The Librarian Kate

As regular readers may know, I was selected as a 2011 ALA Emerging Leader, sponsored by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA).  Part of my sponsorship was the opportunity to write for the quarterly newsletter, RUSA Update. This is a slightly edited version of a post that will be appearing in the Fall 2011 issue. 

During one of the excessively hot days this week, my ever-entertaining morning weatherman informed me that “five months ago today, the temperature was 23 degrees with a wind chill of 17!”  New York City weather swung from one extreme to another in little more than a quarter of the year.  Clearly change can be sudden and extreme – and take place in a short time.

Can this be applied on a personal level?  Indeed, and most definitely for me.  In the six months of the Emerging Leaders program I went from part time to full time employment, now serve on several ALA committees, presented two posters (one of which was my Emerging Leaders deliverable), been published in Computers in Libraries (and soon to be in Reference and Technical Services Quarterly), and unsuccessfully ran for ALA Council.  There’s been a laundry list of personal life changes, but listing them all would turn this into a 20 page article.

The goal of all change is to learn from it, and I have learned throughout these six months.  For starters, I have learned to work within a team again.  Four months of unemployment and six months of working in a small consulting firm as the solo office manager render team work skills a bit rusty.  There were times I did forget what it was like to work on a group project!  But with patience and gentle, constructive criticism from group members and self-reflection, I was able to get back on track.  It was like riding a bike – you may not get on a bike for years, but when you do, everything comes back.

Another lesson learned is the importance of reconnecting with your people.  The job search, unemployment, three family crises in the latter half of 2010, and other issues led some of my involvement within ALA and librarianship slide.  I made some time for certain events and projects, but lack of time and job search burnout led me to take a small sabbatical from professional development.  Those who are unemployed and underemployed will agree that it’s hard to be “Yay Libraries!” when you’re spending day after day in your pajamas watching The Price is Right and living off of cereal because you’re not working.  (I speak from 100 percent personal experience.)  Being an Emerging Leader, surrounded by like minded peers whose ambition matched (and sometimes exceeded) my own, re-energized my passion for information.  It was the kickoff workshop at Midwinter in San Diego that led me to run for ALA Council in the first place!

The third lesson on change is to accept its presence – to quote from one of my favorite movies, French Kiss, “swim in it until your fingers get all pruny.”  One of my colleagues in the 2011 cohort gave the simple axiom that “life happens” as her biggest lesson from the program experience.  Her group had several cases of personal and professional change affect the progress of their project (including, I think, someone affected by severe weather in the Midwest).  Rather than fight it, they learned to work with it. If someone was behind on a deadline due to a family member being in the hospital or a hectic week at work, it was best to just let it go – the work will still be there when everyone returns to it, hopefully rested and in better mind. Their acceptance of crisis mode and understanding that life can intervene in critical and severe ways allowed them to adapt better.  It’s nothing more than the old phrase, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

A final lesson from my project experience – perhaps the most important – has nothing to do with change at all, and is quite counter to it:  Stand up for your beliefs.   Anyone who attended the Emerging Leaders poster session at the Annual Conference knew that my group (Team G), had a quite different, definitely edgy and potentially controversial giveaway with our poster.  I was on board with this idea…until I got a full time job in April.  I wasn’t comfortable handing this particular item out to co-workers or senior colleagues that attended.  I did not feel it would be appropriate for me to do so, not with such a short tenure at the company.  I advocated for having the more family friendly alternative of business cards, and successfully convinced my EL colleagues of same.  I could have kept my mouth shut and gone with status quo (again, accepting change!) but decided that certain issues and concerns were worth the fight.

If you attended the Emerging Leaders poster session, I wholeheartedly thank you for coming.  If you stopped by to talk with Team G about our poster, accept more thanks from me.   Whether or not you visited the Emerging Leaders at Annual, allow me to highlight some of my favorite projects:

