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April 26, 2006

How To Do It All: Tips from 5 Effective Library Leaders

With moderator Kathy Schalk-Greene (Mount Laurel Library) posing questions to five speakers, this session was a stream of excellent ideas, tips and inspirations. A few central questions served as guideposts, allowing each presenter to tell us how they work a demanding job, stay up-to-date with new ideas, be involved professionally and manage to have a personal life.

I'll present the stream of ideas in my own stream of phrases that I hurriedly wrote down.

Special skill you learned early in career: Never take "no" for an answer; Challenge convention; Challenge yourself or else it gets boring; Why get stuck in a routine? Be flexible; Do not let fear rule you. Acknowledge fear; It's the first step; Ask for help.

Role of technology in your career: Use technology to manage time and to communicate; Experiment with technology as it emerges; Adapt it as it fits your need or task; Favorites GoToMyPC.com, Yahoo Calendar, RSS, blogs, Furl/del.icio.us, IM.

Balance between professional & personal life: Don't try to do it all; Make choices; Strive to balance by give and take; Change course when necessary; Revisit your choices; Let work take over at times; Let family & home take over at other times; Work can be a welcome escape from home and vice versa; You have the option of switching back and forth.

Fostering communication with staff: All types of communication has its place; Bad news has its place; Communicate using more than one channel/method; Meetings, social events, one-on-one conversations; Use internal blogs, staff facebooks, IM, email; Listen without judgement.

Dealing with feeling overwhelmed: Allow yourself to feel the fear; Regain perspective; Prioritize; Do what needs to get done right now; Put off what can wait; Take one step and only one step; With one step down, take the next; Reframe and refocus;

Your best advice: Be a good person to be around-positive, friendly, well-informed; Be open to possibilities; Life is not a straight path-be willing to take new routes; Never stop learning.

These great tips came from the following library leaders: Peter Bromberg (SJRLC), Leslie Burger (Princeton Public Library & ALA-president-elect), Mary Martin (Glen Rock Public Library), Kurt Wagner (David and Lorraine Cheng Library-William Patterson University)

Posted by Ranjna Das at April 26, 2006 10:47 AM

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Posted by: Peter Bromberg at April 27, 2006 11:45 PM

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