Dear Twitter: It’s Not You, It’s Us

July 20, 2010 at 3:00 pm (creativity, humor, Library 2.0, Twitter, Uncategorized)

In which we take a tongue-in-cheek look at a project that did not go exactly as planned.

*hem hem*

Dear Twitter:

We’ve been seeing each other for about a year now, and there are a lot of things we really like about you.  You can be funny and charming, and you’ve shared a lot of interesting things with us during our time together.  In fact, it would be fair to say that if we’d never hooked up, the library would’ve missed out on a lot of good times.

Lately, though, we’ve been thinking about our relationship with you, and as difficult as this is for us to say, we just don’t think it’s going to work out between us on a long-term basis.  We hope you understand, and we wish you the very best of luck in the future with all your other relationships — in fact, you have so many other people in your life, we have a feeling you probably won’t miss us at all.

Just to make sure there aren’t any hard feelings, though, we thought we’d take a moment to explain what caused us to make this decision.  Put very simply, it’s not you, Twitter:  it’s us, as a library.

We know people say that all the time in breakups, and we know there are a lot of other libraries who have a relationship with you, so we want to be crystal clear about this, Twitter:  it really isn’t you.  You are fun, and shiny, and hip, and a terrific method of certain kinds of communication.   You are who you are, and we respect that. 

The thing is, we have to be true to ourselves, too.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to look ourselves in the eye in the mirror.  Given how tough that is for an institution to do in the context of a metaphor, we hope you can understand that.

Here are some of the aspects of our relationship that just weren’t working for us as a library.

We weren’t meeting the kinds of people we were hoping to meet through our relationship with you.

One of the main reasons we wanted to hook up with you in the first place was because you had a great reputation.  Other people who were seeing you promised us that if we got into a relationship with you, we’d have a brand-new connection to people in our service area.  Given that we are always looking for new ways to reach out to city residents, we found this tremendously exciting.

What we discovered, however, was that, despite our best efforts to tag and friend fellow Pittsburghers, we only attracted 228 followers,  most of whom were either businesses trying to sell us something, or other libraries and librarians.  While we love our professional peers mightily, and everybody has to buy some stuff sometimes, that wasn’t really our goal, and we were a little disappointed.  Either the audience we were trying to reach just wasn’t interested in us, or they weren’t in a relationship with Twitter themselves. 

Despite our best marketing efforts, nobody seemed to notice that we were now a part of your relationship circle.

Marketing is so important to libraries these days, especially when institutions that support the public good must compete with loud, shiny, for-profit entities for time and attention.  Because we want to be a forward-thinking library,we thought you could help us out as a low-cost marketing tool.  So we promoted our relationship with you in various ways, including a feed into the Eleventh Stack blog , links in e-mail signature files, and shameless self-promotion in every single self-nominating ”best of library Twitter accounts” opportunities that crossed our path. 

Alas, according to the statistics — we used HootSuite — our feed received only 2,023 visits between June 2009 and June 2010.  That’s a lot less than we intended, especially since we were posting every day, and we feel a little discouraged that we weren’t reaching as large an audience as we’d hoped.  On top of that, only 27 people felt that what we had to say was worthy enough to put us on their special lists; our self-esteem took a bit of a hit over this, but it takes all kinds of folks to make a world, and we’ve come to realize that it’s not that we’re not special – we’re just not special in the way that works for you, Twitter dear.

We simply didn’t have the time and energy to treat you the way you deserve.

You’re very much an extrovert, Twitter, all sass and dazzle.  Your words flow a mile a minute, and you speak in short, snappy sentences that sometimes took our breath away.  You keep up thousands of conversations at once and exchange information at warp speed.  We found this very exciting and fun, in the beginning, and looked forward to knowing you better.

The problem is, we never felt like we could give you the attention you deserved.  You’re hard to keep up with, and our mission dictates that we have to serve the entire public, not just the folks who use the world wide web to communicate.  Between book ordering, program planning, and staffing the physical reference desk, it wasn’t always easy, even with the schedule we created, to make time to ensure your needs were attended to. 

We want to take this opportunity to apologize for all those dates we broke, and all those days we left your messages hanging.  You deserve better than that, Twitter  — you deserve a relationship with an organization that has enough funding so that there could be one whole staff member devoted to keeping you happy throughout the entire workday.  Alas, that is definitely not us right now.

We could go on, but we think you get the idea, Twitter:  we’re simply too different right now.  We’re open to the possibility that our circumstances, or yours, might change.  Who knows?  In a year or two, we may want to try again.  Anything is possible in our brave new digital world, after all.

But for the time being, we think it’s best if we part friends.  Maybe we could log in sometime, browse your tags, see how you’re doing – you’re not the right tool for us right now, but you’re a heck of a great tool, and even if our paths never cross again, we’ll be able to look back and laugh at that interesting year we spent together in the early aughts.

Here’s looking at you, Twitter.  Take care.

PS:  Er, this is a little awkward, but we feel like we have to say it:  please ask all your other partners to respect our decision and not try to change our minds.  This was difficult enough for us as it is, and the last thing we want is hard feelings by people sending us a bunch of links to Twitter tutorials and marketing strategies and stuff.  Maybe down the road we’ll be ready to think about that again, but right now it would simply be inappropriate.  Thanks in advance for understanding.

***

Okay, that was entirely too much fun.  Good thing I have another sober, depressing post in the hopper.  Or would you rather have the lighter, fluffer videotherapy piece?  Comment and vote, gang – sad Alchemist, or perky Alchemist next time?  YOU make the call!

12 Comments

Interlude: Library Instruction

June 18, 2010 at 9:57 pm (creativity, databases, day in the life, digital divide, humor, intellectual freedom, personal, philosophizing, presentations, professional development, religion, traditional library services, Uncategorized)

You know you’re a hopeless library nerd when you willingly spend a Friday evening talking to library school students about what it’s like to work in a public library.  It’s a good kind of hopeless, though, the kind that reaffirms what you’re doing and why.

Because it was a library instruction class, I spent a goodish chunk of time talking about instruction in a public library — much of which is impromptu, on-the-fly, and tailored to individual needs, requiring great flexibility and versatility on the staff’s part.  I expressed this, of course, as “making it up as you go along,” because that’s what you do.  Being able to do this, though, requires excellent public speaking skills and a broad knowledge base.  Training as an improv comic, if you can get it, certainly doesn’t hurt either.

But I talked about a lot of other things, too, under the broad heading of “a day in the life of a public librarian.”  I took the radical step of nixing PowerPoint, handouts, and canned remarks.  Instead, I spent most of this week quietly seeking inner guidance about what the right things to say might be, and spoke off the cuff, trusting that the words I would need would show up when I needed them.

[If that sounded scary to you, keep in mind that I've been performing in public since I was five years old.  With experience, you get more comfortable winging stuff.]

The most important thing I’ve learned about any kind of speaking, formal or otherwise, is that to have maximum impact, it should be done with love.  It can be tough love, but the love’s got to be there.  Otherwise you’re just a noisy gong, a tinkling cymbal.  That is, I’ve heard.  I’ve had plenty of opportunities this week to think about loving and non-loving speech, to practice one and to apologize for the other.  All of this, I think, contributed to the presentation going well tonight.

