16 posts tagged “business and economics”

I may use some of these links as part of a short post later in my library's blog. For now, I am parking them here for reference purposes. As always, if any reader out there finds them helpful, feel free to explore. This list is in no particular order.

• From the Reason Foundation, a "Taxpayer's Guide to the Stimulus." According to the site, the guide "breaks down each section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to explain just how all that money is being spent, who is spending it, and what the whole stimulus means in layman's terms." The site does feature a section on how to read the guide and then links related to the act's provisions. They also provide links to other outside sources. 
• ProPublica has a complete website on "Eye on the Stimulus" where they are "tracking the stimulus from bill to building, and we're organizing citizens nationwide to watchdog local stimulus projects." The site also features a very good FAQ for the federal Recovery.gov website. They also feature a Recovery Tracker database where you can see what is going to your county, or you can just click on your state to see contracts and spending at the state level. They have added items to the database that may not have been reported to the federal government (the fed does not require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov). 
• Recovery.gov is "is the U.S. government's official website providing easy access to data related to Recovery Act Spending and allows for reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse."This is the place to start to learn about the economic stimulus efforts. The site contains a lot information.
  
• The Columbia Journalism Review has put together "Bailout, Stimulus--Your Essential Guide." From the site, "in a specially commissioned study, The Audit [the CJR section that covers business journalism] here takes a look at online resources tracking the bailout and stimulus money, from government web sites to independently run operations. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s pretty good. No need to thank us. It’s what we do." This is a very good and accessible overview.
  
• And if you want to know some of the people and enterprises that should be held accountable, the Center for Public Integrity has compiled "Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown? The Top 25 Subprime Lenders and their Wall Street Backers." This investigation is worth reading. 
• And for a little bit of serious humor, which I would not include on the library post I am pondering, gives a Campus Squeeze Douchebag Report on the Big 3, that is, the CEOs of the big American auto companies, who also took stimulus money and became even more infamous when they were asked about their private jets during Congressional hearings. 

Once again, I have put aside enough posts on the topic of bad bosses to make a post about it. These are mostly food for thought. I am sure someone could write some substantial post on bad bosses as they related to libraries and library administration, but I personally don't feel like doing it at the moment. A common theme in some of these posts seems to be what can we learn from those bad bosses.

• Lifehacker asks "How Do You Deal with a Bad Boss?" It is an invitation to their readers to comment, but it is also discussing a bit about entitled Working for You Isn't Working for Me. The book may be something to consider reading at some point. A key point here is knowing what it is about your boss that irks or bothers you, then find a way to cope, or as I say, decompress after work. 
• The Effing Librarian tells us to "Prepare for the Scottish Librarian Invasion." It deals with a story of certain library administrators basically deprofessionalizing their staff and a few other boneheaded things administrators tend to do that demoralize their workers. A must read. Effing Librarian also has a short one on why he is a bad librarian. This was one I could identify with, and it has been something I have been wanting to write about. Maybe it goes back the idea I have seen in some circles where, if a librarian expresses little to no interest in a "leadership" position (read: management) due to having bad experiences with management, then he must have a bad attitude. I have pondered a bit of that before, but not sure what else to do with it.
  
• Bob Sutton, one of my favorites on this topic, asks "Do You Learn More From Working for a Bad Boss than a Good Boss?" He is making the point that bad bosses force you to learn about situations and yourself. After all, when the boss is good and all is well, you are not really as reflective. This may be worth some thought. Mr. Sutton also raises a very good question, which I think would make a nice writing prompt for me one of these days: "What is the most important thing you ever learned NOT TO DO from working for a bad boss?"
  
• I saved this piece not so much for anything deep but because it has a draft memo for when you have to convince your boss to let you go to a conference. (via The Liminal Librarian). Then again, if you have to convince your boss why your professional development is important, how it will better serve the organization, and how it is an investment in you as an asset to the organization, then you may have bigger problems.

And for the random reader who may be interested, here are Part 1 and Part 2 of this rambling series.
 

Being employed means that I work for somebody. Notice I did not say "self-employed." I read someplace that the definition of work is having to do something you would rather not do in some place you would rather not be in the company of people you would rather not be with. Now my current work situation is not that extreme, but as I tell people who ask, some days are better than others. I have recently read a few more items dealing with issues of workplace and management, so I wanted to make some notes here with a bit of quick commentary.

