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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"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"

I was teaching a library-science class about a decade ago when a student snaked her hand into the air.

“You know how no good deed goes unpunished?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and continued lecturing.

I knew where she was going with that question, because I knew her from another context, where she was the self-designated killjoy who approached every project confident of its failure–which, for the record, is an excellent way to ensure failure happens. She’s the one who will ask, “Just to play Devil’s advocate”–as if Satan needed any help.

And we have all sat in meetings where this person  dwelled ad infinitum on every possible thing that could go wrong with a good idea that hadn’t even been launched, or itemized in exquisite detail the inevitable failings of any good idea in progress. There have been times when I have been this person (and will be again in the future), and for this I humbly repent.

I was reminded of this moment recently when I read the (relatively mild) commentary on an article in Library Journal, “Netflix-inspired Pilot Program for Borrowing in California Library Languishes,” and then, reluctantly, prodded from a Tweet, turned my eyes to this post by the Annoying Librarian (yes, I know that’s not her real fake name). It was at that moment I realized why I loathe her: because I’ve suffered her kith and kin at nearly every library job I’ve ever had.

Which leads into a response I’ve wanted to post for a while about what directors do for a living.

In my last post about my concerns about eBooks and the traditional lending model, a commenter said something I’ve heard many times in different guises: “I think the problem lies in the fact that a lot of librarians and admin don’t really know shit about eBooks. Admin’s role has changed from less about being the guardian of the library to more of a fundraiser/politician role.”

I’m not singling out Justin, but I have wanted to respond to his comment for over a month, and the Netflix-lending posts only fueled my desire to do so.

If I have to point to my professionally challenges for the year ahead, it is all about fundraising and politics. I realize it’s awfully cute that I work in such a small library that I end up washing dishes, hanging pictures, and (teeth gritted) cataloging books.  I  am also tech-savvy enough that my staff don’t have to get out the flannel board and hand puppets to have a conversation with me about eBooks, and I bet that is a relief to them. (Though we are also fortunate to have a true geek on board in charge of library systems–an unusually strong resource for a tiny library–and we are also all tech-literate, which is no coincidence, either.)

But I don’t have a list posted to my wall about the tech issues I need to grasp over the next year. Instead, my wall features my professional goals, blown up in type large enough to read from my desk, and they are all related to my “fundraiser/political role.”  In fact, looking over the last 14 months, and at the year ahead, all of my successes, my challenges, and my successes-in-progress directly relate to that role. It’s my job, the one I was hired to do.

Our biggest challenge in libraries right now is about how we position ourselves within the stakeholder/funding process, and much of that has to do with strategic communications. I strive for this not only through direction (I have a strategic-communications document, though that’s an understatement, because nearly everything I have done in the past year relates back to how we communicate) but also, I hope, through example. I recently faced a daunting challenge that for a while had me very frustrated. But I chose to face this challenge with a positive face forward every single day, to stay on message and upbeat, and to turn it into a win for the library.

My director peers who don’t entirely understand eBooks can be forgiven. They have a daunting job these days: to keep libraries positioned.

I realize not all admins are approachable, have an interest in information technology, or want to know. But if there’s something absolutely crucial your “admin” needs to know, you have a responsibility to make every effort to find a way to share this knowledge with them. If the “admins” don’t know “shit” about eBooks, it’s the job of those who do to find a way to communicate crucial facts to them: just what they need to know, and no more than that, and in a manner in which the information can be quickly absorbed.

So now, back to Hayward Public Library. Here we have a director trying something new, and then being transparent that it hasn’t worked out yet.  I found it interesting that this story made Library Journal at all (slow week?), but at that point it was inevitable that AL would begin shouting.

If there’s one thing writing has taught me, it is that shitty first drafts are a necessary part of the process, and that second, third, and fourth drafts aren’t much better. In fact, as a writer, I have to bite back the snark when someone says, “Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to write a story one of these days,” as if good literature were something banged out in a single session on a stray weekend afternoon, and not something extracted through exhausting, nausea-generating iterations (cue Jack Nicholson in The Shining, typing the same sentence over and over and OVER).  It’s understandable; excellence appears effortlessness.

But excellence also requires much behind-scenes sausagemaking and experimentation. This is particularly true for new ideas. It is extremely hard to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas early in the iterative design process (and that goes for everything from writing and homebrewing to designing library buildings). Sometimes the goal is right, but the method needs rethinking. Sometimes the goal itself needs rethinking. And sometimes a good idea just needs time, timing, and tweaking to triumph. You will just not know until you’ve put some effort into it for a while.

