Google "Research" Tool

First off, let me have a slight panic moment: why is Google trying to make librarians obsolete? Since they don't necessarily even understand what we do?

Having said that, let me tell you a little bit about a new "research" tool on Google. I read an interesting (depressing) review on the Chronicle's ProfHacker blog about Google docs' addition of a Research Tool (official language). Basically, users can highlight select portions of text in a Google doc, click on the Tools menu, and have Google try to find a matching citation on the web. Recent changes to the feature allow users to limit to Google Scholar and make citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago. I will also state that at least two people in the comment fields had written reviews earlier in the week only to have Google update the Research Tool, thus rendering their reviews obsolete. So as you read this post, keep in mind some of the features may have changed.

The research tool has pros and cons.

Pro	Con
Students really struggle with citation. Having a tool to show them how to do it will help	Will students actually learn the citation style for their discipline? And how important is that?
Students will have help doing research with tools that are familiar to them.	Information literacy is an important component of an academic library. Using this tool is no proof that students actually understand the concepts of information literacy.
Students can limit their search to academic resources.	What guarantee is there that the students will read more than the abstract if they can't access the article?
Might help cut down on plagiarism	But will students do the research themselves and then write the paper? Or will they write the paper and then try to find sources that fit what they wrote?

I'm sure there are more pros and cons than what I listed.

What I found most shocking were the comments from the faculty members at the bottom of the page. I felt as though none of them addressed the possible pitfalls of the tool. Granted none of them were librarians, and perhaps I am being reactionary.

Thoughts?

College Librarians and Media Specialists of Washington State Spring Conference

Last week I attended the CLAMS conference at South Seattle Community College in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. It was a two day conference entitled Library Advocacy Success Stories. I couldn’t attend all sessions because of my work schedule, but I had a few nuggets I thought I’d share.

The first day featured a “library success” presentation by Pierce College, mostly about their recent remodel of the library space. It really turned out beautifully. They focused on creating clearly defined spaces for different types of learning – collaborative, individual, multi-media, instruction – and different “vibes” – absolute silence, coffee-shop, whisper-level, interactive etc.

This photo from Library Journal terms it as “zoned” for different types of interaction. The signage is all one-word. The reference desk just says ASK and the circ desk says BORROW. You can kind of see them in this photo:

I’m not sure if I’m 100% sold on those terms, but the effect is striking and definitely closer to meaning something to a student than REFERENCE and CIRCULATION. (As I just read somewhere the latter terms are what WE do and the others are what the STUDENTS do – shouldn’t we be using signage that speaks to the user not us?)

One of the key phrases I took away from the presentation was the idea of “facilities as pedagogy.” We are having an impact on learning through our layout, facilities, signage, and yes, even furniture, and we should remember that if we’re ever lucky enough to have money to remodel J

Another important piece of their presentation was that the way they were able to get the money to remodel was by “proving their worth” in our favorite way… assessment. Oh, Pine Tree will never leave us. They were able, through surveys and analysis, to positively correlate interactions with a librarian with a higher student GPA at Pierce College. This really hit me – this is probably true at all of our institutions, but we have to create the data for anyone to know or care. No one is going to come along and create this data for us; we have to take the initiative. But when we do, our reward will be the irrefutable evidence that we matter to student success and (hopefully) the guarantee that our positions will exist in perpetuity. They left us with: “assess what you value, don’t value that which you can assess.” This is easier said than done, but something to think about.

Day two featured a series of shorter presentations on a variety of topics. I’m running out of steam so I will make them another post. Hope to see you all at ALA2012!

Preservation Tidbit

I am currently taking an online course in textile preservation through the Northern States Conservation Center. A little tidbit from my readings, related to the importance of environmental monitoring in museum and library areas with exhibits:

"One person can release approximately the same heat as a 60 watt light bulb and approximately a wineglass-full of water per hour." (Standards in the Museum Care of Costume and Textile Collections, 1998).

Which can, really, have a large impact on your collection if you have lot of people coming to an exhibit! Yikes!

What would Alanis Morissette say?

A few weeks ago I was helping a student with her research paper for Freshman Composition. In her paper, she wanted to argue that pit bulls have gotten an unfair reputation as a breed, and that they really make excellent pets. As we talked about her research and why she chose this topic, she told me over and over again about her own dogs, and how her pit bulls are incredibly sweet and well-behaved. Since she couldn't build an entire research paper around describing her pets' behavior, she thought she might look for some sources about dog behavior and training in general, to make the argument that training has a major influence over inherent breed characteristics.