• Team B worked with ACRL to prepare ACRL 101, a “guide to enhancing the conference experience for first time attendees.”  I loved this project not just because one of the dearest friends I made from the group (Megan Hodge), served on it, but because it will be useful for me when I attend ACRL as a full fledged attendee in 2013.
• Team I reviewed a favorite topic of mine, library website usability, showing off the “Seven Deadly Sins of Library Websites.”  Usability and design thinking are so important in our profession, and I predict that this will grow in the future:
• Team J worked with the Information Technology and Telecommunications Division to create a “Virtual Guide to ALA Deadlines” – any and all deadlines within the organization in one interactive timeline:
• Team K and Team L both worked on projects for the Learning Round Table (LearnRT) relating to training and staff development – Team K built a wiki for staff development day resources, and Team L looked at ways to build a webinar series.  I’m a semi-frequent guest on the T is for Training podcast and have sat through more than my fair share of subpar, weak training session at previous jobs.  Al l these experiences foster my interest in ways we can harness technology to improve training and staff development.
• Team N, working with the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) worked to review LIS student recruitment to the organization within management courses.
• And of course, there is Team G, my team project, a set of videogame collection development best practices prepared for the Games and Gaming Member Interest Group (which became GameRT, a full fledged roundtable at ALA Annual).

This is just a small sample of the projects from our cohort, be sure to spend time reviewing the full list.  If you or someone in your workplace is interested in the Emerging Leaders program, please get in touch with me; I would love to talk at length with you about the program.

As my reign as RUSA’s Emerging Leader is now over, this will be my last “News from Your Emerging Leader” column.  Consider this my final walk across the stage with the tiara on my head; it’s now time to crown my successor.   I wish to thank everyone at RUSA – President Barry Trott and the Executive Board, leadership from sections, and members – for the sponsorship, networking and professional opportunities.  You’ll still be hearing from me within and outside of the organization – I will be co-chairing the RUSA Structure Task Force, and if you’re active in the New Members Round Table, I’m working on two committees there.

I hope to see you all in Dallas and Anaheim in the coming year, and continue conversations in between conferences.  The dialogue is so important to keep librarianship alive.  After all, to quote Doctor Who, “”You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books,  best weapons in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!” I can’t think of a better calling.

Unless you’re a librarian living under a rock (highly possible if you work in academia since the semester/quarter just ended), you know these three statements to be true:

1. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is…well, a weiner.
2. Exactly eight people will watch tonight’s Tony Awards, and half of those will be because the South Park guys will be on*
3. The American Library Association Annual Conference is coming.

With the arrival of the conference comes the end of my reign as an Emerging Leader.  And while I don’t get to crown my successor like on the Miss America pageant (although if any of TPTB from the program are reading this – that would be a great idea!), I do get to show off the project I have been working on with four equally passionate and awesome Emerging Leaders:

1. Brooklyn Public Library’s own Erik Bobilin
2. New Albany, Indiana’s star children’s librarian (and for reasons unknown to her, a hit with the homeschool mom set), Abby Johnson
3. Jonathan Lu, the librarian with Georgia always on his mind (because he lives there).
4. Librarianship’s Yellow Rose of Texas (and the mind behind the Librarian Wardrobe blog), Nicole Pagowsky

Our project is just as fun as we are:  a video game collection development policy.  (We got to play video games for the past six months and call it work!)

If you’re coming to New Orleans a bit early and are looking for something to do on Friday afternoon, why not come to the Emerging Leaders poster session?  You’ll see our poster, along with the collective genius of the next generation of information professionals.  And best of all – you’ll be inside in air conditioning!

I’ll let our official Emerging Leaders Team G (aka Team Gorillaz) press release from 8bitlibrary.com speak for itself.

Emerging Leaders present best practices for video game collection development

Are you thinking about starting a video game collection for your library? Are you wondering how to take your video game collection to the next level? Join the 2011 ALA Emerging Leaders Team G for a poster presentation on video game collection development at the ALA Annual Conference on Friday, June 24, 2011 from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Conference Center Room 271-273.

Team G, comprised of Erik Bobilin, Abby Johnson, Kate Kosturski, Jonathan Lu, and Nicole Pagowsky, will present information on issues and best practices when developing a video game collection, including Circulation & Access, Selection & Purchasing, Weeding, and an ideal MARC record. The team surveyed public, academic, and school libraries across the United States and Canada and spoke with experts in the field to find out what innovative ideas might change what we know about video game collections in libraries.

ALA’s Emerging Leaders program allows new professionals to gain experience and create personal networks within the American Library Association by working with a group on an assigned project.

For more information, check out the team’s website: http://bit.ly/libvideogames

(If you go on the 8bit site to read the press release, you get to see a nice picture of what we all look like.  I’m the one all the way on the right with her eyes closed.  Because I can never take a decent picture.)

So, please come. Learn. Be inspired.  Know that our profession is in very good hands.