Because I’m not a complete maverick, I did scribble down a short list of things I wanted to make sure I said, under the umbrella of “Positive aspects of public library work.”  I wanted to make sure that they knew it was worth it:  the jobhunting, and the subpar salaries, and the budget crises, and the “paying your dues” phase.  Here’s what I came up with:

You learn something new every day.  I’m sure that’s true in other kinds of libraries as well.  However, the serendipity quotient goes up in a public libraries because you never know what the lesson will be, or what guise it will come in.  Sometimes it’s a book title or random fact; sometimes it’s a lesson in patience or kindness.

The dress code is made of awesome.  I can, and do, look “nice” most of the time.  However, I’m deeply grateful that “nice” for me can run the gamut from business casual to capris/t-shirt/cardigan to Victorian goth.  It’s also nice to have that flexibility when, say, water starts pouring down from the ceiling, and you have to help move a whole lot of reference books very fast. 

Performance feedback is frequent and somewhat more relaxed.  I don’t live in dread of my performance appraisal because I get continuous feedback and when I feel I want more, I’m comfortable asking for it.  Also, given that so much of my work is visible, I usually get immediate results.  If something is working or not working, you’ve got empirical evidence to keep going or, conversely, stop.  See also, no tenure file.  If I pursue certain kinds of projects and opportunities, it’s because I think they’re interesting, not because they will make or break my chances of success.

Every day you get a chance to prove that not everything’s on the internet.  The digital divide is real.  The need for, and love of, print materials are real.  The shortcomings of e-books and databases are real, especially when it comes to pre-1990s journal articles (to say nothing of the architecture journals from 1919 sitting in phase boxes down on first stack).  Preservation and conservation concerns are real.  Microfilm still has a viable role to play. Every day in public libraries, we write that book.  Would that the conventional wisdom-mongers were listening.

There are more opportunities to be flexible and implement new ideas.  This is more of a theory based on heresay, but when I listen to some of the complaints my academic peers have, I thank my lucky stars I work somewhere where nobody’s ever going to disrespect me because I don’t have a longer string of letters after my name.  There are fewer boundaries between kinds of workers, and people are less attached to titles and more attached to what you can actually produce.  That makes for a lot less emphasis on things like “personal branding” and a lot more emphasis on authentic personality (which is good, because brands are for cattle, et c’est tout.).

And last, but certainly not least:

When you screw up on the job in a public library, gallons of oil don’t go gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.  This is, of course, my flippant way of pointing out that public library work contributes, on the whole, positive things to the world.  We don’t crank out useless products or generate pollution; instead, we are repositories of learning, wisdom, values, hope and, sometimes, good old-fashioned fun.   That is, quite frankly, the best thing ever, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the little gold statuettes in the world, Oscar fantasies notwithstanding.

So, yeah, I’m a public library nerd, card-carrying, cardigan-wearing, shall-not-be-shushed, world without end, amen.  But it’s me and my kind who will carry the day, in the long run.  For three things last always:  library faith, library hope, and library love.  And that last one’s the greatest.

Or so I’ve heard.  Do you feel the public library love?  Have I gone past denial now, straight on to delusion?   Or am I just coming down from “speaker’s high”?

Holla back.

Reading Today:  The Thyroid Solution, Ridha Arem, M.D. One in ten women have thyroid disorders and don’t realize it; could you be one of them?  A comprehensive primer overview of the mental and physical aspects of thyroid disease and its various treatment options.

27 Comments

The Envelopes, Please: Nominations Sought for 2010 PaLA Awards

June 14, 2010 at 5:36 pm (creativity, humor, innovation, professional development, Uncategorized)

The daydreams I have that don’t involve goat farming usually revolve around winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

It’s a fun fantasy:  one of these years, much to everyone’s surprise, I will not only be nominated for my dark-horse sleeper hit film, but also win the little gold guy, beating out such luminaries as Charlie Kaufman, Kevin Smith and Alan Ball.  When George Clooney calls my name, I will sweep up to the stage in a cloud of scarlet frippery and deliver a mind-blowing speech that combines Dorothy Parker’s wit and Susan Sarandon’s passionate activism.  Then, after a standing ovation which lasts about half an hour, I will serenely glide backstage to enjoy champagne and tasty snack-type things with my new BFFs, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton. 

Hey, if you’re going to daydream, it might as well be huge, right?

Unless I get off my butt and finish some screenplays, that particular dream is probably never going to come to fruition.  That’s okay, though, because I get to fulfill another dream of mine this year – library fairy gothmother — by serving as part of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s Awards Committee.  The awards committee sifts through the nominations in various categories and bestows some well-deserved glory on some hard-working Pennsylvania library workers / supporters. 

Before we can sift through the pile, however, we need to generate a pile.  Since the only thing better than getting your own award is giving an award to someone else, I’d like to cordially invite Pennsylvania’s library workers and other supporters to take a good look at the categories and criteria, then download the nomination form. Once you’re done praising your nominee(s) to the skies, you can send the forms to:

Erin Dorney
Outreach Librarian
Millersville University Library
P.O. Box 1002
Millersville, PA 17551-0302

[Those of you who prefer electronic/digital submissions will be happy to learn that the committee's working on a paperless alternative.  Stay tuned.]

ETA 6/17:  The online nomination form is complete – click here to submit an award nomination.

On the fence about submitting a nomination?  Consider the following notions:

  • It costs virtually nothing to recognize and reward your colleagues for their efforts.  One stamp, and about an hour of your time while you figure out which adjectives are most appropriate, but least hokey.  C’est tout.  Would that being kind and supportive were always that easy!  I mean, let’s face it:  nobody’s getting a hefty raise this year; an award nomination is not a cure-all, or a rug under which to sweep real problems.  It is, however, tantamount to making the best of a bad situation for the truly deserving.
  • Nominating someone can give you a fresh advocacy angle with the press.  Okay, it’s more fun not to tell the person you’ve nominated that they’re up for an award, especially if they then go on to win.  Let’s think strategically here for a moment, though:  the 2011 budget drama is about to ramp up again, and since we’ve been doing this for ages, we all need a fresh new hook to grab the newsies’ attention.  How about “Sunnybrook Farm Public Library nominates Rebecca X for Best New Librarian in the Commonwealth”?  You can then spend some time gushing over Rebecca X’s excellence, playing up all the hard work she does that is probably invisible to the public…and in danger of not being adequately funded.
  • It really IS an honor just to be nominated.   Go ahead and scoff if you must, but there is virtually nobody on this planet who doesn’t respond well to positive reinforcement.  Even cacti bloom under the right conditions, and everybody needs to hear that they’re doing a good job from time to time.  I know, I know, I know:  you bring donuts, you’re lavish with your praise, and you have an open-door policy.  A move like this, though, can really inspire loyalty in a good employee…or an employee who doesn’t realize how good s/he is.  Ditto with elected officials and trustees, in the appropriate categories — you can’t tell me they wouldn’t be thrilled to have their efforts recognized. 
  • Awards look good on resumes.  Unlike other CV items, an award –  like a publication — is a clear-cut sign of merit.  We all know how easy it is to give the same presentation twenty times, or volunteer for a flock of committees and then sit silently in the back playing with one’s crackberry.  Award-winners are clearly not those people.  They’re stalwart, productive library workers, vouched for by their peers.  You can’t win an award by phoning it in.  You’ve got to be fabulous.  And wouldn’t it be nice to get some fabulosity rewarded here in the Commonwealth?  Darned skippy!

