In Brief: In this article, co-authors Lindsay Sarin and Erin Dorney experiment with managing email (testing three existing systems), explore the idea of managing communication expectations, and consider the implications these strategies could have on our library communities. Email Everywhere Email celebrated its 41st birthday this year. Originally a technology reserved for the savviest of [...]

In the Library with the Lead Pipe welcomes Audrey Barbakoff, a librarian at the Milwaukee Public Library, and Ahniwa Ferrari, Virtual Experience Manager at the Pierce County Library System in Washington, for a point-counterpoint piece on filtering in libraries. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and are not endorsed by their employers. [...]

Introduction Let’s start off with a little background and context, just in case you haven’t been glued to the news to catch every nuance of the WikiLeaks story. The Guardian has a helpful timeline of the saga to get you (at least partially) up to speed, and if you don’t like theirs, there are plenty [...]

In the Library with the Lead Pipe welcomes guest author Adrian Whatley. Adrian Whatley is the e-Resources Librarian at Austin Community College. She views her job as connecting students to the information they need in the easiest, most time-efficient manner possible. Part One: Setting the Stage Austin Community College Library Services (ACCLS), like many academic [...]

Derik Badman Developer, Springshare Who are you, and what do you do? I’m Derik Badman. For a paying job I work as a web developer for Springshare, Inc (creator of LibGuides and LibAnswers). Most of my time is spent working on LibAnswers: adding features and occasionally fixing bugs. I also spend time working on a [...]

In the Library with the Lead Pipe welcomes guest poster Micah Vandegrift. Micah is a graduate student in Library and Information Studies at Florida State University. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is interning at the Brooklyn Public Library. Micah’s education has focused on 20th century American culture, digital media and the humanities and [...]

Summer Interlude Three years, twenty committees, twelve hundred instruction sessions, forty thousand monograph purchases, and half a million reference questions later, I’m at the point in this librarian job where I have enough experience to know how to get things done, and also enough to wonder, “What exactly am I doing?” The more you know, [...]

Have you ever noticed how many special events there are in library-land? National Library Week, Read across America Day, Teen Read Week, National Poetry Month, National Children’s Book Week—it becomes difficult to keep track! As much fun as it would be, it’s pretty much impossible to celebrate or even acknowledge each and every one of [...]

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest author, Jean Costello! Jean is a technical project manager for a prominent STM publisher. She is a passionate supporter of public libraries and blogs regularly as The Radical Patron. 2009 may be an inflection point for public libraries. This year, the deepest [...]

I am not much of a book reader.  I have a home computer.  It has a working internet connection.  Any interest I have in genealogy or local history could probably be exceeded serendipitously by talking to family or neighbors and by wandering around the city.  As a family, we do not watch many movies.  I [...]