In Praise of Silence (But Not Shushing)

September 10, 2009 at 7:43 pm (Facebook, Library 2.0, Twitter, humor, intellectual freedom, personal, philosophizing, traditional library services)

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. What senses, then, do we lack that we cannot see and hear another world all around us?”

–Frank Herbert, Dune

The reference room is quiet tonight.  The sound of my fingers flying over the keys is probably the loudest, although there are other typists.  Readers rustle pages.  Pencils skitter across notebooks.  Occasionally someone asks a question, and your alchemist tries to answer in her indoor voice.  Call it 4′ 33″ 2.0, if you will.  Just don’t call it a scandal, or a sign of irrelevance, because it’s actually quite beautiful, if you open yourself up to it.

There have been a number of high-profile news articles lately about old-school vs. new-jack libraries; excitement and razzle-dazzle vs. “musty” books, and people with “strange attachments” to them.  I ask, once again, why we must have an either-or library.  I wonder why we cannot have both.

I am, as ever, biased.  My craving for silence makes Jean Valjean’s bread-lust look downright tame.   But we are now, for the most part, hyper-connected, 24/7, and working with technology makes me grow weary of it, occasionally.  It is challenging, sometimes, to drag myself away from the tweets, the status updates, the never-ending flow of information and hype, and carve out space and time for quiet reflection.

What would we hear, I wonder, if we were more open to and accepting of silence in our libraries?  Is it possible that the silence that’s become so reviled and scorned of late has something to teach us?  That it gives shape to the sounds?  What if we had libraries with warmer, more animated spaces for the extroverts and cooler, quieter places for the introverts?  Just because you noisy lot outnumber us 3 to 1 doesn’t mean we don’t get a vote!

Perhaps that’s a stretch.  Still, the concept of a media fast, as articulated by Julia Cameron and Gregg Levoy, is starting to sound awfully attractive to me.  One week with no newspapers, no internet, no texts, no tweets, no cheeps, no beeps, not a single lux-ur-ee.   Status update:  unplugged.  Achievement:  serenity? 

Let’s take that heretical thought and stretch it a wee bit further:  could you go 40 days, say, with no e-mail, no cell phone, no emerging technologies?  Would you feel alienated, disconnected?  Or would you trust that the news you needed to know would find you?

A moment of silence, for silence, please.  It’s an endangered species in a loud, crazymaking world.  I am all for progress in the form of cheerful, welcoming spaces, and our libraries should most definitely have those.  I would argue, however, that excising our remaining quiet sanctuaries is equally unwelcoming.  If the user experience is meant to be paramount, then that should include all users, not just the ones who prefer noise.

I know, I know.  Worst librarian 2.0 EVAR!  My defense is that I’m aiming for 3.0. :)

Have the rowdy or restful weekend of your choice, and we’ll talk again soon.

7 Comments

Reviewing the Situation

September 2, 2009 at 2:06 pm (ethics, professional development, reviews, traditional library services)

I love reviewing books.  If this librarian thing doesn’t work out, my backup dream is that some publisher, somewhere, is going to read one of my reviews, recognize my untapped potential, and pluck me from relative obscurity in the mid-Atlantic to a life of Dorothy Parkeresque wit in a large city (I’m partial to points west, but I’ll take Manhattan).  Slain by my critical insights and enraptured by my keen understanding of what makes for good fiction, I will be the darling of City X’s literary circles.  Then one of my cats will meow in my ear and I will awaken, disappointed that we didn’t get to the part of the dream where I’m playing poker with my BFF, George Clooney.

Ahem.  That is to say, I’ve been meaning to write about book reviews ever since  LJ sent me a package that contained the mother of all conundrums:  the ARC of Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Year of the Flood.  Now that the review’s been published, I can tell you that it’s a fine line between detached library professional and gobsmacked drooling authorcrush fangirl.

I’ve reviewed for Library Journal since 2005, when my colleague, the late Cathy Duhig, encouraged me to apply. Before I found my way to library world, I’d been on my way to a PhD in literature, so when asked for my area of expertise, I wrote “literary fiction.” It didn’t occur to me that loving sci-fi and horror (which I do) could make me as qualified to review those genres as a background in literature and theory made me to review literary fiction (which it does). I know better now, and would like to sink my teeth into some genre reviewing. However, having that epiphany while staring at the ARC of someone you idolize doesn’t get your review written!