The links:

• Bob Sutton has a great post on "You Better Start Treating Your People Right, or the Best Will Be Leaving Soon." I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Sutton's idea that you have to treat your workers right. It seems horror stories of how corporations treat their workers like cannon fodder abound. The library world is no exception. Just take a peek at the library mofo blog, and you will find a parade of stories of bosses who treat their workers like dirt. Sutton makes a great point, which I would like to quote for my rare reader here: "But if you have treated people like dirt during the tough times (for a horror story, see here), have been inept about how you have implemented tough decisions (see here) or have simply been clueless about your people's perspective during these tough times (see here), you may have been able to keep great people working for you during these tough times and to hire some of the best. You can be sure, however, that they have told their friends about how much your company or you suck.  They are waiting for things to get better, and perhaps encouraged by the signs the labor market is coming back, are probably doing their jobs extra well these days to enhance their reputation for that coming job search.  So you may be fooling yourself into believing all is well when it is not." That last part is something that I can certainly see: your good workers may be just be doing extra well now so you, the boss, can give them a good reference when their time comes to go into the job market. Sure, the economy may be tight, and you can't give raises or financial incentives, but even if you were able to give money, money is not everything if you are treating your employees in a poor manner. Mr. Sutton's post is something every manager, including library administrators, need to read.
  
• There will be times when you could get blamed for something your colleague did. So, here are some things to do "when a colleague's mistakes affect you." Sometimes you may need to help out, but other times you may have to confront, and always remember to protect yourself. This was an old lesson I learned when I first became a public school teacher: document everything, and cover your ass. In essence, no one is going to protect you, so you have to protect yourself. You don't need to brag, but you do need to make your contributions known and clear to the organization. That reality has not changed. (h/t to Lifehacker.) 
• There may also be times when you will be in charge of a team. Or you may have just moved into management. Here is "Motivating Your Team--What to Do (and What to Avoid)." (via Dumb Little Man). 
• When you have a day off, it means a day off. It does not mean you check your e-mail or call the workplace. It is your day, take it off. Period. If you need a reminder of how to take a day off or what to do, here is "How to Really Take a Day Off From the Madness of Life." This is a reminder to take some "me time" now and then. I will admit that I am not as good about taking time off as I should, but when I do, I do unplug completely from work. And when I leave the library at the end of the day, the library stays behind. After all, I do need to keep my sanity. (via Dumb Little Man). 
• Here is more advice to workers: "How to Make Yourself Indispensable at Work." I think that some of the advice in that post is common sense. Unfortunately, for some people, you do have to tell them basic things like minding their manners and acting in a civil manner towards others. The first item on the list is very important: do your job and do it well. Personally, I think that is basically the goal in my life. Thus I hate the classic interview question of "where do you see yourself five years from now?" or some similar question. My answer, the honest answer, is that I want to do be doing my job and doing it well. And before anyone questions me about saying it is my "honest answer," take an honest look at the job interview process. You know both sides will use little white lies now and then during the process. At least, for that question, I tend to be honest because if I get negative feedback on it (namely, I did not lie to them and tell them I want to be a manager or other), I probably don't want to work for them. By the way, I think reading this post goes along nicely with Sutton's post above. (via Dumb Little Man; man, they do put out some good stuff, huh?). 
• Here is another one from Bob Sutton. He is pointing to a Forbes magazine column on getting rid of jackass clients. Up front, I will say that this is not always an option in librarianship. Whether you are in a public library that has to let everyone in (and it usually takes some extreme incident before some jackass gets banned) or an academic library where either some students or certain faculty can display jackass behavior (and you can't really ban them unless the behavior is so egregious it borders on dangerous), you will have to keep a good face and march ahead. This is probably why I will never be a library administrator or manager. I have no tolerance for jackasses or assholes. If I run the library, and you behave like a jackass, you are gone, even if it means I have to call the cops to get you out. Life is too short to deal with jackasses, as Shaun Rein, author of the Forbes piece, points out. Jackasses do damage to your organization. This is very applicable to libraries. If your library develops a reputation of being the place where rude people hang out, where disruptive and loud people are regularly present, and so on, rest assured your best clients will take their business elsewhere. Stop coddling misbehavior in the name of being welcoming or open to all.
  
• I have not had the chance to watch this yet. Dan Pink on "Overcoming the 'Candle Problem' and Rethinking Motivation." (via Lifehacker). 
• And more advice for workers: "9 Qualities That Will Rock Your Career." (via Dumb Little Man). There is some very good advice here on traits that good workers should possess and cultivate.
  