Before I get carried away, let me point out that I do understand philosophical opposition to the concept of awards.  After all, everyone has singular gifts, and each person expresses his/her gifts differently.  If there were, for example, an award for Librarian Who Aspires Most Heartily to Victorian Garb  or Professional Who  Most Lustily Sings Bad 80s Songs While Skipping Down Staircases, I would win them hands down, and none of you would have grounds to lodge a complaint.

That being said — and call me old-fashioned if you must — I like awards because they recognize that while everyone has gifts, some people simply stand out head and shoulders above the crowd.  They can’t help it.  It’s how they’re wired.  They set their personal bars high.  They seek to be excellent.  They have their own flair, and they will not be denied.  And given how much mediocrity there is in the world these days, I’d say that’s a good thing.  Because the world definitely needs more people like Prince Poppycock.

Wait, whoozie what now?

For those of you who aren’t watching America’s Got Talent, Prince Poppycock is the alter ego of a perfectly delightful young man named John Quale, who — like many other people in America — wants to be a singer.  If you have the patience to sit through his audition tape, you will be well-rewarded for your pains.

Do you see what I’m driving at, dears?  There are librarians, and then there are Poppycocks.  Pennsylvania, nominate your Poppycocks!

You’ll also be doing me a personal solid, Constant Readers.  You see, the reason I accepted the invitation to be on the committee in the first place was because I wanted to be involved in doing something positive for Pennsylvania library workers and supporters.  And honestly?  It just doesn’t get any more positive than this.  If Erin isn’t buried in a stack of paper taller than she is by mid-July, I’ll be writing on this topic again to scold you for your hard-heartedness. ;)

Reading Today: Little Bee, Chris Cleave. Oh my goodness. Akin to Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith, but far more gut-punching. I’m not going to spoil a single word. Just read it. Unless, that is, you’re in need of something light and sunny just now.

More pensées ahead.  Stay tuned, if you dare!

3 Comments

A Reading From the Book of Job (Hunting)

May 24, 2010 at 8:37 pm (creativity, digital divide, ethics, humor, intellectual freedom, philosophizing, professional development, religion, traditional library services, Uncategorized)

And, lo, it came to pass that  the Time of the Library School Graduations did come round again.  And at first, there was much rejoicing.  And in many cases did that rejoicing consist of quaffing the fruit of the vine, but also, for those not so inclined, there was indeed punch and pie.  And yea, verily,  it was good pie, and the graduates did celebrate their accomplishments in having become Masters of the Library and Information Sciences.

[And, lo, for one shining moment, the catalogers did cease their quarrels with the reference librarians, and the technomages lay down with the Luddites, and there was much rejoicing.]

But as the glow of accomplishment faded, and unpleasant aftermath of the fruit of the vine did descend upon the revelers, so too did the realization that they still did not have jobs.  And it did dawn upon them like a shock of cold water to the face that they had not yet heard back from the many positions to which they had applied.  And the academic set gnashed their teeth as they realized just how long the hiring process could be, for they had hoped to be compiling their tenure portfolios at that very moment.  And the public librarians did wail as they realized that their bosom friends and classmates were now their fiercest rivals for the teensy pool of positions available.  And the medical and corporate and legal librarians did shiver in their shoes, for while their skills were somewhat more marketable in the overall economy, it did not increase the size of their library job opportunities overmuch; and for what had they toiled if not to work in a library of their choosing?

And so a great howling and finger-pointing went up in library world, as each faction sought the cause of this wretched condition.  And some did blame the library schools, with their generous admissions policies, and some did blame the libraries which did not fill vacant positions for budget reasons, and some did blame copy cataloging.  Others took issue with technology, and sank to their knees bewailing the death of print that meant there would be fewer librarians needed; and others did scoff and call them asses, pointing out that, technically, even more librarians would be needed to help train and teach the hapless patrons, especially those that did fall on the wrong side of the Great and Perilous Digital Divide…but that there were no funds to do so, nor tricks of rhetoric so as to convince the city gubmint that such reinforcements would be needed.

And the hiring managers did wail and smite their breasts and bang their heads repeatedly on the thick stacks of resumes and cover letters they received for each and every opening.  And loudly did they groan in disgust and despair at the cover letters which did not address the requirements mentioned in the job description, and their brains did break to see the bizarre array of unusual fonts used on the aforementioned resumes.  And the hiring teams lifted their eyes to heaven and cried out, “Lord, lord, did they not learn professional communication in library school?”  And the volunteer resume reviewers, who did recently quit those posts because the amount of their unpaid professional labor did reach a tipping point, didst hang their heads in shame at having failed their peers. And everyone involved in library hiring did automatically let all their calls go to voice mail until a position had been filled, and avoided their e-mail with a passion.

Softly did HR teams weep to see candidates with PhDs applying for entry-level clerk positions.  And many were the tablets of Alka-Seltzer dissolved into glasses when they realized that nobody would understand that their lot was just as difficult, in its way, as that of the seekers, especially during interviews in which a Gen X manager might have to decide between candidates who were either her own classmates, or persons who had already forgotten more than she would ever learn. And many an otherwise intrepid soul decided that s/he could no longer, in good conscience, look one more job-seeker in the eye, and so s/he did quit to start a goat farm, upon which many tasty varieties of goats’ milk fudge were made and sold at reasonable prices.

In those dark days the fortunate few who had jobs feared to lodge a complaint of any sort, lest it be perceived as ingratitude for having honest wages in such a horrid economy.  And meekly did they accept the burden of unpaid extra work as staff members retired, or were laid off, or left for personal reasons, and were not replaced due to shrinking budgets.  And in vain did they life their eyes to the mountains of labor, whence cometh paychecks, but yea, verily, no help.

 And they turned the other cheek at the patrons’ bad behavior until they could take it no more, at which point they retreated to the secret hiding places of their libraries and turned the air blue with their wrath and fury.  And many did join not-so-secret societies wherein the word “mofo” was uttered copiously, or blogged anonymously/psuedonymously, and in such way vented their spleen and took comfort in shared misery. 

[And middle management did stew in frustration because they could not be better shepherds to their sheep, though the sheep did understand that they were doing their very best, and did not take it personally.  And sheepishly did the managers approach their superiors to ask for what could not be given.  And sheepishly did the managers inform their flocks that while they could, and would, listen, there was at that moment no other remedy.  And the sheep, for their part, accepted their lot humbly, and did continue to give wool generously, and nibble upon such tasty things as were still available to them.  And the number of potlucks did increase in those countries, which was a mixed blessing thereof.]