So, first you read. I stayed up late and swallowed the novel whole, because I knew I would need as much time as possible to write the darned review. My thoughts went back and forth on a variety of points for which I still don’t have great final answers:

  • What library on the planet isn’t going to purchase this novel?
  • Is that first assumption true?  If that’s true, what is the purpose of reviewing a popular / critically acclaimed author?
  • I’m completely besotted with Atwood.  Should I send it back?
  • How on earth am I going to do justice to this?

The recent switch from “recommended for” to “the verdict” didn’t help matters any.  There are some things about “the verdict” that definitely work for me:  I get the opportunity to be wittier, for one thing, which one can’t always do with the phrase ” recommended for.”  But reviews are supposed to be more than an opportunity to flaunt one’s writerly chops, and I worry that some of the reviews’ usefulness to librarians might get lost.

Unlike most of the other review journals, LJ has always been “for us, by us.”  PW is for publishers, really, more of an awareness tool.  Choice is still for librarians, but it’s mostly for academic librarians, except when it comes to the useful links, with which I beef up our delicious account.  Booklist only publishes positive reviews, so you can approach it cheerfully, confident that whatever you find inside is probably going to be a win for your library.  Kirkus is for Oscar Wilde and other malcontents, and I say that with great love.   But LJ has always been the review tool of my heart because it’s where I go to get the down and dirty, the good-bad-ugly from my peers.

I’m all for being more inclusive, and “the verdict” will definitely expose our work to a wider readership, which is, I suppose, a good thing.  However, the phrase “dance with the one who brought you” keeps coming to mind; after all, it’s not the casual reader who is going to shell out for those LJ print subscriptions.  At least, not the casual reader who saunters through the door of my public library.  To remain a viable reviewing tool, LJ reviews need to keep librarians as the core audience.  Otherwise, why print it at all?  Why not just have it entirely online?

Don’t answer that!  But do break both legs to get your hands on The Year of the Flood, especially if you care about our fragile world and its possible tempestuous futures. 175 words simply couldn’t do justice to the goodness that lies therein.

And there, I suppose, is the writerly challenge! Anyone can blather on for pages about Atwood’s genius (and many will, I’m certain). But can you get to the heart of the matter in 175 words? Almost as difficult as executing good haiku!

When next I get a moment to write, I want to do another sort of review. I’m coming up on my 2-year anniversary in my current job, and I can’t quite believe it. I want to talk a little bit about patterns and changes, as well as my goals for the year to come. These matters may be tempered by the presence or absence of a state budget, but, I assure you, we will get to them.

4 Comments

Soylent Green (day in the life, part II)

July 31, 2009 at 3:33 pm (blogging, creativity, databases, day in the life, leadership, management, personal, philosophizing, professional development, traditional library services)

Fables of the Reconstruction

The problem with part I of this “day in the life” recap is that, despite my best efforts, it still doesn’t capture what passes for normal around here. Monday was very tech-heavy, which could lead to the mistaken impression that I get to play with cool 2.0 stuff all day long while my colleagues are sweating away at the refdesk. Not so.

A normal day around here also usually involves a lot more walk-and-talks. This is a term used to describe the state of affairs when one is conducting business while walking around, as seen on Sports Night and The West Wing. Teamwork and collaboration are the order of the day around here, and while there are many thngs I do independently, like buy books in my subject area and tot up those darned database stats, there are also a lot of things that only come together when my compatriots and I team up and form Voltron.  I also get more phone calls these days, and my presence is required at more meetings.

On top of that, I’m forever charging into people’s offices with a crazy idea, philosophical question, or shameless request (how do you think I got an intern? Ask and get!). The two people I consult regularly — my boss and one of the other senior librarians — are great models for leadership because no matter how many times I go in to talk to them, they stop whatever they’re doing and give me their full attention. They do this for everyone else on staff, too, and I’ve tried to emulate this behavior because I think it’s a valuable one.

Another dimension of the new normal around here is the ongoing advocacy effort. There’s a staff blog and wiki where everyone can contribute their ideas and ask questions, and I log in to read these and contribute whenever I can. It’s comforting to me to see the organization use emerging technologies for the common good, to keep everyone on the same page, spread accurate information, etc., and no matter how our particular situation turns out, at least we’re using all the tools at our disposal.  This morning, in particular, it was amazing to log in to the advocacy wiki and see all the great ideas coming from people all over the system. 

