Author: Robin

Yeah, I’ve got nothing else – just wanted to put that out there. Y’all are lucky that I didn’t add my Amazon wish list link to this post, really… 😉

The Shelf Check blog posed a question a couple of weeks ago about setting up a space in the library for coworking folks. For those of you who aren’t familiar with coworking, there is a good article (lots of ’em, actually) at ReadWriteWeb that explains the concept. Basically it’s a space where independent and self-employed folks can go to work for and by themselves, but with shared resources and companionship made available by the coworking space and their coworking coworkers (awkward, I know…)

I follow a listserv for my neighborhood, and folks are often looking for coworking spaces (to rent) and others to cowork with. Plenty of people already run their small businesses from or do their freelance work at the library, but entirely independently, without the quietly social, communal feeling that it seems those who are looking for coworking spaces crave. Could we fashion a “coworking area,” much the way we fashion teen and children’s areas, in the library? And aggressively, cleverly promote it as a “coworking space–but better,” because workers in the library will have access to on-site librarians who can help them with database searches, etc?

Emily Lloyd, the author of the Shelf Check blog, posed the question above and I have to admit it intrigues me. I like the idea a lot. My particular library has space challenges right now that are pretty much incompatible with the idea of creating that sort of space – but that won’t be true in the future (hopefully!). One of the benefits of coworking spaces is the shared resources – not only on-site librarians, but computers, wireless access, color printers, copy machines, scanners and other bits of office hardware that people may not need to buy on their own but that they might find useful occasionally – and those are just the things that libraries (my library at least) provide already!
Like I said, not something I can do with the resources at my library – but if you all know of a library that does it or are thinking of doing something similar, let me know!

One of my major faults in writing (let’s not get into the major faults I have everywhere else, ok?) is the lack of discipline I have about revision and re-writing. I love to write. I hate to edit and revise. I’m pretty sure this is a common thing, I see others complaining about it quite frequently, so I’m not alone in this. The problem, of course, is that my work is frequently not quite as good as it could be if I would conquer the twin demons of procrastination and laziness and write my stuff *well* in advance of the due date. This is another non-resolution that I’m making this year (they sure are piling up, aren’t they?). With the exception of this blog (which is write once and publish – little editing is done to the text I produce here, with my apologies…), I’m going to try to give myself plenty of revision time when I start to plan out my attack on my next writing project. Editing and revising can only help my output – there is no reason to avoid doing it, besides laziness, and I’m going to definitely be working on that!

I overheard a comment the other day by a woman who paints, but does not sell her paintings (because she does it for the love of painting, not to create a market) about how she loses time while painting and how that was a sign of how much she loved it. This came a day after I started work on a new client’s website (Colossal Sounds) and completely lost 45 minutes of my life. I sat down to start tweaking his WordPress installation and the next time I looked up it was 45 minutes later and I’d have *sworn* it had only been 5.
Having a passion for your work (or your avocation, in the painter’s case) means that you can lose yourself in the process and get “in the zone” of working on something to the point where the passage of time is completely unnoticed. I’ve had those moments at my day job, too – times when I’ve sat down to do a “quick” fiddle with the site’s backend and discovered – an hour later – that I’ve completely lost track of time!
Have you ever done this? Have you ever been lucky enough to do it *while getting paid*? I’m a lucky girl – I need to remind myself of this sometimes.

The fairly recent announcement of Salesforce’s acquisition of DimDim – the formerly open source web conferencing product – has shaken some folks up. It’s a lesson, though, in the fragility of using free services on the web. While I’m not going to say don’t use them (and I’m certainly not going to stop using them myself), you do have to consider that free services (Ning, DimDim, possibly Delicious and more) have a strong possibility of going away altogether or just becoming a service that requires payment (as both Ning and DimDim have done). Either way, for libraries or other folks with very small budgets, the result is the same. The service is no longer available for them.

This applies to every free service – from powerhouses like Facebook to more niche products like the free budgeting and personal finance tool I use, Mint. Anything that you use that you are not specifically paying for (and things that you are paying for, even) can be pulled at any time. Really, paying for a product or service doesn’t mean it won’t go away – it just means that it may be less likely and will (hopefully) offer better support in transitioning you to a new service.
One thing I keep in mind with any service I use is that if I’m not paying for it, I’m not a customer – I’m the product. If the service can’t stay in business selling me and my data/habits/eyeball attention, they won’t be around for long. For services that have no paid option, this can be scary! The best thing to do is to make regular backups of all of your data (that you can!) on these free services and be prepared for service interruptions or unexpected loss of service at any time. Have contingency plans in place and know what options you have if that service becomes immediately unavailable to you.
Not the easiest thing to do, I will grant you, but a bit of preparation in advance can save hours of panicked “crisis-mode” activity in the future!