But though many feared that the End Times of Libraries had indeed come, as was prophesied by the Kings and Soothsayers, all was not lost.  There came forth in those days wise bloggers who offered advice and good counsel to those who had ears to hear, and many did flock to their shrines of learning, and did take comfort in the strength and support of their more experienced colleagues.  And the library webcomics did flourish, bringing a touch of wit and humor to the daily rounds of the jobseekers and their beloveds. And, despite the proliferation of social technologies — indeed, mayhap because of them — the jobhunters didst gird up their loins and travel to the professional conferences, where they did schmooze with their peers, and sign up for interviews, and seek, with all their hearts, the holy grail of a full-time professional position. And though some did, admittedly, turn away from the library jobquest for other pursuits, those who were truly dedicated to the cause — or right tapped out in terms of funding for further educational endeavors — didst grit their teeth and plug away.

And the days passed, and the seasons turned, and the story began once more, with a fresh, new crop of hopeful library students. And the mutterers did mutter, and the cynics did cynic, and the satirists did write and publish manifestos of withering scorn. And so it shall be, it is said, until the great beast E-book descends from the skies in a form that all publishers can monetize and all patrons can utilize on the devices of their choosing. And on that day they shall throw away their print collections, and beat their physical libraries into community centers. All their troubles shall be alleviated with coffeeshops, and and they shall weep no more forever, and if they did weep for just a second thinking about how dull and painful a world would be without trashy paperback novels to read while snuggled up in hammocks, someone would feed them a blue pill, which would plug them back into the Matrix. And every tear would then be wiped away from their eyes.

[And the Library Alchemist sat a little ways away, in her cozy study, and did ponder these things, keeping them close to her heart, as helpless as anyone else to find a solution to the problems that plagued her profession, but doubly determined to laugh and poke defiant fun at the whole sorry mess. And none of that gentle tee-hee-heeing, either, mind you. We're talking the maniacal laughter of the damned here. As you may by now have gathered.]

Reading today: How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy, Hugh Prather.

Up next: Would you believe? Three pensées, by virtue of the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Stay tuned.

5 Comments

The People in My Neighborhood

May 11, 2010 at 8:07 pm (day in the life, ethics, humor, memoir, nonfiction, personal, philosophizing, professional development, Uncategorized)

At one point last Friday, I noticed that my work badge had gone AWOL.

Given that staff need this badge to get into the building, and are supposed to wear it at all times per the rules, this was a touch inconvenient.  Expensive, too, as replacement badges cost $25 a pop.  That’s an awful lot of large regular coffees in the LAV world.

To make matters worse, when I went down to get a replacement badge, I discovered that the badge-maker was broken.   While temporarily saving me $25, this meant I would have to spend the rest of the week depending on the kindness of colleagues to swipe me in every morning until the machine was repaired.

At least, that was the case until the phone rang, and the delightful C., from the Penn Hills library, informed me that somehow my badge had ended up at their library.  Apparently, your absent-minded alchemist had used her own badge as a bookmark, forgotten that she’d done so, and then returned the library book with the badge in it.

Double yoi!

Just one more anecdote from library hijinks in America’s most livable city.  I swear, I could copy out daily events in a notebook, type it up in script form, and sell it to HBO as their next big hit.  It would have to be HBO, of course, because of the cussing, although the ideal situation would be to get into a bidding war with HBO and Showtime.   Oh, and Felicity Huffman plays me, or it’s no go.

I must confess, I feel just a teensy bit guilty about the amount of time I spend laughing.  And I wonder if I’m really the only person to whom amusing things happen, or who is surrounded by smart, funny people who say witty things in Sorkinesque patter.  That doesn’t sound quite right, and yet, I don’t really see a lot of evidence that anybody else in library science is having a good time.  And I mean “a good time despite the fact that library world is falling apart” not “la la la I can’t hear you I’m having a good time.”

There is, you see, a diference.  Laughter, happiness, and positive thinking don’t, if you use them correctly, obliterate the fact that libraries are in a world of hurt right now.  They do, however, coat those bitter pills with enough honey so we don’t have to choke on them.  A little sweetness can go a long way toward firing you up to carry on, if you let it.

I get such sweetness here. 

If you’re reading Eleventh Stack, you already know a lot about some of my co-workers, based on what they choose to reveal about themselves in the library blog.  If you’re not yet reading it, click here to read the contributor bios, so you can make up your mind whether or not you want to know them (and, by extension, all of us) a little better.

Starting a blog was one of the smartest things we’ve done recently, not only because it is an excellent way to promote the library, but because it gives the staff a voice, and reveals a human element that is often obscured in a large organization.  That’s not a pejorative; it’s just what happens.  Library directors still skeptical about blogging may want to take note of that.

And they’ve used their voices for good, this team of blogonauts, as they like to call themselves.  They write well, and they make the library look good.  They understand the delicate balance between the personal and the professional.  When it comes to advocacy, they know how to fire people up without ticking them off.  And, occasionally, they make me mist up, as I did while reading Wes’s recent essay, On Babies and Bebop.

There are others in local library land who prefer to keep a lower profile, either because they don’t think they’re good writers (they’re wrong), believe they have nothing to say (also wrong), or simply do not wish to have an internet presence (choose privacy!).  Some of them may be anxiously perched on the edge of their chairs, reading carefully to see whether or not I’m going to “out” them.  Relax, dears – your secrets are safe with me. 

I will say, only, that this space, from the basement to the rafters, is filled with marvelous people who make a difference in so many ways, every day.  Often their work is invisible to the public, as it is with the small army of people who stoop and stretch for hours, pulling holds and trundling them off to where they need to go.  It is not, I assure you, elves that keep the floors clean, the coffee brewing, or the hallways secured.  Nor is it fairies who balance the books and write the grants, though their work, admittedly, often does seem downright magical to me (numbers, alas, frequently do not add up in the LAV world).  Preservation, conservation, transportation, and much more go on here; like instruments in a symphony, each person brings his or her melody to the whole, and the whole sounds like – with apologies to  Julie — awesome.

On top of being great library workers, they’re just plain nice people.  People who see you walking and offer you rides to, or from, work.  People who lend you umbrellas when it’s raining, or buy you lunch without wanting reciprocation.  People who volunteer to be your personal thrift store shopper (seriously).  People who read great books, and recommend them.  People who peel you off the ceiling when you’re freaking out about something, and trust you enough to confide in you in return.  People who rejoice with you, and with whom you rejoice, when things go well.  People who listen patiently while you muse aloud for the fiftieth time about some random philosophical thing on your mind.  People who actually stop typing and turn away from their computer keyboards to give you their full attention.  People who make you baby cockroaches out of book tape (You know you’re jealous and want one.  Admit it.).

It’s not all wine and roses, though, and we’re no angels.  A large, diverse staff means, of necessity, that there are going to be differences of opinion on everything under the sun, mismatches in communication style, and accidental hurt feelings all the darned time.   But we  try to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and we fight fair.  Some of the people I respect and admire most around here are the people who drive me the craziest, because they tell me what they really think instead of what they think I want to hear, and they’re ever-present reminders that there are other ways to look at the world than mine.  They choose the authentic rather than the easy, and they chellenge me to live up to my own personal code of moral/ethical conduct every day.