• And as if things were not bad enough, it can be harder to get hired during a recession (but not due to the reasons you may think). The post, via Crooks and Liars, discusses a Wall Street Journal article that says "Only the Employed Need Apply, Companies Say." This caught my eye because some of what is discussed is pretty rampant in the librarian profession. When it comes to hiring, especially as of late, libraries will prefer the most experience possible (even if the job is actually advertised as entry level), and in particular, a lot of libraries will try to cram two or even three job descriptions into one job. As Susie Madrak, writing for Crooks and Liars, says, "the other annoying thing that happens during a recession is that employers start demanding all sorts of unrelated skill sets in one person (figuring they'll get them to do two jobs for the price of one)." Just take a look at some of the library job postings out there. When you see something like desire for cataloger who is fluent in Persian and Farsi, can do library instruction, and supervise student workers, you know they either have an internal candidate already lined up (but they have to advertise the job anyways due to some bureaucratic rule), or they are trying to get one candidate to do three different jobs. In such a case, I think Madrak's advice is good, even if you think turning down the job in this economy is a bad idea: "I'd advise you against taking a job like that even if it's offered - no matter how bad the economy is, it's not worth the heart attack you'll probably get." Or, don't take a library job that sucks, to borrow the term coined by the Annoyed Librarian. 
• A couple more tips from Bob Sutton. First, he points to a cool quiz on "Does Your Work Matter to You?" (link to the quiz itself). Second, he points to the blog Unemploymentality blog. I have to take another look at that blog, maybe add it to my feed reader. 
• From the Anecdote blog, here is "Building a Collaborative Workplace with Stories." It is a presentation you have to view online. 
• The folks from Anecdote also remind us that "Saying Thanks is Important for Collaboration." I say that saying thank you any time it is needed should be a given.
  
• Bob Sutton also has some thoughts on business language that makes him squirm. It makes me squirm too, and the sad thing is I am seeing a lot of that language sneaking up in librarianship. In some cases, it is no longer sneaking up; it is becoming part of the landscape, and no, it is not a good thing. This reminds me a book I read a while ago, that I need to look over again: The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit by Lois Beckwith. 

A couple of things have been buzzing in my mind lately. One issues about bad bosses. The other a recent post I read that librarians who do not want to be managers, let alone appreciate bad ones, and complain about it somehow have a "bad attitude." I have been wanting to reply to that for a while, but as usual, time has been tight. But I hope to get to it eventually. Bottom line: I happen to be one of those librarians, and if it's a problem to you up in your ivory tower, tough.

In the meantime, these are a few things I have been reading and picking up on my feed reader. I hope I can draw on some of this to write something more thoughtful later.

• From the blog Dumb Little Man, here is "How to be a great boss." The third item on his list, "delegate--then stay hands off" is one of my favorites. Nothing annoys me more than a boss who thinks they are "helping" with "suggestions" after they assign you a task. Tell me what you want, then stay the hell out of my way. When I am done, I will let you know. Micromanaging is not going to get it done any faster unless you want to do it yourself.
• This is not so much about bad bosses, but it is something for bosses to consider nonetheless. From Mashable, "Friending your employees: What are the rules?" The rules are pretty basic. I think overall, the best answer may well be no. And if you are an employee, and your boss asks to friend you, you may want to decline. At any rate, people should know by now to be careful what they post online given the potential someone you don't want to see it may see it anyways.
  
• I keep finding over time that a lot of bosses simply do not know how to manage a meeting. This is something that interests me, maybe because I have been victimized by one bad meeting too many. I could tell you all sorts of horror stories, and they usually due to some manager who just does not know how to control or run a meeting. From Dumb Little Man, here is "How to get more from Live Meetings." 
• Lifehacker has an interesting post on "Why the manager's schedule blows creative productivity." I have had bosses guilty of this: have no understanding of what us creative types do and the kind of time we need to do it in. For instance, "when managers schedule makers into midday meetings, they kill creative productivity in real but not-obvious ways." I know at least one manager who does this consistently. It's a miracle I get anything done.
  
• Bob Sutton speaks a bit more on "You know your boss is a certified asshole when. . . ." He is expanding a bit on the issue of asshole bosses and collateral damage that he wrote about previously. Sutton also highlights an article he had published in Harvard Business Review (June 2009) on "How to be a good boss in a bad economy." I have to look it up sometime and have a look.
  
• Via Copyblogger, here are "7 types of people everyone wishes would just shut the **** up." I include this here to go with the post about meetings noted above. This is because you often see these asshats during meetings, and they tend to be people that the boss fails to control or manage. And speaking of certain people, Sutton discusses the "Sir, we don't actually do what we propose. We just propose it" syndrome. And I know just that type of person.
  
