. Since my father died I’ve had a buffer of cash available to me (and my sister) as a back-up which means I’ve been able to do a few “riskier” things that weren’t necessarily lucrative but were otherwise fulfilling. Working at the Archive and Open Library was one of these. Doing some consulting was another. My income covers my bills which, through sheer luck, doesn’t include student loans and, through some attention on my end, doesn’t include any consumer debt. Here’s a chart.

pie chart of the amount of $ I've made writing, consulting, librarianing

The interesting thing to me is how many governments I got paid by. The W-2 money is basically three governments (two different checks from my town, for working at the school and the library, one from my state for teaching at the tech college) plus the Internet Archive. The 1099 money is mostly consulting and talks. I got paid by two state library associations, one state library (twice) and one city library system. The consulting was for two town libraries, a high school and one private company. My writing gigs included royalties for both of my books ($128 total), one lucrative article for the Mozilla Foundation, my column for Computers in Libraries and a lot of crazy start-up money from Medium who laid off nearly their entire slate of writers for The Message and replaced us with younger cheaper writers. It was good while it lasted. I made some random money AirBnBing out my house and doing one Justice of the Peace gig.

All in all it was a mid five-figures year that did slightly better than paying for itself which is my nominal goal.

What I wanted to be when I grew up

Posted on by jessamyn

There was an interesting thread on ALA Think Tank where people talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I never wanted to be a librarian, though I liked the librarians that I knew. I wanted to be a writer though I wasn’t sure how you did that. I liked writing and I had the same name as a writer so I figured that would help. I was just digging through some old paperwork and I found my statement of professional concerns from when I ran for ALA Council. This is from 2002, so nearly 15 years ago

ala council statement

With the exception of the slightly over-the-top “family farms” aside, I still stand by this 100%, possibly even more now than I did then. And since then I’ve felt a lot more able to actually implement my ideas about the way the world of libraries and technology should work. I am very grateful that I work within a profession where I can be relevant and useful and effective in my late 40s and work with both older and younger members of my profession to create meaningful change. I even get to write a little as well. I’ve been updating my resume lately, not because I’m looking for work but just because it is a good thing to do, and will try to find a way to work this in there somewhere.