I think particularly for women, the hardest part of leadership is owning it. This is in part because there are still so many messages in society that men lead and women follow (look at the disproportionate number of men holding high-level library administration positions).

But for all leaders, the more experience we have leading in any role — internal or external to our official organizations — the more nuanced our approach to leadership and the more we are aware of what leadership actually takes. We get smarter, we ask ourselves harder questions, we see more angles to every issue, we want to examine things more closely. We have closets full of “lessons learned.”

And quite often the most powerful leadership is happening invisibly around us, in ways we will never know or understand. There are many moving mountains in ways that will never be officially recognized, and not always out of modesty. Some of the best leadership needs to happen very quietly, tiptoeing in with little cat feet.

Some parts of leadership are simply quite boring. Yes, you heard that: leadership involves doing things that are dull, annoying, even stupid. I think of the public library directors sitting in town meetings year after year, listening to reports about dog bites and minor rezoning requests. Yet they do it to ensure that the library has one more soupcon of visibility.

I think of me, volunteering as secretary to Faculty Senate this year (ONLY this year, I keep reminding them…). Is it leadership to spend my personal time formatting minutes? Yes, because building and maintaining strategic relationships is part of leadership. (This role also ensures that I’m paying attention to what’s going on at Faculty Senate–not a bad idea, as I’m a voting member.)

So I’ll go ahead and claim my situational leadership, both externally (as in my leadership with Internet filtering in the 1990s — which I did without official blessing from any internal or external organization) or internally (with several libraries and library organizations that needed coherent vision and a push forward).

That Certain Someone

When we reviewed the questions we might consider, I particularly liked, “Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Maybe some one who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person impact your life?”

It’s interesting that people (and I include myself) always read this in a positive way. I rarely mention my first full-time job, in a juvenile court system, where my boss’s boss staggered in roaring drunk every morning to create havoc in a department that was already frantically busy handling the overnight intake. Or the “leader” of that court system, who I naively visited (I was all of 19) to report the situation, as if he didn’t know it. He sat there in his fancy suit fiddling with his watch band, waiting for me to leave.  After I had moved on, that woman had a heart attack one morning, driving into the court’s parking lot, and before she died at the wheel of her car she injured several people, one badly.

Then there was the captain at the airbase in Germany who sexually harassed two young female airmen every day, leering at them and talking openly of their breasts and so forth. He did this in front of me, knowing that in a corrupt system I had nowhere to go — and by this, I refer not to the military at large, but to the private hell of that sad location. I reported him, and in time he was duly promoted. Your tax dollars at work.

I’ve had other lame jobs, but in comparison, most of those have been silly-lame, not deeply depressing like those positions. I guess it’s a matter of comparison.

But as I’ve said, most of us dwell most of the time on the good. I’ve had two bosses who were there for me in a crucial way during my first decade in LibraryLand. One, Bob, was not really my boss; he was my projector manager when I was a contract librarian at the Region 2 EPA library. I officially reported to a guy several states away whose previous job had been supervising clerks at Toys R Us; I don’t recall meeting with him more than once. But Bob was the one I looked up to.

Bob, it turns out, was a lot like Josephine (Jo, as she goes by), my boss two positions hence. Optimistic, supportive, a person of good ideas and even better questions; a model of integrity, patience, good humor, and openness. Bob managed to provide quality IT services for a federal agency — in retrospect, knowing the agency as I came to understand it during my short time there, quite an accomplishment.

In the same vein, Jo went to ballot four times to get the library she dreamed of approved by the voters, and never stopped being upbeat or forward-looking. She wasn’t naive or oblivious; she just knew what served her better.

Last week I had wonderful news that a small but crucial project I have been striving toward had been recommended for funding. I let myself bask in  it a while, recalling the evolution of this idea and its long, slow foothold in the mind of the right PTBs (powers-that-be). I reflected on the gradual progress from “that’s not how it’s done” to “well, maybe” to “we’re thinking about it” — and onward and upward, always with the support and good advice of my boss.

Along the way I continually tapped my pool of experts in LibraryLand to reassure myself that yes, this is how things are done in the Real World, and continued to maintain my stick-to-it-ness both in my faith that I was right, but more significantly, that the problem was not one of being right or wrong, but of timing, being in the right place, and most of all, my ability to persuade.That’s not a matter of simple case-pleading; it’s a complex matrix of example-setting, seed-planting, stakeholder-building, marketing, and that palate-friendly sauce of patience and impatience that gives me the long view while keeping me on task. There isn’t a sign in our building that I haven’t pondered for its impact on our long-term capacity to grow and lead.

