Books I've Read 

• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell. Ah, the book that started it all (at least for me). Reading through Gladwell's theories on how information and popularity pass through a population woke my brain up and got me rolling. I may have been late to the party, but I'm trying to make up for it now.
• The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida. Near as I can tell, the members of the Creative Class are the folks that we are losing as library patrons, year after year. They're connected online, they want experiences over "stuff" and they are want everything as close to now as possible. Florida gives us a good idea of who we're dealing with and how we might best serve them.
• The Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garrett. His primary topic is website design, but his theories on what makes a good user experience apply to what happens every time a patron enters our environment, be it online or through bricks and mortar. A short, quick read.
• Naked Conversations, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. This is a seminal book on the increasing expectation of transparency from businesses and organization on the part of customers. Through blogs and other social computing spaces (review sites, etc), organizations have an opportunity to interact with their users in ways that will make everyone happy. Scoble and Israel explain why; Michael Casey and Michael Stephens will be explaining why it's specifically important for libraries.
• Ambient Findability, Peter Morville. To quote the FatDux: "A fabulously eloquent work that describes, questions, embraces, and exposes the tools and techniques we use to gather inspiration and wisdom in our brave new world." Exactly that. Also, a short read.
• The Long Tail, Chris Anderson. I was mentally writing up the blog posts about this book as I was reading it. If you read nothing else, make sure this one ends up on the nightstand. With consortia and larger systems growing and resources diminshing, the principles of the Long Tail should have a serious impact on how libraries approach obtaining and maintaining their physical resources. A vital read.
• The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, Andrew Keen. This is the first book in a long, long time that actively made me angry while reading it. I kept hoping Keen would call it all a joke, a bar bet (as my husband opined). No such luck. Keen fervently believes that while social technologies have the power for good, their current uses are destroying the 'cultural gatekeeper' institutions of corporate media. The reason I finished the book (rather than dropping in annoyance) was that Keen was giving me things to think about, reasons why I believe what I do. Cult of the Amateur is worth reading, for this reason if none other.
• The Dip, Seth Godin. A short, sweet little book on learning when to let go of a job/relationship/idea and when to power through. Well worth the short amount of time to read.
• Radical Careering, Sally Hogshead. Coming so soon after The Dip, I felt that there was more than a bit of overlap between the two. Rather than stolen ideas, I'll chalk that up to serendipity. That said, these two books work well together, taking some of the same concepts from slightly different perspectives. Also recommended.

Books I Haven't Read....Yet 

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