The new 25

Following on from this post,
I have decided to once again look into what brings people here. After all, while I write mostly for myself, my giant sized ego is always pleased to know others are reading my work.

1. adhd librarian
2. books for boys with adhd
3. adelaide librarian
4. adhd +stream of consciousness
5. adhd blogspot
6. adhd careers
7. adhd high-functioning
8. adhd information for librarians
9. boys with adhd books
10. confabulation adhd
11. dilbert cartoon adhd
12. high functioning adhd
13. how to get a job as a librarian
14. indie librarian
15. adhd genius
16. librarian productivity
17. librarians adelaide
18. "librarians with adhd"
19. adhd porn
20. world record vomiting
21. men are like children
22. just a spoon full of sugar
23. penny arcade librarian
    
24. "after all, they can do it in a test tube these days"
25. piss people off
    

Not in the top 25, but I have to wonder at these searches

husband illegal get rich quick schemes adhd

nude amishmen

well, perhaps not just wonder, but also feel sympathy and curiosity (in equal measures). I hope my blog was of some help, but I doubt it.

I am also happy to note that the top hits seem much more like they were aiming for my blog (or one like it), rather than ending up here while searching for something entirely unrelated.
Oh and a big shout out to Joanne Keleher (who was also a presenter at NLS06) and whose name still brings a few people to this blog. But while no longer in the top 25, stats show me that people searching for Joanne are much more likely to spend time on the blog and to read multiple blog posts.
So whatever you searched for (and however you found me) welcome to the blog I hope you find something to offend you.

A follow up

Time to follow up on this post.
Yes the move went well, the new books fitted and I proved (yet again) that despite the ADHD I am a kick arse project manager. Especially if you want a project done with limited resources, no budget and no time in which to do it.

Why do people love meetings?

I am not a fan of the meeting, even less of the unnecessary meeting and as such, finding myself managing a library in which I am the only full time employee and one of only 4 permanent employees. Well, I figured we wouldn't be needing a lot of meetings, after all, we will see each other often, we will know what everyone else does...
Right?

I mean, I was ready for senior faculty meetings. Without those how would I know what is going on in each of the different schools and I need to know that so I can ensure my planning creates a library which matches the needs of the different lecturers and their students. Plus it does my ego good to know I am considered Senior Faculty and what is good for my ego is good for everyone.

But in the library I would rather do things over a coffee and a gossip. Which in a library this size I feel should work better than a meeting does, after all I am the only person who is in every day. And I (should) talk to everyone when they are in, plus my door is not only always open but my office is in fact the corridor between the staff workroom and the library. Unfortunately a couple of my staff don't feel that they can work that way, so after much uming and flapping around I decided that it was worth instigating a monthly meeting in order to keep people happy. So far I don't feel that any of these meetings have achieved anything of significance, but then that could be because the library manager is a reluctant participant in these meetings?

Well, at present we are overdue a meeting (I was away when we should have had the last one) and the next one will coincide with my other two librarians being on leave (holidays for one, conference for the other). Still, no excuses this is the new improved ADHD librarian, I shall have a meeting and I shall achieve something in in (any suggestions what I should achieve?)

Damned Tracking Software

Either everyone stopped visiting this blog the moment I started updating it again, or my edits have upset the tracking software which I use to watch you watching me.


Now I need to reinstall it and wait and see who is still out there waiting for my updates.
Anyone?

Actually, I know I am still getting the occasional visitor on the blog because Walt Crawford mentioned me as an anonymous blogger in his latest Cites and Incites which amuses me because I only removed my real name from the profile page very recently (it is back now, I hadn't intentionally cloaked).

My name is John Chisholm and I am a librarian.

Stupid New Lyrics

Seems everywhere I look people are mistaking the death of a fallen pop star for news. Seems that Michael Jackson was more powerful than Jesus because with his death all wars have stopped, apparently no one in Iran is protesting any more...

Stupid media newstainment rubbish,

Anyway, enough with the bitching and the moaning about things I can't change and onto the Elton John tribute to our beloved child molesting sorry, child like saviour. And as luck would have it I have the reworked Candle in the wind lyrics right here for you.

Remember where you saw this first (unless you find it unbelievably offensive in which case forget you heard it from me)

Goodbye Peter Pan
Though I never knew you at all
You had the balls to hold yourself
With a sparkly glove

Boys crawled over Neverland
And they drank your Jesus Juice
You say you didn't touch them
But you say you never changed your nose?