I also tell myself, time and again, that none of this is wasted effort–I’m learning, I’m growing, I’m contributing. I won’t always win the battles, but I’ll know what’s worth winning, and I’ll gain sheer knowledge on the way there. That’s not as fun as winning, but it’s not wasted, either. It’s worth smiling over.

I’m not going to get some shiny LibraryLand badge for my latest “win.” Yawwwwwn I got a facility assessment provisionally approved for funding yawwwnnnnn. Good people get stuff like that done every day, and who knows, others might have succeeded faster and better-er. But I am running the good race on my own terms, and embrace — and own — what I have done so far.

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Chauncey Bailey

Last week, investigative reporter Thomas Peele  gave a talk at my library (Holy Names University) about his book, Killing the Messenger.

I re-read the book this weekend to remind me of the details. In doing so, one of the key ‘details” that made my reacquaintance was the life and death of Chauncey Bailey.

Bailey wasn’t a perfect person. Gunned down at 57 while walking to work in Oakland, his best years as a reporter were behind him.  After a solid career at several major dailies, he’d had a few reversals of fortune before ending up at the tiny community newspaper where he was editor-in-chief.  If Bailey had been murdered for anything less than being the first U.S.  reporter in over thirty years to be intentionally silenced in the line of duty, none of us might remember him.

But in 2007, Bailey was still in the saddle, doing his best to speak truth to power — to unveil the decades of crime and dysfunction inflicted on Oakland by Yusef Bey and his cotillion of  thugs, sycophants, and wack-jobbies.

Killing the Messenger isn’t a perfect book. (Nota bene: there is no perfect book. Books are by people, and people are imperfect.) I agree with the Columbia Journalism Review that the first three chapters unnecessarily sensationalize Oakland.

But after that, the book hits its stride. We move back in time, to the origins of the splinter group of the splinter group once loosely associated with Islam. We see the great migration to the North and the great disappointment of African-Americans who learned that racism was endemic in our culture, not just the South. We see the movement westward. And in bits and pieces we learn about Chauncey Bailey.

I connected with Chauncey Bailey’s story. I know what it’s like to be 50-something and not be at the best place in my life. Right now I’m in a redemption curve. I’m the director of a incredibly small university library and we’ve done some great stuff. Chauncey didn’t get that opportunity, but in the right scenario, it might have played out that way.

Chauncey also reminds me of Warren, a smart and knowledgable contractor we worked with in New Jersey who was in his line of work because his high-powered industry began laying off 50-something men during a lean phase–and if you aren’t young, you don’t know what it’s like to be aging and jobless (a male friend of mine, turning 50, commented that he now knew what it meant to be female). Warren did well with his life — he died a few years back playing tennis, God rest his soul — , but I assume Warren had more than a few days when he woke up wondering what the hell happened.

After I finished re-reading Killing the Messenger, I played the what-if game for a while. What if the Oakland Post hadn’t spiked the story he wanted to publish. What if his killers had a different timetable. What if he had taken a different route to work that morning.

But in the end, there were no what-ifs. Chauncey was murdered. Thankfully, eventually, his death was brought to justice. With the help of his peers, he was able to file his last story.

I work in a small religious institution, which gives me latitude. At the beginning of our talk, I began with a moment of silence for Chauncey as well as for journalists everywhere. Not just to honor their deaths, but their lives. As we paused, the library filling with our breathing and our silences, I thought about Chauncey, putting on his suit, grabbing his coffee, walking to work. May we all live lives so righteous.

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Estate planning makes us even more irritated because we’re not legally married. Sometimes people think we are, because we married in 2004, but those marriages were invalidated and will (almost undoubtedly) never become valid again. The additional expense is costly and irritating, and wouldn’t go away even if marriage were legal in California, because estate law is, in many respects, tax law, and that means the Feds.

Meanwhile, in a happy confluence, for actual real-world research purposes, I am looking into the laws surrounding the disposition bodies after death, including scattering of ashes, particularly in the aftermath of Allan Vieira, the Bernie Madoff of ash-scattering scams. What did I dig up from the LA Times? (Get it… DIG UP?)

“The outrage led Assemblywoman Lynne Leach (R-Walnut Creek) to introduce legislation last year that would stiffen regulations on people who scatter human ashes.”