All right, great. Our college has a strong veterinary science program, so there were a number of dog behavior books for her to choose from. One of the ones she checked out was "Cesar's Way," by the Dog Whisperer himself, Cesar Millan. The book came back from its trip to her home (with her sweet, well-behaved pit bulls) looking like this:

Of course I realize that one mutilated book doesn't exactly invalidate her argument, nor does it necessarily indicate that her dogs are out of control. But since I know what her research was about, I just find it so deliciously... what's the word? Does it start with an "I"?

Computers in Libraries: March 23

Conference: last day

I could only attend one session on Friday, but it was so well worth it! The presenters are doing some pretty cool stuff! It also doesn't hurt that I don't really like reference shifts....

Redesigning Reference Models

This was one of my favorite sessions! The tag for the session was #undesk. The Millersville University librarians who presented this session had to find new ways to reach students. Their library building is undergoing renovations, and the new, smaller space the library was moved to does not have offices or room for a reference desk. There solutions were innovative. Most of the librarians are now physically embedded in their academic subject building, and they hold office hours. They make use of chat, phone/SMS (Google Voice), Jing (screen captures answer reference questions), digital signs, iPads, and being a visible presence at campus events and organization meetings. The librarians realized that forming relationships with faculty and students inside and outside the library is essential. Questions they feel they’ve had to address:

• How do we connect with students?
• How do we encourage and support experimentation?
• What does it mean to be a librarian?

They’ve had to really rethink their definition of librarians though, and I liked their summation: “We provide the building, but the building does not provide us.”

• http://bit.ly/undesk
• http://youtu.be/Au4SZa1t5vI
• http://www.slideshare.net/libscenester/redesigning-reference-models

Computers in Libraries: March 22

Conference: Second Day

Ebook Publishers and Libraries: Win-Win Solutions

Led by Canadian librarians, this session was informative but not particularly applicable to me. Canadian libraries have been able to personalize license agreements with ebook publishers due to the Canadian book market, Canadian laws governing book purchasing rules, and the unity of the Canadian libraries. I didn’t get as much from this session because I don’t think American libraries have the unity needed to demand the same terms as the Canadian libraries.

They are doing some really neat stuff up north with ebooks, and I wish American libraries could copy some of their model.

Tinkerers: Maker Culture and Libraries

Maker culture was something that I have never heard of before this conference, so it was particularly interesting. Maker culture is essentially hacker culture: taking existing devices and software and re-appropriating them to meet a specific need. Most of maker culture happens in hacker spaces; maker culture can also be seen as a way to informally learn about technology. The speaker stated that although maker culture started as activists and continues to believe they work against “the man,” many of the hackers are white males, between the ages of 20-40 who make over $100,000 a year. Many of the products that they make can’t be used by the general public and actually have no economic value for their communities. The speaker argued that if libraries got involved, makers/hackers from different communities would be able to work together in their communities in a free access space. By bringing in librarians and libraries, the end products would be better tied to the local communities because it would be the local community members who made them. This talk was so insightful. I’m not sure that it would be something that worked at King, especially due to limitations from other departments, the administration, and space considerations, but it would be cool if it could!

Examples: FabLab (Fayetteville Free Library, MIT), HackDC

Open Source Trends & Migration

I had certain expectations about the session because my library will be migrating to an open source ILS is the next year or two. The first presenter simply read the results of his survey about what library perceptions of open source are. I would have been more interested if he discussed why libraries make the decision to move to open source or stay with a proprietary ILS, but he didn’t cover those topics. One interesting fact that he did share was the number of libraries adopting cloud-based ILSs, like Sierra. I wasn’t aware that this was a trend, or that libraries were considering it.

Integrating Tablets and Apps Into the Library

Hosted by two public children’s librarians and two academic librarians, this session gave me more insight into integrating tablets. At my library, we are interested in purchasing tablets for reference and instruction. Most of the information provided by the public librarians wasn’t especially relevant; they did mention considerations that had not even occurred to me: data privacy and restricting access to features. The academic librarians talked about their decision to get a droid based tablet v. iPads, using the tablets in instruction, and student reactions to the tablets in instruction. Droid was cheaper and open source. The student reaction was actually not overwhelmingly positive; the students were frustrated by the technology and having to learn a new technology on top of learning research skills, and they worried about damaging the tablet. The librarians ran into their own problems: compatibility of browsers, weak wifi, printing considerations, and wiping devices of data. Another big consideration is the importance of staff training on the devices so that they can assist students and other users.

Computers in Libraries: March 21

In the following three posts, I will provide a brief synopsis of sessions I attended at the Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, D.C. this past week. It was a pretty awesome conference, and I would recommend any e-resources or web librarians attend. I also enjoyed that it was a conference full of technology librarians, so none of us really wanted to meet new people.

I went to 4 sessions the first day.