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like pervert with no guilt
Never knowing who truly loved you
Except for Ben

And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid
So probably it is for the best
That I never did

Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Daddy created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid

Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Michael was a paedophile

Goodbye King of Pop
From a young man who watched a Thriller Video
Who sees you as something less than normal
But more than the creepy son of Joe

Remembering

I have just re-released a previously hidden post in which I was critical of a library manager. Rereading it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own management ability.
The amusing thing is that on reflection I think I need to be more like that which I hated. Oh, I'm not saying I need to be a micromanager nor am I saying that I should be petty and vindictive or take things personally. No, what I am saying is that I need to remember that not all conflict is bad. I need to remember that as the manager I do have the ability (and the right) to say "No we don't do it that way any more"
I have the right to change procedures when I say they need changing, now sure I can ask for input and get the staff to agree, but I should still be willing to stand my ground and have a good old fashioned stouch if that is what is required.

Lets see if I can take that on board over the next few weeks.

Get a real job

I am not about to turn this blog into a job agency, but though I would point out that Alice Springs Town Council is looking for a new Children's Librarian.

Living and working in Alice was one of the highlights of my life and if circumstances were different I would be giving up this management gig and happily settling back as a Children's Librarian.
Now, Alice isn't for everyone but I loved the place and fully expect to live there again at some stage. But I have written about going bush to improve your career before, so I won't repeat myself.

Productivity and a little help?

So, am I suddenly super productive and astounding all around me? Umm, I don't think so. But that's OK because I always get plenty done and all I want is the occasional sharper edge to my ability.

But, I am hoping to get a lot done over the next little while and to that end I am putting out a few questions to my librarian readers...

I am hoping to convince IT to do a big upgrade on our student computers,
so given a computer room with a dozen fairly basic PC and no supervision by staff. How would you set them up?
I'm thinking of asking for Deep Freeze (or something similar), I want to be able to logon to them remotely, I want them to turn themselves on at the start of the day and off at the end of the day and I want them to have firefox (it is embarrassing that I reccomend firefox to all our students, but our own machines don't have it) but what add ons and scrips should I be running on these machines?

Also on the computing front, can anyone recommend a good open source portal system to give our students individual logons and access from home to our databases?

Well, no time for blogging, there's work to be done (thanks Ritalin).

Whatever Comes Next Part 1

Well,
Part one of whatever comes next is about the drugs. I think the prologue did a decent job of trying to define why I decided to jump back on the pharmaceutical bandwagon. But why specifically Ritalin?
Well, I have detailed on this blog my trials of Dexamphetamines. In some ways I loved them but despite the benefits I eventually grew to dislike the side effects too much. I lost my appetite (and 10km - which wasn't such a bad thing), I also found it affected my sleep more than I liked and when I didn't take my doses (because if I didn't need to be on it for a day or a week, I didn't want to still be dropping the tabs) I found myself slightly depressed.
Strattera also mucked up my sleep patterns and that was enough for me to scrap it, because the benefits were quite mild.
Fish oil (which I took for a while, but didn't mention on the blog) certainly helped my joint pain (damn these rugby injuries) but had no noticeable affect on my ADHDness. Although my psychiatrist had high hopes for it (and after looking at some studies so did I).

So, Ritalin is the obvious next choice for me to trial. And so far so good. I am on day 5 of a very low dose and I seem to be noticing some positive results. Nothing major yet (I'm writing in my blog again - but that could just as easily be because I have defined a topic worth writing about). However I do seem to be more alert and so far it has not had any negative affect on my sleep. I feel a little jumpy this morning and I'll have to keep an eye on that but that could also be because it is cold, I have a cold and I have had a rushed morning. So I am not too worried yet.

But I guess that if Ritalin isn't the one for me the only choice left is cocaine? Although I hear it is hard to get a prescription for that.

Prologue to Whatever Comes Next

This post may well be a long one because:

1. I am trialling Ritalin for the first time.

2. I am nearing the end of my time in my current position, so I can probably write more about my current job without risking unemployment.

(so, lets go).


At the end of the year my family and I will be uprooting ourselves and moving to Darwin for a couple of years (or perhaps longer). Unfortunately I will leave a lot of things unfinished at my current workplace and a lot more things unstarted. It is partially to rectify that situation that I have decided to try drugs once again. However, before I start labelling myself an unproductive member of society let me make a few excuses.