It can be heartbreaking to walk away from an idea you’ve poured work into, but it’s part of the process. The significantly harder part of any idea is believing in it before it’s fully-baked, when the effort to make it happen outstrips the apparent payoff, and you feel the impatience of others, hear the negative voices, sniff the faint odor of doubt. That’s the point where you need to have faith in things unseen.

But none of this bothers the Annoying Librarian, because she’s all about the turd in the punch bowl, the preemptive negativism, the soul-sucking, nasty worldview in which no good deed goes unpunished and They are always against Us. It’s a convenient, lazy perch, particularly when you do it behind the lack of accountability that  anonymity provides. It’s good for page views and quick laughs at the expense of whatever idea she’s excoriating at the moment. But it doesn’t make the world a better place. It doesn’t make you a better person, either.

I forced myself to view the Annoying Librarian’s site once more before ending this post, and she’s true to form: there she is saying “I hate to say I told you so.” The facts don’t matter; it’s just another instance where she correlates something she doesn’t like with failure, however tenuous the connection.

Thing is, AL doesn’t hate to say she told us so, not one bit (any more than anyone using that expression feels that way). Like the Dementors, she keens for the moment of destruction; she loves failure more than the creative spark of life itself.  Devil’s advocate? She’s his liege.

I don’t know if Hayward has found the right solution yet. But they tried something new, were up front about it, and are clearly interested in positioning the library for the future. The director seems less interested in the mechanics of this particular approach than addressing the root problems that led to this experiment.

He’s on his game. I’m trying to be on mine. You do your part, too, whether it’s reaching a little harder to explain to your boss about eBooks, thinking twice before you make that negative comment or laugh at a cheap shot, or forcing yourself to go into your next meeting with the most positive spin on things you can muster (you may be surprised at how good you feel when you do this). We have a lot of work to do, those of us who care fiercely about libraries, and we need all the help–and faith–we can get.

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“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Once upon a time I was an outsourced librarian (for the EPA), which meant this: I was paid much less than the federal employees, my benefits were not as good as theirs, and my “supervisor” was some wahoo several states over who had most recently supervised clerks at Toys ‘R’ Us. It was never about anything other than saving the feds a few bucks, which became painfully but at least publicly evident when the EPA libraries were threatened with closure.

I worked hard there, and I “have [had] to work” at nearly every other library I’ve worked at for two decades. Where I work now, we work full-tilt all fall, then do projects over the winter break, then work-work-work all spring, and then catch up on projects all summer. I typically get to work before 7:30 and I’m usually there at least til 5, and I’m in earlier and stay later as needed, and I drag work home. The library is hardly alone in this level of work effort; it’s just typical of our campus. We do great work, and then we get up the next day and do more of it.

God forbid I ever encounter (or have to work for) a Pezzanite. Among other things, you have to be some kind of cad to generalize an entire profession to the Times so boastfully.

I could go on, but you know what? It’s already 5:30 a.m., and I need to get a move on — the day ticks away as I write.

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Probably the best moment (if a year of wandering in the bureaucratic gulag has best moments) was at the end of all of a long phone call when the USAA person thanked me for my military service. I was a Cold War Warrior during a period of relative prosperity, which means that there wasn’t anyone greeting us at airports when we came home from our peacetime tours. We were just the folks who went into the military and spent years humping 12-hour shifts under harsh working conditions while everyone back home was busy being disco-cool. So I got a little lump in my throat when he thanked me for my service.

I have no complaints, and believe the Air Force made me who I am today, but only those of us who have served–even in peacetime–really understand what it means to serve, maybe even more so when nobody is paying attention. I didn’t serve so that someone would thank me for it, but I appreciate it all the same.

USAA also credited me the difference ($141) between my deductible and the total insurance amount, which was a very nice gesture. They did this after I advised them I wouldn’t be filing a claim, and again, it was unexpected and really rather touching.  It did make me realize that if the damage to the rental car had been much greater, this whole situation would have been much messier, because by exercising my right to use Mastercard coverage, the credit card company, not USAA, was my insurance company for the incident. Though perhaps if I had totaled the car I might have been advised much earlier that because I used a coupon for some of the cost of renting the car, the Mastercard coverage wasn’t in effect.

(Good to know that, though a year is a long time to find that out.)

USAA also advised me that the ominous collection notice was just a bill, which I promptly paid. If this shows up on my credit report, I will begin saber-rattling all over again (given that celebrity librarians can command at least 15 minutes of mindshare), but I think I’m OK.

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