Thursday, October 15, 2009

Ten Commandments for Librarians - not in any particular order

I was thinking of listing Ten Commandments for librarians. I had to pause for a while but thanks to comments from friends and fellow bloggers I am upto 10 now.

  1. Acquire: as in collect for your library
  2. Weed: can't stress how important this is if you want to acquire new items
  3. Read: Of course you are supposed to have read every book in the world - but kidding aside read, read, read... it can be anything.
  4. Lead: be a leader and come up with innovative ideas - have a vision
  5. Manage: Know when to pull the reigns - budgeting, staffing, etc
  6. Update or be up to date: in terms of what is happening in the technology world, library world or just world in general
  7. Learn: learn how users learn, learn new technology, so you can be a better teacher
  8. Teach: as in teach computer classes, catalog search, database search, etc
  9. Synthesize: anything you read, learn or update yourself with - use it. Example: if you learn of a new computer program or social networking site, see how you can use it to your library's advantage
  10. Listen: this is a very important skill. Without listening we don't understand the question and we cannot have a reference interview.

7 comments:

ush said...

:D
good luck with the muse.
good ones so far.

crafty_penguin said...

Explore?

Anonymous said...

I guess Learn could be Epxlore. Perhaps I should say Learn/Explore

Rajeev said...

Interesting post! Not sure whether your muse will consider these:

Research: Read widely and deeply from a variety of sources in all areas/fields.

Synthesize: Combine scholarship in a coherent manner

Connect: Seek connections across texts/media.

Ignore if they are not useful.

Anonymous said...

Update and Read could be Research. But I like Synthesize and Connect.

Amos said...

Cnn include Digitize as old data newspapers can be digitized and indexed so that any one can read them without tearing them (old is gold!!)

Library Lady said...

How about "listen"? We must listen to be good librarians.

We know that what a patron is asking for is often not exactly what she/he wants.

The reference interview requires that we listen and extrapolate.

Just a thought...