• Bob Sutton recommends a book called I Hate People. The post is here. I have added it to my TBR list. Not just about bad bosses but also about those not so nice coworkers.
  
• This sounds like some meetings I have attended. For bosses, maybe decision by committee, or trying to please everyone to get the precious consensus, is not the best way to go. Here is "what would happen if the Stop sign was invented in 2008" via Public Sector Marketing 2.0 blog. 

I have an interest in leadership as a subject. I also have an interest in topics about bosses and managers, in large part because I am "managed" by others, so to speak. I am not my own boss. I always make the distinction between management and leadership. Leaders can be managers, but not all managers can be leaders. In fact, a lot of managers are lousy both at managing and in leadership.

These are some items I have come across recently in relation to bosses that have caught my eye:

From Bob Sutton's blog:

• Sutton comments on a post by Scott Berkun that discusses "Top ten reasons managers become assholes."
  
• Sutton asks "Do  you end meetings on time?" Another big peeve of mine. It is not just bosses who do not know  how to allot time efficiently for meetings, but bosses that simply do not know how to run a meeting at all. The second item on the post's list--boss not dealing with blabbermouths-- is something I encounter continuously. Sometimes, you have to have the guts to tell some self-important blabbermouth to shut the fuck up. If you are the boss, that is your job. Do it.
  
• Sutton gives an interview on the topic of "Good boss, bad times."
  
• "The effects of asshole bosses on victim's families, friends and partners." Sutton looks at the collateral damage that an asshole boss can have on those close to the victim. When the victim brings the pain and effects of an asshole boss home, it throws the rest of the household into turmoil. Your relationship with your spouse can suffer, and so on. This is something worth thinking about, and yet it is not often considered.
  
• "How to avoid being a nasty, clueless, and idiotic boss during the downturn." He cites advice telling bosses to really listen. This often has been the case in my experience where a boss pretends to listen, but you already know that they will pretty much do whatever they want anyways. In other words, the boss's mind is already made up before they even asked for your view or opinion. It is basically an exercise in futility and pretense, and personally, I do find it a lack of respect on the part of the boss when they do that. 

From Inside Higher Ed:

• Dean Dad looks at "When the Boss is Awful." I think at times the dean does defend bosses a bit much. In my opinion, there are times when a boss is an asshat pure and simple. No amount of searching for a "reasonable explanation" will do in such cases. And such assholes, to use Sutton's term, should not be tolerated in academia or elsewhere. 

From CIO:

• "How to deal with jerks at work." They are interviewing Bob Sutton about his book, The No Asshole Rule. When it comes to the book, it should be required reading as far as I am concerned; see my review of the book here. As for this particular interview, there are some gems worth reviewing, and not just for bosses.
  

This is not the first time I have made light of campuses and their donors, and some of the choices donors make when it comes to feeding their vanity. Let's be honest and call a spade a spade. Most wealthy donors are not doing it for the common good, but as a tax write-off. So, going in with our eyes open, should we be surprised when we see certain stories out there? From donors forking out bucks to name bathrooms to corporate branding on campus, getting people to be somewhat generous with educational institutions is an art and a pain. To some, it can be a necessary evil. Anyhow, the latest fuss about getting donors to name courses in order to save the classes made me wonder. Sounds like the type of thing to write an extended post, but I am lacking the time. So for now, I am just tossing some items here so I can ponder for later. But at the end of the day, let's be honest again. Is it really that far fetched to have donors name a class after them? I can see the possibilities already.

• From The New York Times, "Colleges Ask Donors to Help Meet Demand for Aid." It does not seem unreasonable to me, but giving some money so some kids can graduate is just not as glamorous as naming the new sciences building or putting in a few million bucks for some phallic bell tower or very elegant garden. You can't put a plaque on a student. Now, a tattoo, that may be an idea.
  
• And from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that there is "New Unrest on Campus as Donors Rebel." Because often charity comes with strings attached, or in cases like this, very strong chains and contracts. And donors tend to get pissy if you sell off that fancy art collection they gave four generations ago because you need to keep the electricity on. 
• And more recently, the City College of San Francisco was floating the idea of naming courses for donors in order to save those courses from extinction. Here and here are some accounts on the matter. Is it really that much a stretch to name a course or two after some donor? Jack Welsh is putting his name to an MBA program. If it works for him, why not for other classes? Maybe we need to come up with a list of candidates then hit them up for some money.
  

