

Free Range Librarian

Free Range Librarian
K.G. Schneider's blog on librarianship, writing, and everything else
	(Dis)Association
I have been reflecting on the future of a national association I belong to that has struggled with relevancy and with closing the distance between itself and its members, has distinct factions that differ on fundamental matters of values, faces declining national and chapter membership, needs to catch up on the technology curve, has sometimes [&#8230;]
	I have measured out my life in Doodle polls
You know that song? The one you really liked the first time you heard it? And even the fifth or fifteenth? But now your skin crawls when you hear it? That&#8217;s me and Doodle. In the last three months I have filled out at least a dozen Doodle polls for various meetings outside my organization. [&#8230;]
	Memento DMV
This morning I spent 40 minutes in the appointment line at the Santa Rosa DMV to get my license renewed and converted to REAL ID, but was told I was “too early” to renew my license, which expires in September, so I have to return after I receive my renewal notice. I could have converted [&#8230;]
	An Old-Skool Blog Post
I get up early these days and get stuff done &#8212; banking and other elder-care tasks for my mother, leftover work from the previous day, association or service work. A lot of this is writing, but it&#8217;s not writing. I have a half-dozen unfinished blog posts in WordPress, and even more in my mind. I [&#8230;]
	Keeping Council
Editorial note: Over half of this post was composed in July 2017. At the time, this post could have been seen as politically neutral (where ALA is the political landscape I&#8217;m referring to) but tilted toward change and reform. Since then, Events Have Transpired. I revised this post in November, but at the time hesitated [&#8230;]
	What burns away
We are among the lucky ones. We did not lose our home. We did not spend day after day evacuated, waiting to learn the fate of where we live. We never lost power or Internet. We had three or four days where we were mildly inconvenienced because PG&#38;E wisely turned off gas to many neighborhoods, [&#8230;]
	Neutrality is anything but
&#8220;We watch people dragged away and sucker-punched at rallies as they clumsily try to be an early-warning system for what they fear lies ahead.&#8221; &#8212; Unwittingly prophetic me, March, 2016. Sometime after last November, I realized something very strange was happening with my clothes. My slacks had suddenly shrunk, even if I hadn&#8217;t washed them. After [&#8230;]
	MPOW in the here and now
I have coined a few biblioneologisms in my day, but the one that has had the longest legs is MPOW (My Place of Work), a convenient, mildly-masking shorthand for one&#8217;s institution. For the last four years I haven&#8217;t had the bandwidth to coin neologisms, let alone write about MPOW*. This silence could be misconstrued. I [&#8230;]
	Questions I have been asked about doctoral programs
About six months ago I was visiting another institution when someone said to me, &#8220;Oh, I used to read your blog, BACK IN THE DAY.&#8221; Ah yes, back in the day, that Pleistocene era when I wasn&#8217;t working on a PhD while holding down a big job and dealing with the rest of life&#8217;s shenanigans. [&#8230;]
	A scholar’s pool of tears, Part 2: The pre in preprint means not done yet
Note, for two more days, January 10 and 11, you (as in all of you) have free access to my article, To be real: Antecedents and consequences of sexual identity disclosure by academic library directors. Then it drops behind a paywall and sits there for a year. When I wrote Part 1 of this blog [&#8230;]