Because if you don’t, every time I see you at the Conference I will poke you with my big foam finger I got from Glee Live when it came to Philadelphia last week:

* I will be one of those eight.  Put your money on The Book of Mormon and Sutton Foster.

Over on Andy Woodworth’s recent Open Thread Thursday post, San Jose LIS student and the one man to rock a bow tie better than the Eleventh Doctor*, John Jackson, pointed out the following to me in response to my concerns about the potential merger of the University of Washington Information School I discussed in my previous post:

I made this same comment over at Hack Library School: there are some benefits to consolidation. Two that come to mind: (1) new, integrated courses that bring together students and faculty from other departments with outside perspectives (Comp sci, humanities, education, e.g.) and (2) access to new sources of funding, including added percentage of tuition, alumni channels, and restricted funds previously not available.

We talk a lot about changing MLS programs, maybe this would be the incentive to really look at the curriculum and ask “Do we really need this? and “What is really essential to what we want to teach?” I know from experience at MPOW that while budget cuts have been hard on all of us, we’ve made some interesting improvements to our services.

I don’t want to belittle the situation: budget and course cuts are seriously frustrating, but even while we protest it, we should be looking to how we can get the most out of the deal. There are some serious benefits worth considering.

My response:

John, you suggested something I didn’t think about. This might be to the respective schools’ benefits. For example, if my library school (Pratt-SILS) combined with Pratt’s Department of Arts and Sciences, we would have wider exposure to certain classes we don’t have already, like basic education courses or art history courses. I regret not having more foundation in educational pedagogy that would help me get instructional positions. Student organizations might even be able to get more money with a larger population and combine forces across departments – we were asked by HASDA (the Pratt student org for art history students), to present an art librarianship event, but we never had time to get the idea off of the ground. I wish we did – many students come to Pratt-SILS for that unique combination of art and librarianship.

So while I’ll be watching what happens to the iSchool closely, and hoping it can retain its individual presence, I will keep in mind that a merger like this may not be so bad after all.

No one likes budget negotiations (as I mentioned on Andy’s blog, it can be the classic definition of insanity), but for all our talk about reforming LIS education, this kind of extreme action might just be what we need to kickstart better quality LIS schooling.  It’s important to keep this in mind.

* If you’re new to this blog, you should know that I am enamored with British sci-fi series Doctor Who.  Get used to it.  And why aren’t you watching already?!  Go forth and thank me later.

As the title says, this is not going to be a blog post about the HC-Overdrive-ebooks-librarians kerfluffle.  (But it does have a Doctor Who joke in the title!)  My one solution to the whole mess is a good old fashioned lib-pub summit, like the arms US and the USSR had back in the Cold War days.  Obviously they worked, since we haven’t fallen victim to MAD (look it up if you don’t recognize that), and I understand both Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter are both still alive – excellent cameo opportunities!

I have been swimming in projects of late, which does not leave me much time to blog or breathe. (Let’s just say I breathe easy in a month, and really easy in three more months.) That being said, there’s a few fun things I can share:

1) Projects, Projects, Projects

Two items of note I can talk about right now:

• ALA Council Campaign: Assuming I have completed all requirements for candidacy properly, I will be on the ballot for ALA Council when voting opens in approximately two weeks.  I’ll post further candidate information when the election opens here and on my candidate Facebook page, but if you are in ALA member in good standing, I ask for your vote, as well as votes for several other fine colleagues and friends also running:  Bobbi Newman, Matthew Ciszek, Roberto Delgadillo, and the combined ticket of Ed Garcia, Jennifer Wann Walker and JP Porcaro.

• ALA Does DIY: CraftCon at the ALA Annual Conference: I’m hoping to get a CraftCon of sorts off the ground at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, a precursor to a formal DIY pavilion in talks for the 2012 Annual Conference in Chicago.  This CraftCon could take the form of a swap, demonstrations, roundtables, meetup, make and take tables – whatever members want it to be (except for sales, that’s out of the scope of the project).  I have an ALA Connect group and a Facebook page, please come over and join the conversation.

2) On the Ground LIS Tech Education

The Apprentice Librarian tipped me off to a great idea coming out of the University of Illinois Library and Information Science school. The “Web Design for Organizations” class is looking for libraries in need of website redesign – and they will send their students out to use their class knowledge and talents to improve the site:

Teams of graduate students from the “Web Design for Organizations” class will be redesigning web sites as part of the course curriculum. Student teams will work with you to assess your needs and help you design a successful site that excels in usability, code compliance and accessibility support for the disabled.