Just a thought or two.

Lately, I have seen a few pieces dealing with job hunting for academics. Also, I am making these notes because I have been involved in some phone interviews, this time as an interviewer, and I have seen the effects up close of not being well prepared. Those effects are not pretty. So in the interest of sharing for anyone who may find them useful, I am collecting some good links I have looked over.

• From Inside Higher Ed, Christine Kelly has two pieces. First, she writes about "Preparing for the Non-Academic Interview." This is important in this economy where you have to go where the jobs go. A doctorate gives you a lot of skills you can bring to a workplace, but you have to sell yourself. Kelly gives you some advice on how to handle some common questions you may be asked such as why you are applying for a job outside of academia. These are questions to think about ahead of time before you go to the interview. Second, looks further at "Non-Academic Interviews" telling you how to prepare for the interview once you have one. Kelly points out how the interview is a lot like acting. It is a performance. The common theme? As G.I. Joe would say, ". . .and knowledge is half the battle." Do note that some of this can apply to librarians seeking work as well if they choose to seek work outside of librarianship.
  
• You may find yourself using social networking sites to help you network. I find Facebook has been pretty good in terms of gradually building a professional network. I have tried Linked In, but I have not used it as much. I may need to review it. Just in case, here is a small article about "LinkedIn Profiles: Avoid the Six Most Common Mistakes." This is in addition to the usual advice about using privacy settings effectively and avoiding content postings that could be embarassing to you somehow. By the way, the title on that says "six," but there are only five items. Maybe the sixth mistake is make sure you know how to count. The advice is still good enough to have a look. 
• Now many doctoral graduates may end up working in a community college. Actually, that may be a good thing given that in this economy, community colleges are the fastest growing institutions of higher education due to their affordability for one. But those graduates need to keep in mind that the mission of a CC is different than the average four year school, and it is definitely worlds away from a big research university. These are teaching institutions. David Lydic, at Inside Higher Ed,  has some advice for those choosing this route. First, he tells us how about "Interviews at Community Colleges" and gives advice on how to prepare for the interview. Second, he gets down to more specifics when he tells us exactly "What You'll Be Asked." This article has very good sample questions from various CC's to candidates for jobs. If you are considering a job teaching at a CC, this is a must read. Personally, I would be willing to teach at a CC, or at least work at one of their libraries, precisely because of the teaching mission and student diversity.
  
• Carole Martin, at CEO Consultant, writes out "10 Killer Job Interview Questions and Answers." This is a more general list, but it tells you how to answer them, with even small comments about what an employer may be concerned about when asking the questions. I think this is important, being able to see things from the employer's view in terms of why they may be asking a particular question. Some of these questions are applicable to librarians seeking jobs. If the link is problematic, this site also picks up the article.
  

Update Note (6/22/09): Here are two  items on interview questions that I would add to this list. They specially tell you what to say as well as what not to say when answering interview questions. These two lists are great tools to help anyone prepare for a job interview.

• From the blog Dumb Little Man, here are "10 Answers You Should Know Before Your Job Interview."  
• And from Bhuvana Sundaramoorthy, here are "50 Common Interview Questions." 

The whole fiasco with Elsevier and their fake journals (and unlike the more polite people, I have no problem calling a spade a spade, and these were basically fake journals sponsored by a big pharmaceutical passing themselves off as serious journals) has been discussed in various librarian blogs. This is why I am just scraping some of my thoughts here and leaving it out of the main blog.

Here are some links for those who may be interested:

• Barbara Fister, writing for ACRLog, on "This Journal Brought to You By. . ." 
• Jessamyn West notes "in case you needed another reason to raise an eyebrow at Elsevier" at librarian.net. 
• And by the way, the Annoyed Librarian had a very nice reply to this whole mess as well. You do have to grant some of AL's points: in this case, Elsevier basically pulled a fast one.
  

The one thing I thought about when I read about the issue is that this just makes our work teaching information literacy that much more harder. As information literacy or instruction librarians, we spent a lot of time teaching our students how to evaluate resources. We spend even more time telling them to rely on "peer reviewed" publications. And now we get that we can't even trust the "peer reviewing" since it is not so much scholars doing it as some big pharma corporation. Let's consider the ethics of the matter, which is about the only thing we can really consider. I mean, we can be angry at Elsevier, but in the end, Elsevier is like any other big corporation, and they did the move that would make them money, ethics be damned. But the larger problem does go back to corporations like Elsevier who take research (often done with federal money, i.e. paid by your taxes) and repackages it and sells it to the libraries. Until those doing the research actually take some control and come up with some better ways to disseminate their information in an ethical way, the corporations will keep doing this, and we as librarians will just have to be that much more wary of information sources. And to be honest, why the heck the federal government (in the U.S. at least) not make it a requirement to make any federally funded research be published for free (put it in PubMed or something like that), since we paid the tab, is simply beyond me.It can be done; there is just a serious lack of spine to do it, but then again, that is politics for you. And let's not even start on why the U.S. government often outsources their information to vendors (can you say Lexis, for example?).