Ok, yes, that was beneath my usual standards, but it’s Sunday morning and I haven’t punched my weekly blog post card, and I appreciate anything that relieves the gloom of estate planning. I admit I snickered like a 9-year-old who just saw her teacher’s bra strap.

Expect more tomorrow on the Random House ebook price hikes–a post written but embargoed for Monday’s delectation.

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Once you have interviewed for a library position, you have established a relationship with that institution and its interview team that stays on your permanent record–yes, the one you were warned about in the first grade. Your paths may never cross again — at least that you are aware of — but you’ve now had an intimate encounter with a number of people who spent an awful lot of time asking themselves if you were the right person for that position.

Perhaps you walked out of the interview and thanked Baby Jeebus you had the common sense not to work for those nut jobs. Perhaps you downed a quart of Rocky Road in a convenience-store parking lot on the way home, just so you’d stop crying, because you knew you blew it.

(Note: herein I break the narrative to state that I have never once believed I nailed the job interview–not ever.)

Perhaps you just had a big ol’ bucket of meh when you walked out of there — nice people, but not a fit for you or for them. Or maybe you immediately had another interview for the AMAZING LIFE-CHANGING JOB, and the other position pales in comparison.

Regardless, do the following:

* Write a thank-you letter, immediately. You can do it by email or you can do it by hand, but write that note and thank the head of the interview team (at minimum) for the opportunity to interview. Yes, even if you think they are all devil-worshippers, or even if you are completely dazzled by that AMAZING LIFE-CHANGING JOB. Write it. Now.

* Exercise patience. Everyone who interviewed you now has to recoup that time to catch up on whatever they didn’t get done during the interview process.

* File away your interview errata where you can tap it later. Like, possibly, decades later. Because they have it on file, too.

* Follow the guidelines for inquiring about the status of the position. You do not have to sit on your hands, but if they say email but don’t phone, then DON’T PHONE.

* Understand that in today’s litigious environment, the interviewer may not want to help you understand where your interview could have been better (I do get asked this question).

* Look for signs of an open door. If the head of the interview committee invites you to apply for future positions, take that at face value. You would be surprised how often interview teams see a quality candidate who isn’t a fit for a particular job and hope they can invite them back someday.

* Sometimes interview teams behave badly. Sometimes paperwork is lost or misdirected. Sometimes major life events interrupt the process. Regardless, under no circumstances should you write the interview team to berate them for not following up. (Yes, I have witnessed this.) If before you were forgotten, now you have made yourself completely unforgettable, and not in a nice way.  If a polite inquiry or two doesn’t do the trick, thank your lucky stars you aren’t working there, and press on.

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Yes, I Eventually Do Explain The Parrots

Here is a very interesting question others have posed: are libraries that license ebooks through Overdrive violating state patron-privacy laws because Amazon retains user data?

(For context, Sarah Houghton-Jan, who last spring proposed an eBook User’s Bill of Rights, recently taped a video recording her thoughts about the Overdrive-Amazon deal enabling Overdrive books to be checked out on Kindle devices and apps. To save time and  skip over the f-bombs, fast-forward to the 4-minute section, where Sarah talks about the complicated privacy issues.)

Full disclosure: I am a happy Overdrive customer. I do not, unlike Sarah, feel “screwed” by Overdrive. As a customer, I knew (most of) what I was getting into with Overdrive’s Kindle deal with Amazon. I knew in advance that Amazon keeps a fair amount of information about its Kindle book customers. I’m not surprised that they keep this data regardless of how the money goes in the pot – through a direct customer purchase, or an indirect library-purchase transaction.

At the start of the deal, the Overdrive-Amazon deal benefited people who already own Kindles, and presumably librarians don’t nanny the world. But that conversation changes with the first person (or library) who purchases a Kindle in order to check out “free” (to them) library books.

My “what next” thoughts: my take is that this is a prime time for libraries to work with eBook vendors, publishing and library associations, and standards groups to nail in some basic rights for readers AND authors AND publishers. It’s also a good time to review the mishmosh of issues and organizations related to accessibility and eBooks. And finally—and this is a librarian task—we should all look at state patron privacy laws and ask if they provide enough protection and the right protection.

I am setting aside other complaints. There’s a moment during the Kindle eBook check-in where Amazon nudges me to buy a book. Perhaps that should bug me. But I don’t see this as The Man. As a writer, I wouldn’t be offended if after checking out one of the books I’m published in, you then chose to buy it. And that’s because I want people to buy my books (whether through the agency of a library or strictly on their own).  I would be even happier if they actually read them.

