![\"Avalanche\"](\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/94\/273288073_c414f17394.jpg?v=0\" "\\"Avalanche\\"")
<\/p>\nA couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a bit despondent about whether our Emerging Technologies Group is going in the right direction. We’ve chosen our first project – it is joyous, creative and collaborative and can involve lots of our staff and our community, but is a bit… well,… “fluffy”. I can see the value in it, but I wondered whether more traditional librarians would find it lightweight, and whether it looked like we were putting energy into trivia.<\/p>\n
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Avalanche<\/a> uploaded to Flickr<\/a> on October 19, 2006<\/a> by ben-der<\/strong><\/a> <\/small><\/p>\n So, I was extremely heartened when I read the May 2007 issue of Walt Crawford’s Cites and Insights<\/a>. He’s begun a new column celebrating “small successes”. Here’s the passage that cheered me up and made me feel like our small project was worthwhile.<\/p>\n A note about \u201csmall successes\u201d<\/p>\n When I use that term, it is not intended to demean the success. It\u2019s an attempt to honor <\/em>it, noting that something doesn\u2019t have to be world changing to matter. The growing set of microloan programs for third-world mini-entrepreneurs is a classic \u201csmall success\u201d approach: $25 here and $100 there may mean more in some cases than a multimillion-dollar project. An effective reference blog in a library may do more than a universal blogging program, even if it begins and grows slowly. Two local libraries making a handshake agreement and using (gasp!) the telephone as a basis for communication: it won\u2019t revolutionize either library, but it does provide significant additional resources at the point of need.<\/p>\n Small successes add up over time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This week I was reminded that not every librarian who can see the benefits of Library2.0 technology is lucky enough to have management willing to embrace it.<\/p>\n Helene Blowers<\/a>, who designed the Learning2.0<\/a> social software course, posted about being at the Computers in Libraries 2007<\/a> conference and meeting many, many frustrated librarians who want to start projects using new technologies but are:<\/p>\n stippled [sic] and oppressed by stale management and old world politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She wonders<\/p>\n if what the profession really needs is just to give some administrators a good swift kick in the head.”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In conclusion, however, she joins the chorus in praise of small things:<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to fight battles through small change, but with enough small battles, it creates some erosion. And the thing about erosion is … that if it continues long enough, it eventually leads to an avalanche of new opportunity!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So next time I feel like a project that brings new attittudes to our library is small and insignificant, I’ll be chanting my mantra “Small successes are potential avalanches, Small successes are potential avalanches”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a bit despondent about whether our Emerging Technologies Group is going in the right direction. We’ve chosen our first project – it is joyous, creative and collaborative and can involve lots of our staff and our community, but is a bit… well,… “fluffy”. I can see the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[118,199,346],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emerging-technologies-group","tag-learning20","tag-small-things"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-3K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}