In fact, I think the only thing that really bums me out about working here is, sometimes, our size.  Unless you’ve got meetings with them, it’s possible to go an entire year without seeing someone who works in a branch.  It frequently takes an extra effort just to see somebody who works on a different floor, which is another excellent reason to use those morning and afternoon breaks for walks around the building.   You really have to be pro-active if you want to get to know people; luckily, my efforts to get to know other people in the system and understand what they do have mostly borne positive fruit.

This brings us back to my peers at Penn Hills, who did me a solid, even though I don’t really know them at all.  Pittsburgh’s pretty transit-friendly, but it’s still not possible to get everywhere just yet.  On top of that, Pittsburgh is very “neighborhoody,” so everything I’ve described above about CLP and Oakland is completely inapplicable to Moon Township, which is itself different from Green Tree, which is different from Oakmont, and so on.  I pick those particular libraries as examples because I”ve actually been fortunate enough to get to know and work with their directors, somewhat; there aren’t a lot of opportunities for that, beside committee work, unless you live in one of those communities.   And yet, somehow, between the countywide listserv, the various committee meetings, and the social bonds we’ve forged both digitally and IRL, we make it all work, somehow.

It takes an awful lot of manure to grow a rose, and if I am at all a librarian  worth knowing, it’s because my character has been molded, shaped, and influenced by the professional company I keep.  I wanted to make sure that at least one entry in my professional blog was dedicated to giving them their due, even at the expense of Constant Reader rolling his/her eyes at The Hokiness.   They deserve more money and more vacation time, but all I can offer them is my love, respect, and cookies.  It will have to suffice.  I suppose it would probably help if I toned down the acerbic wit and rapid-fire snark from time to time, but I can always put that in my goals and objectives for next year.

See?  Loving your fellow man doesn’t have to be all magical unicorns and “Kumabaya.”  What do you love about your library?  Your co-workers?  Do you have people in your professional life who simply rock your library world?  Here’s your chance to brag on them, via the comments.  And if this post inspires you to write your own essay about the library where you work, I would love to see a link.

Reading Today: The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin.   A writer decides she would like to be happier, structures a year-long program to boost her happiness, and offers suggestions on how you can do the same (non-fiction, self-help).

Next up, a pensée, after which we move to the next-most-popular poll topic.  Two topics actually tied for second place, so I will probably flip a coin before choosing my next subject.

3 Comments

Pensée #2: In the Woods

May 5, 2010 at 3:02 pm (blogging, collection development, creativity, fiction, humor, personal, philosophizing, professional development, reader's advisory, reviews, traditional library services, Uncategorized)

I don’t enjoy reading mysteries.  At.  All.

I am, apparently, in good company.  Still, it’s a little embarrassing to write it down.  It’s more embarrassing, though, to admit it to patrons, especially since they think that because you know just enough to bluff with phrases like  

“If you liked Jacqueline Winspear you might enjoy Kathryn Miller Haines!”

then you must share their fondness for all things mysterious. 

When my patrons smile beatifically and ask, “And what mysteries do YOU like?,” there’s always this moment of silent hesitation on my part, a delicate, regretful pause before I shatter their illusion of my biblio-perfection.  And afterwards, they always give me a look, as if I am no better than a puppy-murderer.

Let them look as they like; I don’t like mysteries. 

I do, however, like my colleague, P.,  very much.  When I asked her if she was reading anything good lately, and she enthusiastically recommended Tana French’s In the Woods, I requested it without reading reviews, because, well, P. is smart, fun, and all-around excellent.  I trust her with my readerly life.

And then the book showed up with a big green ”mystery” genre sticker on it. 

Damn.

Still, this is P., after all.  And given that reading 50 pages of a book is my usual modus operandi anyway, I’ll just tell her nicely that the book wasn’t my cup of tea, and that will be that, right?

Er, not quite.  I still don’t like mysteries.  But I do love it when an author creates a compelling protagonist that keeps me reading in spite of my reservations.

The thing about French’s antihero, Rob Ryan, is that he’s a survivor of childhood trauma.  Three children walked into the woods one day, but only one walked out, and the survivor, Adam, doesn’t remember a thing.  His parents move to get him –and themselves– away from the bad memories.  Adam grows up, loses his Dublin accent, changes his name to Rob, and becomes a police officer…but he never remembers what happens to him that day in the woods.

That’s a heavy burden for a person to carry, but carry it he does, sometimes lightly, sometimes awkwardly.  Everything about Rob Ryan is a sign of unhealed grief, from the ways he interacts  with women to the huge gaps in his memory, and I found it both touching and compelling.  French’s genius move here is to show, rather than tell, how Ryan suffers.  She also leaves the childhood trauma unspecified, which creates more pathos than blunt descriptions could, and saves the narrative from melodrama.

There’s plenty here for conventional mystery fans to like, including a truly wicked villain, and the book’s setting –the suburbs of Dublin– has the potential to please those readers who simply must read anything and everything to do with Ireland; in fact, one particular subplot really only appeals to a reader who cares deeply about Ireland and the long, complicated history of the land and its ownership.  The real mystery of In the Woods, however, is whether or not Ryan can get his act together and solve another child murder before the weight of his own unhealed trauma ruins both his career and  his closest relationships. 

This is the sort of book I really should have hated.  Given how frequently crimes involving children show up in the newspapers, I can do without them in my fiction, thank you very much.  Ryan, however, got to me.  I found myself hoping against hope his memories would come back, rooting for his moments of personal progress, headdesking in frustration at his bad decisions…and, ultimately, shedding a few furtive tears at a the resolution of a particular plotline I’d hoped would go differently.

I’m still no fan of mysteries, but thanks to French’s gift for characterization, I’ll be diving back into her world for The Likeness, in which the focus shifts to Ryan’s partner, Cassie Maddox, and her troubled past.  And I’ll make sure to check in with P. on the newly-released Faithful Place, to see if it’s equally gush-worthy.

How excellent to have a trustworthy colleague and friend!  Do you have much luck when your peers recommend books to you?  Have they ever succeeded in getting you out of your comfort zone?  Conversely, has a disastrous recommendation ever put strain on a working friendship?

Reading Today:  A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller.  The bombs fell, civilization went kerflooey, and only the clergy cared about literacy and learning (classics, sci-fi, Hugo Award).

Next time, by your request…the awesome people with whom I work.

10 Comments

My Year of No – Library Edition

April 30, 2010 at 1:32 pm (blogging, humor, personal, philosophizing, professional development)

I wake up every day torn between the desire to save the world and to savor the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day. — E.B. White

On April 1, 2010, I began what I’m calling My Year of No, and it’s not a joke.  It’s an experiment in setting limits, creating boundaries, and simplifying, and it’s a holistic project that encompasses every area of my life.  I’m nattering on about it at length via Facebook Notes (friend invites from Constant Readers cheerfully accepted), but for alchemical purposes we’ll stick to the library sphere here.

I’d been thinking about a work-related project like this ever since I read Emily Ford’s phenomenal essay, How Do You Say No? at Lead Pipe last December.  She articulates, much more logically and rationally than your passionate alchemist ever could, the benefits of setting limits, and offers concrete, practical resources and techniques for professional boundary-setting.  Click there toute de suite, s’il vous plait, because it’s marvelous.

In theory.

