What’s Next

After taking over the world, the next logical step is to learn French.

Obviously.

I mean, at least in a world according to the Violent Femmes.

In some ways I feel like I’ve taken over the world. After all, I’ve taken on my first job as a professional librarian, and I’ve succeeded. I am, in some small ways, a Master of Information. I have, in some small ways, taken over a very small portion of the world. Or at least influenced it. On to bigger and better things.

I already learned French (well before I took over any part of the world), so I’ve got to abandon the Violent Femmes game plan here, and try something else. So here’s what I’m going to do.

On March 1 I will begin working at the Pierce County Library System as their Virtual Experience Manager. As far as job titles go, this seems slightly less ambiguous than the current title of Online Resources Consultant, so that’s an improvement, and it also has the word “manager” in it, so that could be something too, I suppose.

It’s been awhile since I read the job description, so anything I say from this point on could be tremendously wrong insofar as it may not match up at all with what I actually end up doing. That said, here are my plans to take over additional, and somewhat larger, portions of the world (after which I may learn Russian).

In broad strokes.

I talked about Virtual Reference quite a bit when I interviewed for the position. That’s the background I was coming from, but it was also one obvious improvement (in my mind) that PCLS could take advantage of; the cooperative was there, waiting, and to me it was a no-brainer. Obviously it has been a yes-brainer for them up to this point, but I hope to overcome these barriers and get some 24/7 online reference magic happening up in there.

Live, online community events. We’re going to have them. And by online I also mean mixed online/real-life events, as well as true online-only events. And classes. And book discussions. And things.

Community integration. The library has a website. Community businesses and organizations have websites too. Let’s find ways for our websites to be friends. More important, let’s get the library web presence onto these community sites in ways that are useful to everyone involved and that help increase the presence of the library in the overall online community.

There’s a lot of UX (User Experience) stuff I’d like to look at. The PCLS website has a LOT of content, but I don’t think it’s making the best use of its space on the web. The catalog is a nifty new iteration of Polaris, and is shiny (as these things go), but I’m sure there are opportunities there as well for heightened interactivity and community involvement.

I have more ideas, I think, but we’re not there quite yet, and my attention is split. And who knows, maybe things will go an entirely different direction. Maybe I’ll be standing on the corner in a book costume with a big URL to the PCLS website on my chest.

Hey, it could happen.

Whatever happens, things will be bigger and better and I will learn and improve and grow and know more things than I did going into this and maybe, if I am very successful, I will positively impact the organization, too.