In other words, library service is people!  It’s all people!  Whether the service benefits a peer or a patron, everything I do on a so-called normal day revolves around helping a real person.  And that’s often chaotic, messy, and hard to pin down.

Zone defense

I’d hoped to type up my refdesk observations from the other day, but, life happens.  I know they’re on my desk somewhere.  Problem is, so are a lot of other things.  Like small press catalogs, to-do lists, piles of books, spreadsheet printouts, booklists, newspapers, etc.  The rest of my time this week has been occupied with totting up 2nd quarter database stats – I’m about 3/4 done – and preparing for the meeting we had around 1 p.m. today.  It went well, I think.  I’m getting more comfortable with planning and running meetings, and actual work is getting done, which is the goal.  There’s almost nothing worse than a meeting that’s a waste of everybody’s time.

So, that was a day – literally and philosophcially – in my library life.  It’s crawling chaos.  It’s madcap zany.  It’s headache-inducing, spirit-lifting, skippy-dancing, goat-farm-dreaming, puzzle-pondering goodness.  I feel very fortunate to be here, and I wouldn’t change a single thing…except, maybe, to have one whole wall in my office that was nothing but whiteboard.  That would be pretty cool.

Things I want to talk about if I ever get 5 seconds:

  • Having an intern
  • Book reviewing
  • Why Walt Crawford is awesome
  • Gen X leadership

The reach must exceed the grasp.  Isn’t that what library blogs are for?

I’ll be on staycation next week, though.  The play I’m in goes up Friday and Saturday, so I’ll be focusing on delivery and diction rather than databases and desk work.  I maybe might chime in with some of the more abstract, bigger-picture ruminations I normally don’t have time for, but that’s a longshot-darkhorse prospect.

1 Comment

Sorkinesque (a day in the life, part I)

July 29, 2009 at 6:04 pm (ALA Annual 2009, Twitter, blogging, collection development, conferences, databases, day in the life, humor, leadership, management, news, personal, philosophizing, professional development, reader's advisory, traditional library services)

Intro/Backstory
Yes, it really did take me that long to finish and post those meeting minutes!  The reasons why will become apparent shortly.  But first, some backstory.

Last week various colleagues posted the news in various forums that another one of those “day in the library life” blogging events was going to take place.  I love those things.  I never sign up for them, though, because, realistically, if I stopped to write down everything I was doing in a given moment, I’d never get anything done.  And then I thought, well, what better way to demonstrate that a normal day in my life is very much like an episode of Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night than to take a crack at it?

[Those of you who don't know from Sports Night are cordially invited to check out the DVD and see what all the fuss is about - even though starting with anything other than the pilot might seem counterintuitive, I highly recommend starting with "Dear Louise," "Shoe Money Tonight," and "Small Town" to get a feel for the characters, their workplace, and their relationship to each other. It's a wonderful show about a close-knit group of professionals who are extremely passionate about what they do, to the point of appearing like complete ciphers to folks who don't work in their field. Sound like any other professional folks you know? :) ]

So, without further ado, here is a reconstruction, based on my frantically scribbled notes, of everything that took place in my library life on Monday, July 27, 2009.

Library Alchemy: A Day in the Life

Part I – Off-desk

9:30:  Check the desk schedule, add my desk shifts to my Outlook calendar.  Exchange witty banter with colleagues.  Laugh self into pancreatic pain.

9:40:  Finish up ALA expense report and bring it to my boss.  Chat with boss about database stuff, which segues into a philosophical discussion of future staffing models for the reference department.  Return to office.  Field questions from colleague about the exact same stuff was just discussing with boss.  More philosophy ensues.

10:00 Open up e-mail.  Answer the time-sensitive stuff.  Answer flurry of questions about Twitter and HootSuite.  Get another chunk of the Twitter gang signed up with HootSuite accounts and schedule trainings for those who want it.  Discover the “most popular Tweets” feature in HootSuite and squee over it.  Put aside a whack of database reference cards to give to a branch colleague at the Friday meeting.  More e-mail with various blog staffers in an attempt to coordinate some guest posts for September. Decline to take a call from a vendor and proceed to feel guilty about it.

A colleague drops by to check in with me about the school tour I’m giving this afternoon.  The group  has changed its mind several times on whether or not it wants catalog and database training.  The colleague and I decide that asking them what they want is the best solution.  Photocopy catalog and database training handouts for tour group.  Run over training in my head while at the photocopier.  A colleague walks by, greeting me with the mysterious phrase, “PEANUT SAUCE!”  I respond with the countersign, “SCALLIONS!”  Tamp down nervousness about giving catalog and database training, which never seems to go away no matter how many tours and trainings I do.  Accept that fear is normal.  Recite the Litany Against Fear anyway.