This is hardly a slam on Ms. Ford’s writerly excellence.  Putting theory into practice, however,  is always difficult because there’s that messy, human, emotional component that makes saying no and setting limits very, very difficult.

Most libraries are, right now, being asked to do more and more with less and less.  Legislators nibble at state budgets, ruthlessly nickel-and-diming us.  Staff members leave, for whatever reason, and cannot be replaced, much to the chagrin of the Legion of Jobhunters.  It’s no picnic for those left behind, either, as they assume more responsibility for the same amount of pay.  And a simple cost-of-living raise becomes an occasion for celebration (probably with a potluck) because, hey, at least we got that. 

I’m not casting aspersions, mind you.  It is what it is, and there’s no point in grumbling or finger-pointing.  No one person got us into this mess, and no one person can get us out.  It’s a team effort.  Which brings us back to the quandary of saying “no.”

In such a tense professional climate, it becomes difficult for those of us fortunate enough to have jobs to say no to anything, ever.  The fear becomes, if we  start saying no, that’s a demonstration that we’re  not team players, not willing to “man up” in hard times and help us all get through this.  No matter how nicely it’s said, even the most polite, professional “no” can sound like an unwillingness to go the extra mile in tough times.

[Those of you jockeying for tenure are, in a way, fortunate.  You have a goal in sight, a holy grail, a promise of safety to work toward.  In other ways, of course, you are just plain crazy, but it's the adorable kind of crazy that I decidedly appreciate, considering how often I refer students back to my colleagues across the lawn at Pitt,  and up the road to CMU.  Bless the academic librarians!  Without them, we in the public sector have no measuring stick for professional pain, and we stand with you in solidarity against the onslaught of information illiteracy, and cultural stupid/lazy.]

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, somewhere, sometime, something does have to give.  But it’s hard to birth theory into practice.

What works for me is public humiliation accountability.  I know darned well that I could try to make changes until I’m blue in the face, but unless there’s the possibility of a public pratfall, changes won’t happen.  I will, for example, set my Facebook status to something like “has to finish writing the meeting agenda.”  This spurs me to finish the agenda because if I don’t, I’ll have to publicly admit I didn’t finish.  There’s the added benefit of the “go you” and “get ‘er done!” type comments from my peers.

So I’ve printed Emily’s lovely essay for myself (they call me Gothface Tree Killah around these parts, apologies to my WuTang overlord), and will be using it as a guide for the rest of the year as I craft my cunning plan to set professional limits.  I also hereby vow to you, publicly, that from 4/1/2010 to 4/1/2011, LAV will not:

  1. Check work e-mail when she’s not working.  This has been astonishingly difficult, and there are times when I have to sit on my hands to keep from logging into the exchange server.  I keep reminding myself that my job does not (normally) involve blood or fire, and that whatever ends up in my inbox will keep until I get back.
  2. Work from home.  Technology has made it easier and easier to be connected 24/7.  This has had a deleterious effect on playtime with my cats and cosmopolitans with my girlfiends.  Ergo, it must end.  See e-mail rationale, above:  there is no professional issue I could possibly have that waiting 24 hours would ruin.  In some cases, it actually might help.
  3. Volunteer for any additional unpaid professional service.  This is the one that has me uneasy, because it calls into question all my yardsticks of success, to say nothing of my professional goals.  Can I really spend a year saying “no” to committees and task forces and volunteer projects and conferences, and still become a library director someday?  I’ve already said no to at least three amazing opportunities, and part of me is wondering if I’ve ruined my future forever, or look like a slacker.  I’m also afraid that, no matter how nice I was about it, I’ve ruined at least one professional friendship.  That’s kind of a scary place to be.  And yet…there is so much more to success than the number of add-ons on your resume.  Surely I can achieve more than one kind of success?
  4. Say “yes” to any new work opportunity  without subjecting it to a 24-hour discernment period.  I solemnly swear, I am working very hard at the job I get paid to do.  That being said, I have a bad habit of immediately saying “yes” to every new, cool opportunity that comes down the pike at CLP.  Given that we’re a 19-branch library system, there’s something cool going on almost every day.  No sane person can accommodate that.  So I’ve been waiting a day before signing up for anything new, even though this, too, has involved a lot of biting my tongue and sitting on my hands.  What’s been helpful in this regard is my Fabulous Boss’s assertion that I’m working too hard.  When your ambitious, energetic, multi-tasking supervisor tells you you’re working too hard, you can probably ease up a little bit (have I mentioned lately that he’s the Best Boss Ever?).

The punch line to my latest humanifesta is, of course, that I am writing this particular Alchemy essay from home.

*facepalm*

This is in large part because of the wise advice I received from a trusted co-worker:  it’s not enough to say “no” to what’s not working for you; you also have to say “yes” to the things that uplift you, professionally.  Writing with and for all of you, and trying to make sense of this crazy library world together, is, I reckon, one of the most important things I do.  No sense trying to shoehorn that into the framework of a 7.5 hour workday.

Any thoughts, comments, advice, or frosty adult beverages you have handy would be most welcome.  I am going to spend the rest of my day off doing Nothing Work-related Whatsoever.  And when we return, we’ll have a few book reviews before we get to the next-most-popular Alchemy poll topic.

ETA 5/1/10:  Good heavens, all my intentions up in smoke already, and all of you too kind to call me on it.  At the time I wrote this post I was reading Tana French’s In the Woods. I have since finished, and it will be one of my upcoming reviews.

12 Comments

Housekeeping/Book-keeping

April 23, 2010 at 4:14 pm (blogging, Blogroll, collection development, creativity, day in the life, Facebook, fiction, humor, leadership, Meta, nonfiction, personal, philosophizing, reader's advisory, reviews, traditional library services, Uncategorized, web resources)

Life here at Alchemy isn’t all vampires and snark.  It is, however, rather bookish.

I’m somewhat startled by how infrequently I talk about books in my professional librarian blog.  Then again, my writing about books would be much like asking fish to philosophize about water (especially since fish can’t talk).  Print books, to me, are not so much objects to be fussed over as they are critical elements of survival that I take for granted.  The sun will rise in the morning, the water that comes out of my tap will be potable, and there will always, always be something for me to read.  You will step between me and my books at your peril, and you will pry their papery goodness from my cold, dead hands.

All that being said, I’ve decided we don’t talk about books nearly enough at Alchemy, and that this must change.  Given that I am still my department’s emerging technologies librarian, we will still grumble talk a lot about technology.  Because I’m now officially in the leadership training cohort, we’ll still be talking about leadership.  And because I remain your cynical romantic, we will definitely still philosophize.  There are, however, one or two little cosmetic tweaks we’ll make going forward.

For starters, at the end of every post, I’ll link to the book I’m reading that day.  Given that I am usually reading 50 library books at any given time, and have 50 more on order, this should not prove difficult.  In all fairness, I am usually reading more than one book per day (one for the bus, one for each room in the house, one for my lunch break, etc.), but to keep the literary insufferability to a minimum, we’ll stick to one per post.