Strategic Approaches to Mobile:

Presented by a reference librarian, a systems librarian, and a vendor, this session focused on doing environment scans of existing mobile interfaces, library user analysis for smartphones / tablets, what libraries can learn from business created mobile interfaces, and three ways to make a mobile site (stylesheet, mobile website, and native app). I learned so much in this session. I think mobile website development is key. I hope to use what I learned here to create a mobile website or stylesheet redirect for my library website this summer.

Getting Ready for the Semantic Web

This session taught listeners about the basic differences between the existing web and the semantic web, how RDA as a standard would enable library information to work on the semantic web, and current projects in libraries to work with the semantic web. I knew the least about semantic web and programming, so I learned the most at this session. I enjoyed learning about the cataloging standards, and how the semantic web will change searching.

• RDA: uses FRBR and FRAD standards
• Open Metadata Project (OMR): RDA vocab is published on the OMR
  http://rdvocab.info/
• MulDiCat: Authoritative IFLA standards translated into different languages
  http://iflastandards.info/
• OCLC’s Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST)
  http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/fast/default.htm
• OCLC’s Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
  www.oclc.org/research/activities/viaf/

Getting to Know HTML5 and CSS3

An introduction to changes in markup languages hosted by a head of technical services at a Montana university. This session covered changes in tags, how HTML5 will work with the semantic web, HTML5 and microdata, HTML5 and media formats, Javascript API (application programming interface) compatibility, CSS3 response to web design trend changes, and tools to play with the changes. This session as really interesting, and it answered many of my questions about HTML5. I don’t do much of the website backend programming at my library, but it will help me understand what our IT staff does. I belive it will also enable to me code my own mobile website or mobile redirect stylesheet, which is something I hope to implement soon.

• http://pinboard.in/u:jasonclark/t:cil-html5/
• Marcotte, E. (2010, May 25). Responsive web design. A List Apart, 306. Retrieved March 28, 2012, from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/
• Ronallo, J. (2012, February 2). HTML5 microdata and schema.org. code4lib. Retrieved March 28, 2012, from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/6400

Quick Quantifiable QR Codes

This session had too many presenters, in my opinion. The presenters (all academic librarians) discussed how to make QR codes, the importance of shortening the URL, using Google URL shortener to track analytics, and ways to use the QR code. Some of the ideas I liked were a QR code in the stacks that leads to LibGuides to help the student research, a QR code in the stacks that leads to a list of comparable ebooks (merging print and electronic), and using QR codes in place of print maps.

I do have more detailed notes, if anyone is interested!

investing in ourselves

A story from the iSchool flickered into my Twitter feed today: Is a Master's Degree in Library Science a Poor Investment? A Counter Perspective to Forbes Magazine.

(The Forbes story in question was pretty ignorable; coming from Forbes, of course it's going to focus on the financial benefits of your master's, and of course our degrees aren't going to make us rich. We knew this wasn't a good investment in the traditional meaning of the word "investment," so blah blah whatever, Forbes.)

But then the iSchool student winds up making the exact same point as the Forbes story.

Forbes:

"[I]f your desired profession requires a master’s degree, that’s a good reason to pursue it.”

iSchool:

"An MLIS is often required when applying for professional librarian jobs, especially in regards to the more advanced positions such as director or manager. This is why I am pursuing my Master’s degree: In looking at job postings and talking with people in the field, I quickly discovered that a lack of educational credentials would quickly eliminate me for consideration for the director or manager positions I was seeking."

Dur.

That's not a real reason.

It's a valid short-term explanation, but it's not a reason. "Because they said so" isn't good enough for toddlers and teenagers, and it shouldn't be good enough for our profession, either.

Why are we all so afraid to ask the real question: What, exactly, do we learn in library school, and do we need it to be librarians? 

I've questioned my Syracuse degree -- and its $40K price tag -- loudly and often, but the further out I get from library school, the more certain I am that I did, in fact, need to go to library school. It wasn't because of anything I learned in classes or from readings or from professors; some of that was helpful and important, and some of it wasn't.

The reason I needed to go to library school was that I needed to meet other people in the same stage of their careers as I am. 

I needed to have daily contact with people who were navigating the same things, figuring out where and how to work in this field -- and, now, having jobs that are similar to what I'm doing or am going to do or might want to do someday. Just in Klub Kat, we have public librarians; academic librarians at schools of all sizes and stripes; archivists; early-career administrators; people working at vendors; people working at "special" libraries; people working in non-MLS staff positions.

All of you push me to think about things way outside my comfort zone (proper spit-cup signage, say, and bugs and rodents in public spaces) and how we're shaping this profession. Our generation isn't shaping it enough yet, but we have to start somewhere. And we're doing things together, too -- brainstorming, venting, helping each other find job posting, presenting together, co-authoring academic papers.