Is this a bad thing? As a librarian, I partner with our small university bookstore, which is invited and encouraged to sell books at our readings—the same books available for checkout.  I rejoiced at recent readings when our bookstore manager sold a few copies of a professor’s book—two of them to our library, to fill requests. Isn’t this how it should work?

I see Overdrive as a company brokering a useful but transitional technology for placing current reading in the hands of mobile-technology users, leveraging known processes and practices. Overdrive is quaint—designed around the way fair-use works with print books–but it works for now. When things change, weeding will be a breeze!

However, if Overdrive’s current approach is transitional, eBooks are with us for good. (Am I allowed to again note that I was heckled in the late 1990s when I said the paper-based book would be an anachronism in my lifetime? Oh, and I do want stuff from Overdrive, but that’s another post.)

All of us in the reading ecology need to step back and do some serious rethinking. Some of us already are.  Take a look at Gluejar, where Eric Hellman and other thought leaders are proposing a digitization model for existing books that honors everyone in the process — readers, authors, publishers, and yes, libraries. (Eric’s blog, Go to Hellman, is required reading for all stakeholders in the reading ecology.) But while we’re rethinking, we also need to provide services.

We also need to leave the door open for conversations with data-lovers. The traditional librarian narrative wants me to be outraged, simply outraged that Amazon has all that user data, but in reality, I’m jealous. I’d like to have rich user data. I’d like to understand user behavior better. Frankly, I’m jealous not only as a librarian, but as a writer. Who among us of the writerly tendencies would not like to know more about our readers?  We need to at least acknowledge that this data has tremendous appeal.

I’ve held on to this post because I couldn’t figure out how to conclude it, so I’ll wrap it up with this non sequitur: hey, the wild parrots flew all the way from Telegraph Hill to visit us in the Inner Sunset! I have pics AND a video.

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Happy Hour (LITA)
Friday, 06/24/2011 – 5:30pm – 8:00pm
Offsite Location – Howlin’ Wolf Den Tbl 1
(High Priority)
Social event
Here’s your chance to catch-up with your LITA friends, and maybe make some new ones. …

(Plus a Sirsi event and a dinner hosted by a friend. I suspect I will actually collapse in bed and get rested for…)
Steering Committee I (GLBT RT)
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 8:00am – 10:00am
Convention Center – Rm 239
(High Priority)
Committee meeting
Meeting of GLBT RT Steering Committee

Presenting the transition plan for the GLBTRT bylaws changes.

OCLC Increase Your Digital Collection Visibility with WorldCat: A Roundtable for OAI-PMH Repository, Digital Collection and WorldCat Administrators
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 10:30am – 12:00pm
Hilton Riverside – Rosedown
(Low Priority)
Join us to hear more about increasing the visibility of your library’s digital content through WorldCat using the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. Learn about the benefits of search engine optimization within WorldCat and your own digital repository.

OCLC Join the Revolution: Library Management at Web Scale
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 10:30am – 12:00pm
Convention Center – Rm 269
(High Priority)
Find out how moving traditional ILS functions to the Web has positively impacted library services, improved the bottom line, and increased global library visibility and collaboration.

President’s Program: From Idea to Innovation to Implementation: How Teams Make it Happen (ACRL)
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 10:30am – 12:00pm
Convention Center – Rm 356-357
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session, Presidents program
We all value great ideas. … Jason Young, President of LeadSmart and author of the book Culturetopia, will share his perspectives on the importance of identifying and developing the essential factors that impact performance for any team or organization: leadership principles, management practices, alignment and employee behavior.

Council Resolutions Committee (ALA)
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 1:30pm – 2:30pm
Convention Center – La Nouvelle Orleans BR A/B
(Low Priority)
Committee meeting
This is the committee’s business meeting

Celebrating Southern Writers
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 1:30pm – 3:30pm
Convention Center – Rm 335-336
(High Priority)
Author event, Presentation/Session, Tracked Programs
This panel will celebrate authors from the region, including Tayari Jones, John Hart, Jennifer Niven, and Pat MacEnulty The program will be moderated by Barbara Hoffert, editor, Prepub Alert, Library Journal. An author signing will follow. Some books will be given away and others will be sold at a generous discount.

