Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

Michael Stephens shares with us another of his valuable top ten lists: Ten Ways to Lose Your Techie Librarians.  Karen Schneider had seven more to add of her own.  Here are six more, LiB style:

1. Do not expect your technical staff to ever need training on anything.  After all, whatever skills they came in to the job with are enough to last until they retire, and they already know so much more than the rest of us.
2. Require your tech staff to have MLS degrees & computer science experience, but don’t bother paying them adequately for either.
3. Don’t encourage technology staff to go to conferences or professional development events.  They’ll just come back with more of those pesky idea-thingies.
4. Discourage telecommuting.
5. Solicit input from technology staff on projects in a totally perfunctory manner, but already have your decision in mind, which you will stick to no matter what their recommendations are.
6. Hold technology projects and services up as the poster children for
   how great the library is, but don’t bother supporting those projects or
   services with adequate staff or money.  After all, technology is just
   an "add on" to real library services.