Helene Blowers evoked the Phoenix during her keynote presentation at a recent conference. Merriam-Webster describes the Phoenix as “a legendary bird which according to one account lived 500 years, burned itself to ashes on a pyre, and rose alive from the ashes to live another period“.1 What a powerful allusion! Imagine a long-lived entity, with the wisdom
◊ Change Management ◊
Libraries finding their Phoenix
Helene Blowers, Digital Strategy Director for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, really gets it. Her work is an inspiration and I’ll spotlight more of it this week. For now, check out what Helene and Kathy Dempsey have to say on the future of libraries. UGame ULearn interview Kathy Dempsey and Helene Blowers from Jaap van de
Remembering the future
My town election/library/school dream is about my community coming together around a common purpose—to strengthen our bonds, to enrich ourselves through learning and fun, and to provide lasting value for residents of West Boylston and beyond. I glimpsed a part of that dream in Ipswitch Australia. Remember When – Memories of Ipswich is “a collaborative,
Funding what we value: participation
Participation is key to achieving the focus, organization and information needed to help ensure our public funding is aligned with our values. Citizens can (and should) lead the need to increase the responsiveness and accountability of our governing bodies. We need to communicate clearly and constructively with our town officials so they’ll know what is
Funding what we value: information
Given the availability of sophisticated, low-cost publishing tools, it is reasonable to expect better information from all levels of government. In this context, better means: integrated, timely, informative, personalized, interactive, and multi-channel. Integrated – it’s costly and ineffective for town departments to have individual websites. Municipal information needs to be available from a central, well-organized
Funding what we value: organization
Conventional municipal budget & reporting practices make it difficult to answer simple questions like “How much of our annual budget is allocated to [insert department name or expense line here]?” In West Boylston, for example, health insurance costs and debt service fall into two general buckets and are not linked back to the originating departments.
Funding what we value: focus
I applaud our town leaders for initiating the SWOT analysis. In fact, an annual survey of resident values, needs and preferences should become standard governing practice. A successful survey would be: Thoughtful – concise & well-organized with questions that make sense. Comprehensive – one survey covering all departments rather than multiple surveys from individual departments.
Funding what we value: intro
At West Boylston’s April 15th Select Board meeting, the Town Administrator outlined the process and results for a recently conducted analysis to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our community. During a five hour session with 17 volunteer residents, the Beaman Library surfaced as one of the top 3 community strengths. Ironically, the
Cindi Trainor: throw the library doors open
Cindi Trainor, co-author of the The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians shares insights about the statement: We hope that the statements we’ve crafted on our future spark conversation to move us forward in a positive way. There is a groundswell of passion and interest that we in our profession must harness, lest we
My town election/library/school dream
April 7th was election day in West Boylston. Only 11.6% of the town’s 4,758 registered voters cast ballots. My guess is that low awareness, low interest, too many uncontested offices and too many other things to do were behind the low turnout. I dream about doing better next year. And I’m still thinking about stone soup. Imagine residents