Finishing books tends to be an issue for me.  I take Nancy Pearl’s 50-page rule very seriously; it breaks my heart that, at the end of my life, I still won’t have read all the books on earth, so I want to make sure I don’t spend too much time with clunkers.  50 pages is more than enough to be able to file it away in my brain for readers’ advisory.

Still, I’d like to finish more books than I do, which is why I signed up for two reading challenges this year, a 50-book challenge at GoodReads, and a 100 book challenge at Every Girl Blog. That’s technically 150 books to finish this year (doubling up seems like cheating), and I’m going to keep track of them right here at Alchemy, just to save time.  You will find my 2010 reading log thus far in the left-hand sidebar, or you can visit it here.

You’d think we would be all booked up right now, but you’d be so very wrong!  Just to up the ante, starting with the next book I finish, I’m going to review it here at Alchemy.  I love writing book reviews, and would like to get both more exposure and more practice.  The 175-word fiction reviews I produce for Library Journal are definitely fun, and keep me sharp, but I find that, much like the opium addicts of old, it takes more and more of the stuff to satisfy my critical appetite.  Since it would be selfish to sign up to review all the books at LJ, I’ll simply have to branch out.

What else is in it for you, Constant Reader?  Well, those ARCs have to go somewhere when I’m done with them, and I’d prefer it not be the recycling pile.  The sensible, responsible thing to do seems to be passing them on to a fellow information professional.  Ergo, each time I’m done with an LJ ARC, I’ll offer it up for grabs on Alchemy.

As luck would have it, I actually have one for you today – everybody who comments on this entry between now and Wednesday April 28th will have the opportunity to win the somewhat-battered copy of the book I’ve just reviewed.  Today’s mystery ARC is the third novel from a literary mystery author, and if you’re in the mood for a solid whodunit with a number of quirky literary style choices and a meta-fiction vibe, you should put your hat in the ring for it.

In a token nod to technology, I’ve updated my blogroll to indicate which library blogs I’m actually reading right now.  I don’t read many blogs, sad to say; this is not because I don’t love you madly, but because I loathe squinting at a tiny screen.  Because printing out posts is neither time-efficient nor environmentally sound, I limit my blog reading only to those authors who make it consistently worth my while.   Paradoxically, however, I am always on the lookout for blogs I haven’t yet discovered, and it seems sensible that I should start with you.  Ergo, if you are blogging, please include your link so that I can repay your kindness to me by checking out your thoughts as well.

Last, but certainly not least, a feature for the comment-shy:  WordPress has just initiated a delightful new star rating system, allowing you to indicate how much you liked a particular post without having to leave a comment.  I’ve enabled this feature, and you will now see it at the top of every post.  The only way I’m going to get better at this is if you give me feedback, so please, for the sake of quality control, make your (dis)pleasure known ad astra if you’re not feeling chatty.

Poll results indicate the bulk of you are interested in hearing about My Year of No, a project that began on Facebook.  When I come back from my “nobody should work on their birthday” mini-holiday, I’ll tell you all about it…at least, all about the professional aspect.

Happy reading!

Reading Today: This is for the Mara Salvatrucha, Samuel Logan.  A gang member turned informant spills the beans on the MS-13, one of America’s most notorious street gangs (non-fiction, true crime).

14 Comments

Title Fail (Insert Vampire Metaphor Here): Library Failure, Pt. IV

April 19, 2010 at 6:20 pm (creativity, humor, nonfiction, personal, philosophizing, professional development, Uncategorized)

A/k/a “Part the Last.”  Honestly, I don’t know how Dickens managed this whole serialization thing. Romance at short notice is more my specialty.

Besides, we have to finish this series before you start accusing me of making up failures and blunders to suit the topic.  Truth always being funnier than fiction, however, it probably makes sense to you that, as I’ve been typing this and helping various patrons, I also managed to spill half a bottle of water all over myself.

This would not be so bad if I were wearing my usual black attire.  Today, however, I opted for the knee-high, fire-engine red sheath dress that looks so fetching with my black labcoat and pirate boots.   The resulting wet-dark splotches make me look like a badly bruised tomato, and have prompted at least two patrons to ask me if I have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Sigh.

If only to stop attracting failure, then, let’s get this over and done with!

The Non-Verbal Approach

Logically, you know that screwing up at work doesn’t make you a bad person, because everybody does it.  And, logically, you know you’re supposed to forgive yourself, laugh it off, rub some dirt in it, and take a lap.  Because of your pesky brain chemistry, however, logic is not always going to work.  In fact, the more you try to logic yourself into getting over it, the worse you are likely to feel, because you’re trying to solve a right-brain problem with a left-brain approach.

Belleruth Naparstek figured this out while working with trauma survivors.  The lightbulb went on with one client in particular, whose repeated verbalization of her trauma increased, rather than decreased, her symptoms of upset.  Non-verbal techniques, however, such as visualization, guided imagery, and meditation led to a decrease in suffering for the patient and a whole new path of therapeutic exploration for Naparstek.

Now, with the exception of those rare days when somebody ODs on heroin in the library bathroom, you could argue that working in our profession is not traumatic; it simply feels that way sometimes.  And remember, to your amygdala, it doesn’t matter whether or not the trauma is real or imagined.  So if you’re having a bad day of any sort, you might want to consider tricking yourself back into sanity with a visualization, or a meditation.

If you found yourself rolling your eyes at the prospect, it’s possibly because you think I expect you to imagine, say, fields of wildflowers, with chirping little birds flitting past, and perhaps a fuzzy, snuggly bunny rabbit you can cuddle until you feel better.  Those of you who would feel cheered by an interlude with a bunny can hold that image, close your eyes and stop here.

The rest of us are going to do some Lincoln thinking.

Lincoln = Failure?

One exceptionally annoying aspect of the internet is the way truth and fiction meet,  have a few cocktails, and impulsively take off together on an ill-advised, whirlwind tour of your e-mail.  Case in point:  the e-mail foward that praises Abraham Lincoln for his persistence in the face of repeated failure.  The good folks at Snopes have written a meticulous, point-by-point refutation that elucidates just what is, and is not, true about that e-mail forward.  Emotionally, however, it is very satisfying to have an image of somebody larger-than-life who triumphed over adversity to cling to, especialy when we are having a bad day.

Given that we are librarians, however, our logical brains are harder to outfox.  We want order and structure, organization and classification, gosh darn it.  Ergo, our mythic, symbolic figures have to be ridiuclously, outrageously mythic and symbolic in order to sidestep our strong natural tendencies.

Good thing we’ve got some pop culture options to pick from.  Enter Seth Grahame-Smith, who turned our sixteenth president into a vampire hunter, and the warped gang at Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions, who turned him into an undead abomination.  Read each visualization scenario, then decide which symbol works best for you and find a private place to soothe your amygdala.

Visualization #1:  Abraham Lincoln As Vampire Hunter

If you cottoned to the previously-suggested notion that library failure is like a confidence-draining vampire, you might want to focus on bloodsucker-battling Abraham Lincoln as your symbol of sanity. 

Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and imagine the tall, lanky statesman gravely planting a stake right through the heart of your failure-paralysis.  Relish the thought of those spindly arms scything the heck out of the terrible demon that prevents you from becoming your professional best!  Savor the feelings of liberty that kick in as the eloquent Gettysburg addresser calmly bids your fears depart this mortal plane, and return to the unholy realms of their origin, hastening their departure with a ginormous flask of holy water to the face!  Finally, when your fears have been vanquished, don’t forget to shake hands with Mr. Lincoln and say thank you – good manners are always in fashion, no matter how silly the scenario.  Open your eyes, ignore the slackjawed stares of your compatriots, and resume your normal workday duties.

Visualization #2:  Abraham Lincoln as Vampire

It’s perfectly possible some of you might find the previous symbolic stance — as well as most of this series — both rabidly anti-vampire and insensitive to the rights of the undead.  Because Alchemy strives for inclusivity off all kinds, I offer this second visualization in which things take a somewhat different turn.

Close your eyes and breathe deeply.  Imagine that you are growing taller, sprouting absurdly long incisors, growing an astonishingly thick and lavish beard.  Picture your clothes melting and reconstituting themselves into the form of a really striking black suit, complete with tall stovepipe hat.  Feel the preternatural strength in your vampire veins as you consider your prey, all those petty, annoying fears that keep you from achieving your full potential.  Use your amped-up, immortal laser-beam eyes to fix them in place, and stare them down like the puny, pathetic little rabbits they are.  See them grow smaller, trembling in fear at your obvious might, and cover in the face of your bloodthirsty rage!  Now pounce on the little rodents and administer righteous justice!  Mwahahahahahaha!

Remember that you are a scholar and a gentleperson, and slowly watch what remains of your fears dissolve into nothingness.  Count backwards from 100 until you reach 1, at which point you will, hopefully, have recovered your equilibrium.  Take one, last deep breath, then open your eyes, ignore the horrified stares of your co-workers, and resume your normal duties.

Post-Visualization Analysis

Once you’ve managed to convince your supervisor not to shoot you full of Thorazine and lock you away, ask yourself these questions:

  1. Am I willing to take risks and be a little silly for the sake of my mental health and well-being?
  2. Am I courageous enough to consider that perhaps I take myself and my responsibilities just a teensy bit too seriously at times?
  3. If the whole vampire thing didn’t work for me, am I open to creating visualizations around alternatives that I personally find appealing?
  4. Do I hide my true personality and character behind a calm, sedate professional mask?  Do my co-workers know who I am as a person, or do they only see a polished exterior?
  5. How come Library Alchemy gets to be silly and I don’t?

That last is a trick question – you have a right, nay, a duty, to be as silly as possible whenever necessary and appropriate.  What makes you laugh?  What images would get you through a crazy, failure-swamped day at your library?  What is the appropriate balance of personal and professional in your office?  How personal can you get before your peers recoil in horror?  How do you and your officemates keep yourselves sane?

I ask myself these questions a lot.  I also ask myself why I’m still sitting here when I should be on the other side of the work-life balance hyphen!  To be fair, it was quite busy at the desk this afternoon, and that simply must take priority.  I will, however, be back when I can, to do a bit of housekeeping, and then to write about the topic you chose in the last Alchemy poll.  If you haven’t yet voted, you’ve got one more chance.

 A bientot, chers colleagues.  Stay strong, but stay silly too.

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Title Fail (Insert Vampire Metaphor Here): Library Failure, Pt. III

April 13, 2010 at 4:52 pm (blogging, creativity, day in the life, humor, music, news, nonfiction, personal, philosophizing, professional development, Uncategorized)

Here we are again, leading by example, coming up for air to talk a little more about failure.  Like, for example, my failure to keep a straight face yesterday at the reference desk when a patron’s cell phone rang.

Though I’m no Lady GaGa, I’m pretty good with the public service poker face when the occasion warrants.  Yesterday, however, I couldn’t remain composed when the cellphone ringing started.  You see, Constant Reader, the sound that played at intervals without ceasing was…

…a crowing rooster.  Sort of like this, only without the heavy metal riffing in the background.

Put yourself in my place for a moment.  In the peace and splendor of a steady, yet quiet, tour of reference desk duty, your composure is marred by

COCK A DOODLE DOO!  COCK A DOODLE DOO!

Every 30 seconds.  With the patron showing no signs of having heard the sound, or wanting to do anything about it.  And you, enforcer of the policy which clearly states that cellphones should be taken out into the hallway, cannot enforce it, becuase you have your head tucked into your hand, suppressing violent giggles.  Other patrons are looking at you, waiting for you to take charge of the situation, because you are the arbiter of order.  And yet, there you sit, turning purple from suppressed mirth.

Rooster.  Ringtone.  Professional.  Response.  Fail.

How my desk partner managed to get through it with a straight face, I’ll never know.  Perhaps he’ll consent to giving me lessons in future?  Or, perhaps, I should heed my own advice and see what science has to say about outsmarting my brain, so that I, too, can remain calmer in the face of mayhem?

Science!

 There’s no dearth of recent books ready to help you tame your amygdala.  Many of them cite the same scientific sources, so here, pulled at random, is a capsule description of what happens in your brain when the amygdala freaks out:

The Fear Response stimulates the amygdala-hippocampus complex (AHC), your emotional response center and the primitive part of the brain, often called the “lizard brain.” The lizard brain directs the emotions or behaviors that are responsible for survival of the species, such as fear and aggression. The lizard brain also stores the memory of any given negative experience or threat so that you can react even faster to it in the future.

Stimulation of the lizard brain triggers a cascade of events, culminating in the production of hormones and peptides, such as cortisol and adrenaline, that cause physical changes in the body. At the same time, changes occur in the brain that prevent you from doing any complex problem solving–you actually revert to a more primitive being whose main goal is physical self-preservation.

The Love Response, Eva M, Selhub, pg. 5

So, a chemical process that once might have saved you from being saber-toothed tiger chow now has the potential to trip you up by spurring you into fear-driven actions and responses that have the potential to become a negative feedback loop. What’s a librarian to do?

In a word, laugh.

There’s virtually no end to the veritable flood of information out there about the science of laughter. Robert Provine, a key scholar in the field, has generated a great deal of research on the topic, including a lengthy essay in American Scientist.  The bottom line appears to be that laughter is adaptive, is good for us, makes us healthier overall.  Which means that my giggle-fit “fail” at the reference desk yesterday wasn’t so much a “fail” as it was the best possible response to a fairly ludicrous situation.

That lets me off the hook quite nicely!  You, however, may be skeptical.  You would be perfectly within your rights to scowl at your screen, cross your arms and say, “Listen girlfiend, you’re not here, and you don’t know.”  Your library, you may reckon, is no laughing matter.  No amount of snicker-inducing shenanigans could possibly improve your current working conditions, could they?

Well, allow me to retort.  In part IV, I will attempt to sidestep the logical part of your brain and appeal to those parts of it that respond best to myth and symbol, via the figure of Abraham Lincoln.  And, of course, those pesky vampires.

I’ll try to wrap this up on Friday, but it could drag on until next week.  In the meantime, if you have any hilarious cellphone stories, please share in a comment.  Aside from the rooster, the best ringtone I’ve heard at the library was the refrain to The Scorpions’ 80s hair-band hit, Rock You Like a Hurricane. Can you top that, Constant Readers?

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