The view from here: five years as a librarian

This month I celebrated five years working as a librarian, and four years post my librarianship degree. As someone who is naturally reflective, I wanted to look back on what I have achieved and the challenges I faced as a new librarian – as well as my hopes for the future. I entered the library …

Savouring stillness and slowness

My sense of passing time is now sharper, courtesy of quarantined life. When I go for my walks at dusk, I want to drink every second down, paint every colour of the sunset with my hands and keep the cold air on my skin. It’s a weird feeling – wanting to slow time, to replay …

Client engagement in libraries: from empathy to compassion

In my ALIA Queensland Mini Conference presentation last year, I briefly spoke about importance of empathy and compassion in cultivating inclusive library services. I want to explore this topic further and discuss how empathy and compassion can transform client engagement in libraries. A lot of people think great customer service is about fixing things, solving …

What resilience is not

I’m not going to lie; 2018 has been tough so far. And I haven’t been feeling very resilient in the face of it all. I have a complicated relationship with the concept of resilience; what it is, how we build it, and all the opinions, psychology and sometimes superficiality that comes with it. So for …