This isn’t the first time I have heard of such a class model – one instructor at my library school (Pratt Institute), David Walczyk, incorporates fieldwork right into his classes.  I never had the chance to take a class with him (they conflicted with my work schedule) but friends and fellow students told me how often their work involved an actual client, not a mock situation.  And while it’s not formal education, the Dewey Distric Library

In both cases, the real-life experience is critical and beneficial to both client and student – the client gets a cutting edge but usable web site at little to no cost, and the student gains valuable work experience.  I hope more LIS schools incorporate such work into their tech classes.

3) Save the UW iSchool

Thanks to several friends affiliated with the University of Washington Information School, I became aware of the funding crisis facing the UW, and it’s bad.  One of the proposed solutions is merging the iSchool with another school and cutting classes.  It’s a scary situation, especially when the #4 MLIS program is in danger of losing its unique identity in its centennial year. Why care if you’re not a iSchooler or iAlum? Well, if it can happen at the UW, chances are it can happen at your library school too.  Hack Library School gives an overview of the situation, and there is a Facebook group you can join to keep up with developments.   My fellow Jersey librarian Andy Woodworth often talks of Big Tent Librarianship; here’s our opportunity to come together, under the common cause of saving one of the top schools, and put it into action.

(In related news, UW’s Evans School of Public Affairs potentially faces a similar fate.  Since I am an advocate of a combo MLS/MPA, I’ll be watching this one closely too.)

4) Ideas, Ideas, Ideas….

As if I don’t have enough on my plate already, I still come up with ideas.  A brainstorming session with the talented and charming Andromeda Yelton (recognize the name?  She’s one of the forces behind Buy India a Library!) led to some wonderful thoughts:

• Becoming an Independent Library Consultant: Librarians who want to strike out on their own and be their own boss, but fear they won’t have much of a market due to budget cuts might want to re-think the idea.  When I temped/interned in my law firm’s library when the librarian was on maternity leave, we used an outside research firm to handle complicated/lengthy research requests.  I had just finished my first semester of library school and administration was concerned I didn’t have enough deep research experience – thus, using the outside service. Companies without an in-house research department (or whose department is overworked) would find such a business vital.  (If you’re now inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit, my friend Heather, proprietor of yarn shop Highland Handmades, used some episodes of her podcast, The Fiberista Files, to talk about starting your own business.  Most of it is industry and yarn-specific, but she shares universal start-up ideas like thinking of a business name and getting your EIN.)

• New Professionals Division and Lunch with ALA: I often wonder how out of touch librarian feel with their Home Office, particularly newer professionals.  It can feel like the shining city on the hill that you can never reach.  To that end, I’d like to see the Young Librarians Working Group evolve into a group similar to the SLA First Five Years initiative, with membership based in years of service to the profession, not age. The stellar event that this new group could host would be “Lunch with ALA.”  Charge a reasonable rate (remember, we’re new professionals with entry-level salaries!) and invite ALA staff members to attend.  Depending on attendance, at least one ALA staff member could be at each table for informal communication with a keynote by Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels or David Connolly (the face behind ALA JobList).  The emphasis on the table level communication gives members a direct but relaxed line to their professional organization.

• Panel/Roundtable Discussion:  What Librarians Can Learn from the Subway Sandwich Artist: After a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, I stopped off at Subway for a quick bite.  While noshing, another woman came in and made a point to tell the manager how pleasant and courteous the young lady manning the counter was. (And I agreed with her!) That got me thinking – one of the largest “I wish I had learned this in library school” ideas is “customer service.”  Why not invite those in the service profession to share in a roundtable what they learn on the job (formally and informally) with librarians, moderated by a library director (or other senior library professional, maybe an LIS management prof) to provide questions and context to the field.  You could have anyone from a hotel concierge to a restaurant hostess to a franchise manager to a Staples EasyTech professional.  I worked in customer service in high school (I was a CVS cashier) and my volunteer service position at MoMA is customer service.  Alternatively, use librarians who have previous careers in the service industry (I can think of two or three off of the top of my head), who can add even greater context to the lessons learned from managing a Hollister clothing store or tending bar, and how they carry over to the library resume/CV, and eventually (hopefully) the library job. It sounds so basic but if there are complaints about lack of customer service education or training, there might just be a need for such a panel.