11:00 Break time. Decide to take a walk around the building. Ask colleague how her Friday evening presentation went. Ask another colleague about bloggish things. Say hello and good morning to countless other colleagues. Receive a lovely gift: an inspirational photo of a dandelion with the phrase “I release all that does not serve me” written on it. Hang photo on bulletin board.

11:15 Head over to book order. Discover that all of the non-fiction books mentioned in the 7/26 New York Times Book Review have either already been purchased, or are on order. Do vague skippy victory dance. Dive into the other ordering tools with gusto.  Decide that I should probably call back the vendor whose call I dodged and just tell her “thanks, no thanks” right up front. Get vendor’s voice mail. Quietly rejoice. Deliver polite, professional message and hang up, feeling 100s of pounds lighter.

12:00 Lunch. Chat with colleague in lunchroom about violins and music librarianship. Consume leftover peanut noodles with zest and start reading Work the System. Approve wholeheartedly of its emphasis on systems thinking and personal responsibility. Speculate on how its principles could be applied to my work life. Finish peanut noodles and head to the post office to mail a package to my mom. Study lines for the play I’m currently acting in while stuck in line at the post office.

1:00  Log into Eleventh Stack. Clean out spam filter, look at stats. Start rearranging widgets in sidebar based on a conversation taking place on the blog team distribution list. Start draft of next week’s blog post. Proofread a few scheduled posts. Read the post du jour and marvel again at how many awesome, creative people I’m surrounded with.

Log into the library’s Twitter account. Check for new followers. Block spam followers. Read followers’ tweets. Make mental note to remind everybody to use #pittsburgh in their tweets. Ping the rest of the Twitter team about HootSuite signup and training.

2:00 Meet the school tour group in the teen department. Immediately lose all normal vision when contact lens slides off center. Attempt several times to correct this subtly. Fail miserably. Start tour anyway, blind. Ignore rude noises produced by high school males and charitably assume that they are involuntary. Give tour of first and second floors, with special emphasis on Job and Career Center, based on group leader’s interests.

Ask about catalog and database training. Teacher says, “Whatever you think is best.” Decide to give the best catalog and database training ever and lead students to computer lab. Turn on projector. Wait. Fiddle with projector, silently coaxing it to cooperate. Decide projector has developed selective deafness. Give training without projector, using the computer at the lab attendant’s desk. Give thanks once again for theater and improv training.

3:00 Reassure long line of patrons waiting outside computer lab that yes, they can use the computers now. Check e-mail and discover that the wireless is down. Discover, also, that there are questions about my ALA reimbursement form. Silently consider starting a goat farm.

Start planning for Friday’s database committee meeting. Finish writing up June EREC meeting minutes, send to group, and post to ACLA wiki. Skim newsreader. Read an article that makes my heart sink and e-mail it to pertinent (and impertinent) parties. Skim “kept as new” items and decide to keep them marked because someday I will pay them the full attention they deserve, really!

Run downstairs to get coffee. Run into teen patron at coffeeshop. Engage in casual, stealth readers’ advisory with said teen. Run into hard-to-schedule colleague and set up a training time that is technically after my regular work hours, but is the only thing that will fit her schedule. Run back upstairs to my office.

Make list of tasks for my intern to work on on Tuesday. Walk down the hall to resolve the questions about my ALA reimbursement. Notice that the hallway smells strongly of french fries. Observe to colleague that, if the library were a musical, it would be at this point that we all burst into song about the joy of french fries. Stand still with colleague for a few seconds and imagine what this would sound like. Clear up questions about ALA reimbursement. Walk back to my office, inhaling deeply and smiling to self.

See? And we haven’t even made it to the reference desk yet! That deserves its own special installment, which I hope to deliver on Friday. Stay tuned!

1 Comment

Reading 2666

June 26, 2009 at 3:01 pm (personal, philosophizing, reviews, social justice, traditional library services, wikis)

If reading is like dating–and I rather think it is–then there are books you date casually, and books you marry.

Reader, I married 2666. We were only together for 9 1/2 weeks, but it was worth it, and I will never be the same.