That is what I needed, what I couldn't get on my own. Were there other ways to find these people, ways that didn't take two years and cost every cent that some people make in an entire year? Maybe, but I don't know them, and the more graduation recedes in the distance, the more I value what I did get out of library school: you guys.

P.S. That said, people shaping MLIS curricula? Please keep asking that Big Scary Question: What, exactly do we learn in library school, and do we need it to be librarians? If the answer is no -- and it is, too often -- get rid of it, please, for the sake of our future and our sanity.

Interesting Post from Will Manley's Blog

Please take time to read all the comments. They provide some interesting food-for-thought, particularly for us as we are at the beginnings of our careers...

From Will Unwound
February 16, 2012

WILL UNWOUND #684: “From the Tavern Mailbox: Goodbye to Librarianship”

Note from Will:  On a regular basis I get emails from librarians who want to drink deeply of the collective wisdom found in our Unwinders Tavern.  If you have an issue that is bugging you feel free to send me an email at wmanley7@att.net and I will run it in this blog so that our Unwinders can comment on it.  Feel free to change identifiable details so as to protect your identity. I received this email last month.  Please give your best advice to anonymous.

Hi Will,

Just writing to thank you for your last Manley Arts piece about meeting librarians’ needs. Particularly the part about librarians not having taken a vow of poverty. I wasn’t going to rant but you did say you have a lot of free time… I am about to leave the field because the pay is so much lower than the modest ALA-recommended minimum my alma mater touted as de rigeur when I was looking into grad school. The professional satisfaction promised as a trade-off is not happening, either.

The other payoff missing from public librarians’ lives is the professional dignity I was expecting when I became a librarian several years ago. I thought being a librarian would be great, given my aptitude for technology and the written word combined with my social altruism. Whoops. Most of the young librarians I know regret their choice. The most ambitious of us are the most miserable because we know that we could, as they say in the dating game, “do better.” I can make databases, but here I am un-jamming the photocopier and repeating program dates and times for callers who don’t have a pen handy. (It’s not that I need to pay my dues and work up the ladder: this is the highest position under Director.) Patrons are disrespectful, clerks talk to us like we’re pages, and managers struggle to keep a straight face when we suggest salaries should reflect value delivered rather than time served. There is a stark difference in the types of personalities and demographics the field attracts today vs. the era of my coworkers’ entrance to the field. Our colleagues make us pariahs for so rudely writing them an e-mail when they are in the building. They have worked here forever and half of them can barely use computers, forget that PCs have been widely accessible for over fifteen years. We are smart, enterprising, eager professionals. Projects fail miserably because none of my dear elders know how to conduct a productive meeting or start and complete a project. Our ideas are met with “that’s very neat but this is how we’ve always done it” and our attempts at competitive salaries are met with “well you knew going into this you wouldn’t be making a fortune.”

What’s broken? Is it a clash of power structures? I theorize that in a women-run organization like a “traditional public library” the structure is like a family, where authority comes from physical age instead of from your job title which you earned with your ability, like how us Gen X-ers came up. Is it that the civil service system has ruined the money-for-work model, leaving us hard workers feeling cheated? I felt a moment of clarity the day I realized “this doesn’t have to be my problem.” Much as I love social programs, I am industrious and don’t need the system to provide for me.

As you say, basic needs must be met. After looking these last four years for one of these elusive “real-pay” jobs I have given up on librarianship as a career and switched directions to focus on a consulting business centered around journalism and web design. Sometime before my biological clock stops ticking I will type up that resignation letter and say: I cannot raise a family and pay my student loans for $15 an hour. You will have to find another “professional” librarian.

For a long time I was worried it was me: I interview poorly? I don’t know the right people? Wouldn’t you know, less than a year into Project: New Career and I already have a couple freelance clients. Stranger still, none of them have balked over money or yelled at me because they don’t know how to make a photocopy. Perhaps the libraries here will miss my abilities, but life is too short to stay on this train.

I imagine you field lots of letters like this so I won’t ramble any more. I’ll just say thank you again and maybe at least the donut thing will catch on.

Best,

Anonymous

Information Literacy and Safe Sex

I've been working on a new in-class activity to teach MLA citation. My latest idea involves having students construct citations using our MLA Format handout and withdrawn books and periodicals in which I've marked the information necessary for the citation (author's name, page numbers, volume number, etc.) in colored highlighter. I don't know how it's going to go over; my class is tomorrow, but as I prepared this exercise, I debated about whether or not to include websites. I printed out screenshots so that I could highlight the title, sponsor, and so on as I had with the books and articles, but I really want to discourage them from just going to Google for their research.

As I mulled it over, I realized that my attitude toward teaching proper website citation was exactly like the logic behind handing out condoms in schools. Most arguments I've heard for teaching safe sex go something like this:

We really don't want to encourage teens to become sexually active, but we know that we can't do anything to stop them. If they're going to do it anyway, we may as well educate them so they can do so safely.

