Think Clearly: The Lucidea Blog

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Stephen Abram

Stephen Abram
Stephen Abram is a popular Lucidea Webinars presenter. He is the past president of SLA, and the Canadian and Ontario Library Associations. He is the CEO of Lighthouse Consulting and the executive director of the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries. He blogs personally at Stephen’s Lighthouse (www.stephenslighthouse.com). Watch for his new book from Lucidea Press on management tips for librarians, coming soon!
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Recent Posts

Part 2: 33 Tips to Increase Innovation Capacity in your Library

Posted by Stephen Abram on 9/19/2017

I wrote my first 12 tips for innovation and product development success at your library based on my own experiences (and as a sort of ode to my 39th anniversary of my MLS graduation). This is a three part series and the next 11 tips are right here. Watch for the final batch in my next post.

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Management, Integrated Library Systems

Part 1: 33 Tips to Increase Innovation Capacity in your Library

Posted by Stephen Abram on 9/12/2017

There’s nothing like the 39th anniversary of your library school graduation to cause you to reflect. I have many memories of a young, newly minted, newly married and very green librarian heading out into the big world. Ironically, my first task in those pre-Amazon days was to order a book—and I didn’t know how and was a solo librarian. Learning started fast in professional practice. What have I learned in the last 39 years, and is any of it useful?

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Management, Integrated Library Systems

Watching the Future: Tracking Library Trends

Posted by Stephen Abram on 9/5/2017

Librarians are more relevant than ever. We have no good reason to be on the defense and every reason to take the offensive. Conversation in our field is fraught with too much navel gazing and not enough looking at external evidence that many things are going well. We share too many stories about the bad stuff and too rarely share the successes. Yet we are an adaptive profession. Positive change is our tradition; let’s talk about that!

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Management, Integrated Library Systems

Curation: Buzzword or What?

Posted by Stephen Abram on 8/29/2017

One of the most popular buzzwords in library-land at the moment is ‘curation’. It’s used to describe anything from old-fashioned collection development to human filtering activities on social media like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and blogs. The word ‘curator’ gets used too liberally to describe the stuff people do on the web and, in my humble option, dilutes and pollutes the professional things that librarians do.

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Topics: Library Management, Information Management, Management, Integrated Library Systems

Are Librarians Experts?

Posted by Stephen Abram on 8/22/2017

Are librarians actually experts? If so, what are we expert at? What is our expertise?

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Management

Workplace Information Literacy: It’s Different

Posted by Stephen Abram on 8/17/2017

There are plenty of articles and studies on information literacy in our professional literature. However, these almost always address the issue of information literacy in public, K-12 and academic libraries, and focus on end users. But what about workplace literacy?

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Management, Integrated Library Systems, Special Libraries

Part Three: Working Across the Generations—Nobody Likes to be Labeled

Posted by Stephen Abram on 8/10/2017

A meme in the Millennial generation is that they hate to be called Millennials. Same goes for hipsters, punks, etc. So, forgive the shorthand in this post to describe the cohort of new professionals in our field. They offer as much diversity as there always has been, and no generalization can make up for that. That said, there are some themes emerging as newer professionals comprise an ever-increasing share of our field.

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Integrated Library Systems

Part Two: Working Across the Generations

Posted by Stephen Abram on 8/3/2017

In an earlier post, I described a problem in our profession that is exacerbated by the double hump (Bactrian camel) in our population curve. How can you bridge the gap?

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Integrated Library Systems

Part One: Working Across the Generations—Getting Over the Hump

Posted by Stephen Abram on 7/27/2017

I’ve spent a lot of time with new graduates in our profession—those who have started on the path to great librarianship but struggle with finding their footing in the world of library teams—and I’ve noticed some themes. Please read on to find out what librarians have in common with camels.

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, Integrated Library Systems

How Do Ideas Grow?

Posted by Stephen Abram on 5/24/2017

You’ve got an imagination. You’re creative. Librarians often say they’re not—so typically modest—but generally acknowledge that the magic in getting answers and insights from information is a creative act. Librarians are experts in that. If you’re too self-effacing to present yourself as an expert, can you simply admit to your expertise?

In this first post (of many) for Lucidea’s Think Clearly Blog, I’ll put forward two frameworks for thinking about how to successfully present creative ideas for innovation and change within your organization.

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Topics: Library Management, Solo Librarianship, SydneyEnterprise, Integrated Library Systems, GeniePlus