My current employer is in the not for profit educational sector. As such there is not a lot of money laying around for a librarian to trial new and exciting ways of doing things. But I knew that before I took the role and it didn't faze me at the time.
However, since I took the role there has been a reduction in IT support to the library (and quite a drastic one at that). Which unfortunately means that my plans to be fantastic with open source software have fallen in a heap. There is no way that I (or my staff) could manage to drive much in the way of technological change without significant support from IT. In my case, it is because as manager I have too many other duties which would prevent me from spending the long hours required to set new systems up and in the case of my staff it is because the simply do not have the IT skills needed.

My second excuse would be my 2IC, now this is a difficult problem to describe but in simplistic terms; my 2IC is an old-school librarian with very fixed ideas on how things should be done. And she was formerly the manager of the library here and has been with the organisation almost since it began 30 years ago. As such, although she stepped down from management some years ago, she still has a substantial investment in the organisation. Plus, she is a very dominant personality.
While I will admit that I am also a dominant personality, I also tend towards a certain avoidance of conflict (not always, but I like a peaceful life). I have therefore sometimes tended towards maintaining the status quo rather than pushing hard for change simply because it is too difficult to get 'buy in' from this staff member. Unfortunately, this staff member has taken my dislike of conflict and used it to her advantage from time to time. So if I am not at work for a day, I may come back to work and find a policy I have been looking at has been changed slightly or a direction I have given to a staff member has been countermanded. Now, these have not been major changes (probably because I have demonstrated that I am more than capable of being firm when I choose) but rather they have been just enough to annoy me without being anything that would seem significant to anyone outside this library.

So, why does this equal Ritalin?
Well, I want to make sure that I have explored every option and I have perhaps just under six months left here in which to make as many improvements as I can.
I also want to make sure that I haven't just been making excuses for some of these things not happening. If they haven't happened because of my ADHD then I want to know it but I am quietly confident that my ADHD has in fact contributed positively to my time here because (as I have demonstrated in every job I have had) I have a fantastic knack of thinking things that no one else has thunk or thunking things in ways no one else could.

So,
this is my new topic for blogging,
my last six months as manager of this library and my final fling at weeding out the things that prevent the library here from doing all it could do for our students and introducing new and exciting ways of working which will (I hope) make life much much easier for whoever comes here after me.

What a day to be back

Some days blogging on library stuff is just too easy.
(thank you Penny Arcade)

Facebook and shark jumping

I was not an early adopter when it came to social networking. I didn't see the attraction early on. I figured if I was no longer in contact with you, well I didn't care enough to keep in touch and nor did you.

Hell, perhaps I was deliberately ignoring one or two people (or in fact, almost everyone I went to school with).

If my memory is correct, I took the leap into facebook following the ALIA New Grads' Symposium in Sydney a couple of years ago. And it was then intended as a professional development tool, I befriended some of the folk I'd met at the conference, joined a couple of library related groups (or pages, or became a fan of...). It was nice and easy, library related status updates amused me. I felt connected to people across the country who were (like me) attempting to push their newgrad thinking on the intractably boring baby boomers who blocked our path to the top of the library tree (to rely on stereotypes).

But it was an idealised facebook which I joined. One without the foolish pokes and sheep throwing of the hoi polloi of the online world. However soon the real world impinged on my utopian fantasy as friends found me online.
Then friends of friends...
and school acquaintances I thought I had left behind for good.

But that alone is not the reason I am suggesting a shark has been jumped. No, I am now facebook friends with both my eldest daughter and my step-mother.

Let that sink in folks,
facebook is no so ubiquitous that there are three generations of us, from my daughter (who is keeping in contact with friends she lost touch with when we moved interstate), to my step-mother is is vainly calling out "what is a poke, it says someone poked me"

Sure, there are still librarians in my list of friends, probably more of them than any other group. And they are the most active of my friends. So I am not about to abandon facebook as a tool for a librarian, but I am no longer feeling quite as productive when I have a facebook tab open at work.

Back again? Lets wait and see

There have been (whether you knew it or not) several ADHD librarian posts written of late. However they have been placed under an embargo as I am no longer an anonymous blogger and I don't feel like harpooning my own career.

So, I have been looking at areas where I can keep blogging without risk to my life and reputation. I am now ready to try again and see if I can do some regular blogging of my world.

I was thinking of redoing the blog layout first, but have decided that is a form of procrastination, so it is the old layout and if I can blog semi-regularly then it may be worth my while doing some work on updating the layout.

So, what have I been doing since my last flurry of regular posting?
Well, I am working for an organisation with a very low level if IT support and very little in the way of new technology.
In some ways I have been trying to remedy this, but for the most part I have unfortunately been content to let my staff continue with what they have always been doing, avoiding rocking the boat...

