Library Voices

I don't think there is a librarian amongst them, but they are a great band out of Regina and, well, it's Friday and it has been a week. Enjoy!

Step Off the Map and Float



Drinking Games



You can also listen to more from Library Voices, with much better quality, on CBC Radio 3.

Last year, they also had their gear stolen in Vancouver and they made an appeal on youtube to get it back. Watch what they reveal at the end about their band name:

Gender and the Recession

Emily Bazelon and Rebecca Traister discuss the effect of the recession on the depiction of gender, [hetero] relationships and the pay gap. This video-dialogue is from early March, but it is still full of good stuff that people are thinking and feeling, and how the recession continues to be depicted in major media.

Great Place to Work Canada

The Great Place to Work Institute has released their list of the best places to work in Canada. The list is selected based on employee surveys. The detailed pdf from the Globe and Mail explains the metrics that they used to determine the best workplaces. It also has a different list based on the size of the organization.

The Greatest Place to Work is Environics Communications, a public relations firm. They have offices in Toronto, Montreal and Washington D.C. This is their recruitment video. Get this: they want a person with a sense of humor.



Video from The National last night (sorry, they won't let me embed) briefly explains the survey and has requisite clips from The Office, cuz you know, that's the only office.

Potential changes to the hiring of graduate students into US Federal positions?

These two articles appeared on a message from WRK4US and I felt that they may be helpful to some librarians, and librarians who help grad students research work options.

• Agencies urged to hire more graduate students non-competitively
• OPM launches tool to cut red tape in hiring

SimplyHired New Grad Job Search

The vertical search engine SimplyHired has opened a new portal specifically for new grad jobs. Yes, it works for librarian.

In Canada, the vertical search engine Eluta, offers a similar new grad search filter, with Library and Info Studies in the Master of Science menu selection.

Library Internships

At first glance, ALA Connect is dominated by professional development (i.e. for fee courses) but there are several library internships listed within the opportunities exchange. A few are highlighted under the New Opportunities menu on the left-hand side of the page.

Other internships:

• Idealist.org Internships search
• United Nations Human Resources (search both Internships and Information Management)
• Canadian Library Association Internship and Work Experience Programs in Canadian Libraries
• With summer upon us, you better be on the board for FSWEP (limited to Canadians)
• Canadian Heritage Information Network: Jobs in Heritage
• National Gallery of Canada Internships
• NPR Internships
• Presidential Libraries Internship Opportunities
• Go Abroad: Library and Info Science Internships 

Of course, the library association chapters, state and provincial libraries, as well as international library associations all post internship opportunities.

Book Review: Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

The authors of Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier include the CEO and Chief Counsel of ReputationDefender, a company that specializes in online reputation management. Though the book does advertise the services of their company, they also lay out a plan that a reader who understands the nature of the tactics described could use to protect their online reputation. Their plan could also be used to create documentation in case a question every arose about the veracity of the information in the attack, or may prove useful to law enforcement should an online reputation attack veer from malice to harassment or RL violence.


The authors explain the reasons why strangers, acquaintances or customers may use a search engine to look for information on a person. Verifying identity, reputation and claims of expertise may be the most common reasons. Employers, for example, will perform an online search to verify claims and credentials. Since a great deal of public information has moved online, it makes sense to conduct a search via Google, if only to satisfy curiosity.

The authors try to explain the motives of people who destroy online reputations—unfortunately, there may be no reason for wrecking a reputation except boredom—and they describe some of the tactics and tricks that reputation thieves use. Some of the tactics include:

• Googlebombing involves manipulating search results so that a search for other terms will lead to this person’s profile. The example the authors used is the “miserable failure” search leading to the biography of then-President George W Bush.
• Googlestuffing where top level search results are filled with erroneous information about the person searched for.
• “False flagging”, or becoming a double. Some examples include impersonating someone in a forum, blog—as in Fake Steve Jobs—or in a social networking site, like Facebook. Some of these impersonations have highly sinister overtones, especially if they masquerade as a family member.

There are also mistaken identity issues that can lead to online reputation smears. There are cases where a person may deliberately assume your identity online, but the authors also recommend periodic checks to look for “doppelnamers”, people with the same or similar name as yours, who have criminal histories, are a little dodgy or lack good sense. You can use some tactics to distinguish yourself from “dopplenamers”, such as adding your middle initial to your digital footprint, but it is also useful to be aware that these people may end up showing up in your top level search results. It would also be a good idea for any employers who are looking for information online to verify that they do indeed have the correct “Jesse James”.

The book does recommend for fee services, a few affiliated with ReputationDefender, for managing online reputation. However, there is a plan laid out in the book that person, who has read the entirety of the book and who understands the nature of online reputation attacks, can use to protect their personal and professional reputations. Reputation checking will require ongoing effort and it is worthwhile to document attacks and their clean up, in case there are questions about the attack or you need to submit a file to law enforcement.

If I have one big problem with the book, it is that I discovered that the site listed in the references, http://wildwest2.com, does not lead to a companion website for the book. The index/home page leads to the Amazon listing of the book. The links provided in the references at the end of each chapter, such as http://wildwest2.com/go/813 found on page 147, lead only to a broken links. Now a researcher will be able to find the actual references, but the implication of providing links like this is that, well, they will work and will lead the reader to useful resources.

Librarians who are looking for work may want to use the information outlined to check up on their online reputation--and I know for a fact that libraries are checking out their applicants online--and they may need to use it to defend the online reputation of their library. Sadly, only about an hour after finishing this book, I did have to recommend it to a client who was facing personal attacks online; though I was sorry about the attacks, I was glad to be able to give the person a resource to use so they could understand the nature of the attacks and how to resist them effectively.

Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

The Bonus Battle (or you really can explain anything with pictures)

Dan Roam, the author of the Back of the Napkin, explains to bankers why the public is so mad at them. (um, duh). Anyway, when I watched it the first time and he mentioned "murders and acquisitions" I also enjoyed a Freudian mishear.

A Library Writer's Blog

If you're looking for some opportunities to do some professional writing the field, subscribe to Corey Seeman's Library Writer's Blog. There are a wide range of opportunities from conference papers, calls for chapters, contests, very diverse.

How to set up a networking group

Virginia Henry of LIKE has provided a basic article about how she and other knowledge professionals in London created their own networking group. She also provides some advice on how to create your own informal group.

They use LinkedIn, but you could also use MeetUp, though MeetUp is far less formal (better for book clubs) and doesn't include the professional credentials and resumes of group members.

Reviewing Librarian Recruitment Materials

The Emerging Leaders team from the ALA is conducting a survey to evaluate the librarian (to the profession) recruitment materials.

To help improve ALA’s ongoing efforts to recruit a diverse pool of talented and dynamic individuals to the profession of librarianship, librarians are invited to participate in a web-based survey which focuses on the accessibility and usefulness of existing ALA recruitment materials.

Press release with link to the survey.

Spidey Gets Fired - CNBC.com

Spidey Gets Fired - CNBC.com