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December 29, 2006

Love the garnish.

--Garlic bread (earth balance vegan butter & lots of garlic)
--3 cups pasta (w/ 2 cups of parsley, 1 lemon, lots of pepper, 1-2 tomatoes & roasted garlic)
--Rainbow chard (steamed)

Simply amazing and about 10 minutes preparation & cooking time.

One of my New Year's Resolutions-- finally give up the donuts.

Bring your whole self to work

We went to some of the Reaching Out conference this year. Non-profit Management students are quite the different crowd than MBA students, but that's a different post.

At the Saturday lunch keynote Christie Vianson talked about bringing your whole self to work, and how it's more satisfying for everyone if this can happen. Where I work now, I definitely feel more comfortable being my whole self.

My question is, in public service, can you really do this? Even as a librarian, anyone who works with the public, you can't really tell patrons about yourself, or even wear anything, or act any way that might give them a hint of who you are. Sometimes it's possible, and nothing bad happens, but once in a while, giving out any information goes terribly wrong. People make assumptions if they know your age, education, gender, etc. I think direct public service is easiest if you're a complete enigma.

I know it's weird, and sort of impossible sounding, but when someone comes to the reference desk in a public library, there's a lot of judging that goes on, and it's really best to be as completely indecipherable as possible.

December 25, 2006

Blogging and HR

I still hear stories about potential employers shying away from applicants who blog.

My first few days at my new job in September, people knew things about me that I hadn't mentioned. They had all my favorite foods at breakfast my first day, "we know you're vegan, but you make exceptions for donuts, right?" (this is true, though I'm trying to give up donuts) and "we got you this mug because you have cats." And, I really didn't remember mentioning being vegan or liking cats at the interview. When I didn't have to come out, I looked at myself in the mirror wondering just how butch I'd gotten, that they were all just assuming.

But this is what happened. They all read my blog, and liked me, and hired me, and blogging found me the best match I've ever had.

Library & Info Science is all about matching people to each other, to information, to organizations. Building community and bringing people together, and this is blogging, too.

I'm thinking about writing an article about this... Library HR departments recruiting bloggers. I just finished taking an HR class at NYU so I'm all excited about this topic.

December 24, 2006

Happy Holidays

We'll be back soon.