Here's how I feel about teaching my students to cite websites:

• Using websites for research can be helpful and legitimate.

• I don't trust that most college students can make good choices about what constitutes a reliable source of information on the Web, but I know they're going to go to Google anyway, no matter how many library databases I show them.
  
• Since they're going to use websites as sources for their research papers, they should at least be taught how to cite them properly.
  

I realize that in this analogy, I've equated plagiarism with STDs and/or unwanted pregnancy, and this might seem a little extreme. But hey, both can have serious consequences for your academic career.

Job Satisfaction + New Job

I think it's a safe assumption to make on this blog that we all got into librarianship out of a love for the work, and not out of a love of money or fame or something. Unless some of you are rich and famous librarians and are holding out on me. Either way, I went to library school because I like libraries and wanted to work in one. Or, at least, I wanted to do something librarianship-related, in a library or outside of one. I never went in thinking "I will only work in a traditional library!"

Unfortunately, a combination of the bad economy, my self/relationship-imposed geographic limitations, and my relative inexperience as a librarian made it incredibly difficult to find any sort of meaningful work. As you know, I ended up working in customer service at a company that sells library supplies. As many of you also know, I have not enjoyed my time in customer service, for a number of reasons. The work is frequently dull, repetitive, frustrating, and unrewarding, and although our customers are librarians and therefore usually great, I frequently deal with them when they are frustrated or angry. It's the first time in my life I have ever been really dissatisfied with the work I was doing, and it has been hard on me.

The last few weeks I have been helping our international sales department, because I speak Spanish (not fluently) and the native-speaker who is a pillar of the department was out of the office. I was essentially doing a chunk of her job on top of mine, which was overwhelming (and probably how it feels for a lot of librarians who are dealing with layoffs of coworkers) but much more rewarding. The work was more interesting, and I was dealing with customers all over the world. I also got to use my Spanish several times a day. I'm back to doing my regular work for a little while now, but I realized how much I miss Spanish and will be making sure to stay in practice, since it apparently can come in handy.

But the best and biggest change is that I will finally be moving to a new department! I applied and interviewed for another position when it was posted, and I accepted it on Friday. Starting soon, I will be an Associate Product Manger for archival products. My new position will involve a lot of marketing, which I have less experience with, but I think it will be a good thing to learn. There are definitely some drawbacks to getting this job as opposed to some of the others I have tried for outside of the company, but there are a heck of a lot of positives. I am hoping that the biggest positive will be a dramatic increase in my job satisfaction, since I had strongly felt the lack of that in my life. I will be working with a team of people who seem absolutely amazing, and I will be doing more direct work with archival materials than before, which I think will be interesting and will serve me well in my career.

I am still interested in finding a place where I can have my relationship, meaningful work, and more sunshine than I get now, but for the meantime, this change seems good and much-needed.

Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World

Inspired by Amanda’s booktalk on Cinderella Ate My Daughter (and the long wait to get it from my public library) I placed a hold on an earlier Peggy Orenstein book – Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World. [Feminist side note: There is relatively little about sex in this book, certainly much less than the other topics in the subtitle, and yet it gets top billing. Marketing? I highly doubt Ms. Orenstein chose that...] I have had such a reaction to this book that I thought it merited more than a booktalk. I feel like I’ve been living a booktalk of it since I started it, because it’s all I want to talk about. Orenstein released her breakout bestseller Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap (which SPL doesn’t own a copy of?!) in 1994 and followed with Flux in 2000. It is divided into sections that loosely follow the chronology of women’s lives: The Promise (twenties), The Crunch (thirties), and Reconsiderations (forties and beyond). Throughout each section the author recounts her interviews with hundreds of women at various points of life on their differing decisions about career, marriage, childbearing and childrearing. She mostly interviews them in small groups of friends, which leads to interesting revelations about what they regularly share with one another and what they don’t. She also chooses “representative” individuals for more in depth study and follows them for extended periods of time. The crux of what Orenstein is exploring is the “you can do anything you want” mantra that girls of our generation of were fed, seemingly from birth – I know I heard it constantly and I know I believed it, or at least I thought I did. She explores the degree to which women were sold a bill of goods by this – citing the income gap, the glass ceiling, the stigma of being a working mother, and especially the guilt felt by women who try to “have it all.” Reading women’s feelings, in their own words, as they moved through the stage of life I’m in and into the next ones has truly given me a host of reactions and emotions. I saw women like me, struggling with the same questions and worries and also women in lives I would never choose. While she explores the issues I noted above, this book is not a complaint or a list of reasons being a woman is unfair – she places the women in the context of their choices, not their circumstances (for the most part) and allows them to talk freely about the things they can control and the things they can’t.

