Updating Your Dumb Blog at Work

One word: Don't!

Bathroom Breaks, Taking More Than You Need When Working With Annoying Co-Workers

Feel free to just leave the reference desk for 15...hell, 20 minutes at a time when working alongside annoying co-workers. If pressured to provide your whereabouts, your excuse will be: "I have a bad case of the shits, dude."

Utilization, Using the word

Something they should teach in library school...

u til ize (tr. v.) To put to use, esp. to find a profitable or practical use for.

USAGE NOTE: Many critics regard utilize as an unnecessary and pretentious substitute for use. But this is not true in all cases. Utilize can mean "to find a profitable or practical use for." Thus, the sentence The teachers were unable to use the new computers might mean only that the teachers were unable to operate the computers, whereas The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers suggests that the teachers could not find ways to employ the computers in instruction.

From The American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th edition.

J

Resume, Updating your

An academic librarian shouldn't have a resume, but a curriculum vitae. This is apparently Latin for "long boring resume" and can be referred to as a "C.V." for short. A CV should contain a list of every meeting you've ever attended, every association you've ever been on the mailing list for, and every time you've spoken within earshot of your Dean or Department Head. Ever written a letter to the editor of your local weekly newspaper? Heck, throw that in too!

CVs, being longer than traditional one-page resumes, require more than the traditional one-page cover letter. You should try to summarize -- in narrative form -- every single item that is listen on your CV. Brevity won't get you a job, but prosaic self-congratulation will!

Expert search committee member,
J

Professional Associations, On Avoiding Like the Plague

Professional Associations can provide valuable information, opportunity for networking, the wherewithal to consolidate opinions, and the ability to form or change paradigms within a professional field, except in Library and Information Science. Avoid all library associations as if they were deadly diseases, even if your employer pays the bill. A good librarian boycotts these aloof cliques in order to one day start up a totally new rad association for librarians who are fed up with the present 'system.' Such future association might be named Nü Skool Liberians or possibly Infopro's On Da Loose or some other similar awesomely-named title. There might be a microchip implanted under the member's skin for identification purposes (thereby making sure that old-schoolers don't try to infiltrate the new association).

Meetings, How to have effective

Are you finding that your meetings aren't as effective as they could be? Here's plan!

1. Have a pre-meeting meeting to discuss what will happen in the meeting.
2. Have the meeting (as usual).
3. Have a post-meeting meeting to discuss what just happened at that meeting.
   

This works best when the three meetings are back-to-back-to-back. Also, a change of scenery helps give attendees a fresh perspective, so move the meetings from room-to-room.

J

Listservs, Taking Over and Making A Nuisance of Yourself On

Speaking of Listservs, don't forget to horde the spotlight by commenting, berating, patronizing and intimidating the poster of every single message that comes through the Listserv. This type of behavior should begin in Library and Information Science school, and should get gradually worse once you start your first professional job. One day, you'll be so notoriously obnoxious that your behavior will insure that every single intelligent librarian who reads the Listserv will be too intimidated to post. This will drive all of the bright people in our profession into radio silence mode and keep internet superheroes such as yourself believing that their abrasive, condescending 'characters' matter. Also, make sure that you post at least 5 jokes, recipies, chain-emails or other miscellaneous messages per day. Everybody loves off-topic content as much as you do.