What I have been busy with
Like most libraries MPOW had to cope with a pretty striking funding shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year. The Trustees decided to accommodate by combining the Technology Division with the Reference Division. I found out on a Wednesday that on the next Monday I was to head up the new Information & Technology Division and manage 11 people. This was at 8 months pregnant. It is a great decision and I’m loving working with the crew, but made for a busy few weeks.
In a lot of libraries, I think the reference staff are probably the defacto technology folk too – but I’m not sure. In this case, though, combining these divisions was exactly the right move and I’m proud to work in a place that’s brave enough to make it. I’m wondering what other similarly sized libraries do, though.
Also exciting is that I am working on the Connecting to Collections project that our State Library has taken a lead on. The idea is to catalog and expose the most important collections in NH. We are contacting as many cultural institutions as we can think of to participate and I am in charge of creating a website to allow researchers easier access to them. So many are in small organizations and rot away because no one knows they are there. Baby has largely kept me distracted, but there is slow progress being made and I’m hoping to get good time in once the bruises heal.
Watch findNHhistory for the first collections going up by the end of the summer.