The women who most interested me were women in the “Promise” years who had chosen to put careers first, a group I would consider myself in, at least marginally, but they made it clear that they would NOT consider us peers at all. These corporate women would consider all of us librarians “first grade teachers,” a catch-all for women in careers that were more about contributing to the “greater good” than making money. The implication for these women was that these jobs could be done part-time after kids and were a place-filler, rather than a career. I don’t feel like that about my job at all, but I had to acknowledge that I made the decision to become a librarian because I loved it, not because it would be lucrative. I never imagined that I would have to be the sole breadwinner for a family and so in that way my choice was a gendered one. I didn’t like being lumped in with a group that wasn’t career-driven, but this was just one of the many voices in Flux that made me really question my choices and my assumptions.

I’m not sure if this is just hitting me at the right time or if this book is really full of the wisdom of the ages, but I highly recommend that you all read it and tell me. It has really been a spring board for my own thoughts about what I’ve done so far and what I truly want. I know that it will stick with me as I move forward and it has given me a little more freedom about what might constitute a successful life.

How Reading Helps

Two weeks ago I recognized one of the university's student tour guides standing at our Information Desk while I was walking out of the building. I stopped by to say 'hi' and she told me she was working on a research paper for her History of Photography class. Right away I thought "that is super cool" and I asked her what she was writing about.

"Well, this guy named Robert Mapplethorpe? I don't know anything about him and I need one more source and then I'll start writing."

Wow-za. Perfect! I read Just Kids awhile ago and loved it. I asked her if she had heard of the book, to which she replied no. In a very serendipitous moment, the book was on display on a nearby shelf. I handed it to her and told her about his time as an artist in NYC, his relationship with Patti as his muse, his yearning to be in Andy Warhol's inner circle, and about how he died. I told her to look through the book to get an idea of who he was as a person and how that shaped his life as an artist. I may or may not have gotten overly excited but maybe I inspired her to look forward to writing about such a fascinating artist. She checked out the book (and some others) and was on her way.

Fast-forward to today. During a fire drill I saw her and asked her how her paper went. She said it was hard to write (it was due at midnight that same day) but her professor gave her kudos for including the aspects of his life that I told her would be in Just Kids. She got a 98%! I felt so good that I could be Ms. Eager Librarian to help a student. I wouldn't have known anything about Robert Mapplethorpe without reading the book either, which tells me it's a good idea to have a steady reading habit as a librarian. I still cannot believe that the stars aligned that day and I was able to use my knowledge to help someone. Don't we all kind of want to be walking encyclopedias? Or is that just me?

Book Talk: Cinderella Ate My Daughter

At some point during grad school, my nascent feminist tendencies took off and bloomed. Since I hadn't really read anything about gender issues or feminism before, I have really been enjoying reading some books in a totally new topic area.

I first noticed Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein at a Barnes & Noble but, since I have I-Spend-Too-Much-On-Books-Already-itis, I didn't pick it up. I requested it from the library instead! And I waited forever - apparently it is a hot read.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is basically a crash course in, as the cover says, "girly-girl culture" and how it's affecting both girls and boys even into adulthood. It is definitely an overview book as opposed to a deep, academic study of a particular aspect of gender, but that is really ok. Some of it was really instructional, some of it I already knew, and some of it scared the ever living heck out of me. I particularly liked that Orenstein gave us anecdotes about her own experiences raising a daughter, because the book is they type of book that can benefit from anecdotal evidence without losing credibility. Peggy Orenstein writes mostly about girls and their development, but I haven't read anything else by her. What this book really prompted me to do was request the entire sources list from the library system (library plug - we have nearly all of them!)

I strongly recommend this for someone who is interested in gender roles, or anyone who plans on having children and isn't really satisfied with the options for girls. It's an easy read but very good.

Group Work is Rewarding?

In library school they always made us do a ton of group work in a slightly desperate attempt to teach us how to collaborate. This will mimic the real world, they said. Once you get your job, you’ll have to collaborate with your co-workers on projects. Why not start that now?

Well, for the most part, they were right, but for some reason “group work” seems even worse in the workforce than it did in grad school. I think that group work in grad school is tolerable because there is a pretty good chance you’ll get at least one team member who is on the ball. Also, the group work suffering ends at an appointed time (i.e. the end of the semester), so the diligent students feel free to work harder on their projects because there is an end in sight.

Reasons I am thinking about this: my library is currently in the middle of a massive shifting project. (At least it feels massive. There are only 2 floors to my library, so it’s not as bad as it could be.) In the midst of this project, the rest of the librarians realize that the library has NEVER been weeded. Ever. Since its inception. Cue massive weeding project. And now we arrive at my group work frustration.

