From March to May of 2009, well over one hundred librarians declared themselves Shovers and Makers. This site had over fifteen thousand pageviews in that time. Thank all of you for making this project fun.

If you are new to the site, please see the About page to see what we were up to, and page through all the great profiles of the 2009 Shovers and Makers.

This is it, folks. Only three more days left to join this self-selected group of Shovers and Makers before we close down new postings for 2009. Impress your friends! Pad your resume! Buy a t-shirt!

Shover and Maker Amy Buckland got this nice pic of Shover and Maker Jan Dawson while Dawson was suited up to compete in the Beast of the East roller derby tournament. Note how the S&M button adds that extra touch of punk attitude.

Shovers and Makers are fierce.

-Steve

A few months back, when I was talking about plans for Shovers and Makers with Josh, I wondered if people would really want to do it. We figured if a few dozen people posted to the site it would be worthwhile, especially if some of those people weren’t already friends of ours.

As of this writing, we have 132 profiles on the site. So I feel pretty good about that. I knew that the idea of Shovers and Makers wouldn’t resonate with everyone, but obviously it seemed like a fun idea to enough people to make it worthwhile. I was concerned that either Library Journal or past and present “Movers and Shakers” winners would think that the site was a swipe at them or sour grapes or something. If any of them did take it that way, they didn’t tell me, and I’m happy that so many Movers and Shakers are also Shovers and Makers.

We timed this site to go live shortly after the Movers and Shakers were announced, so it was a nice coincidence that the Computers in Libraries conference came shortly thereafter. It was great fun to pass out S&M buttons at the conference and to see so many people in their LSW / S&M t-shirts.

Jill Hurst-Wahl’s write-up of a random lunch conversation with a non-librarian at CIL is my favorite semi-S&M story that I have heard so far. (Though Laura Carscaddon’s making connections story is just about as good.)

But all good things come to an end. Fewer and fewer people are posting profiles, which probably means it’s time to wrap this up. So consider this an announcement that Shovers and Makers 2009 will come to an end on May 15. The site will stay up, of course, but I’ll remove the form for adding new posts. I’ll probably leave comments on the posts open. So if you have been meaning to make an S&M post–if, say, I gave you a button at CIL and you haven’t posted yet (ahem)–May 15 is your deadline.

All of the posts are labeled “Shovers and Makers 2009,” leaving open the possibility that there will be “Shovers and Makers 2010″ and so on. But I’m not sure that people will want to just repeat what we did this year. And it’s possible that it would be best if this was a one-time event. If you have any ideas for what “Shovers and Makers 2010″ should be, please leave a comment on this post or email nerdboys@shoversandmakers.net to reach Josh and Iris and me.

-Steve

Check out the great Shovers and Makers blog badge that Jenny Reiswig made. It’s soooooooo pretty! It’s on the badges page, with HTML to cut and paste, too.

Thanks Jenny. You are totally invited to the next sleepover.

The point of Shovers and Makers is to celebrate people and the work they do. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t wear nifty T-shirts and buttons.

Really, selling stuff isn’t the point here. We aren’t expecting to make any money. But it is true that the Shovers and Makers T-shirt was the inspiration for the Shovers and Makers site, not the other way around. And the buttons are free if you are in Crystal City early next week (and a buck-twenty-five if you won’t be).

All the details are on the new merchandise page.

I can be a bit of a worrier. So when we started working on Shovers and Makers, I was a little nervous about how Library Journal–home of Movers and Shakers–would view the name of our award.

Today there is a nice little blurb about S&M on Library Journal Academic Newswire. Here’s an excerpt:

When the editors at LJ first heard about the Library Society of the World’s informal counterpart to our annual Movers & Shakers list, we were amused—and rightly so. “This is supposed to be fun,” blogged co-creator Steve Lawson. But after reading through the librarians who have posted themselves as Shovers and Makers—the “award” is purely self-appointed—we’re mostly just impressed.

Nice to see that they are taking it as intended, and looking past the jokey name to see all the great stuff people are doing.

-Steve

The first 24 hours of Shovers and Makers have surpassed our fondest hopes. More than sixty people added their profile (or acceptance speech or nomination or whatever we should call it) to the site. As Jason Griffey pointed out on Twitter, that’s more Shovers and Makers for 2009 than there are Movers and Shakers.

And the entries themselves are fantastic. Whether they are long or short, passionate or somewhat tongue-in-cheek, they are inspiring and fun to read. Thank you.

Of course this isn’t over. We are just getting started. If you haven’t written your entry, please do. If you know someone who should be a Shover and Maker, let her know, and send her our way. If you can think of good ways to spread the word beyond Twittering, blogging, FriendFeeding librarians, let us know.

Please check back in on the site as the days go on, or follow along in the LSW FriendFeed room, or with this site’s RSS Feed.

Welcome to the Library Society of the World’s Shovers and Makers awards.

Each March, Library Journal profiles a few dozen librarians as part of their Movers and Shakers awards. As in past years, their 2009 Movers and Shakers are great choices. These are people doing inspiring work who deserve some recognition.

But at the Library Society of the World (LSW), we are into inclusiveness. We believe that there are many more library people who deserve recognition or have inspiring stories to share than could ever be featured in an issue of Library Journal. We also have a do-it-yourself ethic. You can join the LSW just by creating an account on thelsw.org. So simply adding our hand-picked list to the Library Journal’s hand-picked list wouldn’t be in the right spirit.

So here’s the deal. Everyone can be a Shover and Maker. To make it official, you need to go to the Be an S&M Winner page, read the guidelines, and write up your Shover and Maker profile. It can be a sentence or two, or you can go on for paragraphs. But ideally, you will tell everyone about something you have done that you are proud of or excited about.

The only real rule is that you have to write your own Shovers and Makers profile. That way no one can complain that they didn’t get the award (since it’s up to them) and we will all get a little experience in shameless self-promotion.

So now is the time. You can go right to the Be an S&M Winner page and write up your profile which, once approved for publication, will appear as a post on this blog. Or you can check out the about page for a little more about this site (some of it is a repeat of this post). After you have written your own profile, please help spread the word about Shovers and Makers by sending your friends and colleagues to shoversandmakers.net. If you have a blog or other website, you can use our badges to help promote Shovers and Makers.

That’s it. It’s up to you now. Congratulations!

P.S. It seems entirely likely that there will be some problems with this site for the first day or two. If you notice anything broken, please leave a comment on this post or email nerdboys@shoversandmakers.net.

Of course you are already a winner.

Starting Monday, you can tell everyone why.

Shovers and Makers, from the Library Society of the World.