Seeking contributors for a new _Against the Grain_ column: "How We Done It Bad"
All of us are familiar with the "How We Done It Good" article, a piece in which a librarian writes about a project that he or she has recently completed successfully. Sometimes the successful projects involve refinements of old practices and workflows, and sometimes they are
experimental new practices that have proved effective. In both cases, the point of the article is to share the good news and the details with colleagues, who might be inspired to try something similar in their own institutions.
For a new column, to be published irregularly in _Against the Grain_, I would like to invite submissions with an opposite orientation: the column will be called "How We Done It Bad," and it will feature stories of projects and experiments that went wrong -- maybe even horribly,
tragically wrong. The point of these articles won't be so much to provide amusement and/or provoke sympathy, but rather to share lessons learned. How can _AtG_'s readers benefit from mistakes that all of us have made? Can we save each other some wasted time and embarrassment (or worse) by sharing our own stories of wasted time and embarrassment?
Please send ideas and proposals to me at the email address below. I look forward to hearing from you!
(And yes, if you'd prefer to publish your experience anonymously, that's a definite possibility. However, please volunteer only your own stories -- not those of others who you feel have failed in some way.)
----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu
