Monday, September 10, 2012

A Librarian's Business Card

After reading the thread "Facilitating" from the book The Atlas of New Librarianship I realized that as a librarian there's a lot that can be put on a business card. Sure, it would seem more professional to have the standard and important information on the card, like one's name, official title, and contact information. However, I've found, it's so hard to define exactly what a librarian does with just a title like "Executive Director" or "Reference Librarian".

As Lankes mentions, librarians need to facilitate conversation so that knowledge can be created in communities (65). To provide facilitation, librarians should be publishers, teachers, and moderators. Think how cool it would be for business cards to be like Twitter profiles, where you can create your own blurb about one's profession. For example, my future business card might say:

Erin Berry
Instructor, Publisher, Student, Moderator
Loves: British Literature, crockpot recipes, and Google searching

And why be restricted to a small paper rectangle? I love the idea that Lankes offers about library websites: they should not advertise the library, but rather the librarians (78). I am a not a techie, but I think it would be really neat to have the top of the home page display pictures of the librarians, where you can hover over each librarian and their name and business blurb would appear.  That way library members could learn a little about their librarians for they ask for assistance or services.

What would your business card say?

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