The Corporate Librarian

First off, read this from the last time a similar meme went around. What, you want more? Fine.

Some people do know some of these things about me, but close enough.

1. I eat breakfast cereal dry. Yes, I have tried it with milk when I was a kid. Yes, I’m reasonably certain I wouldn’t like it now either. No, I am not lactose intolerant.
2. My first computer was a VIC-20.
3. I have been to psychotherapists several times in my life. I hesitated about putting this one down, but honestly the fact that this is considered a stigma annoys the hell out of me.
4. I used to know how  to say “Flee! The German soldiers are advancing!” in Italian. At least, that’s what the co-worker in the bookstore told me it meant. Considering that it started with “Avanti!” I’m not so certain. No, I don’t remember how the rest of it went.
5. I have a bad fear of heights. It’s not so bad if I’m enclosed (I’ve been to the top of the Empire State Building, for example, or the mini-Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas), but walking on the side of an overpass, for example, terrifies me.
6. I used to be terrified of dogs, because growing up the neighbor’s Saint Bernard (which was much larger than I was) used to bound after me when I got off the school bus and try to lick my face off.
7. I was once bitten by a fake zebra in Tijuana.

No obligation to follow the meme, but because I’m curious: Air Pirate Neff, my fellow Steve, Ceredwyn, Martha, Sean McBride, Joelle Nebbe and Tim.

The beautiful but deadly Rochelle has tagged me with one of those memes the kids like these days:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I’m busy with work stuff, but will try to get to it this weekend.

As my posting’s become ever more erratic, and the few posts I have done come from product announcements or other sources, I’ve decided it’s time to hang it up. I’ll be blogging from Internet Librarian, to vex Walt with my pernicious liveblogging if nothing else , but after that curtains.

Anyone want to take over the blog, make something interesting of it? You can either email me from the About page or comment here, and using my completely arbitrary criteria for deciding who gets it I’ll hand it over along with domain renewal for the next year.

So here’s my Wordle for this blog:

Looking at it, an awful lot is focused on jobs. Sadly, other topics that would be of interest I don’t really have good advice on. How to deal with IT when you want to try new things? Wasn’t an issue at the last job, not an issue (for different reasons) at the current job. Marketing myself? Not much of a way to do that at the last job, no need at the current job (where there are four or five other people, all of whom know what I do).

I’m not sure how much I can blog about the current job, honestly.

I likely won’t be going to many conferences until my finances improve (though I might lobbycon Internet Librarian). For all my talk about wanting hands-on workshops, I haven’t gotten anywhere on planning an unconference.

So honestly, I’m not sure where the blog is going from here.

One note: Until I can figure out a better solution, I’m addressing my earlier bewailing of the lack of online meeting places for corporate librarians by creating a Room on FriendFeed. People can post their thoughts, or comment on other people’s posts or share links of various sorts.

So, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but mucking out the Open Thread post brought it to mind again. I’ve generally been OK with people pitching their products/services as long as they’re a) library-related and b) open about it.

What is the preference of my readers? No product pitches ever? Product pitches are fine?

I’ve been pretty busy with details of finishing up my job, looking for a new one, packing up my apartment, and so on. And next week, I’ll be flying off to South Africa to train my replacement. Johannesburg, for any South African readers wanting to meet up.

But I haven’t forgotten my readers!

A minor change to the About page – rather than give my e-mail address, I’ve replaced it with a comment form. So any questions or comments you have which don’t seem relevant to a specific post, feel free to drop them in there!

It’s really not much of a secret – I mean, I should have created a corporatelibrarian account on gmail if I truly wanted to maintain my anonymity. Or not posted my trading card on Flickr recently. And for those of you as addicted to Web 2.0 things as I am, here’s my profile-in-progress at Library 2.0 on Ning.

But for the 3 or 4 people who haven’t figured it out, hi. My name’s Steven Kaye. I work for Accenture, at least I do until April 30th. When I first set up this blog, the advice I got was to keep it anonymous until Accenture figured out its blogging policy. But it gets awkward writing about oneself in the third person, I was annoyed that I had to turn down an chance to be quoted by Judith Siess because I wasn’t sure what I could and couldn’t reveal about myself, and from what I can tell from Accenture’s blogging policy, as long as I follow common sense guidelines:

• Follow the company’s Business Code of Ethics
• Respect copyright and fair use policies
• Protect confidential and proprietary information
• Don’t comment on or disclose the company’s financial or operational performance
• Don’t reference company clients, business partners or suppliers without permission and don’t use their actual names
• Use a disclaimer

I’m kosher. I’d wondered about that last bit, since WordPress doesn’t seem to have an easy way to post a disclaimer so it’s always at the top of a blog. So for now, I’ve created a disclaimer page.

Got any questions, now that I no longer have a secret identity?

So, faithful readers of the Corporate Librarian, what topics would you like to see me discuss next? ‘Cause honestly, right now I got nothin’.