Scholarly article, Choosing a title for your

Since there is so much dreadful stuff published in professional journals and presented at professional meetings, it's important to come up with a snazzy title for your scholarly endeavors. Below are some general guidelines, presented as potential article titles:

• The colonization of library literature: using punctuation to spice up your article titles.
• Proprefixualization: Using prefixes and suffixes to create new buzz words.
• Misutilization of the word utilize: Mangling the English language in the name of librarianship.
• Bland, boring, and banal: Alliteration as an alleviator for sub-par scholarship.

Salary, On Accepting A Really Low One Because You're Too Wussy To Ask For What You're Really Worth

Do everybody in the field a huge disservice by accepting an MLS-level position for 10- , hell 20-, thousand dollars less than what you should be getting. Do not negotiate with the prospective employer after an initial offering is made. This will ensure that the median salary for librarians stays somewhere between the 'secretary' and 'garbage man' levels. And don't ask for raises or bonuses, either.

Recruiting new librarians

It is your responsibility to recruit people to the profession of librarianship. Evangelical librarians can accomplish this task by inflating the inherent coolness of librarianship ("We are defenders of freedom!"), pretending to enjoy professional reading and meetings ("ALA is like Lollapalooza!"), and by lying about how much they enjoy their work (I just read novels all day!").

After all, if we don't see to it that the job market is supersaturated, who will accept those jobs that offer insultingly low salaries?

Minutes, Working mundane things into the

A fun exercise for your work meetings is to see who can work the most mundane item into the official minutes of the meeting. Some examples:

• Periodicals will be purchasing a new pencil sharpener for public use.
• Interlibrary Loan reported adding a second address line to the ILL forms.
• Bathroom lights should be turned off each night at closing.
• The Reference Department staff should turn off computer monitors each evening, but leave the PCs on for virus software updates.
• All library staff were reminded to refill ice trays in the staff lounge.

This game will not only increase your appreciation of library minutiae, but also make people read the minutes.

Management Via E-Mail

Make sure that your underqualified, promoted-once-too-often manager ass avoids direct communication with staff by sending out pissy e-mails regarding triffling, unimportant issues, instead of making an effort to communicate directly and verbally. This will give you an air of importance; it will make you seem like you're too important to talk to your loser staff. Don't worry about sinking the morale of your staff by being a non-verbal e-mailer. Instead, worry that maybe your staffers think you've become a useless coward.

Power struggles, Participating in public

Workplace power struggles can be publicly manifested in a number of ways: personal interactions, mass email, physical posture, etc. Want to get involved?

Ways to challenge the authority of your committee chair...

• Call a meeting and set the primary agenda items
• Arrive early and sit at the head of the table -- normally occupied by the Chair
• Conduct the business of the meeting (give handouts, ask for departmental reports, etc.)
  
• Rephrase what the Chair says in your own words (for everyone else's benefit)
  
• Be aggressive and doggedly defend your ideas, regardless of relevance
• Re-send (to the committee) mass email messages the Chair has already sent to the committee members.
  

This is just a start. Be creative and seize the power.

Meetings, Scheduling

Do not schedule committee meetings (that are not "lunch meetings") during the traditional lunch hour (12:00-1:00). If you are not paying for or preparing lunch for everyone, you should schedule the meeting in the morning or the afternoon. It is also courteous to allow a 30-minute buffer on either side of the traditional lunch hour because not everyone eats at exactly the same time you do.

J