I have to confess, though, I might not have picked up the book so soon if if fate hadn’t intervened. My reading list is very long, and I am still working on titles I jotted down in 2006. Very rarely do I “jump” titles, but after I overheard someone in a coffeeshop brag that he could skip the novel because he’d read the Wikipedia entry, I figured a jump was justified.

Clearly, I need to stop hanging out in coffeeshops! Bad for the literary heart.

The Wikipedia entry isn’t bad, for what it’s worth. But it’s certainly not the same as making the committment to reading the novel. Wikipedia will tell you what happened; the novel will show you. Wikipedia will explain who the major characters are, and what their signifcance is. The novel will gradually reveal these things to you, in a slow, sensual fashion, as if unwinding seven veils. Wikipedia will explain the relationship between “The Part About the Critics” and “The Part About Archimboldi”; The novel will unfurl, like a rose, so slowly that you almost can’t stand it, and by the time you get to the last 100 pages, you’ll be reading at breakneck speed to see how it could possibly end in a satisfactory manner.

This is not to say that it was an easy read. Wikipedia summarizes the violent aspects of the novel, but there’s a difference between being told something is violent and watching said violence play out. There were times I had to put the book aside and pick up a fluffy vampire novel, or cheerful romance, just for balance (a colleague reported a similar experience – he had to retreat into graphic novels for a bit while reading). Anyone who cares about the status of women in our world today will be moved by the plight of the women of Santa Teresa, literary stand-ins for the as-yet unsolved victims of the Ciudad Juarez serial killer(s?). Death after death after death, until the reader can barely stand it – a perfect literary representation of the sort of real-life violence that we often choose not to see, because our hearts cannot bear it. Likewise with the mesmerizingly-horrible scene in a diner, where a group of police officers crack joke after offensive joke about women. As you read, you can hardly believe what you’re reading. The text is visceral – it hurts. And yet, doesn’t that happen, somewhere, every day in America, and around the world?

What would happen to our world, I wonder, if there were no more novels to serve as mirrors and critics of the human condition? Could Wikipedia ever evoke our sympathies the way an author can? Somehow, I doubt it.

Be that as it may, you may not be inclined to engage with the darker aspects of human nature. Not every book is for every reader, after all, and the whole point of “the user experience” is that everybody reserves the right to design her/his own. But if you are willing to dance with dark themes, to luxuriate in long, sprawling sentences and langorous prose, to walk down a complicated, twisting road to discover who the mysterious Archimboldi is, and why he has come to Santa Teresa, well…you are in for a brain-bending treat, dear reader.

I racked up a dollar in overdue fines while reading 2666; it seemed a small price to pay for the expansion of my mind and the profound stirring of my soul.

So, there’s that.

My resolution not to give any more presentations this year crumbled in the face of invitations (and a request from management). Next week, I’ll be back with summaries and slides.

4 Comments

A Shout-out to my Mom, on the Occasion of her Retirement

June 1, 2009 at 12:21 pm (personal, philosophizing, traditional library services)

This past Friday, after 20 years of public service, my mom retired from her job as a school library aide. I point this out not only because I couldn’t be more proud of her, but also because she taught me a lot about school libraries and how they work, and I feel that my own practice is enriched just from working with her.

After I earned my library degree, Mom would call me, the “real” librarian, to ask me questions about subject headings, Dewey numbers (quit that laughing), weeding, and grade-level appropriateness. Sometimes I knew the answers; sometimes I had to do a little research and get back to her. But every single library conversation we ever had was a teachable moment for me, and I’m humbled by her faith that I would either know, or find, the right answer for her.  Her questions kept me sharp, and reminded me that not everybody in this great country of ours is fortunate enough to have the resources that sone of us take for granted.

For 20 years my mom kept a small library going in the tiny, underfunded private school that employed her. She led storytimes, dreamed up information literacy activities (though she probably never would have called them that), helped kids with their homework, maintained a paper card catalog (again, with the laughing, quit it), shelved, weeded, did collection development on a shoestring budget, recommended books, and then lovingly checked those books out with her old-school stamper. She never thought of herself as a “real” librarian because she didn’t have an MLIS. But in The School of The Velveteen Rabbit, she was, like Rosie, really real.

She’d probably be horribly embarrassed at my writing about her like this, but given that she and my dad don’t own a computer, it can be our little secret. :)   Besides, I couldn’t really let this auspicious occasion pass without bragging on her, just once, the way she deserves.

Do you have a “library angel” in your life?  Have you talked to them lately and told them how much they mean to you?  Why don’t you put down your mouse right now and go call or write them?  I’ll wait.