OCLC Perceptions of Libraries, 2010
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 3:00pm – 4:00pm
Doubletree Hotel – Madewood
(High Priority)
In Perceptions of Libraries 2010: Context and Community, OCLC explores how changing contexts impact how people perceive and relate to libraries and information sources. Technologies and economics are vastly changed from 2005, when OCLC released the first Perceptions report. Join Cathy De Rosa for discussion of trends, perceptions and attitudes of the information consumer from this 2010 study.

Blog and Wiki Interest Group (LITA BIGWIG)
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Intercontinental – Poydras
(High Priority)
Discussion/Interest group

Designing a Specialty Commons
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Convention Center – Rm 243
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session, Tracked Programs
This panel will feature a discussion on space, furniture, equipment considerations in various specialty commons in three academic libraries in Michigan, North Carolina, and California. …

Standards Interest Group
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Convention Center – Rm 287
(High Priority)
Discussion/Interest group
Todd Carpenter, Managing Director of NISO, will give an update on NISO activities. Jason Price, PhD, Collections and Acquisitions Services Manager at Claremont Colleges Library and Eresource Package Analyst/Consultant for the SCELC Consortium, will present on KBART.  Be sure to read Jason‚Äôs article in Serials Librarian, vol. 60 issue 1-4 (2011) entitled ‚ÄúMaking E-serials holdings data transferable: Applying the KBART recommended practice‚Äù. …

Bibliotheca Reception
Saturday, 06/25/2011 – 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Republic New Orleans, 828 South Peters
(High Priority)

HCOD Summit
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 8:00am – 9:00am
Ruby Slipper
(High Priority)

Camino Meeting
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 9:00am – 10:00am
Hilton New Orleans, OCLC Blue Suite
(High Priority)

Navigator User Group
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 10:30am – 12:00pm
Hilton New Orleans, OCLC Blue Suite
(High Priority)

Council I (ALA)
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 10:45am – 12:15pm
Convention Center – La Nouvelle Orleans BR C
(High Priority)
Governance/Membership meeting
Meeting of the ALA governing and policy making body.

Tayari Jones on the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 11:30am – 12:00pm
Exhibit Hall – @ your library stage
(High Priority)
Author event
Tayari Jones has written for McSweeney‚Äôs, The New York Times, and The Believer. Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, received best of the year nods from The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Creative Loafing. …

Top Technology Trends
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 1:30pm – 3:30pm
Convention Center – Auditorium A
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session
This program features our ongoing roundtable discussion about trends and advances in library  technology by a panel of LITA technology experts. The panelists will describe changes and advances in  technology that they see having an impact on the library world, and suggest what libraries might do to  take advantage of these trends.

LITA Awards and Scholarships Presentation
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 3:00pm – 4:00pm
Convention Center – Auditorium A Tbl 1
(High Priority)
Award presentation
Presentation of LITA Awards and Scholarships.

Building the Future:  Addressing Library Broadband Connectivity Issues in the 21st Century
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Convention Center – Auditorium A
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session, Presidents program
The nation‚Äôs first National Broadband Plan was released in 2010.  Hear the inimitable Bob Bocher speak.

Social (GLBT RT)
Sunday, 06/26/2011 – 5:30pm – 8:00pm
Offsite Location – Hotel LeMarais, 717 Conti Street
(High Priority)
Social event
Social for members of the GLBT RT

Breakfast with Steve
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 9:00am – 10:00am
(High Priority)

Stonewall Book Awards Brunch (GLBT RT)
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 10:30am – 2:00pm
Loews – Louisiana I
(High Priority)
Author event, Ticketed event
Brunch in celebration of the 40th anniversary Stonewall Book Award Winners and Honor books, with keynote presentations from previous Stonewall Book Award Winners Dorothy Allison and Sarah Schulman.   Presentation of the 2011 Stonewall Awards and Honors to Brian Katcher (Almost Perfect), Barb Johnson (More of This World or Maybe Another), Tom Mendicino (Probation), James Klise (Love Drugged), Wendy Moffat (A Great Unrecorded History), Justin Spring (Secret Historian), and more.
$55.00

Next Generation Catalog Interest Group
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 1:30pm – 3:30pm
Convention Center – Rm 269
(High Priority)
Discussion/Interest group

The Ultimate Debate: “Library Web Scale Discovery Services: Paradigm Shift or More of the Same?”
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 1:30pm – 3:30pm
Convention Center – Rm 278-282
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session, Tracked Programs
Users have asked repeatedly for a more Google-like interface. etc.etc. Sponsored by LITA Internet Resources and Services Interest Group.

