Quick Housekeeping Note

I haven’t blogged for a few months.  Why not?  My library has been going through growing pains and reorganizations for the last year or more.  Despite several successes, some of the social web tools I’ve advocated these last several years have been very slow to get management’s approval (or priority) amid all the other changes.  Regrettably, that has forced my focus on other things.

I’ve been keeping up with my nonfiction book blog, though, and hope to post here regularly again once we resume using social tools in creative ways.  If that takes too long, I’ll broaden LibraryStream’s focus.  It’s a big world out there … and the library must be in it.

If you stumbled upon this blog…

Welcome. I’m not quite ready for regular postings yet, but you’re welcome to snoop around while I set up the site. After I return from the Polaris Users’ Group conference next week, I’ll launch this blog for good.

My plan is to use this blog to follow the course of social software in general and its value to libraries specifically. I’m the system trainer at a large public library system in the Pacific Northwest, a social web participant, and an avid reader. I hope I can marshall all those hats into an interesting blog. The two postings just below this one link to recent articles I’ve written elsewhere.

Why call it “Library Stream”? It has to do with the flow of ideas. I suppose there’s a kinship to Flickr’s “photostream” and technology’s “streaming” audio & video, too. But there’s one more thought the “Library Stream” name conjures up for me. It’s the idea that change has become so common in the modern library that — like a stream — you’ll never set foot in the same library twice.

Please visit again. I hope to swap stories with you in the future.