12 December, 2006

Still being me

Inspired by all the talk of millenials and genY and everything being 2.0 that I have come across recently (including at NLS) I got online and created a myspace pace for my library. Mmm, there goes the last vestiges of anonymity that I was clinging to.
I was happy with things, it took less than 20 minutes to set up and within a few hours I had a couple of 'friends' two being local 16 year olds and one being a local resident who also happens to be a country music star!
I thought I was on a winner 'yeah me' and happily sent an email around the library staff to tell them how clever I was and how I was going to tell teenagers about our services one way or another (if the mountain won't come to Mohamed).
Imagine the come down when I was pulled into the managers office and given a 'please explain'.
I knew that the new boss was a micro manager, but damn! Kids and youth are my job description and I'm just so used to doing things. I hate the fluffing around you get if you try to design these things by committee. And doing things by the committee was the way the boss wished I'd done it.

Now the whole thing was rather stop start because I kept using terms she was unfamiliar with (like internet and computer). Well no, more like web 2.0 and friendster, social networking, flickr...
All in all it just confirmed to me that doing it straight off was the best thing to do because otherwise it would have takes a team of six librarians two months to agree on parameters, which then wouldn't have worked because myspace gives you your parameters and you just fill in the gaps.

Now I am well aware (and have said it on this blog before) that I am probably an annoying team member at times. But this is going right off the scale at the moment because I don't believe I can be micromanaged. After all it is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

Fresh from my triumph as a myspace producer I propped myself up on my PC at home and did a wikipedia entry for the library. But as i did it from home and in my own time I'm hoping that no one can complain about it.
Oh and we're up to 50 hits on myspace over the course of four days. So lets say the first 10 were internal hits, that 40 hits in four days. Plus we have four local teens and two local musos in our friends lists. I'd say it is going better than I expected.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi John - love the blog! I still remember getting into trouble from the Chief Librarian for being "inappropriate"! Good to see the stereotype being shattered.