April Showers Bring May Flowers (05/09)
By Liz Peoples
The saying goes that "April showers bring May flowers" … I am a gardener and in the early spring I get excited to clean away the leaves and winter gunk and see what has made it through another New England winter (read ice, snow, sleet.) As spring creeps up I begin to receive more seed and garden catalogs and magazines which I peruse and plan out new color and plant combinations for my flower beds, vegetable plots and combo containers. I think that there are several valuable connections or similarities between gardening and the work we do as librarians—hear me out on this subject.
I read my gardening and seed journals because I realize the importance of learning and knowing about new techniques, products and common issues in gardening much the same way I read issues of AALL—Spectrum, SLA—Information Outlook and my local ABLL—Advocate. Within these journals are articles covering new products, services, librarian/vendor issues, how-to guides, best practices, and issues which impact us currently and could impact us in the future. These are the journals I read with regular frequency, but I know to keep learning and growing, it is important to push out of the box and discover new reading and learning materials that are/will impact our careers as librarians. I have recently picked up a copy of AIIG’s Infonomics and wow, what a leap of ideas, products and perspectives this provided me. As librarians we deliver and manage information/data in many forms and this organization and its member publication Infonomics speaks to this. The journal KMWorld is another excellent journal to add to a regular reading list.
Not only is it important to nurture our professional knowledge, but if you are the IP, financial services, legislative, or public records guru, at your firm, it is important to read in these areas also – and it does not have to be a journal exclusive to that content. Read the WSJ sections on those practices and industries for your own knowledge base and to be on par with those attorneys you work with in these practice areas.
Complaints of not having enough time—barely getting through my piles of paper and e-mail hound me as they hound you—but you have to be a little selfish of your time as well as strict with yourself. Feed your own knowledge base and creativity by reading our own association journals and pushing a little farther afield to include other journals because—getting back to my gardening gig—you have to nurture, plant new seeds, water, weed (discarding outdated practices or patterns), fertilize and feed to be able to enjoy new growth within ourselves and our profession. It is so much better to weed out our own outdated methods than to have them weeded by someone else.
I welcome suggestions of new titles to read. Please contact me at liz.peoples@lexisnexis.com especially if you come across content that speaks to deterring beagles from repositioning tulip bulbs and digging to stow away sacred bones and dog biscuits … I will elaborate on that topic in a future article.