But it is also going to take the scholars to finally get a clue as well. Until academia decides to have the intestinal fortitude to come up with other ways to evaluate for tenure besides how many articles you get in an Elsevier journal (or other big corporate-owned journal), and until scholars basically stop serving on those editorial boards, and instead help create better models of distribution where the information is not held by some conglomerate more interested in the bottom line than some ethics, things will not change. Now, I am not an expert by any stretch; others from advocates for open access to repository librarians to those librarian bloggers with bigger reputations have been saying it. I am just a librarian with a thought or two and a dislike for the way things are currently done. And at the end of the day, I am the librarian in the front lines who has to teach the students how to evaluate sources, and now I have to start making another distinction: that is a real scholarly journal, and that other one is paid for by Merck (or insert your big pharma company here). This publisher seems to have some integrity, and this other one is pretty much open to the highest bidder. Because we often make a big fuss when a student plagiarizes or tries to pass other's work as their own. But when a company like Elsevier basically commits an act of academic dishonesty (or just plain dishonesty), they don't exactly get raked over the coals as they deserve. Then again, we should know better as information professionals to question the sources of information. And we should be noting and be aware that a lot of that information we depend on in academia is coming from a corporate source, the type of source not necessarily interested in things like ethics or integrity. We have to remember that their interest is the bottom line and the investors. If it so happens they provide information products academia can use so much the better. But make no mistake, they are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. This means we should be on our guard and constantly asking questions and demanding accountability. 

And those are my two cents, for what they may be worth.
  

I am always looking for new ideas for library displays. I do use some holiday observances as basis for displays. For instance, this April we did activities around National Poetry Month as well as National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. But once in a while I like things that are different. The whole brouhaha over Amazon's "glitch" that excluded a bunch of LGBT titles made for a lot conversation in Twitter and the blogs. Notice I put the "glitch" in parenthesis because I do wonder how much of it was an honest mistake and how much of it was a case of "let's see if we can get away with something and no one notices." But the whole thing has been pretty much rehashed just about everywhere. Here are some links to give a sampling of the mess:

• An Amazon statement from the PR people. Via LISNews.
  
• NPR says Amazon will fix the problem. 
• Shelf Awareness reporting on Amazon's deranking of books. They provide specific book titles, and this inspired the idea of a book display for me. 
• The New York Times chimed on the error. 
• Even the comic strip Shelf Check took a crack at the Amazon fiasco. I am printing that one for my office door. 

Anyhow, I was thinking a small educational display, where we could explain what the issues were as well as include some books on LGBT topics, would be a good idea. If we had a book or two about Amazon as well (like a few on this list. By the way, finding books about Amazon itself on Amazon is not as easy as it sounds).

So, what are some of the titles that Amazon was failing to find? Here is a small list, which I could use to make the display:

•  Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
• Little Birds: Erotica by Anais Nin
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby
• Maurice by E.M. Forster
• Becoming a Man by Paul Monette

Anyhow, just another idea for later. What I am really interested in is the display idea. The issue itself, while important, is not something I want to dwell on, even though as a librarian I should think about the implications of the monopolistic juggernaut that Amazon is building. But things like that often get beaten to a pulp by the more prominent bloggers, both in and out of my profession, so we shall move on for now.
 

I may have mentioned before that I try to stay away from politics. Well, I follow them, but I try not to discuss them in polite company. I do find the whole AIG mess pretty much disgusting, and I would wish the sorry bastards would shut down the company already. I mean, if they want to take our money, then they should take any conditions imposed. Don't like terms? The simple solution is don't take the money. Period. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and deal. So, when that executive from AIG made his resignation letter public in the NYT, I thought it was a ridiculous piece of self-righteous tripe. A lot of people have replied to it much better than I could, but one person in particular said what needed to be said. The Rude Pundit has a great response to that sorry bastard. If you are squeamish, don't go further. But if you are open minded, are as outraged as most people are, then go right ahead. Because he has said what needed to be said.