Changes in Library Administrative Personnel

All members of the KCKPL Library staff received an email from the Assistant Director of Libraries announcing her resignation. We all have opinions on her resignation, on what it means for the Administrative branch of our system, and on what it means for our library system's future.
2011 should be an interesting and intense year. A term that was soaked into us at library school was "paradigm shift" and it would appear KCKPL is in the midst of a shift of leadership. But, I, for one, believe in the person at the top.
I plan on spending part of my holiday leave reviewing a couple of important documents which were design to define the philosophical direction of KCKPL: our strategic plan and our technology mission statement. And then I will grant myself some time of self reflection of where I have been in KCKPL during my first ten years and how I can continue serving KCKPL in the future.

One more reason why I admire the King's Singers

The King's Singers are performing in Atlanta, GA tonight. The Salvation Army is promoting their concert. And the six-member singing group is donating 100% of their concert proceeds to the SA's Red Kettle drive to assist people in the Atlanta, GA community. I don't know how frequently the King's Singers do this, but this gesture amps up my respect for the group even further.

Random thoughts

I know it has been a long time since I blogged, but here are some random library-related thoughts:

• I do believe the mixture of patrons using the computer lab (upon my observations) is one-half recreational (including YouTube, Facebook, and games) and the other half practical (including job searching, resume writing). I helped one gentleman navigate a JobCorp site and I helped a lady save email attachments to her flash drive.
• Just received an email from my branch manager speaking to the budgetary difficulties that another library system is having in town, including the reconstructing of their ILL policies.
• We are getting a higher number of patrons using our WiFi and the number of patrons asking if we have WiFi printing is increasing.
• How soon will it be until we implement smartphone technology into library programing? I've been reading articles from library tech pundits saying we are not too far away in developing apps for library functions such as placing holds or catalog lookup or even paying fines.
• Finally, I taught 6 computer classes for November with a total of 80 patrons in attendance.