Battledecks 2011
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Convention Center – Rm 344
(High Priority)
Presentation/Session, Social event
Battledecks is not for the faint of heart. It is a nerve-wracking event where those competing must create a coherent presentation from a deck of slides that they have never seen before.  This is truly the perfect way to end your conference experience as these courageous individuals compete for the glory of being crowned the next champ.

Zoe and Thomas
Monday, 06/27/2011 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm
TBD
(High Priority)

Ladies who Brunch
Tuesday, 06/28/2011 – 9:00am – 10:00am
Hotel
(High Priority)

Tour of St. Charles Parish Library
Tuesday, 06/28/2011 – 11:00am – 2:30pm
(High Priority)

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I have this theory that an uncomfortably high percentage of research library directors are fundamentally very anxious about their standing among their peers (university as well as library), sometimes to the point of professional myopia, and that this results in occasionally bizarre behavior — in this case,  using budget season in a year of severe cuts all around to prattle on about how the very best libraries don’t need librarians or library instruction (just like my favorite local restaurant can stop serving food or waiting on tables).

Me, I really don’t give a gnat’s behind about my standing among other directors as long as I can get ‘er done. As explained previously, I choose the small teaching-university environment because that’s how I roll.

But I do take notice when a university “librarian” seems quite proud to announce that the (self-inflicted) trend in his library is to significantly reduce the number of professional librarians (replacing some with “PhDs” and IT people) and move out of the information literacy role.

I put “librarian” in quotes quite intentionally. After listening to his speech at Penn [edit: Penn State] and the responses from people I respect, I have concluded that Jeff is posing a question, who is a librarian? My response is that I am a librarian, and he is not.

Let me explain.

A few months after I arrived at MPOW, someone on campus commented on all the “cutting-edge services” I was providing. I pressed this person for examples, just to see what was considered “cutting-edge” in our environment.

My Judy-Jetson improvements included:

* Establishing walk-up (and chat/email) reference services (which we call Research Help, since that’s what it is).*

* A regular docket of literary and arts events in the library

* “Allowing” food in the library (which was true before I arrived, but not well-known)

* Making the library cleaner and brighter, with more seating for students

* A renewed rigor/emphasis on information literacy instruction and implementing assessment thereof

* Implementing online interlibrary loan (hello, 1977!)

By the standards of the Gospel According to Jeff Trzeciak, I must seem like some misguided brontosaurus snuffling in the antedeluvian biblioforest. I should be eliminating walk-up service and replacing practitioners with PhDs who will focus on hifalutin digital projects. I’m… boring. And small. Hardly the stuff of Taiga Forum.

Though–wait–wasn’t one of Taiga’s latest findings, “Within five years, universities will expect libraries to assess their impact on student learning and retention and will fund accordingly”? But I digress.

I made those changes, and prioritized them, based on two things: my twenty years of professional library experience (and more years beyond that); and my environmental scan that concluded the following:

• Our students — many first-generation  college  — arrived with poor research skills, and often graduated that way;
• Instructors understand the need for high-quality information literacy instruction and absorb skills themselves through our library-faculty instructional partnership;
• We, the library, could play a pivotal role in helping our students become lifelong information consumers; and
• We could share and reinforce the joys of reading and cultural literacy, often within the context of faculty- and student-driven creation.

I will stand by those priorities. Yes, we have many other things in work, some highly technical (have your hugged your NCIP messaging today?), some more entrepreneurial, such as our academic-tech support for faculty, and some edgy in a small, fun way, like our LED “Open” sign. I also would love to have more IT staff. Of course I would!  And I have been saying for my entire career that we are shifting to a more professional/managerial workforce.

It may well be that Jeff’s students arrive completely steeped in research skills — which I doubt — and that McMaster’s faculty also self-update in this knowledge. But on this mortal coil, I would consider it sinful and wrong to eliminate a key service I considered crucial to the mission of our university, and crucial to our fundamental obligation to our students and faculty.

* Note, we didn’t have scheduled reference hours for at least the previous decade, and it would have been hard to do it during that period. But with the addition of .5 FTE temporary halftime reference support shortly before my arrival, as well as a new librarian who is willing to work half his time “on the desk” — a daunting schedule he nevertheless believes in — we eke out a slender but highly-prized reference — er, research help — schedule. We work our fingers to the bone, but we make it happen–because we are librarians.