We’ll be back later this week with…goodness knows what.  But I’m sure it will be something. :)

1 Comment

Working Harder AND Smarter – Thursday Update

May 28, 2009 at 4:35 pm (23ThingsN@, Emerging Leaders 2009, Learning 2.0, Twitter, blogging, collection development, databases, leadership, news, professional development, social justice, traditional library services)

Did I say Wednesday?  That didn’t happen, clearly.  But, rather than let this blog become a bluesy litany of “where does the time go,” I’ll confine myself to a quick project update:

Collection development:  The one sane thing in my workday.  It’s nice to go through NYTBR and see you already have all the hot nonfiction either in the collection or on order.  Score!

Eleventh Stack:  Also holding steady.  Hit count is slightly down, but still above last year at this time.  It also mirrors last year’s slight decline.  I don’t mind fewer readers over the summer, as long as it’s part of a larger pattern.  Still, all the more reason to sit down and think of ways to kick it up a notch..

23 Things N’@:  Week 4 is all about wikis, and everybody’s happy!  The range of experience and abilities continues to educate me on how we can do this better next time.  Definitely a move to a tiered-activity system is in order, IMHO, something along the lines of beginner/intermediate/advanced, so that people have options to choose from according to their experience/comfort level. That being said, holy project success!

Twitter: I have mixed feelings about how this is going, and would like to write more about it at length.  Long story short, it’s an easily managed, low-maintenance project, but I don’t know if it’s achieving our objectives.  More time may be called for.  We shall see.

Database Stuff (CLP):  We haven’t met for a while because our new quarterly renewal schedule has made the committee process more efficient.  It’s time for 3rd-quarter renewals, though, and a look at 1st-quarter stats.  Plus, me being me, I have some wild and crazy ideas to throw at the committee to see what they think.  Secretly I want a database promotion task force.  I will pay for jackets that say “Database promotion task force,” if given free rein. :)

Database Stuff (EREC/ACLA): Good news!  The deal went through, and the county has purchased a subscription to Mango Languages.   Our patrons really miss Rosetta Stone, and for the life of me, I still don’t understand WHY they chose to stop selling the database to public libraries.  We are hoping, however, that Mango will fill this critical gap – language learning is very popular here, and the wait list for materials is very, very long.  We’re working out the hookup kinks as we speak – stay tuned, because you know I’m going to try to learn about seven languages myself. :)

Oh, and all that above about task forces and jackets?  Add a blog and multiply by ten, and you’ll get an idea of what I’d love to achieve at the countywide level.  Girl’s gotta dream…

Emerging Leaders:  You’re probably wondering why I have barely discussed this at all.  I’ve been meaning to, but now I don’t have to, really, because the fine folks at In the Library With the Lead Pipe have spread it all out for you in a nutshell.

Emerging Leaders has been like boot camp. I am getting a lot out of it. I am not sure that what I am getting out of it is exactly what the program planners intended, but such is life. :) It’s difficult to capture the zeitgeist of this kind of experience in medias res, so I’ll probably not even try until after annual, when it’s all over and done with.

Alternative Media Task Force/Event Planning: My other ALA project! The group process on this particular project has been amazing. We are putting together the Alternative Media Reception / SRRT 40th anniversary celebration, and it’s going to be awesome. Stay tuned for the official announcement, because you’re really not going to want to miss it.

And just because it’s not nearly busy or exciting enough around here, guess where the next G20 summit is going to be held? It’s going to be one crazy summer at Alchemy, so stick around…bonus points if you can identify the Sports Night references in this post…

2 Comments

Booktalks and Boundaries

May 13, 2009 at 5:38 pm (presentations, professional development, reader's advisory, traditional library services)

Welcome back to the wild world of Alchemy!

Yesterday I gave a presentation called “New, Now & Next:  A Road Map for Contemporary Fiction” for Pittsburgh OASIS, the local branch of a national program for seniors with an emphasis on lifelong learning. This was the same presentation I gave at Pitt and CMU, and I stubbornly maintained my position of having no slides or visual aides, save one handout. Nope – I like giving this presentation because it’s good old-fashioned booktalking. Swap out your titles and it’s a whole new ballgame every time.

Titles I booktalked included:

This Is Chick Lit, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, ed.

This Is Not Chick Lit, Elizabeth Merrick, ed.

Tales From the Farm, Jeff Lemire.

