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LibraryLand Skills for Any Century

Meredith Farkas wrote a post about skills for librarianship that has received well-deserved praise from many corners of LibraryLand. I’d like to add to this list a little–and challenge one comment. Based on my own experience and what I have observed for the last fifteen years, here are a few more skills you need:

Cunning. You will more easily navigate the rough waters of real-world work environments if you have political acumen, the ability to sniff out b.s., and that prickly sense in the back of your neck that warns you of someone bad-mouthing you. In the Air Force, we were taught to listen to our instincts: “If it doesn’t look right, feel right, smell right…” One tip: make lots of friends. The people who tear down others often get a wee too arrogant and badmouth to the wrong folks–your friends who will give you a heads-up what so-and-so is saying.

I also learned to listen to silence. Sudden silence, in an organization, is a cue to me that something is not right–like the way birds stop singing before a big storm or an earthquake. Managing silence, in fact, is a very important skill. Ask a question, and if you’re not satisfied, keep probing.

Impatience. Patience is vastly overrated. Librarians love to process stuff to death, and are often all too willing to spend way too much expensive staff time deliberating very tiny matters in lieu of getting to “go.” (We don’t need no steenkin’ users…) At MPOW our style manual requires serial commas–as in salt, butter, cheese, and eggs–because it’s non-debatable. Keep your eyeballs peeled for time-sinks. Develop timelines and try to beat them. Live by deadlines.

Pessimism. I am not suggesting you turn into a nattering nabob of negativism. I just mean you should imagine the worst-case scenario and have a plan for it, whether it’s a flood or a huge budget cut. Do you have an emergency phone tree? A contingency plan for how you’ll approach a big setback? An axe?

Fiscal horse-sense. Why is it so few librarians can read a budget or understand how the money gets spent? At several former places of work (MFPOWs) I worked hard to ingratiate myself with the accountants by showing an interest in the budget–primarily by finding errors, anomalies, and opportunities. To me, the statement “We can’t afford…” is a red flag that makes me holler “Show me the budget.” Yes, I know libraries are often on tight budgets, but still: show me the budget. I double-dare you.

Then there’s the general penny-wise-pound-foolishness I have witnessed far too often, such as one MFPOW with a multi-million-dollar budget where we suffered with a donated fax machine that regularly ate incoming faxes because “beggars can’t be choosers.” This same library had four staff members scheduled around the availability of their one aged computer… and this was not in the dark ages. (Yes, I fixed that problem.) I remember doing a technology inventory in one library where the ratio of computers to staff was 1:1 in Admin and 1:7 in reference. Price out a computer versus a staff person, and that’s simply insane. An employee should never wait around, hands folded, for time on a cheap input device.

Cajones [sic–see comments!] (thank you, Madeline Albright). You need to be able to say things like “I’m the best choice for this job because…” and “This project will succeed because…” Learn how to showboat, how to write a press release, how to brag about a new service until your voice is hoarse. It also helps to learn how to politely disagree, or to point out the obvious but unspoken, like “gee, why didn’t any women get selected for that panel?” Yes, this will get you labeled by some as a self-promoting shameless hussy who’s in it Just For Yourself. Wear it with pride.

Feistiness. I’m fiercely protective of Team MPOW. I do not sit in meetings and say, “Why–replacing professional librarians with volunteers is a great idea!” I say “We use professionals for the same reason I pay my dentist.”

This post was much longer but to my consternation got truncated by Movable Type–shame! More later. Busy day, so not for a while.

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This was written by K.G. Schneider. Posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006, at 6:38 am. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.