Once everyone realized that project (i.e. the cataloger) participants were not pleased with the direction of the project, we had a big brainstorm group meeting to communicate our goals and plans accurately to each other (which should have happened in the beginning). Communication is not a strong point of my library, primarily because most of the employees have been there a while and understand how operations are supposed to work. We all collectively decided in this meeting that we would weed certain areas per our subject “specialties”, write the faculty for approval, and then remove the books. Weeding is a collaborative process: librarians, the cataloger, and faculty are all involved. Our workflow is

Librarian analyzes / weeds books >> Faculty approve or disapprove selections >> Books go to the cataloger for removal and disposal

The workflow works pretty well, except for the fact that it is a funnel: there are multiple librarians and faculty and one cataloger (who refuses to ask for help). Furthermore, the cataloger feels that it is her job to re-evaluate our weeds. I can’t quite figure out what bothers me about this. Is it because my authority and experience is questioned? Is it because this slows the process down immensely as our cataloger spends 5 minutes on every book? Is it because I feel that she is an interfering busybody? Is it her tone when she questions my weeds? I don’t know. I also realize that her input is important because she has been at the library so long, and she knows the collection really well. She doesn’t really have a firm grasp on how students use our resources, but she knows what books we have, why we have them, where they came from, what courses they support, and so on.

My boss has stressed over and over how weeding is a collaborative process. My boss doesn’t want to get involved in what I am sure she views as territorial scuffles. Meanwhile, the other librarians and I are getting very frustrated. In group work, everyone has a part of the project to complete. If someone doesn’t do their part, the other group members pick up the slack. Currently, we are all doing our work, so there is no need for others to pick up the slack. There is also a person at the end of the project who makes sure that everything is cohesive. It just burns my biscuit that the cataloger is that end of project person, and she doesn’t seem to share the same vision of an academic library as the librarians.

Game Face

One of the great challenges of life is maturing enough to be able to recognize that sometimes life requires us to remain calm and fully utilize our poker faces. Probably the greatest skill I've gained as a working adult is the ability to detach my emotions from the tasks I must complete as an employee and supervisor. Though I am passionate about many things in my personal life, I've had to realize that being ruled by passion at work almost never ends well.

Think about people you work with: consider the person who cries a lot or is angry a lot or is so mercurial they are difficult to interact with. Now consider the person who is able to talk reasonably about problems or calmly troubleshoot an emergency. I strive to be someone who is excited about making things better but able to temper that excitement with rationality and flexibility.

But I still want to tell the patron who told me to "go back to Hong Kong" to go fuck herself.

Not only am I a branch manager, but today I am the "librarian in charge." The LIC is the highest ranking staff member on duty on Sundays when most of our working staff is part-time. My staff can and should notify me about problems as they arise, especially when I am on-duty with them.

Today we had a female loudly complaining about asthma being contagious and asking that the man on the computer across from her be removed from the library because he was using an inhaler. Her computer session expired and she refused to relinquish her machine to the next customer. I overheard her call one of my librarians a bitch and walked over with the security officer as she continued to argue with another librarian. I introduced myself and asked if there was a problem; she asked me if I was "in her country" and continued to argue. As I more firmly tried to stop her tirade she finally told me to "go back to Hong Kong," at which point I advised her that the library would not tolerate disparaging racial comments or name-calling and that it was time for her to leave. She was escorted out by our security officer, promising that we would all be in trouble for her treatment. "What is your name again?" she asked. I repeated my name and position as branch manager, to which she replied "not for long."

All this to say, while on the inside I wanted to physically and verbally unleash the fury on this woman, common sense and my position held me back. This may be the hardest part of working with the public: the situations where people are entirely rude, ignorant, hateful and, oftentimes, smelly. I hate to admit that people are sometimes willfully ignorant, incredibly spiteful or mentally unstable - sometimes all three - and that no amount of calm lecturing or kind accommodation will change them. 

I can see that it's taken me this long to become a person who can handle these situations in a way that won't get my contract terminated. My younger self would've engaged in an argument or reacted in kind when put in this situation. I'm not sure there are any books or workshops to aid in this; my education has certainly been trial and error to create the "game face" I'm able to put on now.

But just for the record, I'm Korean NOT CHINESE!

When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout?

It's been a while since I've posted to this blog with anything even remotely interesting. For that, I apologize. I hope you've at least enjoyed my bizarre non-fiction book talks.

I've recently started a new position as branch manager of a medium/large city library. My thinking is that this experience, which I'm loving so far, will provide a lot of fodder for posts.

For right now, I'd like to talk about something they definitely don't teach you in library school: the practical realities of library facilities maintenance. This topic includes things like "negotiating maintenance contracts for your library" and "what to do when your governing body doesn't pay for pest control." I'd like to talk briefly about something that is beginning to impact every other day of my life: library fire and burglar alarms.