Now I have the added concern that Jeff’s blatherings will be read and taken seriously, not only as a blueprint for library restructuring, but also as a valid interpretation of what librarianship, at essence, really means to all of us, in and out of LibraryLand.

Like Jenica, I don’t speak for my university. But I do feel I can and should speak on behalf of librarianship. And if Jeff has done me one small favor, it is that in studying his words, I feel more than ever the rightness of my leadership and decisions.

In the end, what matters, and what we are about, are the ancient truths of librarianship: organizing, managing, making available, preserving, and celebrating the word in all of its manifestations; helping our users build skill sets the fundamentals of which (if not the ephemeral details) will last a lifetime; and celebrating and defending the right to read, however that word is interpreted. This is what we do. This is who we are. This makes us librarians.

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Also see this great video from the Pioneer Library System: What 26 Checkouts Look Like; and visit the comments (some quite tart, but most are cogent) on the “open letter” from Harper Collins.

I wrote Brett yesterday to suggest the boycott also reference the other two issues that are important: HarperCollins’ resistance to consortial agreements, and their desire to begin meddling in library card policy.

But really, if this boycott sticks to this one point, I’m more than satisfied. We can work this issue from various angles, but I’m committed to all action that defends readers’ rights and advocates on behalf of the written word.

Yes, we librarians waited a while to address this issue. Yes, we could be better at planning and coordinating. Yes, we sometimes wait for “them” to solve our problems.

But I’m delighted to see us acting at all. I’m proud that there are people in our profession who saw this as important enough to act boldly. I support them. I support us.

We hang together, or we hang separately.

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Torture irons on the ship SUCCESS (LOC)

Last weekend on Twitter I saw a post:  “Tell me your favorite books on failing and failure, especially as it relates to innovation and leadership.”  I responded with this comment: “another blog post I don’t have time 2 write: how failure is overrated, & often confused w iterative design.”

I got up a little earlier than usual this on Monday (thanks to a cat who was licking my face) and decided to see if I could succeed (as in, not fail) at a 20-minute post on this topic. Cindi Trainor does a good job of capturing some of my thoughts, but I wanted to paraphrase/amplify, if only in the spirit of chiming in. I’ll use my writing experience to add crunchy bits of flavor and texture.

I know the conversations about failure are intended to get us comfortable with owning up to the idea that we don’t always succeed, and that if you don’t break a few eggs, you’ll never make an omelette (or something). That’s terrific. But let’s be clear that succeeding is personally and professionally more rewarding than failing. The delta is the difference between how I feel when I get a rejection letter and how I feel when I get that magic email or phone call that an essay has been accepted for publication.

Furthermore, claiming you’re comfortable with failure is dangerous if what you’re really doing is being uncomfortable with iterative design and group input. Don’t give up too early in the design process, and for God’s sake, set your vanity aside and let others help you. A good idea may need tuning; it will nearly always need iteration, particularly after it’s been tested in anything like a functioning environment.  If you love your idea, if you think it’s valid, you owe it more than one try.

(I cannot tell you how many times, late in the survey design process, I have to insist that yes we DO need to test the survey one more time–and I’m talking about surveys I’ve designed, not others. You don’t get a do-over once you launch a survey, just like you get one chance to submit an essay to a literary journal. That last 10% of effort separates good from great.)

Invention usually comes from individuals (a point Roy Tennant has made more than once), but it takes a village to bring ideas to life. One phenom I’ve observed in work organizations here and there is discomfort with feedback, coupled with the mistaken idea that input on a design immediately voids the value of the original creator’s effort. My guess is this stems from how we approach higher education these days, which is to emphasize individual achievement–a very artificial model.

I have heard workers say, “Well, I can’t take credit for this idea, because others helped me.”  I acknowledge all the people who help me with my own writing, but in the wee small hours of the morning, it’s me and my keyboard, revising my essay. It’s still your idea, even if someone told you it would be better off purple, not green.

I’ve also observed workers losing interest in an idea once they received feedback on it. Absolutely we want to acknowledge people who participated in making an idea come to life. But it doesn’t negate the value of the original idea.

My first semester in the MFA program, back in 2004, I observed one very smart, skilled writer dropping out of the program within weeks of starting. My take then (never voiced, just pondered) was that this  person could not cope with the very radical level of feedback provided in the workshop environment. This writer liked the idea of “succeeding,” writer-style — to see a work improved enough to be ultimately published — but was not able to handle what success actually required.

