Resilience vs. Sustainability

I have a guest post up at In the Library with the Lead Pipe, on the concepts of resilience and sustainability for libraries.

If you don’t know Lead Pipe, it’s a terrific blog edited by a great group of folks.  The posts are substantial and peer-reviewed, and always thought-provoking.  It’s definitely a good blog to put on your RSS feed (if it’s not already there.)

Many thanks to Eric Frierson for soliciting the post, and to Eric, Kim Leeder, and Nicholas Schiller for their review and edits.

 

Image: Woman in her garden, Virgin Islands.  Library of Congress.

Street Books

I recently did an interview with Street Books librarian Laura Moulton, who runs a free bike-powered library for people who live outside.

Good news update:  the original project was funded by a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant, but Laura just announced that it will live on past the term of the grant, which was due to end in early September.  Based on the enthusiastic response she’s gotten, from both patrons and donors, this is an idea whose time has come.  There’s someone in Seattle interested in starting a Street Books library there, and who knows where else?

You can read the full interview here.

Once I had a kid who’d torn it up a little because it was his 21st birthday, and he told me so.  He was pretty swaggery and belligerent.  I asked him what he liked and he said Che Guevara.  The next week he came back and asked for that, not really even looking at me.  I said yes, here it is, and it blew his mind.  I saw him again and waved to him when I was biking home on Saturday, and he waved back.  It’s a pretty cool thing.

 

Five things Lady Gaga can teach marketers about community building…

Courtesy of Fast Company.  (For “marketers,” read “librarians.”)

1. Target like-minded individuals.
2. Be vulnerable.
3. Treat the consumer patron like your boss.
4. Create a collective experience.
5. Become a better company library through community.