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware.

2666, Roberto Bolano.

You Poor Monster, Michael Kun.

The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi.

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris.

The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall.

The Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah.

Flash Fiction Forward, James Thomas and Robert Shepard, eds.

And You Invited Me In, Cheryl Moss Tyler.

Kind of all over the map, those picks, but that was part of my point: fiction these days is more exciting and diverse than ever before, and there are many new things to try. The audience was wonderful, chiming in with titles they liked, and observations of their own, so the presentation was free to go in wonderful directions I hadn’t planned for. I rather like that in a presentation!

Goodness knows I had more than enough material as it was, so much so that I deliberately moved some things around – the last time I gave it, for example, we never got to urban fiction, graphic novels, or the GLBT collection, and I definitely wanted to highlight those.  I also made sure to stress that you don’t have to like everything, and invoked Nancy Pearl’s 50-page rule.  Based on the feedback I got from the attendees and the organizers (another fine partnership brought to you by ACLA!), all went well. 

After I agreed to speak for OASIS, I quietly made the decision that it was the last speaking engagement I would accept for 2009. This is not because I wasn’t having a wonderful time – far from it! It’s a privilege to be able to speak to people, and, INFP on the Meyers-Briggs aside, there’s enough of the performance ham left in me that I get a big kick out of public speaking. And yet, a librarian’s got to draw the line somewhere.

What I’d realized was that, somewhere in the flurry of book reviews and other committments, that I’d already promised to do enough library service work above and beyond my regular duties that it will take me the rest of 2009 to fill my committments! Add the Emerging Leaders committee work for 2010/2011, and, well…something had to go.

This is sad, in a way, because of course I’m interested in everything, and I want to do everything. But I would also like to be a person of integrity, who delivers on the things she promises in a timely fashion. If that can be without all-nighters and hair-pulling, so much the better!

So, how do you say no when your plate is full, and the invites keep coming? Here are some strategies that have worked for me.

  • Ask the person if you can get back to them.  Then wait 48 hours and rehearse your no.  Or drop a few other committments so you can say “yes” if you really want to.
  • Explain that you are doing X, Y, and Z, and that to take on Q you will have to drop something.  Then put it back on them to choose what is a higher priority (very effective with bosses, though I think mine is on to me. :) ).
  • Recommend a colleague in your place.  NOTE:  This is not open license to get revenge on a co-worker who has done you dirty.  It is, however, a great way to give other people an opportunity to shine, especially if they are more skilled in the task than you are!  Remember:  you’re marvelous, but nobody loves a praise hog.
  • Negotiate a reduced assignment.  Maybe you can team up with a peer to give the presentation, or write one article instead of two, or get a longer due date/deadline.  Most people who need your help will be more than happy to work with you on a win-win solution.

If all else fails, here are 100 easy ways to say no you can try. Something that could be fun would be to roll a few dice to determine which excuse you should use…or, if you’re feeling confident, you could just set your default to #9. :)

The rest of my week has been the usual, with a nice big scoop of keeping up with 23 Things ‘N@ on top! A lot of the participants are really getting into the spirit of exploration – I’ll be back on Friday with some examples of cool blogs they created this week.

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Fashionably Late to the 23 Things Party

May 4, 2009 at 6:00 pm (23ThingsN@, Learning 2.0, Library 2.0, Twitter, humor, innovation, professional development, traditional library services)

The big day has finally arrived: 23 Things N’@ went live today, and as of right now over 280 people have registered. Not only that, but 44 folks have already started their week one assignment.

You might be wondering why I’m so giddy. After all, didn’t everybody already do this last year, or the year before? Haven’t we all moved on to the next splendid, shiny thing?

Well, no, not so much. Something I’ve tried to point out over the course of this blog (sometimes gently, sometimes not) is that Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are different.  We have power users, but we also have a lot of patrons who are still functioning at a less-than-basic level.  And although the unwritten code of the library blogosphere states that we’re never supposed to say this out loud, sometimes we really are too busy to incorporate emerging technologies into the workday, especially when we’re up to our eyeballs in reference questions that require multiple trips to the stacks, and simply cannot be answered in 48 hours or less.