My library system operates buildings that are hybrids of municipal space and system function. The buildings we have are owned and maintained by the city of location and then the library provides the people and collection; they provide the building and we make it a library. There is a lot of what I consider hair-splitting, which forces us to differentiate between what is furniture and what is equipment - the city is supposed to purchase furniture and we can provide equipment as needed. I'm sure I'll talk more about this later.

All that being said, my building houses not only our city library, but also the library system's headquarters. In the day-to-day shakedown, most of the building maintenance facilitation falls on the side of the branch and not the administration. We are large enough to have a burglar alarm and of course we're required to have a fire alarm system. During my first couple of days I was given the appropriate keys and codes and shown where all the alarm panels are located throughout the building. I also had to contact the alarm company and make sure the contact lists were updated and in the appropriate order: 1) city maintenance, 2) branch manager and 3) a dept head. It's a good thing I did that pretty quickly because it seems like we've had issues every week.

The fire panel buzzes on occasion, indicating everything from low batteries to test failures through a variety of high-pitched and annoying noises in several different syncopations. My first week it was a low battery, indicated by a sustained, steady beeping. Yesterday it was a different part of the panel, indicated by a high pitched whine throughout the ENTIRE DAY. We also think we've had some homeless people hiding in the building to sleep in the air conditioning and then leaving and triggering the alarm as they go.

Most of the time, the company calls me first and then I have to decide whether or not to dispatch the police. It's a challenge to find that balance between making sure everything is secured and not annoying the police by dispatching them every night. Over the fourth of July weekend I got about six calls, which is what tipped us off about the homeless situation (which has apparently happened before).

All this to say, it's a lot of responsibility and another way that salaried library staff - especially those higher up the ladder - are always on call. I'm not complaining; I don't live too far away and if I respond I know it will be done correctly. However, it is something I hadn't really thought about that much. Here is some advice:

1. When you start a new job, take the time right off the bat to enter your library's contact numbers and phone tree into your cell phone. This should include your immediate supervisor(s) and any staff that you directly supervise.
2. Enter the contact number for your alarm company into your cell phone. I have mine entered as ALARM CO and include all of my passwords. I've also assigned them a really loud (annoying) ringtone so I'm less likely to miss their call.
3. There are probably call sheets and specific instructions for emergency situations. Print off several copies and put them where they can be found in your office and at home. These will help in case you forget to enter someone's number in your phone or if you forget who you are responsible for calling. If your organization doesn't have something like this, take the initiative to suggest/create one. They are great for emergency closings, bad weather and a myriad of other things that can come up.
4. Make sure your alarm company has updated information for your building/organization. Turnover can often leave former employees on contact lists long after they are gone. Some of the files I just updated still had information from three branch managers ago!
5. Make it a point to review contact information for staff and alarm systems on a regular basis. Staff should probably be done every six months and alarm stuff will probably be OK if checked annually.

I haven't had any calls today and I'm considering that a win!

Book Talk: The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is an engrossing profile of one of humanity's greatest and most indefatigable killers. The idea is that profiling cancer is much like profiling a person because of its mercurial and elusive nature; it has evolved and entrenched itself into the international medical psyche and spilled over into the everyday lives of people. Siddhartha Mukherjee's work is personal, passionate and accessible to all readers. In my humble opinion it should be required reading for every person in the medical field and perhaps every person period. Don't worry if you are intimidated or even uninterested in this type of book - I guarantee it will capture your attention and not let go.

book talk: Little Princes

Little Princes by Conor Grennan is a memoir about volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal. Having a desire to travel the world, Grennan set off for Nepal not knowing what to expect. Right off the bat his honesty about his lack of knowledge about Nepal and being around children sets the reader up to learn along with him. This memoir has it all: adventure, suspense, humor (sarcasm, slapstick, etc.) and even some looove. I learned about Nepal's history, culture, and society as Grennan went above and beyond my expectations. Every single page was a delight - and I turned those pages fast! Grennan founded Next Generation Nepal which focuses on reconnecting victims of child trafficking to their families.

book talk: The Paris Wife

This book traces Ernest Hemingway's first marriage from the perspective of his wife, Hadley, when they live together in Paris. As "the Paris wife," Hadley is swept up Ernest's early literary successes and failures, and the Hemingways cross paths with prominent expats in Paris like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.

The beautifully written story really brings these historical figures to life and it would be a great book suggestion for someone who loves Hemingway's work or the Paris salon scene, as well as non-fiction readers who are curious about a fictionalized account of post-WWI culture in Europe, bullfighting, or misogynistic but sympathetic literary giants.