My suspicions were further solidified several years later, when I was running a writers’ workshop in Florida and two new members were introduced who unsettled the group for several months through their discomfort with feedback. Needless to say, neither would-be writer had much success getting anything published. But their unhappiness with anything less than glowing confirmation of their writing skills translated into disruptive behavior that threatened the very core of the group. Fortunately, this kind of person is at heart a quitter, and quit they did, before we had to take the final steps to “evict” them.

Are you declaring failure too early  because you’re pain-averse? Almost never have I observed a writing workshop where feedback was intended to kill a writing idea, but the best feedback is necessarily painful–excruciating, I-hate-myself, I-suck, I-am-not-a-writer, pound-the-steering-wheel-all-the-way-home painful.

A writer submitting a manuscript to her peers believes deep down that this will be the time when the other writers say, “This work is perfect.” A writer needs to think that this response is possible; it’s what forces you to give your all to a manuscript for hundreds or thousands of hours upon end only to share it with other people whose role it is to tell you what works, but also, what doesn’t work. A writer may spend thousands of hours on a manuscript only to be told by trusted peers that it needs overhauling top to bottom, or hundreds of pages need to be tossed, or that second-person-omniscence really isn’t working, or magical realism doesn’t belong in a recipe collection. But a writer who wants to succeed will subject herself to the process willingly, fully aware that pain lies ahead.

By the way, if you think most good ideas, or literary works, are extracted in the space of a long afternoon, think again.  Most writers have to curl their hands and breathe shallowly when people say, “Oh yeah, I keep meaning to take a day and write a short story,” and only fantasies about this person’s comeuppance help us survive these moments. (Anne Lamott said it better in Bird by Bird, which should be required management reading; note that her subtitle is Some Instructions on Writing and Life). A long afternoon is about how much time it takes to produce five paragraphs, four and a half of which will soon end up on the cutting-room floor, with or without your workshop’s help (since the purpose of a workshop is to gradually build the governor in your brain that does their work for you), so that the remainder can be revised ten times over.  The same is true of the execution of nearly any good idea.

Finally, the failure may not be in the idea, but how it is introduced and managed. A good idea needs curation: coordination, timing, communication, care and feeding, iteration. Someone tweeted Lombardi’s truism that winning isn’t everything, it’ s the only thing. I don’t buy that, because I’ve learned a lot from good ideas that I couldn’t bring to life (and also because it’s heartless). But you can’t win/succeed/not-fail if you aren’t willing to accept that the response to your great idea may be that it can’t be executed the very minute you think it up and without any modification or coordination. In an organization with the resources to execute ten good ideas, the eleventh idea either has to bump something else off the table, or it will have to wait.

Patience, grasshopper. “Not now” is not the same as “no.”  Sometimes a great idea needs to wait its turn; sometimes it is simply precocious, and in a year will be timely. Other times, a great idea has lost its prime moment and needs to be left behind on the altar of things that could have happened in an alternate universe. You’re all the better for having had a great idea; there will be many more.

Yes, winning is part of it, but learning how to win is even bigger. I didn’t complete this post on Monday; I had to get to work, and it wasn’t done. It was better to let it marinate a day while I forged on to other things. It’s still not much as far as writing goes–it’s a hasty blog post, not an essay in the New Yorker, and my expectations for it are low.  The essay I worked on for an hour and a half early this morning, on the other hand, will take many more hours to reach its first draft, and I will willingly break my heart ten times over, shredding the essay to pieces, reconstituting it, spending sunny days staring at a screen, to see it succeed.

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Change by alexlc13, on Flickr

In February I’m giving a talk to medical librarians that explores these questions:

• How do we know when and what to let go?
• What are the ingredients to effective change management?
• How do we inspire buy-in from those we work with and from our key stakeholders?

I would add this final point that has arisen In Light Of Recent Events:

• How do we recognize and respond to strategic moments?

This is one of those cases where I feel the audacity of addressing these questions. Do I really know the answers, even in part? I have led change from time to time, but have I done it well, and and have I learned from the experiences, particularly the bad ones?

Then it occurred to me that change is like eating: everyone does it. So I turn back to you, gentle readers. What do you say?

(Yes, it has occurred to me that I have had recent experience with a kerfuffle that was almost entirely about change management from every possible angle. For the wisest observations and best roundup of other posts, see Michael Golrick, and no, I’m not just sending you there because he liked my post–he raised the “strategic moment” issue that needs greater attention and that I didn’t address.)

By the way, Brad, I’m really hoping you chip in with some observations on Evergreen.

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