[Yes, that means I haven't checked our Twitter account today.  I shall hold out my wrist for the wet noodle-lashing I so richly deserve. It also means I'm willing to put my MLIS on the line that the Stravinsky question I spent two days working on could NOT be easily Googled. :) ]

What that means is that, professionally, we’ve really had to slow down and think about what Library 2.0 means in a patron population where there are still a lot of 1.0 needs to fill.  As librarians, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves in all areas, which is why Team Celery Stick worked so hard to pull this off.  However, we also have a responsibility to make sure that, while we are leaping boldly forward, that there is No Pittsburgher Left Behind.

So, while I still like the image of us sauntering in the room a little bit late (clad, of course, in our fetching little Chanel suits that we scored at the thrift store on Ellsworth), I prefer to think of us as being right on time for ourselves and our patron needs.  If we’d done this when everybody else did, we would’ve deprived ourselves of the year of discussion and debate around these issues.  Now that we’re ready to move forward, I honestly can’t see anyone or anything stopping us.

Those of you who have never visited our fair city might be wondering what’s up with the ‘n@” part of 23 Things.  ” N’at” is a lovely little phrase peculiar to the Pittsburgh speech pattern, and I couldn’t begin to explain it to you if I tried.  You can, however, click here and here for, respectively, a scholarly and a fun explanation of why there’s no linguistic place on the planet quite like Allegheny County. :)

At any rate, while the program is going on, this blog is going to be quite Things-centric, but I promise I’ll try to write about other stuff too. See you later this week…

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Snippets from the A-Team

April 16, 2009 at 7:55 pm (Learning 2.0, Library 2.0, Twitter, blogging, collection development, databases, traditional library services, virtual reference)

And by “A-Team,” I mean, of course, Team Alchemy.  I just love it when a plan comes together, though, and many things have blossomed this week.  Here’s a short progress report.

Collection Development

Got a compliment today – it was passed down from the coordinator of collection development, who appreciates the way Bonnie and I have worked out the ordering of pop culture/current events non-fiction. That’s really gratifying to hear, because we spend a lot of time making sure we’re not duplicating orders! Our LibraryThing account helps, and the rest of the staff in both our departments have been gracious about using it.

Refdesk

The question du jour concerned Slavic mythology. Do we have the best career, or what?

Virtual Reference

There’s a lot of rhetoric floating around about best practices and whatnot, so I’ll not dwell on this overmuch. Suffice to say, I think virtual reference is splendid for developing writing skills, and learning to adapt the reference interview to a text-based process is a never-ending course in professional development.

Of course, it’s also subject to Murphy’s Law: if I start conducting a reference interview, the patron asks for just a few quick links. If I start with links, the patron invariably reveals more info that cries for a reference interview. Definitely educational. :)

Eleventh Stack

In March the Eleventh Stack blog earned a record-high number of hits, and so far this year monthly visits are double those from 2008. On March 25th we were featured as one of WordPress’s top 100 growing blogs. Granted, we were only #98, but given how many WordPress blogs there are, I think that’s a pretty cool feat!

CLPicks

As of right now we’re up to 81 followers on Twitter, and our TwitterGrade has risen to 85. Again, not too shabby for a ragtag team of librarians trying something new. A goodish chunk of our followers are local people, too, not just my librarian friends/colleagues. Whew. :)

23 Things

Team Celery Stick (a subsidiary of Team Alchemy) opened up registration yesterday for our “23 Things ‘N ‘At” program – in one day we received 110 registrants countywide, so the bar is up there pretty high! Kelley, Ryan, Beth and I have risen to the occasion by setting up our wiki, creating the official program blog, and putting the final touches on our content.

Databases (CLP)

Working on 1st-quarter stats. Also spent some time doing scenario planning, in case of material budget cuts. It’s better to plan for things and not need them then vice versa, IMHO. And it’s a good exercise in seeing where you’re strong, collectionwise, in what formats.

Databases (countywide)

With much help from the committee, have set up four trainings for our suite of NetLibrary recorded books. They’ve just changed the interface and added iPod-compatible titles (hurray!), so we want to make sure the various libraries’ staffs are up to speed.

There’s more, but I think that’s enough for now. If I told you everything I did all day, you wouldn’t believe me! Although I wish I got more reference desk time, I’m really happy to be part of all the things I do on the daily. I definitely stretched out of my comfort zone with this job, and it’s taken me to places I never imagined I’d go.

From clerking to reader’s advisory librarian to nominal 2.0 person/reference librarian in 7 short years. Who knows what will happen next? It’s pretty exciting…

At any rate, I’ll be back next week with the results of the drawing for Slow Reading. Hope you all had a wonderful National Library Week!

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