The Long(ish) Read: Walter Benjamin Unpacking his Library

Walter Benjamin in Paris. Image © Gisèle Freund

Welcome to The Long(ish) Read: a new AD feature which uncovers texts written by notable essayists which resonate with contemporary architecture, interior architecture, urbanism or landscape design. In this essay, written in 1931, Walter Benjamin narrates the process of unpacking his library. All in boxes, he takes the reader through elements of his book collection: the memories attached to them, the importance he placed on the act of ‘collecting’ and the process of accumulation, and how objects like books inhabit a space.

Walter Benjamin in brief

Born in Germany in 1892, Benjamin was known as a ‘man of letters’. Having been educated in Switzerland he had a short career in the lead up to the Second World War, which saw him carve a niche as a literary critic. In the 1930s he turned to Marxism, partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht and partly due to the rise of extreme right-wing politics in Europe. He spent much of his professional life in Paris, where he wrote this essay. Benjamin died in 1940 having committed suicide at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the Nazis. Read more...

8 Ways Millennials Can Build Leadership Skills By Laura McMullen Aug. 19, 2015

By Aug. 19, 2015 | 11:07 a.m. EDT + More

So ‘leader’ isn’t in your job title.

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No one is asking you to manage a team or take charge of a multimillion-dollar project. So what? Even young, green employees can boost their leadership skills by learning from others and volunteering for small-scale assignments. And they should learn to lead now, given that 73 percent of the nearly 800 participants in The Hartford 2014 Millennial Leadership Survey said they aspire to be leaders in the next five years. Continue for eight expert-approved ways young people can learn to lead.

Next: Observe and learn.

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Burn the Libraries and Free the Librarians from R. David Lankes

Burn the Libraries and Free the Librarians from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

What Went Right: A Case Study of a Successful Hiring (Part 1) by Ellen Mehling, Career Development Consultant, METRO

Ellen MehlingEllen Mehling: Where did you go to school? What degrees and/or certificates do you hold?

Krissa Corbett Cavouras: I attended Sarah Lawrence for my undergraduate degree and earned my masters from Pratt School of Information and Library Science (SILS) in 2011.
EM: Were you employed elsewhere when you applied for this job? For how long had you been job hunting?

KCC: I was working for a small e-commerce company, as a knowledge manager on their marketing team, for two years prior to starting at Brooklyn Public Library. I had probably been actively looking for about three months when I had my first interview here.
EM: How did you learn about the position? Did you have any connections via your network to that workplace?

KCC: I heard about the position on a couple of fronts — first, because I’ve had Brooklyn Public Library’s job page bookmarked for years, ever since I graduated from library school! Second, my manager Robin and I have several mutual friends from our early days as bloggers, so I saw the job shared around that mutual circle on Facebook. (I do think that’s how I knew it was in serious recruitment, because sometimes you don’t know from a website job posting if it’s a really open position.) I also have several library school colleagues who now work in the system, although I don’t think I saw this specific posting on my library school listserv. http://metro.org/articles/what-went-right-a-case-study-of-a-successful-hiring-part-1/

9 things bosses do that make great employees quit

It’s pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something to complain about—few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door.

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

The sad thing is that this can easily be avoided. All that’s required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager’s part.

First, we need to understand the nine worst things that managers do that send good people packing.

1. They Overwork People

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