Of course there are good reasons for this, dropping into a place as a new manager and leaping at every windmill shouting "this is how we did it at my last library"
well, that'll just set everyone offside. Still, I should have found a few more windmills to tilt by now. So, perhaps this blog will chronicle some successful jousting of a windmill or two.

I've also spent a couple of years on a committee for an ALIA biennial conference. Did I learn much form that? Well, hell yes (and some of it is perhaps worth retelling) so I may bite the hand that professionally recognises me and have a look at some of the backroom shenanigans that lead up to a (reasonably) successful conference.

I also want to do a bit of critical thinking of 2.0 'stuff' from the point of view of someone who plays with the new and the shiny, but also from the pov of an organisation where that is a new concept.

So, am I back?
no promises.

In Which I Admit I Piss People Off

My current situation is (as I believe I have stated) that my co-workers at my new job are aware of this blog. As such (and due to my inability to self-censor once I get into a writing flow) I have been reluctant to continue blogging library issues here. Sure I could blog personal issues, but I don’t want to be the new lonelygirl or I could blog theology, but as my current employer is a Christian organisation even that could lead to wailing and gnashing of teeth.

That said, I find myself in need of an outlet at this moment (and in possession of plenty of ADHD related library shenanigan stuff).
So, here goes.

At present I am in the midst of a big library move, my library has been gifted 16000 new items, which as a small library is significant. It has resulted in a lot of work though, floors strengthened, a wall removed, my staff all relocated to a new office and other stuff, like stamping 16000 items, merging catalogue records and stocktaking the incoming collection.

And I as the manager am responsible for the planning to ensure that this all goes according to plan. Yes, I need to plan things. Sure, I make light of this and I do tend to be a bit relaxed about things (which worries people).

How worried do people get? Well my 2IC and the building maintenance supervisor presented me with a timeline. A very good one in fact, so I didn’t need to do that. I just gave it my approval and worried that it was done because they don’t believe I could do it myself. It was however a very ambitious timeline and I did express my belief that it was unlikely that we would find ourselves living in a perfect world and as such I was not concerned with making these dates writ in stone. I have been pleasantly surprised however to find that things have gone very close to the timeline.

One area which has caused time to expand has been the lack of volunteers from amongst the students. Apparently there has in the past been a large number of students willing to volunteer to assist at times like this. Well, you see the place has grown out of an old charismatic bible college and that attitude of all mucking in and having working bees has persisted for quite a long time. It would seem however that it has finally died. Which does not come as a surprise to me as I believe that that part of our culture is dying across the country not just amongst the Charismatics.

Still, I have been given a bit of extra money to spend on casual staff and we are going along very well. Our extension is done, our new shelving (well a mix of old, new, recycled, reclaimed, stolen and mismatched shelving) is being assembled. I have got my staff moving our existing collection into the new area (backwards) leaving what I have estimated is enough room to interfile the new collection (which will be interesting, am I an estimator to be reckoned with? So far I am doing very well, but so far I have done but a fraction of the total so there is still time for spectacular failure.

I have bay end panels for standup OPACs on order. I have people moving our computers around to create some more shelf space. I have had new air-conditioning fitted and the painters in all at the same time we have been doing this. Fun fun fun.

But all in fact just how the ADHD brain was designed to live. I haven't minded at all. It has been the most enjoyable part of my time here so far.

But, it is time for you to play the game Could You Cope With Working With ADHD Librarian.
You see, my 2IC wants a plan of the final layout for the library.
Seems fair? You’d want one too perhaps?

I keep saying "I'm playing it by ear"
or alternatively, "I'm waiting to see how it looks when we put up the new shelves"

Perfectly logical (in my mind)
and in my defence it is working very well so far,
but I am aware I am pissing off one (almost retired) very long-standing staff member (who has in fact pretty well built this library from nothing).
So in terms of people you shouldn’t piss off, she’s at the top of the list.

Still, she didn’t want to be the boss (or so I hear). So she has in fact got me and my wonderful way of doing things.

Ban Books

I created this little poster today as a comment on a FARK thread. Thought I'd put it out there for all librarians to use. No idea where I stole the image from (I downloaded it for just such a use some time ago but neglected to note the source. Naughty librarian) Still, as far as I am concerned you can remix, reuse, reword, recycle, rinse, repeat and do whatever you like with it. Copyleft forever!



also,
I am not dead. I'm just working somewhere where they knew about my blog before I got here, which mean I can't be quite so self destructively honest and self depreciatingly ironic. As such I am still thinking of the future direction of the ADHD librarian persona.
But I will blog again...

someday.